The biggest issue i think the article also pointed out is STO is the only show in town trek wise either TV or Gaming if there were another viable trek game similar to STO as in 3D style format that offered a better experiance.
then STO would have to either shape up its content or watch the player base dwindle over time.
Sadly CBS cannot or will not do anything about the problem so long as they get their kickbacks they stay quiet and PWE will continue to shove an asian style grinder down our throats till we either accept it or quit.
I'm going with "will not". CBS didn't license the game for the fun of it. They wanted money, thus requiring the game to be profitable.
i agree. I truly wish they would spend some of this money from lockboxes, etc to improving or fixing existing issues. Such as the severe graphics lag on most Delta maps and Romulus command. I myself and from what I read, many others with higher end systems seem to be dropping to sub 10 FPS levels on alot of these maps and this company refuses to acknowledge anything about it.
Which raises the obvious question: precisely why has this remained (to my knowledge) an unacknowledged problem?
I tried it but its a browser based game and will never be as good as any client based game sure its a distraction but overall could never really compete with STO.
True... but then again, STO can never compete with Bridge Commander, in it's current form...
There is always one better.
Very true but if STO had a true MMO competitor i would think it would only help in the quality of both products which would only be a boon to us gamers and trek fans alike.
The biggest issue i think the article also pointed out is STO is the only show in town trek wise either TV or Gaming if there were another viable trek game similar to STO as in 3D style format that offered a better experiance.
then STO would have to either shape up its content or watch the player base dwindle over time.
Sadly CBS cannot or will not do anything about the problem so long as they get their kickbacks they stay quiet and PWE will continue to shove an asian style grinder down our throats till we either accept it or quit.
As I understand my fellow players (US counterparts), CBS is a subscriber to the very same policy as PWE and PWI are.
However, most of the stories are pretty good IMO... And then theres "Of Bajor"... But let's not get into that.
My arguement is in the manner of having a comepetitor game that could offer a different experiance to the asian grinder STO has become.
I do understand fully CBS and PWE act exactly the same with similar business practices my arguement is meant at seeing a better product for us gamers and trek fans across the board and competition is one way to do just that.
Well there is this other game that may or may not have words such as domain and alien in it's name that is somewhat interesting...
Not as story driven as STO but it's fun...
UGH!! i tried that disgusting ICK!! and thats not even close to a viable competitor for STO not even in the same ballpark again that game is just EUWWWW!!!
I agree with that it was total ICK!!, if that's the best others can offer sto has no fear of loosing the top spot for a very long time to come.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
the article is accurate for almost everything. STO is just a grind fest, and he doesn't even talk about the new gambling systems. but i'm not agree about the lockbox. nobody is obliged to open these boxes
In my opinion, these boxes are just a scam. I don't know if the players who open the boxes for lobis realize the real cost of their beloved lobi ships; this is insane. but having said that, everyone is free to spend his money as he wants.
i agree. I truly wish they would spend some of this money from lockboxes, etc to improving or fixing existing issues. Such as the severe graphics lag on most Delta maps and Romulus command. I myself and from what I read, many others with higher end systems seem to be dropping to sub 10 FPS levels on alot of these maps and this company refuses to acknowledge anything about it.
Which raises the obvious question: precisely why has this remained (to my knowledge) an unacknowledged problem?
Unacknowledged? Didn't they recently do a set of tweaks there?
the article is accurate for almost everything. STO is just a grind fest, and he doesn't even talk about the new gambling systems. but i'm not agree about the lockbox. nobody is obliged to open these boxes
In my opinion, these boxes are just a scam. I don't know if the players who open the boxes for lobis realize the real cost of their beloved lobi ships; this is insane. but having said that, everyone is free to spend his money as he wants.
I own 3 box ships i must say i purchased from the exchange so no you dont need to open boxes just some hard work grinding up the EC to make the purchase via the exchange.
I tried it but its a browser based game and will never be as good as any client based game sure its a distraction but overall could never really compete with STO.
True... but then again, STO can never compete with Bridge Commander, in it's current form...
There is always one better.
Very true but if STO had a true MMO competitor i would think it would only help in the quality of both products which would only be a boon to us gamers and trek fans alike.
In that regard, you are entirely right...
Now if someone were to come around and present the lovechild of elite-force and Bridge Commander... I think STO would die a very quick and painless death.
Until such time, we need to stick with the TRIBBLE kid of Legacy and The Fallen.
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
This games takes advantage of several flaws in human behavior.
First of all: Gambling
Notice how the "good stuff" is random? lockbox ships & items, item upgrades, item modifiers...
They have no intention of changing that, because they know that brings money, it exploits one of our biggest weaknesses, math.
The average person does not truly understand math, our brains are not good handling numbers and probability.
The gambler's fallacy
Most people assume that completely random is not random at all, that there are factors like luck or "streaks", this is a subconscious flaw, we are not even aware of it, but the developers are, that's why you see server wide messages every time someone opens a lockbox and gets an expensive ship, that's why sometimes you see several people winning ships in a row.
We see that and we unconsciously assume that somehow you have a bigger chance to earn a ship than you did before, several people assume that, and they begin opening lockboxes, and more announcements pop up making more people open lockboxes, that's why sometimes you see a "lucky streak".
The rush of winning
That exists, if you win a big prize during a random even your brain releases endorphins (the happiness and pleasure neurotransmitter), this brings us back to the gambler's fallacy, people are more likely to open more boxes/upgrading/crafting more gear after winning, but this is when we begin ignoring the failures and only realize about the winnings (as I said, our brains suck at math and probability), this can lead to a compulsive behavior and even addiction.
