Can they get one by opening boxes then selling it for real money? Yes, that's possible, but not likely because its not profitable. Anyone who wants to spend real money on a ship should just buy zen, buy keys, sell keys, then buy the ship off the market.
The fact is, the grey market for MMOs died a decade ago because games put so many ridiculous BOA items and made enough ways to trade real money for in game money that there is no way to compete. Companies wanted total control over your money and didn't want to have to deal with the problem of scammers.
Any RMT sites or ads you see today are scams, pure and simple. There is no gold, no zen, no dil, there is no ship, nothing that is actually for sale. They promise you that so you give them your CC info and/or account info which they then steal. They have zero effect on the in game economy because they do not participate in it beyond robbing you.
Not profitable? Really?
So... as a company I got my product... the ship... for free. With little to no effort on my behalf I got all my product for free and sold it... that's not... in your mind... profitable? That's.... 100% profit.... literally... like if i sold it for 5.00 it would be 100% profit.... i profited 5.00 without putting in a cent... isn't that perfect capitalism? zero in 100 out...
The black market died in mmo's? really? everywhere i look in every mmo there are RMT's... they look quite healthy for so called zombies... I mean what is the point of making harsh punishments for a system that doesn't exist... isn't that strange? There is no such thing as this thing we are trying our best to legislate out of our game...
The people at Cryptic know what they are doing. I would find it hard to believe that none of them graduated from some business school, or that none of them have any experience with the real stock market. They created this game and all of it's markets and currencies. They know how to influence the rates on the exchange. They can put things, like keys, on sale in the Z-store and they know what that will do for the prices of keys on the exchange. Same thing with R+D pack sales, how often they decide to make the D7 miracle worker flight deck cruiser available, or anything like that. They can even change the mechanics of the game. The introduction of the infinity lock box affected the sale of all those old lock boxes, as did making lock boxes available for free. Re-engineering affected the weapons market. Changing fleet project requirements so that commodities are no longer accepted killed the market for them on the exchange. Not to mention, dil-sinks. People can claim that it's the players who set the prices, but it's really not. Some players claim to be able to make an astronomical amount of EC in a month or so, but when I ask them to share how they did it, they refuse because they are afraid that Cryptic will nerf the way they make EC.
The people at Cryptic know what they are doing. I would find it hard to believe that none of them graduated from some business school, or that none of them have any experience with the real stock market. They created this game and all of it's markets and currencies. They know how to influence the rates on the exchange. They can put things, like keys, on sale in the Z-store and they know what that will do for the prices of keys on the exchange. Same thing with R+D pack sales, how often they decide to make the D7 miracle worker flight deck cruiser available, or anything like that. They can even change the mechanics of the game. The introduction of the infinity lock box affected the sale of all those old lock boxes, as did making lock boxes available for free. Re-engineering affected the weapons market. Changing fleet project requirements so that commodities are no longer accepted killed the market for them on the exchange. Not to mention, dil-sinks. People can claim that it's the players who set the prices, but it's really not. Some players claim to be able to make an astronomical amount of EC in a month or so, but when I ask them to share how they did it, they refuse because they are afraid that Cryptic will nerf the way they make EC.
I don't think that's true. As far as I know every player pretty much responds the same way when asked how to make a ton of EC's.
For paying players it's simply, buy zen during zen events HOLD on to the zen till there are flash sales or the BEST sales would be promo Sales with promo discounts. Buy the Promo boxes and sale for 13-15M per box.
For none paying players do as many doff and admiralty missions on as many alts as you can daily for dill and EC's. Sale items like gear and contraband and so on and so forth on the market. Wait for said events and trade in dil for zen, use zen to buy promo boxes sale promo boxes. Most players also do it with Keys and make millions...
Then buy what you want. Pretty sure this is the same formula everyone uses. There is no secret to it. And i am certain if you read this thread it will be repeated time and time again.
^ some people also play the exchange itself though you need a fair amount of EC to do that enough to make much.
For example if you buy R & D promo packs during a promo event you can get them cheaper than the normal selling price. Hold on to them for a week or two, near instant profit of something like 1 million EC per pack.
Or they buy ships that are over-supplied during some event, wait for the supply to drop, then sell at the normal price.
I'm too lazy to do things like that, in part because I already have a job and I don't need a second one
The people at Cryptic know what they are doing. I would find it hard to believe that none of them graduated from some business school, or that none of them have any experience with the real stock market. They created this game and all of it's markets and currencies. They know how to influence the rates on the exchange. They can put things, like keys, on sale in the Z-store and they know what that will do for the prices of keys on the exchange. Same thing with R+D pack sales, how often they decide to make the D7 miracle worker flight deck cruiser available, or anything like that. They can even change the mechanics of the game. The introduction of the infinity lock box affected the sale of all those old lock boxes, as did making lock boxes available for free. Re-engineering affected the weapons market. Changing fleet project requirements so that commodities are no longer accepted killed the market for them on the exchange. Not to mention, dil-sinks. People can claim that it's the players who set the prices, but it's really not. Some players claim to be able to make an astronomical amount of EC in a month or so, but when I ask them to share how they did it, they refuse because they are afraid that Cryptic will nerf the way they make EC.
I don't think that's true. As far as I know every player pretty much responds the same way when asked how to make a ton of EC's.
For paying players it's simply, buy zen during zen events HOLD on to the zen till there are flash sales or the BEST sales would be promo Sales with promo discounts. Buy the Promo boxes and sale for 13-15M per box.
For none paying players do as many doff and admiralty missions on as many alts as you can daily for dill and EC's. Sale items like gear and contraband and so on and so forth on the market. Wait for said events and trade in dil for zen, use zen to buy promo boxes sale promo boxes. Most players also do it with Keys and make millions...
Then buy what you want. Pretty sure this is the same formula everyone uses. There is no secret to it. And i am certain if you read this thread it will be repeated time and time again.
That Battlestar Galactica quote came to my mind reading this comment.
"All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again"
Yet there has been no appreciable change in game population. Nothing more than the bog standard seasonal fluctuation that has always been here.
If you believe that I've got some "oceanfront" property you may be interested in.
I used to make, literally, BILLIONS of EC buying and selling DOFFs on the exchange. They would sell as fast as I could list them because thousands of players were buying them to sink into starbase projects. Now, you can't really do that anymore. Why? Because those thousands of players, and the demand they had for items, has vanished.
The simple fact that people are... dissuaded... from discussing exactly what the playerbase is should be evidence enough. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
I love this game, have spent countless thousands of dollars on it, but the prices I'm seeing today and the paltry return on investment I'm getting tell me all I need to know.
I used to make, literally, BILLIONS of EC buying and selling DOFFs on the exchange. They would sell as fast as I could list them because thousands of players were buying them to sink into starbase projects. Now, you can't really do that anymore. Why? Because those thousands of players, and the demand they had for items, has vanished.
Or because people finished their starbase projects years ago and no longer need your DoFF's.
Yet there has been no appreciable change in game population. Nothing more than the bog standard seasonal fluctuation that has always been here.
If you believe that I've got some "oceanfront" property you may be interested in.
I used to make, literally, BILLIONS of EC buying and selling DOFFs on the exchange. They would sell as fast as I could list them because thousands of players were buying them to sink into starbase projects. Now, you can't really do that anymore. Why? Because those thousands of players, and the demand they had for items, has vanished.
The simple fact that people are... dissuaded... from discussing exactly what the playerbase is should be evidence enough. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
I love this game, have spent countless thousands of dollars on it, but the prices I'm seeing today and the paltry return on investment I'm getting tell me all I need to know.
Im sorry, unless you can provide prove "thousands of players have vanished" then your statement has no basis in reality.
Or, has the Klingon Judge in one of the TMP movies said "We are interested only in facts not theories"
Also, if you are getting paltry investments now, in my opinion, makes me believe you dont know anything about MMO exchange fluxs and how trends change over time. My opinion only of course, but what wasa hot ticket item one day, doesnt mean it will stay that way
They definitely have a way to collect and interpret sales data. That's what told them they'd make more off putting the Donnie in the promo rather than the C-Store. As much was said in the livestream when it was brought up.
