They need you to log in every day, earning the new currency, to pad their metrics.
And yet here we are, not realizing just how we, the players, have so much power over Cryptic. They need us more than we need them. If we, the players, truly want change for STO, we need to exploit the hell out of that power.
But I think sadly, we'll all do what we always do. We mope around and complain, get distracted by a new shiny, and forget or accept the change and move on until the next fiasco happens.
Reminds me of the whole dilithium event nerf with "hoarded" marks no longer giving better rewards.
HOW DARE YOU HOARD RISIAN PEARLS FROM LAST YEAR!!! YOU WILL PLAY OUR WAY!!!
It's basically a huge "up yours" to anyone with the sense to stash some extra pearls away for the following year.
In fact I fully expect the summer event to die a death once everyone has the ship. Nobody is going to carry on grinding it once they have what they need. Previous years a lot of people played there right up till the end to save some goodies for next year...this will no longer be the case.
Couple of questions on the ship emotes (though one is a wee bit off topic, but it might spur a thought if it hasn't already been raised)...
1) In the case that a target has the Sensor Analysis doohickey bouncing over their ship, if that person does a ship emote will it appear above the SA doohickey, replace the doohickey, or not be visible because of the doohickey?
2) With the availability of the SA doohickey and now the ship emotes, will it be possible for a team lead to mark a target at some point? Cause that could be a pretty nifty feature sort of thing...
I don't mind the change in the currency. It doesn't affect me that much and I like that they are offering stuff to us for what we already have. I do not like the retiring of the previous ships.
... I guess I've gotten used to the idea to the point I don't expect to be able to circumvent what is clearly the intended mechanic for acquiring event ships the day they roll out.
If you could max your spec points in a week or get all the new stuff on day 1 there's not a lot of reason to return to play.
As for discontinuing the ships, personally I was never interested in playing them very much (most of my alts have them boxed and unused in the bank, and I don't remember the last time I went back to one). But it does suck for players who like them.
^ I've not ensconced many toons in Risian ships, so it's not a matter of liking them so much as it is console bonuses and set bonuses...if this year's ship has a 3rd part of the set for the cruiser/corvette and I like the 3-piece bonus, recruits can't get it. It'd probably be good on their part if the set bonus from the past consoles was frozen in place, and only the new yearly consoles from here on out formed a set. Regardless, seconded on the circumventing.
Oh, and one more thing. This isn't just an insult to the STO players. This is an insult to your development team who spent time creating the Risian Corvette and Risian Cruiser. By making this "exclusivity" decision, you're telling your own employees that what they're creating just isn't that important if you can afford to "retire" them, instead of allowing new players (and our Delta Recruits) to enjoy them.
Closing the gap, indeed.
Dilithium weekend excluding reputation mark payouts is okay because you want those reputation marks to be valuable throughout the year. But the Risian Corvette and Luxury Cruiser? Well, that's a limited time only thing and not intended to be enjoyed year-round because we're putting an emphasis on T6 ships we can bilk you for.
But I'm also willing to predict you aren't entirely retiring the Corvette and Luxury Cruiser. No, you put too much money and labor hours into that work to literally retire them.
You're just going to repackage it, aren't you? Under the T6 treatment, of course. Without any sort of discount.
I'm betting the Risian event ship will be a T6 Risian Corvette, which is why it's being retired. Otherwise, you fall into the same controversy as the T6 Jem'Hadar Strike Ship. If you remind players they're going to grind for the same exact ship from 2 years ago with slightly better stats and a ship mastery trait, some of us might point out a problem with the ethics of such a decision.
Double Dip Rising is the best extortion ever, and the players love it.
But hey, I'd love to be proved wrong in this prediction of mine.
So, this change in and of itself is a terrible idea, for reasons stated upthread.
But moreover, I'm really saddened and confused by how much apparent WORK is going in to finding the last few ways that players are enjoying themselves in the game and doing away with them. I mean, developer time is developer time whether it's spent building new systems, fixing bugs, or nerfing existing material, so why is so MUCH of that finite resource apparently being spent on nerfs?