The sunk cost fallacy
Basically our brains assume that once we've wasted resources on a task to achieve something, it's best to continue doing so, otherwise those resources are wasted and of course you can't let that happen.
We fall for that an awful lot of times and it also goes hand to hand with the gambling fallacy a lot of times.
This is specially common when we upgrade items or when upgrading from T5 to T5-U, you've spent a lot of time, resources, maybe money to purchase and equip your T5 ship, but a new batch of better ships just arrived, but fear not, we can make your outdated ship just as good as those T6 ships, for a fee of course.
Second: Humans are greedy and jealous
Those two are paired like bread and butter, we desire stuff, and we hate it when other people have that stuff but we don't.
F2P games are incredibly good at exploiting both, that's why the C-Store exists, and that's why it focuses on selling power instead of cosmetics, someone just won a great ship opening a lockbox, you could try doing the same (or you did and failed), but you can always buy something equivalent or even better! just for a few dollars! in no time! who's laughing now Fred?!
Third: Humans are lazy and impatient
Sorry, that's evolution mates, turns out that lazy and impatient humans were more successful in the past and now we pay the price (in sweet, sweet money).
Oh, business companies are sooooooo good at exploiting this flaw of our nature, it all comes down to balancing time, effort, reward and the price to skip both time and effort and get the reward right away.
You just have to make your product look like it's available to everyone if they put enough time and effort into it, but make it hard enough so most people won't have the patience to do it, this is achieved by time gates and "grinding".
A freebie player, taking advantage of his 4 character slots, could easily get a good ship per month, but it would require him to perform repetitive task each day for 30 days, let's remember, this is a game not a job, people come here to have fun.
So companies take advantage of that and offer us a shortcut, by paying you can skip the grinding and get your ship right away and invest those 30 days on something fun.
the article is accurate for almost everything. STO is just a grind fest, and he doesn't even talk about the new gambling systems. but i'm not agree about the lockbox. nobody is obliged to open these boxes
In my opinion, these boxes are just a scam. I don't know if the players who open the boxes for lobis realize the real cost of their beloved lobi ships; this is insane. but having said that, everyone is free to spend his money as he wants.
I own 3 box ships i must say i purchased from the exchange so no you dont need to open boxes just some hard work grinding up the EC to make the purchase via the exchange.
I know, i have myself a manasa bought in the exchange. i talked about the guys who open the boxes only for the lobis
the article is accurate for almost everything. STO is just a grind fest, and he doesn't even talk about the new gambling systems. but i'm not agree about the lockbox. nobody is obliged to open these boxes
In my opinion, these boxes are just a scam. I don't know if the players who open the boxes for lobis realize the real cost of their beloved lobi ships; this is insane. but having said that, everyone is free to spend his money as he wants.
I own 3 box ships i must say i purchased from the exchange so no you dont need to open boxes just some hard work grinding up the EC to make the purchase via the exchange.
I know, i have myself a manasa bought in the exchange. i talked about the guys who open the boxes only for the lobis
Yeah i know quite a few of those and i always roll my eyes at them
I, for one, somewhat agree with the article. However, despite all of this, I still love the gameplay brought out by games like STO. My problem is with monetization, and how many F2P companies don't quite get how to monetize their games. What might surprise you, however, is that I actually believe that, if done correctly, a F2P game can actually be extremely successful. My motto? Pay for Convenience, not Power. You sell power, you break the game, and that motto has been proven time and time again.
Time-based gameplay doesn't actually bother me, unless it stalls your enjoyment of the game. This is why I had problems with DA: Inquisition, because the time-based mechanics actually got in the way of you finishing the story. Since most of the time-based mechanics are around the Duty Officer System, I'm not bothered by it.
The Lockboxes, surprising as it may sound, don't exactly bother me either. I've only ever opened 10 throughout my entire playthrough, and I honestly don't feel any more powerful because of them. I even sold one of my Keys on the auction house for a massive profit for my level (I don't have to worry about running out of EC anytime soon).
If I have one complaint about STO, it's account-level services and items. Few of STO's services affect you on the account level, and none of the ones that actually matter do this at all (i.e. Bridge Officer count, Duty Officer Count, Energy Credit Count, etc.). Even SWTOR, a game I hate even more than STO, allows you to purchase item slots and other services at an account level, at a slightly higher Cartel Coin cost than usual. If this issue was accounted for, I would be pretty happy.
P.S.: none of Cryptic's IPs have been optimized for Windows 10 as of the writing of this post, despite the platform having been out for several months now. That problem needs to be sorted out ASAP!
P.S.S.: Watch Extra Credits on YouTube, they have a whole playlist about F2P games, and possibly how to do them right:
The prices and obvious shenanigans are not hidden. Anyone with any intelegence knows exactly what to expect when playing this game. I mean is there really anyone out there that thinks that they are going to win a Jem Hadar SS on thier first opening of a doff pack. You would have to be epic fail naive.
Also I'm speaking from experiance here. If you have a Drug problem you know you can't just socially take narcotics. You take one today and 50 tomarrow. Same with gambling. STO caters to the addict. If your a addict it would be a good idea to stay away from microtransactions in general.
Heres my point. If you have never played sto you will know within the first few hours what type of game it is. Don't blame anybody but yourself if you fall into a trap that you created and there is no shame to ask someone for help to get you out.
P.S. I'm guilty of this but have you ever noticed its so easy to spend $50 in zen on paypal but its impossible to get yourself to spend $10 in food at the Grocery store checkout.
My biggest "personal peve" with sto isn't with money (sort of, depends on how you look at it). Its with the fact we get these extremely awesome ships and a TRIBBLE game to fly them in. I've said that way more than once btw.
