This is a very nice gesture. The event ships are vanity items first and foremost and not meant to be "top performers", having them account wide is a very nice move especially for new characters. But like others I'd be interested in the definition of the word "Event" - now I know that this does not include lockbox or lobi ships (why would it? Seriously, people...) but is "event" the same as "anniversary event" or does it only affect summer/winter ships?
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Please dont mess with the bird and monkey pet raising. i needs my marks, man!!!. How else am i gonna fight iconians without the gear lol but yea . . . seriously that event feature is fine.
I have mixed feelings about this one. I don't usually post, but I want to speak up about this one after reading the forums. We all have a different personal experience. I am disappointed that I neglected to slot the project for last year's ship on an alt, and now I'll have no chance to change that. I was looking forward to this summer to finally claim the Risian cruiser that I'd assumed I already had. My mistake I can live with. What I cannot abide is the vitriol I have read in the forums. There is no place for such speech. Overall, I think the currency change is a positive move; however, it does continue to marginalize newer characters versus those like myself who have a degree of privilege after having played for several years. Delta Recruits specifically are disadvantaged, and this comes after saying "its the most new-player friendly the game has been in almost two years. I would hope to see a compromise that may allow for the purchase of the retired Risian consoles from the reputation store. While the retired ships still remain exclusive, such a compromise would further attempts to put players on even footing. It is fair to reward players' loyalty with a visible status symbol of the time they have invested in the game. However, it would not be appropriate to perpetuate a systemic advantage in the form of set bonuses that would disproportionately favor veteran players solely on the grounds that "we were here first."
With all the rewards a delta recruit gets they are at a disadvantage because they can't get a couple free novelty ships that are outclassed by anything offerred at lvl 40? Thats a rich one,i'm in disbelief that you think a delta recruit is at a disadvantage, at the very min. a dr wil recieve 5mil ec and so much dil by the time they reach 50 plus the huge dump of marks they can get a fleet ship easily that will outgun those novelty ships. As for the console set, very subpar if you ask me, they don't even justify being in the lobi store. I understand your point, but i just don't agree with you. I agree with the changes being made, i just don't understand why so many feel this way over a couple of novelty ships that are being retired.
I'll tip my hat to you, Salami, your solution to players who have previously unlocked the ships from an event and were upset that their alts couldn't get them this year is brilliant. It all but eliminates that particular section of the players argument. Being able to get the Dyson on my new DR KDF sci recruit will make me a happy bunny, seriously hopping around and eating carrots happy! The Chel Grett on my new toons as well? Nice.
You still have people who did not slot the event last year, despite running it, because they figured they'd still be able to this year AND then run it for the new ship. How are those guys going to hurt your metrics? They'd still run this year, it's just that they'd slot last years to finish first. Those guys are not getting the ship, and apparently CANNOT ever get the ship, but can get some shinies IF they are the right level to do so. I'm not one of them, but I'm curious as to how you feel about their position.
Now please don't misunderstand what follows, though, because whilst I am happy I am also still stunned by the announcement and how it was handled. It smacks of "better to ask forgiveness than permission"... not that you guys need permission to make a change to the game but making such a wholesale change to the status quo should surely have been explained before being dumped on us in a post which tried to make it seem like an awesome thing.
Much of what you have reaped here, "feedback"-wise is as a result of how this was handled, sadly much like every other thread-zilla over the past few years... lack of communication up front. It plays like this;
Trendy/Smirk/Branflakes - "Hey guys, we are doing this!"
100 pages of us going - "WTF? WHY? WHAT? HOW? WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WAFFLE?"
You, or Taco, or Bort, or Geko - "Oh. We are doing this because we have noticed a problem and this seems a good solution, please accept a cuddle by way of apology and mollification."
If you instead put out a big first post explaining a change was coming because of a perceived problem you'd probably have about 30 pages of mixed responses and it'd burn out.
Trust your players a bit more, we love this game and by extension most of you guys for making it... show us the love in return and be open. I can't promise noone will try to toast your chestnuts once in a while, but they'll probably be a bit nicer about it than they are right now.
I still think that you could have announced this change as being instigated AT THE END of this year's Summer Event but I am in the minority here.
"...we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than the things that divide us.”
Jo Cox 22.6.1974 - 16.6.2016
. It turned out the change we made to make earning the ships more alt friendly had completely trivialized play of the events. Players could earn currency on all of their alts in one year, and then spend the currency from a single character every year to get the ship immediately. While some few players would then re-run the event on the character that spent their currency, the vast majority wouldnt. Again, this meant participation was down while rewards were still earned at the same rate.
I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
I knew this would happen when you did it. I guess it was foolish for me to hope you might expand on it, and come up with the most easy solutions.
1) As I listed in another post you could have opened up a special bridge office store that used pearls. This then would mean extra currency would be spent on the new uncommon/rare/very rare pilot/command/intel boffs. You could have even added new ones to the basic list that were ultra rare, or epic.
2) You could have added ultra rare and epic duty officers for pearls.
3) You could have allowed people to turn extra pearls in favors to get better stuff. You do this in the neverwinter winter event on the last few days...why not in STO too?
4) You could have added pearls for R&D stuff like you did.
5) Specialization points...a guaranteed almost that people would use them up.
6) How about stuff not available anymore...like red matter capacitors for a 1000 pearls?
You had so many options this just wasn't thought through good in my opinion. I also support letting new players still be able to get older ships in events. This way people who are new will not feel they missed out. POINT OF NOTE: Most of the ships you refer to as near lock box quality are not anymore. In fact even the older lock box ships are not!! I know this as my D'kora is useless...the swarm missile launcher is too low damage, the Tachyon mine launcher does a next to nothing against shields. I mean it should be upgraded to weaken shields by a percentage. The console is pretty weak compared to what is out there now.
Since you are not going to change anything with the older ships...why not let them spend their extra currency on them? If they wish to buy more ship slots to have them...let them...they have to spend Zen for the slots anyway and that is a win for Cryptic.
This is fantastic news and very welcome... but there's an obvious (if selfish) question.
For those who purchased the Dyson Science Destroyer in the lobi store, will there be any sort of rebate? I'd stumped up the lobi to get a decent secondary deflector and complete the Solanae sets when that was the only option to do so, so it's slightly narking to find out I've spent 600 lobi on something that's now being unlocked anyway.
(Yeah, I know, caveat emptor and all that, but it can't hurt to ask...?)