I'm 100% sure Cryptic has a way to collect and interpret sales data, however, how could they possibly know how well the Disco Connie would sell if they put it in the C-Store at an appropriate Zen price?
The ships that are currently in the C-Store are nowhere near as desirable or as powerful as the Disco Connie, so interpreting ship sales in this way is flawed, simply because there isn't a ship in the C-Store that matches it, or indeed the other Promo ships, which are all pretty powerful and/or desirable. Simply put, they don't have the right data or enough data to make that call.
One obvious way to find out how well a powerful and desirable ship like this will sell, is to actually put one in the C-Store as a test. I'm sure they could do that with one ship. If it doesn't sell as well, then go back to the tried and tested. It's not difficult and it wouldn't be difficult for them. Promote said ship properly, make it powerful/desirable, price it properly, see how it goes. More data for them to interpret and make a decision based on that.
The ship could still be ground out, could still be sold on the exchange (as long as it wasn't made character or account bound) so wouldn't affect the players in that regard. The one big change would be that for your money, you would be guaranteed the ship rather than having a low chance at having it, by opening boxes.
Guys lets not rehash the old "are lockboxes gambling" type of stuff and avoid those arguments because they never end well and one of us will end up having to lock the thread. There are times and places for that but here isn't one.
I've been watching people with the D7 Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier with all their pew pew pets, and thought I'd like to fly one myself. Looking on the exchange, my Liberated Borg Klingon would have to pay 1,353,200,000 EC to obtain one.
Doing the maths, I would need to sell in the neighborhood of 270 keys; and at today's cost (full price, no sale) that would run me roughly 31,000 zen. To purchase that with $$$$, would cost around $300, and with dilithium (at this moment it would cost me 438+ per Zen) it would be well over 13,500,000 Dil.
Assuming that I don't want to dish out $300 (and I DO NOT), I can refine enough dilithium to purchase the Zen to purchase the keys to sell the keys to buy the ship in 1700+ days; or using all of my toons, about 4 months. This of course assumes everything remains the same as it is today.
What I believe has happened here is that everyone has embraced the idea that it is always cheaper to buy lock box ships on the exchange than to gamble opening the lock boxes. Fewer people are opening the lock boxes because of this, and fewer lock box ships are making it to the exchange. Less supply, same demand (arguably higher demand on the exchange) results in higher cost on the exchange.
I'm not going to pay $300 for a ship. I'm not going to sit around and grind the dilithium for this ship. And I'm not going to gamble on the lock boxes. In the end, I'm not going to get this ship. This means that Cryptic will sell one less of these than it could. I wonder how many people feel the same as I do?
First to be perfectly blunt, you are not entitled any specific price just because you want a ship. Unless you have evidence of some kind of exploit you want to make myself or my cohort aware of via PM, ships and prices in general on the exchange are set by supply and demand. As demand for ships goes up but supply stays the same, prices will rise. If demand goes down then so will prices and so on. Why would someone accept a trade of only 500m when they could get twice that amount and such?
The other thing that factors into the price of a ship is how easy it is to acquire the ship. Promo ships are typically hardest to acquire followed by lockbox ships, and then lobi ships, in that order. Generally by and large it takes more resources such as zen, dilithium, ec, and such to generate a promo ship than it does a box ship or lobi ship. It's alot cheaper EC and zen wise to open 200 lockboxes than it is to open 200 promo packs. Thus part of why promo ships go for as much as they do. You will typically never see a promo ship for under 1b ec purely because of how difficult it is to generate them. This is because you could end up taking that 1b ec and then some to generate another one.
The reason folks are typically more prone to save packs and keys and trade those for a ship is because that's a guaranteed way to get the ship. If you have 250 and going off current prices last I checked that's 4.7m per key and 1.175b ec worth of value. That 1.175b is guaranteed trade value, where as you wouldn't be guaranteed a ship if you used those keys to open boxes. Typically if you're going to save up for a ship, then keys and fleetship modules are good items as they hold their value and will always be in demand. Unopened promo packs themselves are also great sellers and will typically go for more than box keys and fleetmodules.
As the last bit, if you really want the ship then one of two things is going to have to happen, either you grind for it and/or shell out some cash to convert to keys/packs to trade for a ship, or take a stab at once on your own. I deal in promo and box ships on the regular and I can tell you from experience, if I'm asking for 1.3b and someone offers me 1.2 or even that 1.175 above, generally I will take the offer as I would rather make a slightly smaller sale vs no sale at all.
Darkblade, if we aren't allowed to talk about "lockboxes are gambling" here, where can we talk about it?
When people try to chat about this on the STO Facebook group, they get a similar response from the mods on there. And then these same mods also tell people to go on the forums (these forums) if they wish to talk about lockboxes, where one of the Devs "might" see the conversation. (This is nonsense anyway, I'm pretty sure the Devs don't control Cryptic's sales strategies!)
For me, this is just a fob off. I know the Facebook group has nothing to do with you, but I thought I'd mention it because it is entirely frustrating to not be able to talk about something that is important in the game!
On the surface, it seems that on ANY of the forums, you're only allowed to talk about STO in positive tones, and that anything remotely negative towards Cryptic or STO is clamped down on quickly, even if it's constructive criticism, which is all I would ever offer.
Darkblade, if we aren't allowed to talk about "lockboxes are gambling" here, where can we talk about it?
When people try to chat about this on the STO Facebook group, they get a similar response from the mods on there. And then these same mods also tell people to go on the forums (these forums) if they wish to talk about lockboxes, where one of the Devs "might" see the conversation. (This is nonsense anyway, I'm pretty sure the Devs don't control Cryptic's sales strategies!)
For me, this is just a fob off. I know the Facebook group has nothing to do with you, but I thought I'd mention it because it is entirely frustrating to not be able to talk about something that is important in the game!
You are trying to derail a thread about costs by turning it into a discussion about gambling.
On the surface, it seems that on ANY of the forums, you're only allowed to talk about STO in positive tones, and that anything remotely negative towards Cryptic or STO is clamped down on quickly, even if it's constructive criticism, which is all I would ever offer.
Hahahahahaahahaa, no.
If you actually read the threads in these forums, 90% of them contain criticism of Cryptic and/or PWE.
Some things that aren't allowed are flaming, trolling, and insults. Many people can't discuss things they dislike without stooping to one or more of those and that is the point where they are moderated, NOT for disagreeing politely (or even a little rudely) with the way things are.
I've been posting here for over 5 years and I have criticized Cryptic scores if not hundreds of times without being moderated.
Although I am quoting an individual post below, I advise everyone to pay attention to this particular portion of this post. Unless a 3rd party vendor has been authorized by Cryptic to sell or give ships out in some kind of way, it's a breach of the Terms of Service and agreement you make with Cryptic not to buy from those guys when you first start playing the game. Most of those guys get their items by stealing from other players within the game and in every game I've ever seen, if you buy from those guys, and the rightful owner of said item has been working with customer service, you go down along with seller. If I catch anyone on here dealing with gold sellers, I will go out of my way to make sure you get busted because those guys harm the game itself, and the playerbase. Simply because they exist does not mean they are authorized or even legal. If folks have evidence of someone gold selling you can forward that evidence to Customer Service, or send this evidence to myself or one of my cohorts and we will see to it the proper folks get it. Now with this said see below.
My issue is with this whole thread is simply efficiency and ideology.
Everyone always seems to forget that there is a third option as to why there are so many of these ships on the market and that's literally the existence of third party providers.
IT's like everyone here assumes that everyone on the market is good faith actors.
These ships are worth something to someone and people will get them how ever they can. Literally they have a real world market value. Do not forget that.
There will always be a supply even when there is no demand because it is a business within a business.
Now dealing with this quote, simply because 3rd party vendors exist does not make them authorized or even legal. Most video game companies have clauses in them that could potentially allow the company to sue you and/or the sellers if they chose to do so. Whether or not they will doesn't matter. The ships and such have no real world value in that sense because it's against ToS and illegal to sell to or buy from a 3rd party vendor that's not been authorized. To say "but 3rd party vendors" is similar to trying to count drug dealing as part of the local economy. It can have an effect on the economy sure, but it's illegal and can't be counted as part of the legitimate economy. As far as us players are concerned, the ships have no real world value as we can't legally sell them or such for real world cash. We can only approximate a value based on the amount of zen it would take to get the ship, and how much money it would take to get that zen.