This games takes advantage of several flaws in human behavior.
First of all: Gambling
Notice how the "good stuff" is random? lockbox ships & items, item upgrades, item modifiers...
They have no intention of changing that, because they know that brings money, it exploits one of our biggest weaknesses, math.
The average person does not truly understand math, our brains are not good handling numbers and probability.
The gambler's fallacy
Most people assume that completely random is not random at all, that there are factors like luck or "streaks", this is a subconscious flaw, we are not even aware of it, but the developers are, that's why you see server wide messages every time someone opens a lockbox and gets an expensive ship, that's why sometimes you see several people winning ships in a row.
We see that and we unconsciously assume that somehow you have a bigger chance to earn a ship than you did before, several people assume that, and they begin opening lockboxes, and more announcements pop up making more people open lockboxes, that's why sometimes you see a "lucky streak".
The rush of winning
That exists, if you win a big prize during a random even your brain releases endorphins (the happiness and pleasure neurotransmitter), this brings us back to the gambler's fallacy, people are more likely to open more boxes/upgrading/crafting more gear after winning, but this is when we begin ignoring the failures and only realize about the winnings (as I said, our brains suck at math and probability), this can lead to a compulsive behavior and even addiction.
The sunk cost fallacy
Basically our brains assume that once we've wasted resources on a task to achieve something, it's best to continue doing so, otherwise those resources are wasted and of course you can't let that happen.
We fall for that an awful lot of times and it also goes hand to hand with the gambling fallacy a lot of times.
This is specially common when we upgrade items or when upgrading from T5 to T5-U, you've spent a lot of time, resources, maybe money to purchase and equip your T5 ship, but a new batch of better ships just arrived, but fear not, we can make your outdated ship just as good as those T6 ships, for a fee of course.
Second: Humans are greedy and jealous
Those two are paired like bread and butter, we desire stuff, and we hate it when other people have that stuff but we don't.
F2P games are incredibly good at exploiting both, that's why the C-Store exists, and that's why it focuses on selling power instead of cosmetics, someone just won a great ship opening a lockbox, you could try doing the same (or you did and failed), but you can always buy something equivalent or even better! just for a few dollars! in no time! who's laughing now Fred?!
Third: Humans are lazy and impatient
Sorry, that's evolution mates, turns out that lazy and impatient humans were more successful in the past and now we pay the price (in sweet, sweet money).
Oh, business companies are sooooooo good at exploiting this flaw of our nature, it all comes down to balancing time, effort, reward and the price to skip both time and effort and get the reward right away.
You just have to make your product look like it's available to everyone if they put enough time and effort into it, but make it hard enough so most people won't have the patience to do it, this is achieved by time gates and "grinding".
A freebie player, taking advantage of his 4 character slots, could easily get a good ship per month, but it would require him to perform repetitive task each day for 30 days, let's remember, this is a game not a job, people come here to have fun.
So companies take advantage of that and offer us a shortcut, by paying you can skip the grinding and get your ship right away and invest those 30 days on something fun.
so true. if only these flaws weren't also a real problem in rl: deforestion, rhinos killed for money because some guys have problems with their libido (their horns), etc. MMOs are very interesting if you want to understand mankind.
one of the best example of all you have writen is: a 30$ ship for only a starship trait.
this article just smacks of someone who doesn't know how to play the system for the best benefits for the least expenditure.
the first thing he brings up lockboxes are a prime example I have opened many lockboxes and it didn't cost me a penny of real world money.
although I will admit that I was never lucky enough to get a ship from them I will also say that I found the items within to be very useful and overall would have cost me around the same amount of zen as if I had bought them on the store directly.
secondly I will address the $5 upgrade cost of tier 5 ships, there is a simple answer here, don't upgrade them.
there are many tier 5 ships in the game that could be upgraded for free if players were sensible enough to get the from the events on top of this if I had any need to upgrade tier 5 ships I would use the same method I used to buy keys so it would not cost me any real money.
lastly I will address ships and ship bundles, here again there is no need to spend any real money, personally I have bought the Dyson mega pack for 10,000zen and the T6 Delta Rising Operations Pack for 12,500zen but yet again did not have to spend any real life money.
all of these things I got by playing the game and selling Dilithium in exchange for zen.
before you ask, no I don't spend all day playing the game, just a couple or few hours and sometime a couple more at weekends if I have the time but the most important thing is playing the events like Crystalline and Mirror and not just for the 50k main prize but also for the bonus days.
most other days I rarely get anywhere close to the 8k refining cap but by saving the Dilithium I do get I am able to play the system and get the things I want with the least real world expense.
finally I don't buy into that time is money or your working to earn it argument because for me this is all just fun and if I was not playing sto I would be having to find my fun elsewhere and that might indeed cost me real world money.
maybe you think I would have no Dilithium for anything else but there again you would be wrong, I have bought items from the reputation stores, upgraded 12 ships of gear and 15 ground sets of gear to MK14 with Dilithium as well as donating tons of the stuff to my fleets.
all of this I have done with just 3 main characters and 3 farming Delta alts.
Yeah, god forbid they introduce a more equitable system where everyone pays a reasonable price and people who have no job, family or whatever it is that allows them to have all this time have to pay as well.
Everytime I hear somebody defend this game, the first thing they talk about is how if you have enough time you don't have to pay for anything. It's like their celebrating the fact that they don't do anything else and are cheapskates.