So, if I ground out 1000+ Qmendations and Glossies on each of six alts as a way of "ripping off the band-aid" so that I could enjoy future events without feeling like it was a second job... what happens with that? Are existing ones going to be honored, or are they being obsoleted immediately? If the latter, will there be something cool we can do with them, or are they just going to be garbage for no other reason than that I participated in events at the wrong time?
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
That's nice and all, but what about new players? Don't they deserve a chance to earn the whole ship set, too? Wouldn't it improve participation if they could still do the event with multiple characters to unlock all the ships, instead of just this year's one?
I agree something needed to be done about the old ship currency. I collected so many Q photos during the last winter event I ended up discarding some to save bank space, and was still left with enough to last years. But what about the new ship currencies? What if a player falls short of the ship-buying goal, or exceeds it? Previously, the leftovers could be saved for next year. Will they useless garbage now, to be discarded, or will there be something else to use them for? Will there be any reason to keep playing the event after getting the ship anymore?
EDIT: And what if a player slotted the ship project and filled it almost completely, but fell short of the goal? Is it fair to just cancel it, to tell them all their efforts were useless and their currency thrown down the drain? Are you telling players who aren't sure if they will be playing enough to get the ship to not bother even trying?
...We knew that shipping the alt friendly system as it was is our mistake, ...
And that is the reason I (and many others) have to suffer now?
You added several mistakes to your first one:
1. You killed the system before the event starts (making past efforts useless).
2. Your "replacement offers" don't do much for people, who don't have use for it (or cannpt even claim it).
3. You force everybody to set aside reallife (work, family and so on) to be online during the event time. No solution for people who cannot do it on time. (the old system was more friendly in that regard.)
4. No "equal footing" for new characters.
5. Last but not least, you destroyed the trust of the player base into your decisions. If I take my feelings for a clue, you will pay dearly for this mistake. I am not going to commit reallife currency into a game, that treats me as bad.
There has been a lot of discussion, speculation, and general debate with the decision to adjust the way Summer Event ship currency is earned. This wasnt a decision we came to lightly, but it was one that we needed to make to maintain the integrity of this event and these ships. Im going to take a moment to give some history on these sorts of events, why we made this decision, and what we plan to do moving forward.
Our seasonal events came to pass as a way to give you something fun to play that doesnt fall strictly in line with our standard gameplay, while also giving out a rare and powerful reward for doing so. We decided, as most of you would, that the most desirable reward we could give out is a ship and a system was designed to give you access to that ship. Over a specific period of time youre asked to log in and play a short mission for about 55% of that time in order to earn a near lock box quality ship. This ship was earned per character and each character on your account had to turn in the same amount of currency to earn the ship. The ship wasnt only powerful, but was a status symbol for someone that was there when the event ran. After a couple of years of participating in this system the general feedback from the community was that this was too tedious and far too much of a commitment for people with multiple alts that wanted the ship. This led us to have some internal discussions and make a change.
About a year ago we changed the system so that all you had to do was earn the ship on a single character on your account, and then every alt you had that could slot the ship project only had to turn in a single days worth of currency in order to get the ship. We were happy to make this change, and were even happier at how well it was received by the community. It meant everyone got their ships and didnt have to get completely burned out on the daily mission to earn the currency. For a time, this was a great setup and both dev and player got what they wanted.
Over the last couple of seasonal events we noticed a trend that was different than we had seen in the past. General participation on the event was dropping, but the number of ships being collected was staying the same. Somehow people were playing less and still earning the ships from these events; we started digging into the numbers to figure this out. We initially assumed people were using the Lobi bypass option to speed their way through the events, but after digging deeper into the numbers that wasnt the case either. It turned out the change we made to make earning the ships more alt friendly had completely trivialized play of the events. Players could earn currency on all of their alts in one year, and then spend the currency from a single character every year to get the ship immediately. While some few players would then re-run the event on the character that spent their currency, the vast majority wouldnt. Again, this meant participation was down while rewards were still earned at the same rate.
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year. This ensured that each year the players that participate in the event will earn the reward for that year, while still allowing alts to earn the ships after a single play of the event. We knew that shipping the alt friendly system as it was is our mistake, and we wanted to ensure that impacted players werent left with nothing. We created a variety of desirable rewards that would let players turn in their pearls and feel like they got something valuable or unique for them. While this satisfied me in the short term, after reading all of your feedback I want to take this a step further.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
This is still not enough. What about those players that missed the opportunity to get the ships and thought they could get them the next event. There are only two events that allowed plaers to keep working on ships that they have missed.
Pls make all old ships available one last time this Summer and the next Winter event so that allplayers got the opportunity to get all the ships they want before taking them all out.
That will ensure your vision of changing the event and still gives every player a last final shot and those ships.
I played my first winter event last year. I got the Carrier and wanted to get the Raider this year to get my pets. I can already see that this wont be possible so now i am stuck with a Carrier i can't get the best pet for. Gues how much i will play that Carrier.
Right! I won't.
Give everyone one last shot to get the ships and all this flaming will stop because then we know what will happen next year. Everyone that is playing already will be ready for it. The way you are doing it now is just flat out wrong.
We have a winnah !
Except they read their metrics wrong , and all this will get them is a stabilization in the lower numbers .
That, plus Salami's "alts get free ships!!! " was a) unnecessary , and b) against his own metrics , oh and c) it looked like s flashy TRIBBLE neon sign ("free ships, come n'gettem ") .
The ship wasn’t only powerful, but was a status symbol for someone that was there when the event ran.
Let's be clear here:
STO had 3 (maybe 4) status symbols, and the summer event's ships were not among them .
... I could write up the list & the reasons for their precieved status, but why bother . Point is, not only are their metrics read wrong , their show & tell as to their reason is total BS ...
Thanks finally some good news for Veterans ... not that good for the "new guys", though ...
Or the guys who hadn't managed to get enough pearls in the past two events, for that matter. Like me. :P
It's a good change for what it does, but retiring the previous ships altogether... that part could do with some extra work. Perhaps a middle ground could be reached:
Cryptic deletes all pearls stockpiled from previous events at the beginning of an event. (In effect, the same thing as they're doing now.) You get to turn in such stockpiles for stuff, like this year. They do not, however, add another currency, and they do not block the acquisition of ships from previous events.