Like I said, if you have evidence of gold selling and such, I will make sure the appropriate folks see it, or you can send it to CS yourself. Otherwise
If you believe that I've got some "oceanfront" property you may be interested in.
I used to make, literally, BILLIONS of EC buying and selling DOFFs on the exchange. They would sell as fast as I could list them because thousands of players were buying them to sink into starbase projects. Now, you can't really do that anymore. Why? Because those thousands of players, and the demand they had for items, has vanished.
The simple fact that people are... dissuaded... from discussing exactly what the playerbase is should be evidence enough. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
I love this game, have spent countless thousands of dollars on it, but the prices I'm seeing today and the paltry return on investment I'm getting tell me all I need to know.
As time goes on demand for different items will change. In this instance the demand for doffs changed as more and more fleets are maxing out their holdings and don't need all the extras. By that logic, the fact that plasmonic leech is so cheap now would mean everyone left the game, which is simply untrue. Simply because demand for certain items dries up does not mean that everyone has left, it simply means folks no longer want/need that item as much as before. I used to survive as a weapons dealer early on in the game, now I've had to diversify my investments.
Secondly, you're allowed to discuss the current state of the playerbase and whether you think it's in a good place or a bad place. What you're not allowed to do is turn it into a doom thread. There is a difference between the two. The number of current players will fluctuate up and down naturally over the course of a game's life, this is nothing new. As it sits right now, the game is in a good place and if we're going by the last numbers released, there were several million people playing the game. Not only this but on stream it's been stated STO has had it's best year ever just recently. If the rule about doom threads were to suddenly vanish, that's when I would advise you potentially start to worry.
They definitely have a way to collect and interpret sales data. That's what told them they'd make more off putting the Donnie in the promo rather than the C-Store. As much was said in the livestream when it was brought up.
I'm 100% sure Cryptic has a way to collect and interpret sales data, however, how could they possibly know how well the Disco Connie would sell if they put it in the C-Store at an appropriate Zen price?
The ships that are currently in the C-Store are nowhere near as desirable or as powerful as the Disco Connie, so interpreting ship sales in this way is flawed, simply because there isn't a ship in the C-Store that matches it, or indeed the other Promo ships, which are all pretty powerful and/or desirable. Simply put, they don't have the right data or enough data to make that call.
One obvious way to find out how well a powerful and desirable ship like this will sell, is to actually put one in the C-Store as a test. I'm sure they could do that with one ship. If it doesn't sell as well, then go back to the tried and tested. It's not difficult and it wouldn't be difficult for them. Promote said ship properly, make it powerful/desirable, price it properly, see how it goes. More data for them to interpret and make a decision based on that.
The ship could still be ground out, could still be sold on the exchange (as long as it wasn't made character or account bound) so wouldn't affect the players in that regard. The one big change would be that for your money, you would be guaranteed the ship rather than having a low chance at having it, by opening boxes.
You need to keep in mind Cryptic has access to numbers and figures that none of us in here do, not me, not you, not BMR, or anyone else. Unless they decide to let us view this data all we have to go on is their word as to what's in it. That can be frustrating at times certainly, but it is what it is. All businesses keep track of this stuff in some form or fashion and Cryptic is no different. To be perfectly blunt you don't know what kind of data they have and for that matter neither do I, unless they decide to tell us.
As for putting something on the cstore vs making it a promo ship, it makes sense business wise why they made it a promo ship vs just a cstore. What's going to be more profitable per ship, $30 one time for the entire account, or potentially $200 for each copy of the ship they want? Sure it sucks if you have multiple toons that want it but Cryptic is going to do what makes them the most money. With that said simply because we might think an item does well or would do well in a certain area or for sale at all, does not mean that item will in fact do well. Every dollar in a business will add up fast.
Darkblade, if we aren't allowed to talk about "lockboxes are gambling" here, where can we talk about it?
When people try to chat about this on the STO Facebook group, they get a similar response from the mods on there. And then these same mods also tell people to go on the forums (these forums) if they wish to talk about lockboxes, where one of the Devs "might" see the conversation. (This is nonsense anyway, I'm pretty sure the Devs don't control Cryptic's sales strategies!)
For me, this is just a fob off. I know the Facebook group has nothing to do with you, but I thought I'd mention it because it is entirely frustrating to not be able to talk about something that is important in the game!
On the surface, it seems that on ANY of the forums, you're only allowed to talk about STO in positive tones, and that anything remotely negative towards Cryptic or STO is clamped down on quickly, even if it's constructive criticism, which is all I would ever offer.
A couple of things here. To your first question, find an active thread in Ten Forward or anywhere else that's been left open and post in there without necroposting. Otherwise I don't care to tell you we don't normally allow that sort of thing as it devolves into flaming/trolling and nothing gets "discussed." Very rarely, if ever, do we make exceptions.
Each individual facebook group is different and has their own rules. What those rules are and how they enforce them is up to each individual group. This is something I have no control over. If you're going to post in those groups then I suggest you abide by their rules.
Lastly, you are free to discuss the current status of the game and your thoughts of it in the positive or negative, provided it's done in a respectful and civil manor. You are also free to voice constructive criticism of the game provided again of course it's done in a respectful and civil manor. For that matter I've criticized some stuff here or there myself. What's not permitted are rant threads or flaming/trolling the devs, Cryptic, and/or other users. If you have further questions or concerns I suggest taking this to PM instead of here.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Something in this thread that's been odding me out is the fact that players keep saying the term the best in regards to this ship.
This ship is not the best ship available to the vast majority of captains, in fact many of the cstore ships with their consoles, traits, and layouts are far more suitable to players.
You literally do not need this ship.
The weapons nerfed to nothing, the pets are decent but that's it, they aren't that great, and the trait has no use whatsoever in the current game. With the current content we play it will without a doubt wind up on a shelf.
The only thing I can say that makes it pleasing is it's looks. Add in a section 31 vanity shield and she is probably the most beautiful rendition of the constitution. I hate the constitution. I think it is one of the cheapest, most bulbous, most horrendous ships ever.... like.... they literally took apart a washing machine, took the worse parts and thought... this... this is good. I half expect when i fly mine to see strings attached to it as it sails through space. If it wasn't for the console... but this one, this girl is gorgeous.
Besides that there are plenty of ships, plenty of traits and plenty of consoles in the C-store that make this ship green with envy.
In my opinion a vast majority of the c-store ships and traits are superior. Improved grav well, Min maj, superior numbers, promise of ferocity, history will remember, strike from the shadows, so on and so forth are just better traits...
Bar none the best trait in this game for Beam based captains is a trait that's in the C-store. The gagarin is by far the best trait imho in this game for spamming none stop Bfaw. literally you can spam bfaw, beam overload, and torp spread and never put on the breaks. It triggers supremacy so you literally keep during combat max energy returns... an amazing trait.
Everyone that says the discovery constitution is the best ship in the game don't really know what they are talking about. They are just regurgitating what they heard or what they fantasize it to be and are not looking at it for what it is. It's a decent ship. It's not even the best ship in the promo box. It's not the strongest, not the stoutest, and the law out isn't the best either. It is simply a good ship that happens to be very attractive. You can live your life without the constitution.
I am not attempting to belittle this ship but simply pointing out facts. There are better ships out there. For your game play find your ship. Chances are more then likely its not this ship.
Something in this thread that's been odding me out is the fact that players keep saying the term the best in regards to this ship.
This ship is not the best ship available to the vast majority of captains, in fact many of the cstore ships with their consoles, traits, and layouts are far more suitable to players.
You literally do not need this ship.
The weapons nerfed to nothing, the pets are decent but that's it, they aren't that great, and the trait has no use whatsoever in the current game. With the current content we play it will without a doubt wind up on a shelf.
The only thing I can say that makes it pleasing is it's looks. Add in a section 31 vanity shield and she is probably the most beautiful rendition of the constitution. I hate the constitution. I think it is one of the cheapest, most bulbous, most horrendous ships ever.... like.... they literally took apart a washing machine, took the worse parts and thought... this... this is good. I half expect when i fly mine to see strings attached to it as it sails through space. If it wasn't for the console... but this one, this girl is gorgeous.