I didn't think it'd be this easy for someone to push my buttons, but here it goes. I'm disabled--have been for the better part of three years, and will be for the rest of my life, barring some unlikely medical advances--so every dime that passes through our family's proverbial coffers has to be carefully spent. I can't begin to justify paying the dollar cost of much of anything in this game, but having been playing for a couple of years, I'm mostly out of stuff to spend my dilithium on (though I haven't had the heart to go whole hog on upgrading the rarity of gear). I might have more time than most, but accumulating all the dilithium I can refine in a week only takes about five hours a week, which is less time than I played video games in a week when I still worked 40 hours. All that means that I can afford to make sensible C-Store purchases with Zen bought off the exchange. My wife would (rightly) have a fit if I bought a single ship on a single (sometimes only mediocre) video game for $30, but she couldn't care less if I spend 750,000 or 1,000,000 dilithium on the same.
And the thing is, there's a whole player economy that only exists because, for the STO community as a whole, that's fine. I wouldn't be able to buy Zen if there weren't players who valued between 22,000 and 23,000 dilithium more than a real dollar, but I can earn that dilithium a lot easier than I could that dollar. So we trade, voluntarily on the part of all parties, and the 'cheapskate' and the 'whale' both get to enjoy the game a little more.
What I find more funny is the amount of people jumping to defend this game.
You guys are the exact type of person the article talks about... Those that will blindly follow and open their wallets for a slight hint of something star trek.
The article is accurate in it's overall assessment of this game and the way in which it's heading.
Hat's off to him for stopping playing and not looking back.
No, some of us just came into STO knowing full well what it is from the get-go. That is, a MMO operating under the Asian grindfest and F2P/micro-transactions models. You can either grind or pay. Simple as that.
Some people just get carried away with it, as with the case of the lock boxes or special promotions on packs. That, or the fact that some folks just have that kind of disposable income. The first only becomes a problem if you let it. There is nothing inherently wrong with the second.
The biggest issue i think the article also pointed out is STO is the only show in town trek wise either TV or Gaming if there were another viable trek game similar to STO as in 3D style format that offered a better experiance.
then STO would have to either shape up its content or watch the player base dwindle over time.
Sadly CBS cannot or will not do anything about the problem so long as they get their kickbacks they stay quiet and PWE will continue to shove an asian style grinder down our throats till we either accept it or quit.
I'm going with "will not". CBS didn't license the game for the fun of it. They wanted money, thus requiring the game to be profitable.
I think it's based on royalties of sales, not profits, so the game could make 0$ in profits but CBS still gets their money.
There's no denying Cryptic knows how to make money in this game.
But there are other titles, other games that are far more aggressive and greedy than Crypitc/PWE.
Hell, I recently played World of Warships, and I can tell you now, Wargaming makes Cryptic/PWE look like they're the Saints of Low Cost Gaming.
There is also the other side of the coin also where free to play games make Cryptic/PWE far more aggressive and greedy, such as comparing to Path of Exile as one example. That said I feel in terms of F2P model, STO IMO, is about below average costs, it's not that bad.
Company as a whole for Cryptic and PWE, I don't know though. Looking through NeverWinter forums as of late is questionable to say the least, and I never really looked into their other games, but I have been told they are on the pricy side.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,688Community Moderator
There's no denying Cryptic knows how to make money in this game.
But there are other titles, other games that are far more aggressive and greedy than Crypitc/PWE.
Hell, I recently played World of Warships, and I can tell you now, Wargaming makes Cryptic/PWE look like they're the Saints of Low Cost Gaming.
Agreed i tried it aswell and was horrified at how they milked the playerbase...i also quit and uninstalled it
Don't forget TOR, with its "blackmail" F2P model. ONLY thing free is the story, up to a point because of expansions AFAIK. Unless you give them at least $5, you don't even have access to a bank!
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
The prices and obvious shenanigans are not hidden. Anyone with any intelegence knows exactly what to expect when playing this game. I mean is there really anyone out there that thinks that they are going to win a Jem Hadar SS on thier first opening of a doff pack. You would have to be epic fail naive.
Also I'm speaking from experiance here. If you have a Drug problem you know you can't just socially take narcotics. You take one today and 50 tomarrow. Same with gambling. STO caters to the addict. If your a addict it would be a good idea to stay away from microtransactions in general.
Heres my point. If you have never played sto you will know within the first few hours what type of game it is. Don't blame anybody but yourself if you fall into a trap that you created and there is no shame to ask someone for help to get you out.
P.S. I'm guilty of this but have you ever noticed its so easy to spend $50 in zen on paypal but its impossible to get yourself to spend $10 in food at the Grocery store checkout.
Impossible? I spend more than that pretty much every trip. this time was 14 and all I got was some chicken, apples, picante sauce and corn chips.
There's no denying Cryptic knows how to make money in this game.
But there are other titles, other games that are far more aggressive and greedy than Crypitc/PWE.
Hell, I recently played World of Warships, and I can tell you now, Wargaming makes Cryptic/PWE look like they're the Saints of Low Cost Gaming.
Agreed i tried it aswell and was horrified at how they milked the playerbase...i also quit and uninstalled it
Don't forget TOR, with its "blackmail" F2P model. ONLY thing free is the story, up to a point because of expansions AFAIK. Unless you give them at least $5, you don't even have access to a bank!
But that's just it! They have boxes in that game, but it's so much easier to get the items and nothing is through the roof like it is on this game. With TOR, you get a whole lot more for you buck if you just pay the sub. With this game, you get TRIBBLE for 15 a month. Everyone who says this complains immediately about having to pay anything while misunderstanding that it's the very payment in and of itself that keeps prices reasonable. I'd rather pay a lil at a time for a game than 30 for a digital item.