The people who weren't around (or weren't around enough) for previous events get the chance to unlock the ships they've missed, but the main function of the system is still intact. Seems like a win-win scenario to me. (Except for the people who were using the system the way salamiinferno explained, but as someone who was planning on doing that in the last winter event and this summer, I think we can agree that at least it doesn't adversely affect anyone else.)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
With all the rewards a delta recruit gets they are at a disadvantage because they can't get a couple free novelty ships that are outclassed by anything offerred at lvl 40?
risian ships outclassed by the vendor trash?
a t5u ship with 11 consoles, scalable hull and 4 sub-ship traits outclassed by a regular t5 ship with no upgrade, with 9 consoles, static hull and no traits?
Making the Future currency retroactive to the past ships we all win.
For example summer 2015 player fills the Que halfway. 2016 player uses the 2016 currency to finish the 2015 Que.
This is a win for everyone.
but slotted events are going to be wiped at the end of the event, regardless of how many pearls you put into them.
Now clowns, that's another story. They scare the crap out of me.
We fight them too. Entire armies spilling out of Volkswagens.
We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending them in.
It occurs to me that it would probably be simpler and less "beating our playerbase over the head", if Cryptic would simply program it with limits on how many pearls you could stock up on. After all account-wide event-ships are unlocked, the most you could "stock up" on any toon would be, say, 400 pearls. That way it still limits who can get the ships on day 1, but it also means that people can reuse currency next year--in the chance that they didn't save up enough for a purchase. 400 pearls is 10 days worth of less grind for those who have played Risa before, but it still requires an investment to go back and finish getting the other 600.
I get what people are saying about devalued currency and stuff, but let's be honest here. Risa has only been going 2 years, and there are a LOT of people who have either missed it entirely, or worse, those who didn't get to finish ques in previous events. Succinctly, changing currency at every event is a direct assault on casual gamers who simply will not or cannot earn enough in 1 event to obtain the reward.
Alternately, Cryptic could simply have RAISED the amount of pearls that alts are required to have to obtain an already-account-unlocked ship. For this purpose, something in the vicinity of 200 pearls makes sense. People who grind out the entire event each day, would only be able to unlock 1 ship @1000 and ~2 others @ 200 each.
Changing it in this way, while keeping the same currency each year, would greatly stem the problems salamiinferno is talking about, while still leaving room for casual gamers who have to use carry-over from previous years just for even 1 unlock. And as posted previously, simply ADDING a new incentive system on top of the existing, still-in-use currency would allow for players to unlock things like skill points, should they have extra time to grind more currency. And by making it an item like skill points--which are obtainable elsewhere in game--you have now stopped the currency from devaluation--while still leaving it viable from one year to the next.
However, this STILL does not address the issue of people who have not yet unlocked any Risa ships on account--and their now inability to obtain any of those ever.
Furthermore, since it now takes an OBSCENE amount of time to traverse sector space, it would be nice to have a TRANSWARP option to Risa during this event. Granted, that only fixes HALF of the issue with going back and forth from wherever I was, but it would still be a VAST improvement. For some of us (especially those without slipstream drive yet unlocked), it will take far more time to commute to/from event, than it does to complete the daily.
P.S.
I sincerely hope this does NOT extend to CE and mirror events...as those have NEVER had account unlocks. Not that I wouldn't mind having an account-wide unlock for those, but until/unless those GET an account-wide unlock, it just wouldn't make any sense. And while we're on that note, offering a dilithium bonus for all event daily completion above/beyond cashing in for a ship/item...would be a great idea, and one that's already used for CE/Mirror.
P.P.S.
2000 zen for the ability to automatically siphon 1,000 unrefined dilithium off whatever TRIBBLE pops a disco ball in my presence.
OK, first of all, thanks to salamiinferno for a response that is forthright, positive and candid.
But an obvious question arises out of it: just why is Cryptic seeing the player behaviour described? (Play time in events declining while rewards from events remain the same, that is.)
Well, it seems to me that the answer is pretty darn obvious: players want the rewards, but don't want to work to get them. And, really, why should we? OK, you have to work for rewards in real life, but that's the point, this isn't real life, it's a game that we play for fun.
So, if Cryptic's desired goal is to get people spending more time in the events... the solution has got to be, make the events more fun.
I think it's safe to say that for most of us, repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again ceases to be fun pretty quickly. New content - new things to do, new places to explore, new challenges to face - is better at engaging people than repetitions of the same old stuff.
(In passing, I'll note that there are several ways in which the Risa event gets things right, here. You've got things like the sandcastle building, which is an evolving challenge where you get to build bigger and better sandcastles as it proceeds. You've got the Pavyl hunt, where a player's got to log in five days and look in a different place each time. Even the "Flying High" thing gives you a different selection of courses each time you run it. These are good things. They could be improved, sure, but they are in themselves good.)
So. Players want new and exciting stuff to tempt their jaded appetites. But the problem here is that Cryptic's budget for development time is not unlimited - far from it. The company simply doesn't have the resources to come up with twenty-five different things to do during the summer event, for instance.
Or does it? Seems to me there are two things Cryptic could be doing to increase diversity of content.
One, of course, is encouraging use of the Foundry. I'd suggest, seriously, some better in-game rewards for Foundry authors, because as things stand, the grind rather militates against creating for the Foundry. I've done a couple of Foundry missions myself, and would like to do more, but if I have to throw all my alts through time-limited events as well, not to mention the daily chores of doffing, R&D progression, gathering and refining dil... well, there are only so many hours in the day (and some of them have to be taken up with, y'know, real life), and if I take time out to develop Foundry stuff, I miss out on regular-gameplay stuff. So, more incentives to go into the Foundry would be welcome.
The other thing to do... would be to go back and take a good hard look at procedural mission generation. This was clearly part of the early vision of the game - the Genesis system was a procedural mission generator, and if it had been bundled into the game itself (instead of just being used to run off a bunch of basic "exploration" missions) it would have been a literally endless source of new content. Seriously, Cryptic could do a lot worse than go in this direction. I know it's a complex development challenge (both for the programmers and the arts-and-writing guys), but if it could be made to work, it would be a winner - an enormously positive asset for the game as a whole.
At last, real and proper responses to the game. I tip my hat to you Salami, a welcome breath of fresh air in both the tone and the answer to this problem.