Besides that there are plenty of ships, plenty of traits and plenty of consoles in the C-store that make this ship green with envy.
In my opinion a vast majority of the c-store ships and traits are superior. Improved grav well, Min maj, superior numbers, promise of ferocity, history will remember, strike from the shadows, so on and so forth are just better traits...
Bar none the best trait in this game for Beam based captains is a trait that's in the C-store. The gagarin is by far the best trait imho in this game for spamming none stop Bfaw. literally you can spam bfaw, beam overload, and torp spread and never put on the breaks. It triggers supremacy so you literally keep during combat max energy returns... an amazing trait.
Everyone that says the discovery constitution is the best ship in the game don't really know what they are talking about. They are just regurgitating what they heard or what they fantasize it to be and are not looking at it for what it is. It's a decent ship. It's not even the best ship in the promo box. It's not the strongest, not the stoutest, and the law out isn't the best either. It is simply a good ship that happens to be very attractive. You can live your life without the constitution.
I am not attempting to belittle this ship but simply pointing out facts. There are better ships out there. For your game play find your ship. Chances are more then likely its not this ship.
Not everyone wants a particular ship for stats. Any ship in this game can easily be made viable for play on normal with very rare weapons. It's a D7, one of the most iconic Klingon ships. I bought mine for my Retro Gorn that I created close to 9 years ago before PWE messed up the Gorn skins by ruining them and removing the old skins.
Although I am quoting an individual post below, I advise everyone to pay attention to this particular portion of this post. Unless a 3rd party vendor has been authorized by Cryptic to sell or give ships out in some kind of way, it's a breach of the Terms of Service and agreement you make with Cryptic not to buy from those guys when you first start playing the game. Most of those guys get their items by stealing from other players within the game and in every game I've ever seen, if you buy from those guys, and the rightful owner of said item has been working with customer service, you go down along with seller. If I catch anyone on here dealing with gold sellers, I will go out of my way to make sure you get busted because those guys harm the game itself, and the playerbase. Simply because they exist does not mean they are authorized or even legal. If folks have evidence of someone gold selling you can forward that evidence to Customer Service, or send this evidence to myself or one of my cohorts and we will see to it the proper folks get it. Now with this said see below.
My issue is with this whole thread is simply efficiency and ideology.
Everyone always seems to forget that there is a third option as to why there are so many of these ships on the market and that's literally the existence of third party providers.
IT's like everyone here assumes that everyone on the market is good faith actors.
These ships are worth something to someone and people will get them how ever they can. Literally they have a real world market value. Do not forget that.
There will always be a supply even when there is no demand because it is a business within a business.
Now dealing with this quote, simply because 3rd party vendors exist does not make them authorized or even legal. Most video game companies have clauses in them that could potentially allow the company to sue you and/or the sellers if they chose to do so. Whether or not they will doesn't matter. The ships and such have no real world value in that sense because it's against ToS and illegal to sell to or buy from a 3rd party vendor that's not been authorized. To say "but 3rd party vendors" is similar to trying to count drug dealing as part of the local economy. It can have an effect on the economy sure, but it's illegal and can't be counted as part of the legitimate economy. As far as us players are concerned, the ships have no real world value as we can't legally sell them or such for real world cash. We can only approximate a value based on the amount of zen it would take to get the ship, and how much money it would take to get that zen.
Like I said, if you have evidence of gold selling and such, I will make sure the appropriate folks see it, or you can send it to CS yourself. Otherwise
Sigh, people and their ideological high horses. You have three pretty big holes in your argument there that are pretty problematic.
1. You compare these people to drug dealers. Wouldn't, by your terminology the biggest drug dealer here be cryptic? A vast majority of drug dealers are created by the failures of so called "Legal" Companies. Most drug addicts, a majority in fact, are created by Doctors and pharmaceutical companies who pump up these people and then drop them flat when they can no longer afford their fix. This then allows people to sneak in and fill that void for a tidy profit. So in this analogy you used to prove your point you literally made cryptic look even worse for being the root of the problem to begin with. They got the players addicted and then left them high and dry where they had to look to these other avenues. And i highly doubt, with the way financial institutes work these days that there is a such thing as player theft. If you lose your money, ALL CC's ALL banks and all online financial institutes will return it back to you and even some 1-2 years out from the transaction... Look at Wells Fargo, look at PayPal, look at Citibank... they will literally return to you your money so this so called player theft fallacy is a red heron.
2. How exactly would you know if you purchased an item from an RMT? Unless you literally go through that channel and buy that specific item from them, how would you know? My point as i pointed out was that SOME OF THE SHIPS ON THE MARKET ARE OWNED BY THESE SAID COMPANIES. And when you provide them with payment1.1-1.5B ec's is a lot of credits and can buy a lot of keys and promo boxes to restock your shelves. Sale some on the market sale some through more financial avenues. You assumed on your own volition that they are doing something nefarious like stealing from players which is laughable on its face and juvenile at best, When we have explained a hundred times how players can raise millions of ec's, do you not think they can do the same and provide these avenues.... legally? Even if the act is so called illegal, the process is not.You take the risk, you reap the rewards. And like all things in capitalism there doesn't seem to be much risk and a tooooooooon of reward.
3. Why is the onus for policing the TOS for this company put on players and not the company that created it and profits from it? To what benefit do the players gain for all of a sudden being the security for this particular corporation? For you, to say, you would personally see to it that you will see them go down in flames. How exactly would you do that? Sounds fishy to me. How exactly could you tell the difference between an RMT and a hard working player? Put that in any other concept and you're literally saying people should police each other to the benefit of a company. The company makes more money, the player base gets what? So when we take out so called good guy with a gun attitude and go about slandering and attacking everyone what exactly will that do? Will it stop these players from selling items? No. They will just simply find another avenue. So your buggy whipping makes absolutely no sense and would simply make it worse. They only people who can change this system is the people that created it. I will not for one police anyone and will praise these people for using capitalism to it's fullest.
As I said before, it is a part of the market and it does exist. A reason no matter how big or small as to why some of these ships are on the market to begin with, no matter how many be it 1 be it 100 is because an RMT put it there and they will always always have a supply, even when the demand is not there. Because it is cyclical. It literally is a self contained system.
Sigh, people and their ideological high horses. You have three pretty big holes in your argument there that are pretty problematic.
Gonna pretend you didn't say that first line for the moment and give you a slight bit of leeway. Don't make me regret it. I also advise you to pay attention as this is the only time I'm going to say some of this stuff below.
1. You compare these people to drug dealers. Wouldn't, by your terminology the biggest drug dealer here be cryptic? A vast majority of drug dealers are created by the failures of so called "Legal" Companies. Most drug addicts, a majority in fact, are created by Doctors and pharmaceutical companies who pump up these people and then drop them flat when they can no longer afford their fix. This then allows people to sneak in and fill that void for a tidy profit. So in this analogy you used to prove your point you literally made cryptic look even worse for being the root of the problem to begin with. They got the players addicted and then left them high and dry where they had to look to these other avenues. And i highly doubt, with the way financial institutes work these days that there is a such thing as player theft. If you lose your money, ALL CC's ALL banks and all online financial institutes will return it back to you and even some 1-2 years out from the transaction... Look at Wells Fargo, look at PayPal, look at Citibank... they will literally return to you your money so this so called player theft fallacy is a red heron.
Something you need to understand, is it doesn't matter what you or I think of these 3rd party companies, whether they should be allowed to exist or not, it matters what the law says and what the agreement you made with Cryptic says when you accepted the Terms of Service and so on to play this game. Bottom line, unless those companies are authorized directly by Cryptic they are NOT allowed to sell those items on their shop as legally it's not theirs to sell. In this instance they're costing Cryptic money they could be using to create new content, something I'm sure you want just as much as I do. I used the drug dealer analogy as it was something I knew folks could relate to and understand. You don't count illegal activity as part of an economy because it's not supposed to exist to start with and is not legitimate. That would be like Rolex counting the sales of knockoffs of their own watches in with their own sales, you just don't do that. A bank is under no obligation to refund money you spent on an illegal activity and generally won't. However that's not the point I was making. Folks are allowed to farm out as much EC as they can earn, ships, and so on. What they are not allowed to do is then turn around and sell it for cash outside the game. In regards to the gold sellers, every time someone buys from them that's money that's not going to Cryptic but going to what amounts to a scalper.