I cant say I disagree with just about everything in this article. /shrugs... but one thing the Arthur left out is the fact that it IS a CHOICE to pay real money into this game. The F2P model makes its money based on the belief that a certain percentage of the game playing population has a sort of OCD for new shiny things. This means when they stuff a new shiny thing into a " locked box" that segment of the population will spend real $$ for a chance to get said shiny thing. I myself buy lockbox keys when they are on sale with a 99% certainty I will NOT get the most valuable new SHINY thing in game. I myself do it because I want the game to continue running. That's MY bottom line. I've been playing since open beta,, I bought a lifetime sub about 8 months after launch and I have never regretted it. I complained and got upset about the Grind fest that was Delta Rising,, yet I played ALL the missions on MULTIPLE characters.. I through a FIT when T6 ships came out... yet I've bought almost all of them. Its a CHOICE I have made. When the day comes that the plug is pulled on the STO server I will have NOTHING to show for all my time and money. I spend the time and money knowing that. However,, at this moment I enjoy STO and hope it continues on for many years to come.
Its been said in these forums hundreds of times Cryptic and PWE are business's. Business's need to turn a profit to continue to be in business. Its the cold, hard, truth.
*************************** Fleet Admiral In charge of Bacon Fighting 5th Attack Squadron The Devils Henchman
this article just smacks of someone who doesn't know how to play the system for the best benefits for the least expenditure.
the first thing he brings up lockboxes are a prime example I have opened many lockboxes and it didn't cost me a penny of real world money.
although I will admit that I was never lucky enough to get a ship from them I will also say that I found the items within to be very useful and overall would have cost me around the same amount of zen as if I had bought them on the store directly.
secondly I will address the $5 upgrade cost of tier 5 ships, there is a simple answer here, don't upgrade them.
there are many tier 5 ships in the game that could be upgraded for free if players were sensible enough to get the from the events on top of this if I had any need to upgrade tier 5 ships I would use the same method I used to buy keys so it would not cost me any real money.
lastly I will address ships and ship bundles, here again there is no need to spend any real money, personally I have bought the Dyson mega pack for 10,000zen and the T6 Delta Rising Operations Pack for 12,500zen but yet again did not have to spend any real life money.
all of these things I got by playing the game and selling Dilithium in exchange for zen.
before you ask, no I don't spend all day playing the game, just a couple or few hours and sometime a couple more at weekends if I have the time but the most important thing is playing the events like Crystalline and Mirror and not just for the 50k main prize but also for the bonus days.
most other days I rarely get anywhere close to the 8k refining cap but by saving the Dilithium I do get I am able to play the system and get the things I want with the least real world expense.
finally I don't buy into that time is money or your working to earn it argument because for me this is all just fun and if I was not playing sto I would be having to find my fun elsewhere and that might indeed cost me real world money.
maybe you think I would have no Dilithium for anything else but there again you would be wrong, I have bought items from the reputation stores, upgraded 12 ships of gear and 15 ground sets of gear to MK14 with Dilithium as well as donating tons of the stuff to my fleets.
all of this I have done with just 3 main characters and 3 farming Delta alts.
Yeah, god forbid they introduce a more equitable system where everyone pays a reasonable price and people who have no job, family or whatever it is that allows them to have all this time have to pay as well.
Everytime I hear somebody defend this game, the first thing they talk about is how if you have enough time you don't have to pay for anything. It's like their celebrating the fact that they don't do anything else and are cheapskates.
I didn't think it'd be this easy for someone to push my buttons, but here it goes. I'm disabled--have been for the better part of three years, and will be for the rest of my life, barring some unlikely medical advances--so every dime that passes through our family's proverbial coffers has to be carefully spent. I can't begin to justify paying the dollar cost of much of anything in this game, but having been playing for a couple of years, I'm mostly out of stuff to spend my dilithium on (though I haven't had the heart to go whole hog on upgrading the rarity of gear). I might have more time than most, but accumulating all the dilithium I can refine in a week only takes about five hours a week, which is less time than I played video games in a week when I still worked 40 hours. All that means that I can afford to make sensible C-Store purchases with Zen bought off the exchange. My wife would (rightly) have a fit if I bought a single ship on a single (sometimes only mediocre) video game for $30, but she couldn't care less if I spend 750,000 or 1,000,000 dilithium on the same.
And the thing is, there's a whole player economy that only exists because, for the STO community as a whole, that's fine. I wouldn't be able to buy Zen if there weren't players who valued between 22,000 and 23,000 dilithium more than a real dollar, but I can earn that dilithium a lot easier than I could that dollar. So we trade, voluntarily on the part of all parties, and the 'cheapskate' and the 'whale' both get to enjoy the game a little more.
Well, hopefully then you won't find yourself all up in arms when somebody who isn't a 'whale' and someone who isn't disabled (sorry about your luck by the way) and has to go out and do something, so they don't necessarily have the time and don't have the money to be a whale.
What irritates me is that somebody will make a thread like this pointing out the obvious problems with the gambling and the overpriced items and inevitably somebody will come along and point out how free everything can be if you just take all that time. Somehow this game is apparently superior because you can ride the ingame economy off of someone else's gambling addiction.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,688Community Moderator
At least lockbox keys in STO are only $1.25. For Supply Crate Keys in Team Fortress 2... thats $2 something for pretty much the same thing... and you have a chance at getting a weapon you already have. Not to mention some of the weapons in the Mann Co. Store are like $7 something, and you could potentially craft them in game without spending money for the standard versions. The supply crates really benefit not items with better stats, but items with different visuals or the ability to track kills.
STO isn't the first game I've played with a lockbox thing.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Basically our brains assume that once we've wasted resources on a task to achieve something, it's best to continue doing so, otherwise those resources are wasted and of course you can't let that happen.