Use this as a stepping stone in all future Dev chats with your community, I see a glimmer of hope in what was a very cloudy future.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
Does this mean within the next few weeks my Delta Recruit will have access to the Plesh Brek Breen Raider? That will be awesome and very appreciated.
What if I don't finish a Summer Reputation project?
All in-progress Summer Reputation projects will be removed at the end of the 2015 Lohlunat Festival.
Could you maybe consider this:
If a player buys pearls or the new currency (like will happen this year) through the lobi store, as I have done in the past, it is usually the case that the number of pearls is not a set number so it stands to reason that there will be some left over at the end of, say, a ship project.
Are you going to keep the buyback store for pearls/new currency at the end of this year and future summer events?
I have a question I haven't seen asked yet. will this include only ships or all special items that previously ran in events like the crystaline torpedo and the shotgun? If not why? they like the ships are items that will be no longer obtainable due to this new method of retiring old exclusives, and that those of us who worked to get them in previous event's should have access to them. Or, will these items rerun in their respective events at some point so they are obtainable by new players. I think these rewards are just as important as the ships as they are unique and new players or recruits have no access to them. Another reason they should unlock for the account is because if you run them again, only new players will run the event, unless you make the unlock something new plus all the old items, which frankly I don't see happening. Be nice, but do not see happening. The ships being account unlocks is a step in the right direction though.
Another thing about items...the special uniques like the crystaline torpedo and the shotgun should be account unlocks set as a lazy 8 epic that can then be upgraded by the player to its appropiate mark level and upgraded for free until mk XII due to its unique nature. Again changes I don't ever expect to see but would be a nice gesture from cryptic to the players.
What if I don't finish a Summer Reputation project?
All in-progress Summer Reputation projects will be removed at the end of the 2015 Lohlunat Festival.
Could you maybe consider this:
If a player buys pearls or the new currency (like will happen this year) through the lobi store, as I have done in the past, it is usually the case that the number of pearls is not a set number so it stands to reason that there will be some left over at the end of, say, a ship project.
Are you going to keep the buyback store for pearls/new currency at the end of this year and future summer events?
I think they should initiate the buyback store with all types of combinations so one can spend all theit event marks they have leftover or (if they choose to) continue earning the special mark to get items from this conversion store throughout the life of, and a little after the event ends. This would give players an incentive to both keep playing the event and earning the special mark for the durration of the event. Just my 2 cents.
But an obvious question arises out of it: just why is Cryptic seeing the player behaviour described? (Play time in events declining while rewards from events remain the same, that is.)
That's not technically correct. Players played more one year so they could play less the following year(s). In any case the number of event missions needed to get a ship remains at exactly 25, the question is only when they were played.
And it was caused by the fact that a) more ship currency could be acquired during the event than was necessary to buy the ship (extremely so after the alt-discount was introduced) and b) there was nothing else that could be done with the currency other than save it for next year's ship.
If they had sold spec points for Q photos during the winter event, how many players would have stockpiled them instead of using them? How many more people would have played the event the whole time to buy spec points, even if they didn't want the ship at all?
After the change, it will still take exactly 25 event missions to get the ship, but they will have to be all done the same year. However, unless alternate rewards are added, nobody will have any reason to run more than 25 event missions anymore.
Changing "run the event extra times to prepare for next year" into "don't run the event extra times" might improve the event play time in the beginning, as those players who had 1,000 pearls saved and didn't intend to play at all this year will now have to (if they still want the ship). But it also means that once everyone who wants the ship has it, they'll have no reason to keep playing so in the end play time will be reduced.
Cancelling the projects after the event also means players who aren't sure they can complete it this year may simply choose not to start at all, because they can no longer continue next year.
There has been a lot of discussion, speculation, and general debate with the decision to adjust the way Summer Event ship currency is earned. This wasnt a decision we came to lightly, but it was one that we needed to make to maintain the integrity of this event and these ships. Im going to take a moment to give some history on these sorts of events, why we made this decision, and what we plan to do moving forward.
Our seasonal events came to pass as a way to give you something fun to play that doesnt fall strictly in line with our standard gameplay, while also giving out a rare and powerful reward for doing so. We decided, as most of you would, that the most desirable reward we could give out is a ship and a system was designed to give you access to that ship. Over a specific period of time youre asked to log in and play a short mission for about 55% of that time in order to earn a near lock box quality ship. This ship was earned per character and each character on your account had to turn in the same amount of currency to earn the ship. The ship wasnt only powerful, but was a status symbol for someone that was there when the event ran. After a couple of years of participating in this system the general feedback from the community was that this was too tedious and far too much of a commitment for people with multiple alts that wanted the ship. This led us to have some internal discussions and make a change.
About a year ago we changed the system so that all you had to do was earn the ship on a single character on your account, and then every alt you had that could slot the ship project only had to turn in a single days worth of currency in order to get the ship. We were happy to make this change, and were even happier at how well it was received by the community. It meant everyone got their ships and didnt have to get completely burned out on the daily mission to earn the currency. For a time, this was a great setup and both dev and player got what they wanted.
Over the last couple of seasonal events we noticed a trend that was different than we had seen in the past. General participation on the event was dropping, but the number of ships being collected was staying the same. Somehow people were playing less and still earning the ships from these events; we started digging into the numbers to figure this out. We initially assumed people were using the Lobi bypass option to speed their way through the events, but after digging deeper into the numbers that wasnt the case either. It turned out the change we made to make earning the ships more alt friendly had completely trivialized play of the events. Players could earn currency on all of their alts in one year, and then spend the currency from a single character every year to get the ship immediately. While some few players would then re-run the event on the character that spent their currency, the vast majority wouldnt. Again, this meant participation was down while rewards were still earned at the same rate.
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year. This ensured that each year the players that participate in the event will earn the reward for that year, while still allowing alts to earn the ships after a single play of the event. We knew that shipping the alt friendly system as it was is our mistake, and we wanted to ensure that impacted players werent left with nothing. We created a variety of desirable rewards that would let players turn in their pearls and feel like they got something valuable or unique for them. While this satisfied me in the short term, after reading all of your feedback I want to take this a step further.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
I say you did good. You even offered people the option to buy Spec points with their surplus Event currency. I often complain -- and equally often for good reasons -- but, in this case, I genuinely believe you handled this the proper way.
If you had a toon that had earned a ship (e.g. the dyson) and then deleted the character. Would the dyson be available in the store even if none of your current characters had earned it?