Tau Dewa patrols, nerfed. Delta quadrant patrols, nerfed, then nerfed again. Voth battlezone, nerfed. Borg red alerts, nerfed. Doffing for XP, nerfed. Fix for Deferi city hard? Still waiting after how many years? A renewed way to earn XP, now that all the old ways have been destroyed? Coming eventually, according to rumor. And now seasonal events, nerfed.
Please, PLEASE, allocate SOME of the developer time away from nerfs and back to things that make the game MORE enjoyable, rather than more of a chore. Maybe 80% nerf, 20% fun would be a good starting point.
So those who worked last year to earn enough pearls to get the ship this year get a selection of junk offerings and no ship.
31 pages in and going strong. This is not going to end well.
It would be a far better decision to allow people to use the pearls and the new currency this year and THEN retire the pearls. AND still allow people to get the old ships. Why are you taking them away? This makes no sense. None of our Delta recruits will be able to get any of the previous event ships because they're all going to be taken away??? Is this supposed to be a ham-fisted way of forcing us to buy C-store ships? Because I can tell you straight up it's not going to work.
"We want to close the gap between new players and old ones"
Proceeds to widen the gap with a decision like this
Cryptic please.
You're contradicting yourself every step of the way.
Truthfully, denying the new players and new characters created in the Delta Event SPECIFICALLY designed to get people to create new characters, the chance to get these event ships.
There are people who deleted established characters in order to make Delta Recruits in their places. It's just...bad.
It's creating another void between vets and new players. It's also shafting the people who weren't able to complete a project for whatever reason last year and were expecting to finish it this year. If they don't have that project slotted from last year they're screwed.
This has the 'stink' of Geko written all over it. What this also shows very clearly is that T5U ships are considered completely worthless by Cryptic. I would recommend claiming/Reclaiming or whatever and of the consoles from two Risian ships if you are going to rid your inventory of the ships themselves. Knowing how they work there will probably be a new console with whatever they are releasing that gives two or three console bonuses.
Frankly it would be agreeable to be able to reclaim event ships altogether.
Well much like they haven't maintained any exclusivity with the ships by selling them...
...they could just move the previous costumes to the Lobi Store or the like...
...to maintain the particular type of exclusivity that Cryptic enjoys.
Reminds me of the whole dilithium event nerf with "hoarded" marks no longer giving better rewards.
HOW DARE YOU HOARD RISIAN PEARLS FROM LAST YEAR!!! YOU WILL PLAY OUR WAY!!!
It's basically a huge "up yours" to anyone with the sense to stash some extra pearls away for the following year.
In fact I fully expect the summer event to die a death once everyone has the ship. Nobody is going to carry on grinding it once they have what they need. Previous years a lot of people played there right up till the end to save some goodies for next year...this will no longer be the case.
This is all very true.
So unless they extend this store of pearl trade ins into the new currency, everyone is gonna vacate the vacation spot... except people who just enjoy Risa for Risa.
On the upside the Iconians haven't decided to just destroy Risa altogether.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
So those who worked last year to earn enough pearls to get the ship this year get a selection of junk offerings and no ship.
31 pages in and going strong. This is not going to end well.
It would be a far better decision to allow people to use the pearls and the new currency this year and THEN retire the pearls. AND still allow people to get the old ships. Why are you taking them away? This makes no sense. None of our Delta recruits will be able to get any of the previous event ships because they're all going to be taken away??? Is this supposed to be a ham-fisted way of forcing us to buy C-store ships? Because I can tell you straight up it's not going to work.
I'm betting the Risian event ship will be a T6 Risian Corvette, which is why it's being retired. Otherwise, you fall into the same controversy as the T6 Jem'Hadar Strike Ship. If you remind players they're going to grind for the same exact ship from 2 years ago with slightly better stats and a ship mastery trait, some of us might point out a problem with the ethics of such a decision.
It wouldn't surprise me. They're already planning to do something like this with the S[REDACTED] D[REDACTED].
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Right on.
I liked the Corvette. You know why? Because I'm a freakin' Ferengi.
The ship is sleek, it's fast, I can give it a name without a "U.S.S." stuck in front, and it's the only ship available that Starfleet Command will let me put a latinum-plated paint job on.
That's right. Latinum... Plated... To match all that custom-built Epic military hardware I have installed on it. That's kicking TRIBBLE in style. After all, the Homestar Runner is the ship that qualified me for the 30K DPS League.