Probably really one of the fallacies seen most often in human behavior. Money you spent is (normally) gone. So if you bought a ticket to a concert for $50 and then don't feel well (and cannot pass the ticket on or sell it) because they've spent the money they will still go when they wouldn't have gone to a free concert because they were not feeling well - when in reality both situations are identical on your fun meter and your wallet.
And I understand that. This spring I spent a lot of money to get my car street approved ("TÜV" in Germany. You basically have to get your car checked every two years whether it still is okay to drive). Shortly after that the engine started making troubles. Well, I just spent a whole lot of money for the two new years of driving, so I better be taking care of that, too? Nope, because the new costs would have exceeded the worth of my car. In other words, I could get a "new" car of comparable state for less money. Had I known this in advance, I shouldn't have done the TÜV thingy but the money is gone. So I knew what the right thing to do was. It felt wrong regardless and still feels. Probably because you're admitting to yourself that you did something which you shouldn't in hindsight.
Strangely the opposite effect sometimes happens as well. Take your $5 upgrade. The situation now is "Will spending these extra $5 give me enough of fun compared to not doing it?". And it would be wrong top say "I have to do it, I already spent 25 bucks on something that will lose its worth". At the same time it would also be wrong to say "I already spent money and do not see why I should spend more" if indeed the $5 would give you five dollars worth of fun. (This holds for a purely utility driven perspective, extraneous effects like "I don't want to give money to a company that regularily puts out products that make the older ones obsolete" do change the stance you should take, depending on how you feel about it).
What I was mostly trying to say, though, before I got distracted by the shiny and started rambling, is: a lot of players who do not like the game seem to fall into a similar trap. If spending your time on a game isn't your idea of fun anymore, either because your tastes have changed or the game did or both, just don't do it. I know that it feels like "I spent so much time here and so much money to go with it, I cannot leave" - yes, you can. And maybe should.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
But that's just it! They have boxes in that game, but it's so much easier to get the items and nothing is through the roof like it is on this game. With TOR, you get a whole lot more for you buck if you just pay the sub. With this game, you get TRIBBLE for 15 a month. Everyone who says this complains immediately about having to pay anything while misunderstanding that it's the very payment in and of itself that keeps prices reasonable. I'd rather pay a lil at a time for a game than 30 for a digital item.
2 month TOR sub = Tier 6 ship. 4 month TOR sub = cross-faction 3-pack ships.
But with STO you get to choose which ships to buy IF ANY, and you don't pay $20 extra for new episodes.
You guys are the exact type of person the article talks about... Those that will blindly follow and open their wallets for a slight hint of something star trek.
How is it that people who disagree with somebody seem to always be sheeple these days? Is it that unfathomable that somebody likes something and will pay a little money for it to be more enjoyable to hir? Yes, I open my wallet for a few things star trek, but by far not for all of them - no costumes, action figures, posters. Here it is in a game I like to play, and although I am pretty sure I would not like to play it if it were on almost any other franchise (sorry SW - I am not a hater but never really cared for the IP except that it has brought out three nice movies). Even though I don't know half of what is happening here, since I never entered the EU, stopped watching Voyager after a couple of episodes I did not like.
Then again, I love Lord of the Rings a lot. A whole lot. Still, LOTRO didn't convince me to go past the tutorial stages. So somehow this game does something right for me.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Comments
My character Tsin'xing
Very true but if STO had a true MMO competitor i would think it would only help in the quality of both products which would only be a boon to us gamers and trek fans alike.
I agree with that it was total ICK!!, if that's the best others can offer sto has no fear of loosing the top spot for a very long time to come.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
In my opinion, these boxes are just a scam. I don't know if the players who open the boxes for lobis realize the real cost of their beloved lobi ships; this is insane. but having said that, everyone is free to spend his money as he wants.
My character Tsin'xing
I own 3 box ships i must say i purchased from the exchange so no you dont need to open boxes just some hard work grinding up the EC to make the purchase via the exchange.
In that regard, you are entirely right...
Now if someone were to come around and present the lovechild of elite-force and Bridge Commander... I think STO would die a very quick and painless death.
Until such time, we need to stick with the TRIBBLE kid of Legacy and The Fallen.
First of all: Gambling
Notice how the "good stuff" is random? lockbox ships & items, item upgrades, item modifiers...
They have no intention of changing that, because they know that brings money, it exploits one of our biggest weaknesses, math.
The average person does not truly understand math, our brains are not good handling numbers and probability.
The gambler's fallacy
Most people assume that completely random is not random at all, that there are factors like luck or "streaks", this is a subconscious flaw, we are not even aware of it, but the developers are, that's why you see server wide messages every time someone opens a lockbox and gets an expensive ship, that's why sometimes you see several people winning ships in a row.
We see that and we unconsciously assume that somehow you have a bigger chance to earn a ship than you did before, several people assume that, and they begin opening lockboxes, and more announcements pop up making more people open lockboxes, that's why sometimes you see a "lucky streak".
The rush of winning
That exists, if you win a big prize during a random even your brain releases endorphins (the happiness and pleasure neurotransmitter), this brings us back to the gambler's fallacy, people are more likely to open more boxes/upgrading/crafting more gear after winning, but this is when we begin ignoring the failures and only realize about the winnings (as I said, our brains suck at math and probability), this can lead to a compulsive behavior and even addiction.
The sunk cost fallacy
Basically our brains assume that once we've wasted resources on a task to achieve something, it's best to continue doing so, otherwise those resources are wasted and of course you can't let that happen.
We fall for that an awful lot of times and it also goes hand to hand with the gambling fallacy a lot of times.