There has been a lot of discussion, speculation, and general debate with the decision to adjust the way Summer Event ship currency is earned. This wasnt a decision we came to lightly, but it was one that we needed to make to maintain the integrity of this event and these ships. Im going to take a moment to give some history on these sorts of events, why we made this decision, and what we plan to do moving forward.
Our seasonal events came to pass as a way to give you something fun to play that doesnt fall strictly in line with our standard gameplay, while also giving out a rare and powerful reward for doing so. We decided, as most of you would, that the most desirable reward we could give out is a ship and a system was designed to give you access to that ship. Over a specific period of time youre asked to log in and play a short mission for about 55% of that time in order to earn a near lock box quality ship. This ship was earned per character and each character on your account had to turn in the same amount of currency to earn the ship. The ship wasnt only powerful, but was a status symbol for someone that was there when the event ran. After a couple of years of participating in this system the general feedback from the community was that this was too tedious and far too much of a commitment for people with multiple alts that wanted the ship. This led us to have some internal discussions and make a change.
About a year ago we changed the system so that all you had to do was earn the ship on a single character on your account, and then every alt you had that could slot the ship project only had to turn in a single days worth of currency in order to get the ship. We were happy to make this change, and were even happier at how well it was received by the community. It meant everyone got their ships and didnt have to get completely burned out on the daily mission to earn the currency. For a time, this was a great setup and both dev and player got what they wanted.
Over the last couple of seasonal events we noticed a trend that was different than we had seen in the past. General participation on the event was dropping, but the number of ships being collected was staying the same. Somehow people were playing less and still earning the ships from these events; we started digging into the numbers to figure this out. We initially assumed people were using the Lobi bypass option to speed their way through the events, but after digging deeper into the numbers that wasnt the case either. It turned out the change we made to make earning the ships more alt friendly had completely trivialized play of the events. Players could earn currency on all of their alts in one year, and then spend the currency from a single character every year to get the ship immediately. While some few players would then re-run the event on the character that spent their currency, the vast majority wouldnt. Again, this meant participation was down while rewards were still earned at the same rate.
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year. This ensured that each year the players that participate in the event will earn the reward for that year, while still allowing alts to earn the ships after a single play of the event. We knew that shipping the alt friendly system as it was is our mistake, and we wanted to ensure that impacted players werent left with nothing. We created a variety of desirable rewards that would let players turn in their pearls and feel like they got something valuable or unique for them. While this satisfied me in the short term, after reading all of your feedback I want to take this a step further.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
Dont forget to make the other Risa rewards more sexy.:D
It will sure make the players buzz of to Risa like flys.
The change of currency implies that there will be a trade store for old curencues pretty much like the one being offered here for owners of old pearls.
If that's the case then you guys are opening another can of worms. I can already see the system being played in favor of players and Cryptic thinking of it as an exploit.
The problem I see is that Cryptic always fails to be pragmatic about these kind of things. Well about anything they come up with really.
Pragmatism is essential. It anticipates exploits and allows the devs to develop robust, resilient systems. If you're a dev and wonders what I am talking about, by all means pm me and I will explain the possible "exploits" that can come from the current scheme.
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year. This ensured that each year the players that participate in the event will earn the reward for that year, while still allowing alts to earn the ships after a single play of the event. We knew that shipping the alt friendly system as it was is our mistake, and we wanted to ensure that impacted players werent left with nothing. We created a variety of desirable rewards that would let players turn in their pearls and feel like they got something valuable or unique for them. While this satisfied me in the short term, after reading all of your feedback I want to take this a step further.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
First of all, and above all else, a big thank you for taking the time to address this. One of the things I love about STO is how active the devs are, and it's great knowing that I'm not just shouting into a vacuum. It's a very nice feeling as a player, knowing that everyone's comments are in fact read and taken into consideration - and it's great knowing, when enough players agree on a course of action, that the devs are willing to listen.
This is, and always will be, one of the things that keeps STO alive and strong: the dedication and receptiveness of the staff.
Definitely, thank you for the total account-wide unlock system. That seems to be the #1 complaint from the initial announcement. Now that I know Delta Recruits and other alts can get all the ships I've collected (especially important with Starship Traits, such as on the Sarr Theln), that's a big relief.
I also understand the need to make things somewhat exclusive. I've only been in STO for a year, so I can appreciate the reasons that I won't have have access to ships from 2013, 2012, and so on. Having all those older ships is a mark of long service in the game - my marker point starts in 2014, and I can accept that with no problems.
The only concern I have, and many other players have touched on this as well, is that your post does specify that the reason for initial action was in fact metrics-based. That is, you had wanted players playing specific content at specific times. In general, I am completely ok with that - STO is an MMO, and rewards in MMOs will often require time-specific, directed play. I'm just disappointed that the Summer Event has to be changed so drastically from the current state, in order to meet these demands. And I'm very disappointed that players who had stocked up on seasonal currencies (myself included, although as a newer player my stock isn't very large yet) are being somewhat punished as a result, where their previously-spent in-game efforts aren't resulting in the ships they had hoped for.
Either way, I so very much appreciate your comments, and I thank you and the team for taking quick action in response to the community's concerns.
Well, while it is a good thing that FINALY Someone Answered (Salami a BIG THANKS for Taking the Time) and that they have decided to change things a little Bit, its still NOT enough to make good for the Damage thats done.
People like me who allready have Characters with all the Event Ships can be Happy, yea we can now Unlock all of those on our New Characters (Deltas) so i could say YAY Thank you Very Much and everything is fine now....i could....but its not.
Whats with New Players? Or Players who did not Managed to get the Corvette / Yacht in Time and not even Slotted them cause..well they did not Expected you to just REMOVE those Ships..cause...it makes no sense??? Whats with them? We Veterans now will have all those Ships Unlocked for all our Characters, and everyone else gets the BIG Middlefinger?:eek:
You know the EASIEST Solution would be: DONT REMOVE THOSE SHIPS AT ALL, cause Like EVERYONE HERE allreaady said THERE IS NO LOGICAL REASON to Remove those Ships, Unless you wanna Replace them with a T6 Corvette and a T6 Yacht, but if so it should be THIS Summer Event and you should SHARE that Information with us, but since i dont think so back to my Solution:
DONT Remove those Ships, Let People Slot them and use the OLD Currency, and if they dont have enough old Currency Let them Grind for the New Currency and fill the Rest with the New Currency, and starting from Next Year Change the 2 Old Ships to Require the New Currency only, you know its EASY AS THAT.