I was hoping to get one for each of my Regional Managers this summer... A matched set of 'company cars', so to speak. They're going to be so disappointed, if I can't.
Oh, and one more thing. This isn't just an insult to the STO players. This is an insult to your development team who spent time creating the Risian Corvette and Risian Cruiser. By making this "exclusivity" decision, you're telling your own employees that what they're creating just isn't that important if you can afford to "retire" them, instead of allowing new players (and our Delta Recruits) to enjoy them.
Closing the gap, indeed.
Dilithium weekend excluding reputation mark payouts is okay because you want those reputation marks to be valuable throughout the year. But the Risian Corvette and Luxury Cruiser? Well, that's a limited time only thing and not intended to be enjoyed year-round because we're putting an emphasis on T6 ships we can bilk you for.
But I'm also willing to predict you aren't entirely retiring the Corvette and Luxury Cruiser. No, you put too much money and labor hours into that work to literally retire them.
You're just going to repackage it, aren't you? Under the T6 treatment, of course. Without any sort of discount.
I'm betting the Risian event ship will be a T6 Risian Corvette, which is why it's being retired. Otherwise, you fall into the same controversy as the T6 Jem'Hadar Strike Ship. If you remind players they're going to grind for the same exact ship from 2 years ago with slightly better stats and a ship mastery trait, some of us might point out a problem with the ethics of such a decision.
Double Dip Rising is the best extortion ever, and the players love it.
But hey, I'd love to be proved wrong in this prediction of mine.
Hmm at first after reading this I was angry, really angry.
But then i remembered that Risian ships are just for show and they're pretty lame, so this change will only hurt compulsive collectors that don't want to spend too much time on a beach planet instead of cold space.
Then again, problem is that i'm one of those compulsive collectors so, ugh.....
And my poor Delta recruit will add 3 ships to his already-anniversary-lacking collection
Don't like this, at all. Hopes down for winter event.
So you are penalising those with the intelligence to plan ahead.
I knew I wouldn't have much time this summer to play, so I spent far too much extra time last summer getting all the pearls I would need to still get the new ship for 2015.
I also knew I would be visiting family this Christmas so wouldn't be able to play at all. Again, I planned ahead and got enough Q autographs to cover me for 2015.
So as I said, for those of us with the intelligence and ability to plan our lives a year or more in advance, for those of us that have families and other responsibilities so can't be playing video games every day or certainly not much over the holiday periods, its a big TRIBBLE you from Cryptic.
All this does is upset your old loyal player base.
Just leave things alone, they are fine as they were.
They could at least announce this before people saved all the pearls. Like at the beginning of this years event say the pearls won't apply to next year.
HOLD ON!!! At least they let us know about this change a month a head of time. They could have just waited to announce the change after the event started... Oh, nvm... To soon??
I know I asked before on this thread, and been replied to by another forum-follower, but if they are scrapping one lot of risian currency what will happen to the other?
Can Trendy tell me what the plans for the lohlunat favors are please?
I'm not that upset about retiring the Pearls to force players to participate in the event more than they otherwise would have. I may not agree with it, but I can cope with it.
BUT....
Starship Emotes?!?!?
Really?? Someone thought it was a great idea and in keeping with the spirit of Star Trek to have our -SHIPS- give each other holographic lazy-spam?? This is what will improve the game to make it feel more like the Star Trek we all (supposedly) love and respect??
I'm not even going to get into the obvious trolling aspect of these, nor how annoying people will make any sort of space activity by giving everyone around them a gesture that isn't requested or appropriate (and anyone who has spent time on ESD should know this is exactly how players will use these).
Just from a minimal immersion standpoint, why, in the name of Khan, did anyone think this was remotely appropriate! Did anyone ever see the Enterprise-D give the Vulcan salute to the Excelsior class courier delivering an official to her? Perhaps someone saw the Defiant let the Borg cube that was destroying her have a sad-face? Maybe the scene where the Enterprise gave the Excelsior that extremely noticeable thumbs-up after defeating the plot to derail the Khitomer negotiations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire was emblazoned on the brain of whoever put forth this as a truly inspired inclusion into STO?