When gold selling companies get desperate enough, they almost always resort to ripping off players in game and stealing the items from other players in game. I've seen it happen and had a gold seller try to hack my account years ago in World of Warcraft and is why I now have an authenticator. Let's just say there was a "digital disagreement" between myself and the hacker and I won. It got to the point that blizzard themselves stepped in after I locked the dude out the last time.
2. How exactly would you know if you purchased an item from an RMT? Unless you literally go through that channel and buy that specific item from them, how would you know? My point as i pointed out was that SOME OF THE SHIPS ON THE MARKET ARE OWNED BY THESE SAID COMPANIES. And when you provide them with payment1.1-1.5B ec's is a lot of credits and can buy a lot of keys and promo boxes to restock your shelves. Sale some on the market sale some through more financial avenues. You assumed on your own volition that they are doing something nefarious like stealing from players which is laughable on its face and juvenile at best, When we have explained a hundred times how players can raise millions of ec's, do you not think they can do the same and provide these avenues.... legally? Even if the act is so called illegal, the process is not.You take the risk, you reap the rewards. And like all things in capitalism there doesn't seem to be much risk and a tooooooooon of reward.
There is a difference between buying from a gold seller directly, and unknowingly so perhaps on the exchange. If it can be demonstrated the person legitimately didn't know, then they typically have nothing to fear as far as major repercussions to their account. Depending on the company and the item they might have their credits refunded and the item removed from their account. Or perhaps the company will generate a new one to give to the rightful owner if it's stolen and just nuke the gold seller. However if you knowingly buy from a gold seller, then may Q have mercy on your soul.
In regards to gold sellers on the exchange, I know more than you think I do. I pull double duty as a Bug Hunter as well as a Forum Mod. part of those other duties is to catch bugs, exploits, gold selling and such. I'm not going to tell you exactly how much I know or what cause NDA, so we'll leave it at that.
As I explained above, folks are free to make as much EC and such as they can raise provided they do it legitimately. What they're NOT free to do is turn around and try to sell it for actual cash outside the game, as they don't have the rights to do that, only Cryptic does, and thankfully they don't sell EC. This is in plain black and white in the ToS you agreed to when joining this game. Your argument is basically a variation of "ends are justified by the means" type of argument which holds no weight. So I seriously hope you're not advocating folks be allowed to sell EC and stuff via third parties. The right thing done the wrong way is still wrong.
3. Why is the onus for policing the TOS for this company put on players and not the company that created it and profits from it? To what benefit do the players gain for all of a sudden being the security for this particular corporation? For you, to say, you would personally see to it that you will see them go down in flames. How exactly would you do that? Sounds fishy to me. How exactly could you tell the difference between an RMT and a hard working player? Put that in any other concept and you're literally saying people should police each other to the benefit of a company. The company makes more money, the player base gets what? So when we take out so called good guy with a gun attitude and go about slandering and attacking everyone what exactly will that do? Will it stop these players from selling items? No. They will just simply find another avenue. So your buggy whipping makes absolutely no sense and would simply make it worse. They only people who can change this system is the people that created it. I will not for one police anyone and will praise these people for using capitalism to it's fullest.
As I said before, it is a part of the market and it does exist. A reason no matter how big or small as to why some of these ships are on the market to begin with, no matter how many be it 1 be it 100 is because an RMT put it there and they will always always have a supply, even when the demand is not there. Because it is cyclical. It literally is a self contained system.
As to why its important players help out, this is for a number of reasons. First off, like I explained prior ever dollar given to a third party is a dollar not going into the game. This is money that could have gone to new features, bug fixes, or new content that now won't, but is instead going in the pocket of someone trying to take advantage of vulnerable players and so on. By contributing to that, you're essentially saying you want your new shiny now and are flipping the finger to the game.
There is no way to tell if what a gold seller is offering you is stolen or they generated it on their own in game using only player-side tools. That's just one reason you don't do business with gold sellers. Even if they generated the item on their own naturally, it's still against ToS and illegal for them to sell it to you for real life cash outside the game. There are legitimate channels you can go through in game that folks buy and sell items in via in game chat, without having to touch the exchange. Generally alot of those folks would rather take a little less than exchange prices vs missing a sale outright. There is ZERO excuse to go to a gold seller with the options people have today.
Every dollar in a business adds up. Last numbers we had there were 7.5m captains created between consoles and pc. If just one of them guys $5 of EC one time from a gold seller, no big deal right? Now if even just 5% of those 7.5m were to do it just once that's $1,875,000 that's going to the gold seller and not the game (7,500,000 * 0.05 * 5.) That's $1.875 million that could be going to the game for bug fixes and improvements to the game overall. Now if we assume each of those 5% bought a lockbox ship for $90 it gets far far worse at $33,750,000 that could be going into the game for fixes or otherwise, that's now going into the pockets of gold sellers. (average price of box ship 350m ec. Divide 350m by 4.7m average price of a key for 74.4 keys. 1125 zen for 10 pack of keys. Multiply 1125 by 8 to get 9000. Divide 9000 by 100 to get dollar amount of $90. From there (7,500,000 * 0.05 * 90) = 33,750,000.) That's at just 5% of the playerbase only doing it once and you see how quickly it gets into the millions of dollars range. I don't know about you but I would much rather that go into the game and not a 3rd party gold seller's bank account. So do you really want to stick to that argument about "using capitalism to its fullest?"
Lastly as part of my alternate duties as a Bug Hunter, I'm tasked with seeking out cheats, exploits, and gold sellers that could do harm to the game. Due to these duties I'm required to keep in at least semi-regular contact with some of the folks at cryptic. I don't think that should come as a surprise. If you have information you wish to submit to myself or one of my cohorts, I can guarantee personally it will be seen by the right people.
As for "I will not for one police anyone and will praise these people for using capitalism to it's fullest," I really hope you didn't just endorse gold selling against forum rules.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Something in this thread that's been odding me out is the fact that players keep saying the term the best in regards to this ship.
This ship is not the best ship available to the vast majority of captains, in fact many of the cstore ships with their consoles, traits, and layouts are far more suitable to players.
You literally do not need this ship.
The weapons nerfed to nothing, the pets are decent but that's it, they aren't that great, and the trait has no use whatsoever in the current game. With the current content we play it will without a doubt wind up on a shelf.
The only thing I can say that makes it pleasing is it's looks. Add in a section 31 vanity shield and she is probably the most beautiful rendition of the constitution. I hate the constitution. I think it is one of the cheapest, most bulbous, most horrendous ships ever.... like.... they literally took apart a washing machine, took the worse parts and thought... this... this is good. I half expect when i fly mine to see strings attached to it as it sails through space. If it wasn't for the console... but this one, this girl is gorgeous.
Besides that there are plenty of ships, plenty of traits and plenty of consoles in the C-store that make this ship green with envy.
In my opinion a vast majority of the c-store ships and traits are superior. Improved grav well, Min maj, superior numbers, promise of ferocity, history will remember, strike from the shadows, so on and so forth are just better traits...
Bar none the best trait in this game for Beam based captains is a trait that's in the C-store. The gagarin is by far the best trait imho in this game for spamming none stop Bfaw. literally you can spam bfaw, beam overload, and torp spread and never put on the breaks. It triggers supremacy so you literally keep during combat max energy returns... an amazing trait.
Everyone that says the discovery constitution is the best ship in the game don't really know what they are talking about. They are just regurgitating what they heard or what they fantasize it to be and are not looking at it for what it is. It's a decent ship. It's not even the best ship in the promo box. It's not the strongest, not the stoutest, and the law out isn't the best either. It is simply a good ship that happens to be very attractive. You can live your life without the constitution.
I am not attempting to belittle this ship but simply pointing out facts. There are better ships out there. For your game play find your ship. Chances are more then likely its not this ship.