With your announcement with the Account Wide Unlock for everyone who allready has those Ships, you made Veterans Happy, now dou YOURSELF AND New Players + Players who dont have those Ships yet ALSO Happy so EVERYONE can be Happy and you know Best Customers are the Happy Ones Right? Dont Reward the one Half of your Customers while Punishing the other Half, THINK ABOUT IT! :rolleyes:
You know there is such a thing as Professional Pride as well. Maybe cryptic, who happen to be the owners of this game, and as such have the right to do whatever they please with it, don't like it when players don't participate in content they went to the trouble to create?
There is also a valid argument for "metrics". If you are going to spend lots of money having artists and coders create all these new outfits, weapons, ships, equipment, environments, accessories, activities, quests, NPC's, dialogues and rewards ... The maybe with an "Event" such as the Summer/Winter/Anniversaries, which are a HUGE undertaking, they might just want to see people actually playing them, otherwise, what's the point?
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You still have people who did not slot the event last year, despite running it, because they figured they'd still be able to this year AND then run it for the new ship. How are those guys going to hurt your metrics? They'd still run this year, it's just that they'd slot last years to finish first. Those guys are not getting the ship, and apparently CANNOT ever get the ship, but can get some shinies IF they are the right level to do so. I'm not one of them, but I'm curious as to how you feel about their position.
Now please don't misunderstand what follows, though, because whilst I am happy I am also still stunned by the announcement and how it was handled. It smacks of "better to ask forgiveness than permission"... not that you guys need permission to make a change to the game but making such a wholesale change to the status quo should surely have been explained before being dumped on us in a post which tried to make it seem like an awesome thing.
Much of what you have reaped here, "feedback"-wise is as a result of how this was handled, sadly much like every other thread-zilla over the past few years... lack of communication up front. It plays like this;
Trendy/Smirk/Branflakes - "Hey guys, we are doing this!"
100 pages of us going - "WTF? WHY? WHAT? HOW? WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WAFFLE?"
You, or Taco, or Bort, or Geko - "Oh. We are doing this because we have noticed a problem and this seems a good solution, please accept a cuddle by way of apology and mollification."
If you instead put out a big first post explaining a change was coming because of a perceived problem you'd probably have about 30 pages of mixed responses and it'd burn out.
Trust your players a bit more, we love this game and by extension most of you guys for making it... show us the love in return and be open. I can't promise noone will try to toast your chestnuts once in a while, but they'll probably be a bit nicer about it than they are right now.
I still think that you could have announced this change as being instigated AT THE END of this year's Summer Event but I am in the minority here.
Jo Cox 22.6.1974 - 16.6.2016
I knew this would happen when you did it. I guess it was foolish for me to hope you might expand on it, and come up with the most easy solutions.
1) As I listed in another post you could have opened up a special bridge office store that used pearls. This then would mean extra currency would be spent on the new uncommon/rare/very rare pilot/command/intel boffs. You could have even added new ones to the basic list that were ultra rare, or epic.
2) You could have added ultra rare and epic duty officers for pearls.
3) You could have allowed people to turn extra pearls in favors to get better stuff. You do this in the neverwinter winter event on the last few days...why not in STO too?
4) You could have added pearls for R&D stuff like you did.
5) Specialization points...a guaranteed almost that people would use them up.
6) How about stuff not available anymore...like red matter capacitors for a 1000 pearls?
You had so many options this just wasn't thought through good in my opinion. I also support letting new players still be able to get older ships in events. This way people who are new will not feel they missed out.
POINT OF NOTE: Most of the ships you refer to as near lock box quality are not anymore. In fact even the older lock box ships are not!! I know this as my D'kora is useless...the swarm missile launcher is too low damage, the Tachyon mine launcher does a next to nothing against shields. I mean it should be upgraded to weaken shields by a percentage. The console is pretty weak compared to what is out there now.
Since you are not going to change anything with the older ships...why not let them spend their extra currency on them? If they wish to buy more ship slots to have them...let them...they have to spend Zen for the slots anyway and that is a win for Cryptic.
For those who purchased the Dyson Science Destroyer in the lobi store, will there be any sort of rebate? I'd stumped up the lobi to get a decent secondary deflector and complete the Solanae sets when that was the only option to do so, so it's slightly narking to find out I've spent 600 lobi on something that's now being unlocked anyway.
(Yeah, I know, caveat emptor and all that, but it can't hurt to ask...?)
I agree something needed to be done about the old ship currency. I collected so many Q photos during the last winter event I ended up discarding some to save bank space, and was still left with enough to last years. But what about the new ship currencies? What if a player falls short of the ship-buying goal, or exceeds it? Previously, the leftovers could be saved for next year. Will they useless garbage now, to be discarded, or will there be something else to use them for? Will there be any reason to keep playing the event after getting the ship anymore?
EDIT: And what if a player slotted the ship project and filled it almost completely, but fell short of the goal? Is it fair to just cancel it, to tell them all their efforts were useless and their currency thrown down the drain? Are you telling players who aren't sure if they will be playing enough to get the ship to not bother even trying?
And that is the reason I (and many others) have to suffer now?
You added several mistakes to your first one:
1. You killed the system before the event starts (making past efforts useless).
2. Your "replacement offers" don't do much for people, who don't have use for it (or cannpt even claim it).
3. You force everybody to set aside reallife (work, family and so on) to be online during the event time. No solution for people who cannot do it on time. (the old system was more friendly in that regard.)
4. No "equal footing" for new characters.
5. Last but not least, you destroyed the trust of the player base into your decisions. If I take my feelings for a clue, you will pay dearly for this mistake. I am not going to commit reallife currency into a game, that treats me as bad.
This is still not enough. What about those players that missed the opportunity to get the ships and thought they could get them the next event. There are only two events that allowed plaers to keep working on ships that they have missed.
Pls make all old ships available one last time this Summer and the next Winter event so that allplayers got the opportunity to get all the ships they want before taking them all out.
That will ensure your vision of changing the event and still gives every player a last final shot and those ships.
I played my first winter event last year. I got the Carrier and wanted to get the Raider this year to get my pets. I can already see that this wont be possible so now i am stuck with a Carrier i can't get the best pet for. Gues how much i will play that Carrier.
Right! I won't.