I'm sorry, but I just cannot conceive of why this would even be put forth as a suggestion for the devs to implement, let alone actually make it through to actually be put in the game. We have far too little immersion in the game as it is (consoles in our Ready Rooms that are constantly on fire, a dirth of ship interiors that actually look like ship interiors, Captains and Admirals who basically have complete freedom to take their ship anywhere and do anything, ect.), so why would anyone want to make STO feel even less like the Star Trek it is supposed to be?
Seriously. This has to be a joke. It can't be serious. That would be just too depressing to think that this is the direction the Devs are taking STO, especially in the midst of what is supposed to be the most serious challenge to the collective races continued existence in the history of the game.
Okay, after reading this, This new summer event is not worth it at all. The devs had decided that everything we worked for was for nothing.
One of the few events that we could collect something rare and fun and you have the nerve to tell us that you don't want to keep the event going is total BS.
I still have projects not completed, and with players that have alot of new alts, collecting those one of a kind ships are now going to be impossible. Last year's winter event was fun, but this year's summer event is just a slap in the face.
I wonder if you, the devs, have heard of the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". If not, that stop changing something that was working. This new idea for the summer event is just plain stupid, and I don't very many player are going to be happy with you for that.
Outside of failing actually to maintain the exclusivity, it's a common way in which events reward exclusive items...they're vanity items.
Somebody participates in an event, they might get a vanity pet, costume, some additional palette thing, titles, etc, etc, etc.
When was the last FE rerun? How will folks 4pc their Command Platforms? What about folks missing consoles for the Summer/Winter ships? Etc, etc, etc...
Vanity stuff as exclusive items makes sense...allows one to be rewarded and show off participation without affecting gameplay.
Cryptic you guys are just an absolute total RIP OFF.
All of this new TRIBBLE, grind or pay, you are counting on new players paying for the advantages others have been committed to the grind for. Now this. PLayers take note, anything you have saved from previous things, Winter Event, Mirror Event, Crystalline entity event will go this way too. They will never admit this, but there you go.
Just put the game back to Pay to Play and oh yeah make it PLAYABLE...the lag is beyond belief, Command Ships/Traits/Specialization seems to be a huge cause of it, and your answer is a Command Sheshar? Really?
Ugh...When does Legacy of the Void come out? I need something better to play, you have butchered Star Trek and if CBS was smart they would take this license away from you and give to people that can nurture this game.
Comments
And yet here we are, not realizing just how we, the players, have so much power over Cryptic. They need us more than we need them. If we, the players, truly want change for STO, we need to exploit the hell out of that power.
But I think sadly, we'll all do what we always do. We mope around and complain, get distracted by a new shiny, and forget or accept the change and move on until the next fiasco happens.
HOW DARE YOU HOARD RISIAN PEARLS FROM LAST YEAR!!! YOU WILL PLAY OUR WAY!!!
It's basically a huge "up yours" to anyone with the sense to stash some extra pearls away for the following year.
In fact I fully expect the summer event to die a death once everyone has the ship. Nobody is going to carry on grinding it once they have what they need. Previous years a lot of people played there right up till the end to save some goodies for next year...this will no longer be the case.
1) In the case that a target has the Sensor Analysis doohickey bouncing over their ship, if that person does a ship emote will it appear above the SA doohickey, replace the doohickey, or not be visible because of the doohickey?
2) With the availability of the SA doohickey and now the ship emotes, will it be possible for a team lead to mark a target at some point? Cause that could be a pretty nifty feature sort of thing...
^ I've not ensconced many toons in Risian ships, so it's not a matter of liking them so much as it is console bonuses and set bonuses...if this year's ship has a 3rd part of the set for the cruiser/corvette and I like the 3-piece bonus, recruits can't get it. It'd probably be good on their part if the set bonus from the past consoles was frozen in place, and only the new yearly consoles from here on out formed a set. Regardless, seconded on the circumventing.
(If this has been adressed on one of the 30 pages before, I'm sorry - I couldn't stand this amount of rants.
But I'm still a mere human."
Vice Admiral Chris Curtiss, Temporal Ambassador
Except it already took "those people" 25 days ... d'oh ... :rolleyes:
Closing the gap, indeed.