The ship is desirable for many reasons.. partially for performance and largely for the aesthetic. It's the only way to get the Advanced Phasers that have a unique firing effect and even post nerf are still among the best beams you can get in the game. If you broke the aesthetic and loaded it up with Cannons, it's DPS potential is among the best in the entire game hands down. The Pets are also still among the best pets you can get, not sure where you're getting your information.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that no one 'needs' this ship. There are C-Store ships like the Gagarin and the Jem'Hadar Vanguard Warship that can dish it out with the best of them. Those two are still two of the best ships in the game and no one 'needs' a lock box ship in order to complete even elite content. The demand for the Discovery Constitution is generated from want.. not need. That being said, you have some bad information about the ship itself, it's an excellent performer with beams and an unreal monster with cannons. I don't use the trait either, most people don't.. but the actual ship stats are quite good.
The people at Cryptic know what they are doing. I would find it hard to believe that none of them graduated from some business school, or that none of them have any experience with the real stock market. They created this game and all of it's markets and currencies. They know how to influence the rates on the exchange.
Cryptic might, in general, understand the in-game economy and market forces well but like any company they can still frequently make mistakes either due to poor gameplay decisions, misunderstanding the behavior of the player base or simply by getting too greedy. A few good examples here are the implementation of gear and level cap increases in Delta Rising when we had a significant upgrade cost for Mk XIV gear but didn't see any effective "value" because the NPCs were actually harder to kill than they were before. Cryptic clearly hoped that players would be "encouraged" to upgrade their gear and yet were seeing less actual gameplay value by doing so. Don't even get me started on the JHAS T5U/T6 debacle where Cryptic literally edited out a prior statement and replaced T6 with T5U after the fact despite multiple screenshots showing their original statement. I actually stopped spending any significant money on STO for several years because of the JHAS debacle as I no longer trusted Cryptic at that point. I eventually returned to the game but only once we got certain content added, i.e., the Jem'hadar characters and ships in Victory is Life and all the Discovery content and ships they've added over this past year. I'd like to think that Cryptic learned from those mistakes and is now showing their playerbase more respect as a result of pushback on those issues. The point here is that it's entirely possible for Cryptic to misread the market and overcharge for something that players are unwilling to purchase for various reasons. I don't think that the promo ships are completely unreasonable, which his why I purchased the Discovery Connie from the exchange, despite this being around $250 USD for a single ship. At the same time, I wouldn't assume that simply because Cryptic makes a business decision that it is a good one, or that they somehow can't make mistakes, because they have certainly made those over the years.
For what it's worth, Cryptic has run into many of the same problems in Neverwinter (except even worse) with the Level 70 level cap increase because your character effectively got nerfed while the NPCs were turned up to ludicrous difficulty (similar to Delta Rising). Many players left the game during that time and Neverwinter never really recovered. They also made various changes to refining and invoking and I haven't returned to the game since as their ingame economy is in far worse shape than STO. It's entirely possible for Cryptic to lose sight of the playerbase in STO as well and they do need to pay attention to threads like these, even if promo packs are still selling well. I don't necessarily agree with many of the arguments in this thread, as some of them amount to "why are you selling a popular ship for so much money", which should be rather obvious. I do however agree that Cryptic needs to understand and respect their player base rather than simply try to extract as much money from them as possible.
Oh, it is extremely skewed. For example, I can buy an item that comes in a multiple choice reward pack for less than I can buy the pack. In other words, I can buy an item, knowing exactly what I'm getting, for less than it costs to buy the pack that only gives me a chance to get that item. This isn't a one time anomaly either.
That is not necessarily unexpected depending on what you're getting from the pack, i.e., if a less popular random ship drops that might be less expensive than the random pack itself that still has a chance for a more popular ship. Where it becomes really unusual is when I recently bought the Kelvin Destroyer from the exchange buying the non-random multiple-choice pack (where you get to choose from several options) that was around 600 mil EC at the same time that the Kelvin Destroyer itself was selling for around 700 million EC. In other words, a non-random choice pack was going for less than one of the ships from that pack, which made no sense. Sometimes people try to sell something that is actually a worse value and hope that there is someone out there willing to buy it, which is more of a problem with players then it is with the STO economy itself.
Given the state of the Dilitium economy, we will probably have a Phoenix Event upcoming this week. Followed by a R&D Promotion followed by an Updrade Weekend. More D7s will enter the market.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Shrug. If I was after pure DPS, that ship still would not be my first choice. The vaawdy juggernaut would be the top of my list if that is what I wanted. Which I know is a promo ship too. If I was getting a ship that was good DPS for my personal preferred playstyle (zippy tact/sci hybrids), the Michael Burnham Show conny would not even be in the top 10 picks. For my second preferred playstyle of pure zipcort...it's outright TERRIBLE for that. Not the worst...but it's down there. For my third prefered playstyle of I am a space wizard Harry...it's not actually that bad...but seriously any actual sci ship will do better. It can make an okay sci/tact hybrid...but I honestly like playing full on sci vs giving up a LOT of the sci punch for some small amount of weapon DPS. But if I am honest, I play the first two styles the most. I RARELY play sci anymore. Anything other than that and it is most likely me playing around with an idea for a few hours. So like Lasonio said, it's not a layout for everyone. Certainly not me in anycase.
A fair assesment, no ship is going to be good for all those builds you mentioned and the Discoprise is no exception.
I will say though, for pure energy weapon build with Cannons I would take the Discoprise over the Juggernaught hands down. The only thing the Jugger has over the Discoprise in a DHC Build is that intel seat which is erased by the Discoprise pets and superior inertia rating. The Jugger, much like the Scimitar line flies like a drunken whale while the Discoprise can be brought to a sudden stop for those great 'park, shoot and then take off' scenarios. It's basically a Gagarin with 2 hangars of high damage pets.
As a pure beam FAW ship, with the Advanced Phasers and the Tactical Fliers, it remains the best beam build ship in the game in my opinion.
Nothing you typed was inaccurate or incorrect, the ship does not excel in the areas you outlined. It's a great ship for pure energy weapon builds, beyond that.. I would agree it's sub par at best. Though I would say the same for the Jugger and other stellar ships like the Gagarin or the Jem'Hadar Vanguard Warship. Trying to use a Discoprise as a Sci-Scort is trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
Can they get one by opening boxes then selling it for real money? Yes, that's possible, but not likely because its not profitable. Anyone who wants to spend real money on a ship should just buy zen, buy keys, sell keys, then buy the ship off the market.
The fact is, the grey market for MMOs died a decade ago because games put so many ridiculous BOA items and made enough ways to trade real money for in game money that there is no way to compete. Companies wanted total control over your money and didn't want to have to deal with the problem of scammers.
Any RMT sites or ads you see today are scams, pure and simple. There is no gold, no zen, no dil, there is no ship, nothing that is actually for sale. They promise you that so you give them your CC info and/or account info which they then steal. They have zero effect on the in game economy because they do not participate in it beyond robbing you.
Not profitable? Really?
So... as a company I got my product... the ship... for free. With little to no effort on my behalf I got all my product for free and sold it... that's not... in your mind... profitable? That's.... 100% profit.... literally... like if i sold it for 5.00 it would be 100% profit.... i profited 5.00 without putting in a cent... isn't that perfect capitalism? zero in 100 out...
The black market died in mmo's? really? everywhere i look in every mmo there are RMT's... they look quite healthy for so called zombies... I mean what is the point of making harsh punishments for a system that doesn't exist... isn't that strange? There is no such thing as this thing we are trying our best to legislate out of our game...
Makes sense to me... good luck on that hill.
I'll ignore your first reply since it seemed to be nothing more than a needlessly hostile rant and it's pretty hard to follow your weird writing style.
For this one though, how exactly are you claiming that ships are created for free? The only people that can do that are Cryptic themselves, so unless you're alleging some kind of corrupt practices at Cryptic I don't think that is remotely reasonable to assume.
So what we are left with is someone has to create Zen to get a ship. This can't be done for free. Either you spend real money or you spend time on a lifer account. You can't profit in the long run buying zen to open boxes for ships and then sell them for real $$ unless you're the luckiest player in the game that somehow gets ships at something like quadruple the rate of everyone else.
Of course you can convert dilithium to Zen, but that is not free either, not remotely so. It takes a lot of time to convert and earn the dilithium in the first place, time that is better spent doing a real job to earn money for zen.