Give everyone one last shot to get the ships and all this flaming will stop because then we know what will happen next year. Everyone that is playing already will be ready for it. The way you are doing it now is just flat out wrong.
DING ! DING ! DING !
We have a winnah !
Except they read their metrics wrong , and all this will get them is a stabilization in the lower numbers .
That, plus Salami's "alts get free ships!!! " was a) unnecessary , and b) against his own metrics , oh and c) it looked like s flashy TRIBBLE neon sign ("free ships, come n'gettem ") .
And as for the " cover story " :
Let's be clear here:
STO had 3 (maybe 4) status symbols, and the summer event's ships were not among them .
... I could write up the list & the reasons for their precieved status, but why bother . Point is, not only are their metrics read wrong , their show & tell as to their reason is total BS ...
Or the guys who hadn't managed to get enough pearls in the past two events, for that matter. Like me. :P
It's a good change for what it does, but retiring the previous ships altogether... that part could do with some extra work. Perhaps a middle ground could be reached:
Cryptic deletes all pearls stockpiled from previous events at the beginning of an event. (In effect, the same thing as they're doing now.) You get to turn in such stockpiles for stuff, like this year. They do not, however, add another currency, and they do not block the acquisition of ships from previous events.
The people who weren't around (or weren't around enough) for previous events get the chance to unlock the ships they've missed, but the main function of the system is still intact. Seems like a win-win scenario to me. (Except for the people who were using the system the way salamiinferno explained, but as someone who was planning on doing that in the last winter event and this summer, I think we can agree that at least it doesn't adversely affect anyone else.)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
a t5u ship with 11 consoles, scalable hull and 4 sub-ship traits outclassed by a regular t5 ship with no upgrade, with 9 consoles, static hull and no traits?
that's a good joke. you should become a clown.
but slotted events are going to be wiped at the end of the event, regardless of how many pearls you put into them.
We fight them too. Entire armies spilling out of Volkswagens.
We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending them in.
I get what people are saying about devalued currency and stuff, but let's be honest here. Risa has only been going 2 years, and there are a LOT of people who have either missed it entirely, or worse, those who didn't get to finish ques in previous events. Succinctly, changing currency at every event is a direct assault on casual gamers who simply will not or cannot earn enough in 1 event to obtain the reward.
Alternately, Cryptic could simply have RAISED the amount of pearls that alts are required to have to obtain an already-account-unlocked ship. For this purpose, something in the vicinity of 200 pearls makes sense. People who grind out the entire event each day, would only be able to unlock 1 ship @1000 and ~2 others @ 200 each.
Changing it in this way, while keeping the same currency each year, would greatly stem the problems salamiinferno is talking about, while still leaving room for casual gamers who have to use carry-over from previous years just for even 1 unlock. And as posted previously, simply ADDING a new incentive system on top of the existing, still-in-use currency would allow for players to unlock things like skill points, should they have extra time to grind more currency. And by making it an item like skill points--which are obtainable elsewhere in game--you have now stopped the currency from devaluation--while still leaving it viable from one year to the next.
However, this STILL does not address the issue of people who have not yet unlocked any Risa ships on account--and their now inability to obtain any of those ever.
Furthermore, since it now takes an OBSCENE amount of time to traverse sector space, it would be nice to have a TRANSWARP option to Risa during this event. Granted, that only fixes HALF of the issue with going back and forth from wherever I was, but it would still be a VAST improvement. For some of us (especially those without slipstream drive yet unlocked), it will take far more time to commute to/from event, than it does to complete the daily.
P.S.
I sincerely hope this does NOT extend to CE and mirror events...as those have NEVER had account unlocks. Not that I wouldn't mind having an account-wide unlock for those, but until/unless those GET an account-wide unlock, it just wouldn't make any sense. And while we're on that note, offering a dilithium bonus for all event daily completion above/beyond cashing in for a ship/item...would be a great idea, and one that's already used for CE/Mirror.
P.P.S.
2000 zen for the ability to automatically siphon 1,000 unrefined dilithium off whatever TRIBBLE pops a disco ball in my presence.
But an obvious question arises out of it: just why is Cryptic seeing the player behaviour described? (Play time in events declining while rewards from events remain the same, that is.)
Well, it seems to me that the answer is pretty darn obvious: players want the rewards, but don't want to work to get them. And, really, why should we? OK, you have to work for rewards in real life, but that's the point, this isn't real life, it's a game that we play for fun.
So, if Cryptic's desired goal is to get people spending more time in the events... the solution has got to be, make the events more fun.
I think it's safe to say that for most of us, repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again ceases to be fun pretty quickly. New content - new things to do, new places to explore, new challenges to face - is better at engaging people than repetitions of the same old stuff.
(In passing, I'll note that there are several ways in which the Risa event gets things right, here. You've got things like the sandcastle building, which is an evolving challenge where you get to build bigger and better sandcastles as it proceeds. You've got the Pavyl hunt, where a player's got to log in five days and look in a different place each time. Even the "Flying High" thing gives you a different selection of courses each time you run it. These are good things. They could be improved, sure, but they are in themselves good.)
So. Players want new and exciting stuff to tempt their jaded appetites. But the problem here is that Cryptic's budget for development time is not unlimited - far from it. The company simply doesn't have the resources to come up with twenty-five different things to do during the summer event, for instance.
Or does it? Seems to me there are two things Cryptic could be doing to increase diversity of content.
One, of course, is encouraging use of the Foundry. I'd suggest, seriously, some better in-game rewards for Foundry authors, because as things stand, the grind rather militates against creating for the Foundry. I've done a couple of Foundry missions myself, and would like to do more, but if I have to throw all my alts through time-limited events as well, not to mention the daily chores of doffing, R&D progression, gathering and refining dil... well, there are only so many hours in the day (and some of them have to be taken up with, y'know, real life), and if I take time out to develop Foundry stuff, I miss out on regular-gameplay stuff. So, more incentives to go into the Foundry would be welcome.
The other thing to do... would be to go back and take a good hard look at procedural mission generation. This was clearly part of the early vision of the game - the Genesis system was a procedural mission generator, and if it had been bundled into the game itself (instead of just being used to run off a bunch of basic "exploration" missions) it would have been a literally endless source of new content. Seriously, Cryptic could do a lot worse than go in this direction. I know it's a complex development challenge (both for the programmers and the arts-and-writing guys), but if it could be made to work, it would be a winner - an enormously positive asset for the game as a whole.