Dilithium weekend excluding reputation mark payouts is okay because you want those reputation marks to be valuable throughout the year. But the Risian Corvette and Luxury Cruiser? Well, that's a limited time only thing and not intended to be enjoyed year-round because we're putting an emphasis on T6 ships we can bilk you for.
But I'm also willing to predict you aren't entirely retiring the Corvette and Luxury Cruiser. No, you put too much money and labor hours into that work to literally retire them.
You're just going to repackage it, aren't you? Under the T6 treatment, of course. Without any sort of discount.
I'm betting the Risian event ship will be a T6 Risian Corvette, which is why it's being retired. Otherwise, you fall into the same controversy as the T6 Jem'Hadar Strike Ship. If you remind players they're going to grind for the same exact ship from 2 years ago with slightly better stats and a ship mastery trait, some of us might point out a problem with the ethics of such a decision.
Double Dip Rising is the best extortion ever, and the players love it.
But hey, I'd love to be proved wrong in this prediction of mine.
But moreover, I'm really saddened and confused by how much apparent WORK is going in to finding the last few ways that players are enjoying themselves in the game and doing away with them. I mean, developer time is developer time whether it's spent building new systems, fixing bugs, or nerfing existing material, so why is so MUCH of that finite resource apparently being spent on nerfs?
Tau Dewa patrols, nerfed. Delta quadrant patrols, nerfed, then nerfed again. Voth battlezone, nerfed. Borg red alerts, nerfed. Doffing for XP, nerfed. Fix for Deferi city hard? Still waiting after how many years? A renewed way to earn XP, now that all the old ways have been destroyed? Coming eventually, according to rumor. And now seasonal events, nerfed.
Please, PLEASE, allocate SOME of the developer time away from nerfs and back to things that make the game MORE enjoyable, rather than more of a chore. Maybe 80% nerf, 20% fun would be a good starting point.
31 pages in and going strong. This is not going to end well.
It would be a far better decision to allow people to use the pearls and the new currency this year and THEN retire the pearls. AND still allow people to get the old ships. Why are you taking them away? This makes no sense. None of our Delta recruits will be able to get any of the previous event ships because they're all going to be taken away??? Is this supposed to be a ham-fisted way of forcing us to buy C-store ships? Because I can tell you straight up it's not going to work.
There are people who deleted established characters in order to make Delta Recruits in their places. It's just...bad.
It's creating another void between vets and new players. It's also shafting the people who weren't able to complete a project for whatever reason last year and were expecting to finish it this year. If they don't have that project slotted from last year they're screwed.
Frankly it would be agreeable to be able to reclaim event ships altogether.
THAT...would leave me very...agitated.
This is all very true.
So unless they extend this store of pearl trade ins into the new currency, everyone is gonna vacate the vacation spot... except people who just enjoy Risa for Risa.
On the upside the Iconians haven't decided to just destroy Risa altogether.
That's it, exactly.
It wouldn't surprise me. They're already planning to do something like this with the S[REDACTED] D[REDACTED].
WHOOPS, spoiler alert!
Right on.
I liked the Corvette. You know why? Because I'm a freakin' Ferengi.
The ship is sleek, it's fast, I can give it a name without a "U.S.S." stuck in front, and it's the only ship available that Starfleet Command will let me put a latinum-plated paint job on.
That's right. Latinum... Plated... To match all that custom-built Epic military hardware I have installed on it. That's kicking TRIBBLE in style. After all, the Homestar Runner is the ship that qualified me for the 30K DPS League.
I was hoping to get one for each of my Regional Managers this summer... A matched set of 'company cars', so to speak. They're going to be so disappointed, if I can't.
But then i remembered that Risian ships are just for show and they're pretty lame, so this change will only hurt compulsive collectors that don't want to spend too much time on a beach planet instead of cold space.
Then again, problem is that i'm one of those compulsive collectors so, ugh.....
And my poor Delta recruit will add 3 ships to his already-anniversary-lacking collection
Don't like this, at all. Hopes down for winter event.
I knew I wouldn't have much time this summer to play, so I spent far too much extra time last summer getting all the pearls I would need to still get the new ship for 2015.
I also knew I would be visiting family this Christmas so wouldn't be able to play at all. Again, I planned ahead and got enough Q autographs to cover me for 2015.