On the other hand, it doesn't take a lot of effort to automate the creation of accounts to automatically spam people with RMT advertisements. The return is low, but now and then you'll get a bite, someone who for some reason doesn't understand they can do legitimate RMT with Zen. However it works, they contact the website, pay, and then at some time they are made to believe they will get something for their payment. They tell you to wait more and more because there are difficulties or something. It's not on the up and up is it so who can you contact to complain? The game company? So you have to wait, but it never comes. You tell me, does your CC/bank let you cancel a payment you already paid the bill on 3 months ago?
It's also my understanding that some of these sites will demand your login information since they need to get whatever you ordered to you securely without you being able to trace it and get them in trouble. Since you know this isn't a legit process as far as ToS goes, you do it which makes perfect sense somehow. So then at some point they steal your account, either using it to send out more RMT adverts, or just loot it for everything not bound, maybe both. Then you go cry on the game forums of whatever game it is about being TRIBBLE, adamant that you have no idea how its possible and blame someone else for your stupidity.
Actual transfers, whether the extremely rare "legit" kind or just to loot the account are probably a lot less common these days since it isn't hard for the game company to create special logging, especially for a sting account, but that's only if they care enough/have a widespread enough problem to justify the time and money to do it. Two factor authentication can also stop this too.
The fact is, though, the scammers don't need to go to that step. They don't need to farm anything. They don't need to actually have a ship or gold or whatever. They just need to make you think they do.
This stuff came up at a time when you couldn't readily turn real money into in game items. Farmers and so forth made real money offering goods that peopled wanted. Then game companies cracked down on it and finally got the bright idea that they could make more money by letting people turn real money into in game items, and make everything bound.
People still believe that gold farming is somehow possible, though, and buy into the scams. Case in point, this happens even in games where its physically impossible to trade items between players, where there is literally no in game economy like World of Tanks.
I‘m pretty disillusioned about the state of affairs in the industry and the consumer.
The prices of virtual items in MMO or MOBA and many MP games are quite frankly disgusting.
I own the virtual racing simulation Assetto Corsa by Kunos Simulazioni.
They sold several car packs for this game over its actively supported life cycle. For any one of these cars I have no doubt they put in more work in terms of modelling, animation, coding and testing than most MMO and MOBA companies including Cryptic has for any of its virtual goods.
A car pack is between 1,99€ and 6,99€ and includes between 3 and 10 cars.
Any of their beautifully animated, modelled, textured, realistically adjustable with simulated damage model and real to life performance cars comes in at about 0,66€.
0,66€!
Most MOBA and MMO companies like WarGaming, Cryptic, NCSoft etc. on the other hand sell their mid to high tier items, or only some skins etc. for the price of an entire game sometimes beyond even 100€.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I no longer want to partake in this fruitless exercise.
I rather buy entire games for that money. I decided to cut down on playtime for MMOs and play something else, something complete like for example recently the rather good GreedFall.
I’m not poor, far from it. I own a life time subscription in STO and in the past I bought some Zen here and there. But no more.
I’m not saying I will stop playing STO. And I will use the Zen I get for my life time subscription but I will never ever gamble again or buy additional Zen.
I can either afford something by playing casually or I will move on.
While I now find the greed of these companies abominable I have to admit that it is to no small part an issue with the players and of course with me as well.
They can only charge that because people, including me in the past, actually paid it.
There is also an apologetic culture to it. People e.g. saying “you can get it for free” or “it is optional”.
They grossly over gloss the fact that the developer/publisher uses several psychological tricks to get people to pay for it anyway and that “free” isn’t actually free.
There is FOMO, peer pressure, sunk cost fallacy, addiction, mimetic desire etc. the list goes on and on.
Saying there is a “free” option or that it is entirely optional isn’t changing the fact they exploit the living TRIBBLE out of their customers. I would argue that it is in fact entirely irrelevant.
But people won’t change easily and the industry as whole is currently entranced to condition following generations on mobile devices to line their pockets with gold.
Sadly legislation ins slow but even if something happens within the next few years I doubt there will be reflection within the industry but rather new creative ways to avoid or bypass regulations…
I‘m pretty disillusioned about the state of affairs in the industry and the consumer.
The prices of virtual items in MMO or MOBA and many MP games are quite frankly disgusting.
I own the virtual racing simulation Assetto Corsa by Kunos Simulazioni.
They sold several car packs for this game over its actively supported life cycle. For any one of these cars I have no doubt they put in more work in terms of modelling, animation, coding and testing than most MMO and MOBA companies including Cryptic has for any of its virtual goods.
A car pack is between 1,99€ and 6,99€ and includes between 3 and 10 cars.
Any of their beautifully animated, modelled, textured, realistically adjustable with simulated damage model and real to life performance cars comes in at about 0,66€.
0,66€!
Most MOBA and MMO companies like WarGaming, Cryptic, NCSoft etc. on the other hand sell their mid to high tier items, or only some skins etc. for the price of an entire game sometimes beyond even 100€.
The thing is though... Games are luxury articles. So their cost really is only representative of demand of people that want to pay them.
And Asetta Corsa is not a F2P game. Everyone that plays that game has to buy it first. STO is different. IF you don't want to pay, you can still play it. You can even, if you have the time, get whatever you want for it.
So the whole model of F2P games is predicated on getting a small amount of your customers to pay for game for all of your customers.
If a 1,000 people play Asetto Corsa, they made ~20,000 bucks from them already. If a 1,000 people play STO, Cryptic has earned no money yet. If 100 of them are willing to pay 200 bucks for a space ship, then they finally broke even with the Asetto Corsa model.
Asetto Corsa cannot make money from people that are not willing to spend the money to buy hte game in the first place. STO has a chance of benefiting from them, because these people can serve as "content" for the paying players (For example, as Dilithium Provider, or a team mate in an STF, or as someone wearing a cool custom or something like that). That's why F2P games usually are multiplayer-focused and often encourage trade between players, too.
I mean, that doesn't mean that stuff like lockboxes aren't of a questionable predatory nature (IMO), but there are things to consider - F2P games can offer gameplay for more players than non-F2P games, becuase they allow people to join that don't pay. But someone still has to pay for the game'S development and the profit margin of the developing/publishing companies - and that's the ones that pay. This might really be the closest we come to actual trickle-down economics...
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
Not profitable? Really?
So... as a company I got my product... the ship... for free. With little to no effort on my behalf I got all my product for free and sold it... that's not... in your mind... profitable? That's.... 100% profit.... literally... like if i sold it for 5.00 it would be 100% profit.... i profited 5.00 without putting in a cent... isn't that perfect capitalism? zero in 100 out...
The black market died in mmo's? really? everywhere i look in every mmo there are RMT's... they look quite healthy for so called zombies... I mean what is the point of making harsh punishments for a system that doesn't exist... isn't that strange? There is no such thing as this thing we are trying our best to legislate out of our game...
Makes sense to me... good luck on that hill.
I don't think that's true. As far as I know every player pretty much responds the same way when asked how to make a ton of EC's.
For paying players it's simply, buy zen during zen events HOLD on to the zen till there are flash sales or the BEST sales would be promo Sales with promo discounts. Buy the Promo boxes and sale for 13-15M per box.
For none paying players do as many doff and admiralty missions on as many alts as you can daily for dill and EC's. Sale items like gear and contraband and so on and so forth on the market. Wait for said events and trade in dil for zen, use zen to buy promo boxes sale promo boxes. Most players also do it with Keys and make millions...
Then buy what you want. Pretty sure this is the same formula everyone uses. There is no secret to it. And i am certain if you read this thread it will be repeated time and time again.
For example if you buy R & D promo packs during a promo event you can get them cheaper than the normal selling price. Hold on to them for a week or two, near instant profit of something like 1 million EC per pack.
Or they buy ships that are over-supplied during some event, wait for the supply to drop, then sell at the normal price.
I'm too lazy to do things like that, in part because I already have a job and I don't need a second one
That Battlestar Galactica quote came to my mind reading this comment.
"All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again"
If you believe that I've got some "oceanfront" property you may be interested in.