This is specially common when we upgrade items or when upgrading from T5 to T5-U, you've spent a lot of time, resources, maybe money to purchase and equip your T5 ship, but a new batch of better ships just arrived, but fear not, we can make your outdated ship just as good as those T6 ships, for a fee of course.
Second: Humans are greedy and jealous
Those two are paired like bread and butter, we desire stuff, and we hate it when other people have that stuff but we don't.
F2P games are incredibly good at exploiting both, that's why the C-Store exists, and that's why it focuses on selling power instead of cosmetics, someone just won a great ship opening a lockbox, you could try doing the same (or you did and failed), but you can always buy something equivalent or even better! just for a few dollars! in no time! who's laughing now Fred?!
Third: Humans are lazy and impatient
Sorry, that's evolution mates, turns out that lazy and impatient humans were more successful in the past and now we pay the price (in sweet, sweet money).
Oh, business companies are sooooooo good at exploiting this flaw of our nature, it all comes down to balancing time, effort, reward and the price to skip both time and effort and get the reward right away.
You just have to make your product look like it's available to everyone if they put enough time and effort into it, but make it hard enough so most people won't have the patience to do it, this is achieved by time gates and "grinding".
A freebie player, taking advantage of his 4 character slots, could easily get a good ship per month, but it would require him to perform repetitive task each day for 30 days, let's remember, this is a game not a job, people come here to have fun.
So companies take advantage of that and offer us a shortcut, by paying you can skip the grinding and get your ship right away and invest those 30 days on something fun.
I know, i have myself a manasa bought in the exchange. i talked about the guys who open the boxes only for the lobis
Yeah i know quite a few of those and i always roll my eyes at them
But there are other titles, other games that are far more aggressive and greedy than Crypitc/PWE.
Hell, I recently played World of Warships, and I can tell you now, Wargaming makes Cryptic/PWE look like they're the Saints of Low Cost Gaming.
Agreed i tried it aswell and was horrified at how they milked the playerbase...i also quit and uninstalled it
Time-based gameplay doesn't actually bother me, unless it stalls your enjoyment of the game. This is why I had problems with DA: Inquisition, because the time-based mechanics actually got in the way of you finishing the story. Since most of the time-based mechanics are around the Duty Officer System, I'm not bothered by it.
The Lockboxes, surprising as it may sound, don't exactly bother me either. I've only ever opened 10 throughout my entire playthrough, and I honestly don't feel any more powerful because of them. I even sold one of my Keys on the auction house for a massive profit for my level (I don't have to worry about running out of EC anytime soon).
If I have one complaint about STO, it's account-level services and items. Few of STO's services affect you on the account level, and none of the ones that actually matter do this at all (i.e. Bridge Officer count, Duty Officer Count, Energy Credit Count, etc.). Even SWTOR, a game I hate even more than STO, allows you to purchase item slots and other services at an account level, at a slightly higher Cartel Coin cost than usual. If this issue was accounted for, I would be pretty happy.
P.S.: none of Cryptic's IPs have been optimized for Windows 10 as of the writing of this post, despite the platform having been out for several months now. That problem needs to be sorted out ASAP!
P.S.S.: Watch Extra Credits on YouTube, they have a whole playlist about F2P games, and possibly how to do them right:
Also I'm speaking from experiance here. If you have a Drug problem you know you can't just socially take narcotics. You take one today and 50 tomarrow. Same with gambling. STO caters to the addict. If your a addict it would be a good idea to stay away from microtransactions in general.
Heres my point. If you have never played sto you will know within the first few hours what type of game it is. Don't blame anybody but yourself if you fall into a trap that you created and there is no shame to ask someone for help to get you out.
P.S. I'm guilty of this but have you ever noticed its so easy to spend $50 in zen on paypal but its impossible to get yourself to spend $10 in food at the Grocery store checkout.
so true. if only these flaws weren't also a real problem in rl: deforestion, rhinos killed for money because some guys have problems with their libido (their horns), etc. MMOs are very interesting if you want to understand mankind.
one of the best example of all you have writen is: a 30$ ship for only a starship trait.
I didn't think it'd be this easy for someone to push my buttons, but here it goes. I'm disabled--have been for the better part of three years, and will be for the rest of my life, barring some unlikely medical advances--so every dime that passes through our family's proverbial coffers has to be carefully spent. I can't begin to justify paying the dollar cost of much of anything in this game, but having been playing for a couple of years, I'm mostly out of stuff to spend my dilithium on (though I haven't had the heart to go whole hog on upgrading the rarity of gear). I might have more time than most, but accumulating all the dilithium I can refine in a week only takes about five hours a week, which is less time than I played video games in a week when I still worked 40 hours. All that means that I can afford to make sensible C-Store purchases with Zen bought off the exchange. My wife would (rightly) have a fit if I bought a single ship on a single (sometimes only mediocre) video game for $30, but she couldn't care less if I spend 750,000 or 1,000,000 dilithium on the same.
And the thing is, there's a whole player economy that only exists because, for the STO community as a whole, that's fine. I wouldn't be able to buy Zen if there weren't players who valued between 22,000 and 23,000 dilithium more than a real dollar, but I can earn that dilithium a lot easier than I could that dollar. So we trade, voluntarily on the part of all parties, and the 'cheapskate' and the 'whale' both get to enjoy the game a little more.
No, some of us just came into STO knowing full well what it is from the get-go. That is, a MMO operating under the Asian grindfest and F2P/micro-transactions models. You can either grind or pay. Simple as that.
Some people just get carried away with it, as with the case of the lock boxes or special promotions on packs. That, or the fact that some folks just have that kind of disposable income. The first only becomes a problem if you let it. There is nothing inherently wrong with the second.
I think it's based on royalties of sales, not profits, so the game could make 0$ in profits but CBS still gets their money.