Use this as a stepping stone in all future Dev chats with your community, I see a glimmer of hope in what was a very cloudy future.
(Shame that some are still unhappy and are now demanding unlocks of every other special item now, though.)
What if I don't finish a Summer Reputation project?
All in-progress Summer Reputation projects will be removed at the end of the 2015 Lohlunat Festival.
Could you maybe consider this:
If a player buys pearls or the new currency (like will happen this year) through the lobi store, as I have done in the past, it is usually the case that the number of pearls is not a set number so it stands to reason that there will be some left over at the end of, say, a ship project.
Are you going to keep the buyback store for pearls/new currency at the end of this year and future summer events?
Another thing about items...the special uniques like the crystaline torpedo and the shotgun should be account unlocks set as a lazy 8 epic that can then be upgraded by the player to its appropiate mark level and upgraded for free until mk XII due to its unique nature. Again changes I don't ever expect to see but would be a nice gesture from cryptic to the players.
I think they should initiate the buyback store with all types of combinations so one can spend all theit event marks they have leftover or (if they choose to) continue earning the special mark to get items from this conversion store throughout the life of, and a little after the event ends. This would give players an incentive to both keep playing the event and earning the special mark for the durration of the event. Just my 2 cents.
And it was caused by the fact that a) more ship currency could be acquired during the event than was necessary to buy the ship (extremely so after the alt-discount was introduced) and b) there was nothing else that could be done with the currency other than save it for next year's ship.
If they had sold spec points for Q photos during the winter event, how many players would have stockpiled them instead of using them? How many more people would have played the event the whole time to buy spec points, even if they didn't want the ship at all?
After the change, it will still take exactly 25 event missions to get the ship, but they will have to be all done the same year. However, unless alternate rewards are added, nobody will have any reason to run more than 25 event missions anymore.
Changing "run the event extra times to prepare for next year" into "don't run the event extra times" might improve the event play time in the beginning, as those players who had 1,000 pearls saved and didn't intend to play at all this year will now have to (if they still want the ship). But it also means that once everyone who wants the ship has it, they'll have no reason to keep playing so in the end play time will be reduced.
Cancelling the projects after the event also means players who aren't sure they can complete it this year may simply choose not to start at all, because they can no longer continue next year.
I say you did good. You even offered people the option to buy Spec points with their surplus Event currency. I often complain -- and equally often for good reasons
Dont forget to make the other Risa rewards more sexy.:D
It will sure make the players buzz of to Risa like flys.
If that's the case then you guys are opening another can of worms. I can already see the system being played in favor of players and Cryptic thinking of it as an exploit.
The problem I see is that Cryptic always fails to be pragmatic about these kind of things. Well about anything they come up with really.
Pragmatism is essential. It anticipates exploits and allows the devs to develop robust, resilient systems. If you're a dev and wonders what I am talking about, by all means pm me and I will explain the possible "exploits" that can come from the current scheme.
STO Screenshot Archive
First of all, and above all else, a big thank you for taking the time to address this. One of the things I love about STO is how active the devs are, and it's great knowing that I'm not just shouting into a vacuum. It's a very nice feeling as a player, knowing that everyone's comments are in fact read and taken into consideration - and it's great knowing, when enough players agree on a course of action, that the devs are willing to listen.
This is, and always will be, one of the things that keeps STO alive and strong: the dedication and receptiveness of the staff.
Definitely, thank you for the total account-wide unlock system. That seems to be the #1 complaint from the initial announcement. Now that I know Delta Recruits and other alts can get all the ships I've collected (especially important with Starship Traits, such as on the Sarr Theln), that's a big relief.
I also understand the need to make things somewhat exclusive. I've only been in STO for a year, so I can appreciate the reasons that I won't have have access to ships from 2013, 2012, and so on. Having all those older ships is a mark of long service in the game - my marker point starts in 2014, and I can accept that with no problems.
The only concern I have, and many other players have touched on this as well, is that your post does specify that the reason for initial action was in fact metrics-based. That is, you had wanted players playing specific content at specific times. In general, I am completely ok with that - STO is an MMO, and rewards in MMOs will often require time-specific, directed play. I'm just disappointed that the Summer Event has to be changed so drastically from the current state, in order to meet these demands. And I'm very disappointed that players who had stocked up on seasonal currencies (myself included, although as a newer player my stock isn't very large yet) are being somewhat punished as a result, where their previously-spent in-game efforts aren't resulting in the ships they had hoped for.
Either way, I so very much appreciate your comments, and I thank you and the team for taking quick action in response to the community's concerns.
People like me who allready have Characters with all the Event Ships can be Happy, yea we can now Unlock all of those on our New Characters (Deltas) so i could say YAY Thank you Very Much and everything is fine now....i could....but its not.
Whats with New Players? Or Players who did not Managed to get the Corvette / Yacht in Time and not even Slotted them cause..well they did not Expected you to just REMOVE those Ships..cause...it makes no sense???
You know the EASIEST Solution would be: DONT REMOVE THOSE SHIPS AT ALL, cause Like EVERYONE HERE allreaady said THERE IS NO LOGICAL REASON to Remove those Ships, Unless you wanna Replace them with a T6 Corvette and a T6 Yacht, but if so it should be THIS Summer Event and you should SHARE that Information with us, but since i dont think so back to my Solution:
DONT Remove those Ships, Let People Slot them and use the OLD Currency, and if they dont have enough old Currency Let them Grind for the New Currency and fill the Rest with the New Currency, and starting from Next Year Change the 2 Old Ships to Require the New Currency only, you know its EASY AS THAT.
With your announcement with the Account Wide Unlock for everyone who allready has those Ships, you made Veterans Happy, now dou YOURSELF AND New Players + Players who dont have those Ships yet ALSO Happy so EVERYONE can be Happy and you know Best Customers are the Happy Ones Right? Dont Reward the one Half of your Customers while Punishing the other Half, THINK ABOUT IT! :rolleyes:
There is also a valid argument for "metrics". If you are going to spend lots of money having artists and coders create all these new outfits, weapons, ships, equipment, environments, accessories, activities, quests, NPC's, dialogues and rewards ... The maybe with an "Event" such as the Summer/Winter/Anniversaries, which are a HUGE undertaking, they might just want to see people actually playing them, otherwise, what's the point?