So as I said, for those of us with the intelligence and ability to plan our lives a year or more in advance, for those of us that have families and other responsibilities so can't be playing video games every day or certainly not much over the holiday periods, its a big TRIBBLE you from Cryptic.
All this does is upset your old loyal player base.
Just leave things alone, they are fine as they were.
I guess this is pretty much confirmation that people who missed out on the Samsar Cruiser won't get a shot at it again either.
This is just beyond idiotic.... and the people who are making these decisions seriously "deserve" to be "fired".
As it stands, that is correct.
I know what you mean - I've been in this thread moderating for 3 hours now, so I don't blame you for skipping it all!
Also, can we get a face palm emote?
Can Trendy tell me what the plans for the lohlunat favors are please?
BUT....
Starship Emotes?!?!?
Really?? Someone thought it was a great idea and in keeping with the spirit of Star Trek to have our -SHIPS- give each other holographic lazy-spam?? This is what will improve the game to make it feel more like the Star Trek we all (supposedly) love and respect??
I'm not even going to get into the obvious trolling aspect of these, nor how annoying people will make any sort of space activity by giving everyone around them a gesture that isn't requested or appropriate (and anyone who has spent time on ESD should know this is exactly how players will use these).
Just from a minimal immersion standpoint, why, in the name of Khan, did anyone think this was remotely appropriate! Did anyone ever see the Enterprise-D give the Vulcan salute to the Excelsior class courier delivering an official to her? Perhaps someone saw the Defiant let the Borg cube that was destroying her have a sad-face? Maybe the scene where the Enterprise gave the Excelsior that extremely noticeable thumbs-up after defeating the plot to derail the Khitomer negotiations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire was emblazoned on the brain of whoever put forth this as a truly inspired inclusion into STO?
I'm sorry, but I just cannot conceive of why this would even be put forth as a suggestion for the devs to implement, let alone actually make it through to actually be put in the game. We have far too little immersion in the game as it is (consoles in our Ready Rooms that are constantly on fire, a dirth of ship interiors that actually look like ship interiors, Captains and Admirals who basically have complete freedom to take their ship anywhere and do anything, ect.), so why would anyone want to make STO feel even less like the Star Trek it is supposed to be?
Seriously. This has to be a joke. It can't be serious. That would be just too depressing to think that this is the direction the Devs are taking STO, especially in the midst of what is supposed to be the most serious challenge to the collective races continued existence in the history of the game.
Tell me this isn't actually going to be put in.
One of the few events that we could collect something rare and fun and you have the nerve to tell us that you don't want to keep the event going is total BS.
I still have projects not completed, and with players that have alot of new alts, collecting those one of a kind ships are now going to be impossible. Last year's winter event was fun, but this year's summer event is just a slap in the face.
I wonder if you, the devs, have heard of the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". If not, that stop changing something that was working. This new idea for the summer event is just plain stupid, and I don't very many player are going to be happy with you for that.
Outside of failing actually to maintain the exclusivity, it's a common way in which events reward exclusive items...they're vanity items.
Somebody participates in an event, they might get a vanity pet, costume, some additional palette thing, titles, etc, etc, etc.
When was the last FE rerun? How will folks 4pc their Command Platforms? What about folks missing consoles for the Summer/Winter ships? Etc, etc, etc...
Vanity stuff as exclusive items makes sense...allows one to be rewarded and show off participation without affecting gameplay.
Because it doesn't make financial sense to give players access to free T-5U ships.
All of this new TRIBBLE, grind or pay, you are counting on new players paying for the advantages others have been committed to the grind for. Now this. PLayers take note, anything you have saved from previous things, Winter Event, Mirror Event, Crystalline entity event will go this way too. They will never admit this, but there you go.
Just put the game back to Pay to Play and oh yeah make it PLAYABLE...the lag is beyond belief, Command Ships/Traits/Specialization seems to be a huge cause of it, and your answer is a Command Sheshar? Really?
Ugh...When does Legacy of the Void come out? I need something better to play, you have butchered Star Trek and if CBS was smart they would take this license away from you and give to people that can nurture this game.
Bad move Money Grubbers.
Lohlunat Favor
Risian Tropical Bird Egg
Tropical Tag
Autographed 8x10 Glossy Picture of Q
Anniversary Qmendation
Crystal Shard