There is also the other side of the coin also where free to play games make Cryptic/PWE far more aggressive and greedy, such as comparing to Path of Exile as one example. That said I feel in terms of F2P model, STO IMO, is about below average costs, it's not that bad.
Company as a whole for Cryptic and PWE, I don't know though. Looking through NeverWinter forums as of late is questionable to say the least, and I never really looked into their other games, but I have been told they are on the pricy side.
Don't forget TOR, with its "blackmail" F2P model. ONLY thing free is the story, up to a point because of expansions AFAIK. Unless you give them at least $5, you don't even have access to a bank!
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
My character Tsin'xing
But that's just it! They have boxes in that game, but it's so much easier to get the items and nothing is through the roof like it is on this game. With TOR, you get a whole lot more for you buck if you just pay the sub. With this game, you get TRIBBLE for 15 a month. Everyone who says this complains immediately about having to pay anything while misunderstanding that it's the very payment in and of itself that keeps prices reasonable. I'd rather pay a lil at a time for a game than 30 for a digital item.
I cant say I disagree with just about everything in this article. /shrugs... but one thing the Arthur left out is the fact that it IS a CHOICE to pay real money into this game. The F2P model makes its money based on the belief that a certain percentage of the game playing population has a sort of OCD for new shiny things. This means when they stuff a new shiny thing into a " locked box" that segment of the population will spend real $$ for a chance to get said shiny thing. I myself buy lockbox keys when they are on sale with a 99% certainty I will NOT get the most valuable new SHINY thing in game. I myself do it because I want the game to continue running. That's MY bottom line. I've been playing since open beta,, I bought a lifetime sub about 8 months after launch and I have never regretted it. I complained and got upset about the Grind fest that was Delta Rising,, yet I played ALL the missions on MULTIPLE characters.. I through a FIT when T6 ships came out... yet I've bought almost all of them. Its a CHOICE I have made. When the day comes that the plug is pulled on the STO server I will have NOTHING to show for all my time and money. I spend the time and money knowing that. However,, at this moment I enjoy STO and hope it continues on for many years to come.
Its been said in these forums hundreds of times Cryptic and PWE are business's. Business's need to turn a profit to continue to be in business. Its the cold, hard, truth.
Fleet Admiral In charge of Bacon
Fighting 5th Attack Squadron
The Devils Henchman
Well, hopefully then you won't find yourself all up in arms when somebody who isn't a 'whale' and someone who isn't disabled (sorry about your luck by the way) and has to go out and do something, so they don't necessarily have the time and don't have the money to be a whale.
What irritates me is that somebody will make a thread like this pointing out the obvious problems with the gambling and the overpriced items and inevitably somebody will come along and point out how free everything can be if you just take all that time. Somehow this game is apparently superior because you can ride the ingame economy off of someone else's gambling addiction.
STO isn't the first game I've played with a lockbox thing.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
Probably really one of the fallacies seen most often in human behavior. Money you spent is (normally) gone. So if you bought a ticket to a concert for $50 and then don't feel well (and cannot pass the ticket on or sell it) because they've spent the money they will still go when they wouldn't have gone to a free concert because they were not feeling well - when in reality both situations are identical on your fun meter and your wallet.
And I understand that. This spring I spent a lot of money to get my car street approved ("TÜV" in Germany. You basically have to get your car checked every two years whether it still is okay to drive). Shortly after that the engine started making troubles. Well, I just spent a whole lot of money for the two new years of driving, so I better be taking care of that, too? Nope, because the new costs would have exceeded the worth of my car. In other words, I could get a "new" car of comparable state for less money. Had I known this in advance, I shouldn't have done the TÜV thingy but the money is gone. So I knew what the right thing to do was. It felt wrong regardless and still feels. Probably because you're admitting to yourself that you did something which you shouldn't in hindsight.
Strangely the opposite effect sometimes happens as well. Take your $5 upgrade. The situation now is "Will spending these extra $5 give me enough of fun compared to not doing it?". And it would be wrong top say "I have to do it, I already spent 25 bucks on something that will lose its worth". At the same time it would also be wrong to say "I already spent money and do not see why I should spend more" if indeed the $5 would give you five dollars worth of fun. (This holds for a purely utility driven perspective, extraneous effects like "I don't want to give money to a company that regularily puts out products that make the older ones obsolete" do change the stance you should take, depending on how you feel about it).
What I was mostly trying to say, though, before I got distracted by the shiny and started rambling, is: a lot of players who do not like the game seem to fall into a similar trap. If spending your time on a game isn't your idea of fun anymore, either because your tastes have changed or the game did or both, just don't do it. I know that it feels like "I spent so much time here and so much money to go with it, I cannot leave" - yes, you can. And maybe should.
2 month TOR sub = Tier 6 ship. 4 month TOR sub = cross-faction 3-pack ships.
But with STO you get to choose which ships to buy IF ANY, and you don't pay $20 extra for new episodes.
How is it that people who disagree with somebody seem to always be sheeple these days? Is it that unfathomable that somebody likes something and will pay a little money for it to be more enjoyable to hir? Yes, I open my wallet for a few things star trek, but by far not for all of them - no costumes, action figures, posters. Here it is in a game I like to play, and although I am pretty sure I would not like to play it if it were on almost any other franchise (sorry SW - I am not a hater but never really cared for the IP except that it has brought out three nice movies). Even though I don't know half of what is happening here, since I never entered the EU, stopped watching Voyager after a couple of episodes I did not like.
Then again, I love Lord of the Rings a lot. A whole lot. Still, LOTRO didn't convince me to go past the tutorial stages. So somehow this game does something right for me.