I used to make, literally, BILLIONS of EC buying and selling DOFFs on the exchange. They would sell as fast as I could list them because thousands of players were buying them to sink into starbase projects. Now, you can't really do that anymore. Why? Because those thousands of players, and the demand they had for items, has vanished.
The simple fact that people are... dissuaded... from discussing exactly what the playerbase is should be evidence enough. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
I love this game, have spent countless thousands of dollars on it, but the prices I'm seeing today and the paltry return on investment I'm getting tell me all I need to know.
Or because people finished their starbase projects years ago and no longer need your DoFF's.
I still sell my stuff like hot cakes.
Im sorry, unless you can provide prove "thousands of players have vanished" then your statement has no basis in reality.
Or, has the Klingon Judge in one of the TMP movies said "We are interested only in facts not theories"
Also, if you are getting paltry investments now, in my opinion, makes me believe you dont know anything about MMO exchange fluxs and how trends change over time. My opinion only of course, but what wasa hot ticket item one day, doesnt mean it will stay that way
I'm 100% sure Cryptic has a way to collect and interpret sales data, however, how could they possibly know how well the Disco Connie would sell if they put it in the C-Store at an appropriate Zen price?
The ships that are currently in the C-Store are nowhere near as desirable or as powerful as the Disco Connie, so interpreting ship sales in this way is flawed, simply because there isn't a ship in the C-Store that matches it, or indeed the other Promo ships, which are all pretty powerful and/or desirable. Simply put, they don't have the right data or enough data to make that call.
One obvious way to find out how well a powerful and desirable ship like this will sell, is to actually put one in the C-Store as a test. I'm sure they could do that with one ship. If it doesn't sell as well, then go back to the tried and tested. It's not difficult and it wouldn't be difficult for them. Promote said ship properly, make it powerful/desirable, price it properly, see how it goes. More data for them to interpret and make a decision based on that.
The ship could still be ground out, could still be sold on the exchange (as long as it wasn't made character or account bound) so wouldn't affect the players in that regard. The one big change would be that for your money, you would be guaranteed the ship rather than having a low chance at having it, by opening boxes.
Darkblade, if we aren't allowed to talk about "lockboxes are gambling" here, where can we talk about it?
When people try to chat about this on the STO Facebook group, they get a similar response from the mods on there. And then these same mods also tell people to go on the forums (these forums) if they wish to talk about lockboxes, where one of the Devs "might" see the conversation. (This is nonsense anyway, I'm pretty sure the Devs don't control Cryptic's sales strategies!)
For me, this is just a fob off. I know the Facebook group has nothing to do with you, but I thought I'd mention it because it is entirely frustrating to not be able to talk about something that is important in the game!
On the surface, it seems that on ANY of the forums, you're only allowed to talk about STO in positive tones, and that anything remotely negative towards Cryptic or STO is clamped down on quickly, even if it's constructive criticism, which is all I would ever offer.
You are trying to derail a thread about costs by turning it into a discussion about gambling.
Hahahahahaahahaa, no.
If you actually read the threads in these forums, 90% of them contain criticism of Cryptic and/or PWE.
Some things that aren't allowed are flaming, trolling, and insults. Many people can't discuss things they dislike without stooping to one or more of those and that is the point where they are moderated, NOT for disagreeing politely (or even a little rudely) with the way things are.
I've been posting here for over 5 years and I have criticized Cryptic scores if not hundreds of times without being moderated.
This is heading towards a discussion of moderation, which is also a derailment of the thread so please take that to PM with a mod or try starting another thread after reading the rules - https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1191393/perfect-world-entertainment-community-rules-and-policies
Now dealing with this quote, simply because 3rd party vendors exist does not make them authorized or even legal. Most video game companies have clauses in them that could potentially allow the company to sue you and/or the sellers if they chose to do so. Whether or not they will doesn't matter. The ships and such have no real world value in that sense because it's against ToS and illegal to sell to or buy from a 3rd party vendor that's not been authorized. To say "but 3rd party vendors" is similar to trying to count drug dealing as part of the local economy. It can have an effect on the economy sure, but it's illegal and can't be counted as part of the legitimate economy. As far as us players are concerned, the ships have no real world value as we can't legally sell them or such for real world cash. We can only approximate a value based on the amount of zen it would take to get the ship, and how much money it would take to get that zen.
Like I said, if you have evidence of gold selling and such, I will make sure the appropriate folks see it, or you can send it to CS yourself. Otherwise
As time goes on demand for different items will change. In this instance the demand for doffs changed as more and more fleets are maxing out their holdings and don't need all the extras. By that logic, the fact that plasmonic leech is so cheap now would mean everyone left the game, which is simply untrue. Simply because demand for certain items dries up does not mean that everyone has left, it simply means folks no longer want/need that item as much as before. I used to survive as a weapons dealer early on in the game, now I've had to diversify my investments.
Secondly, you're allowed to discuss the current state of the playerbase and whether you think it's in a good place or a bad place. What you're not allowed to do is turn it into a doom thread. There is a difference between the two. The number of current players will fluctuate up and down naturally over the course of a game's life, this is nothing new. As it sits right now, the game is in a good place and if we're going by the last numbers released, there were several million people playing the game. Not only this but on stream it's been stated STO has had it's best year ever just recently. If the rule about doom threads were to suddenly vanish, that's when I would advise you potentially start to worry.
You need to keep in mind Cryptic has access to numbers and figures that none of us in here do, not me, not you, not BMR, or anyone else. Unless they decide to let us view this data all we have to go on is their word as to what's in it. That can be frustrating at times certainly, but it is what it is. All businesses keep track of this stuff in some form or fashion and Cryptic is no different. To be perfectly blunt you don't know what kind of data they have and for that matter neither do I, unless they decide to tell us.
As for putting something on the cstore vs making it a promo ship, it makes sense business wise why they made it a promo ship vs just a cstore. What's going to be more profitable per ship, $30 one time for the entire account, or potentially $200 for each copy of the ship they want? Sure it sucks if you have multiple toons that want it but Cryptic is going to do what makes them the most money. With that said simply because we might think an item does well or would do well in a certain area or for sale at all, does not mean that item will in fact do well. Every dollar in a business will add up fast.
A couple of things here. To your first question, find an active thread in Ten Forward or anywhere else that's been left open and post in there without necroposting. Otherwise I don't care to tell you we don't normally allow that sort of thing as it devolves into flaming/trolling and nothing gets "discussed." Very rarely, if ever, do we make exceptions.
Each individual facebook group is different and has their own rules. What those rules are and how they enforce them is up to each individual group. This is something I have no control over. If you're going to post in those groups then I suggest you abide by their rules.
Lastly, you are free to discuss the current status of the game and your thoughts of it in the positive or negative, provided it's done in a respectful and civil manor. You are also free to voice constructive criticism of the game provided again of course it's done in a respectful and civil manor. For that matter I've criticized some stuff here or there myself. What's not permitted are rant threads or flaming/trolling the devs, Cryptic, and/or other users. If you have further questions or concerns I suggest taking this to PM instead of here.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
This ship is not the best ship available to the vast majority of captains, in fact many of the cstore ships with their consoles, traits, and layouts are far more suitable to players.
You literally do not need this ship.
The weapons nerfed to nothing, the pets are decent but that's it, they aren't that great, and the trait has no use whatsoever in the current game. With the current content we play it will without a doubt wind up on a shelf.
The only thing I can say that makes it pleasing is it's looks. Add in a section 31 vanity shield and she is probably the most beautiful rendition of the constitution. I hate the constitution. I think it is one of the cheapest, most bulbous, most horrendous ships ever.... like.... they literally took apart a washing machine, took the worse parts and thought... this... this is good. I half expect when i fly mine to see strings attached to it as it sails through space. If it wasn't for the console... but this one, this girl is gorgeous.
Besides that there are plenty of ships, plenty of traits and plenty of consoles in the C-store that make this ship green with envy.
In my opinion a vast majority of the c-store ships and traits are superior. Improved grav well, Min maj, superior numbers, promise of ferocity, history will remember, strike from the shadows, so on and so forth are just better traits...
Bar none the best trait in this game for Beam based captains is a trait that's in the C-store. The gagarin is by far the best trait imho in this game for spamming none stop Bfaw. literally you can spam bfaw, beam overload, and torp spread and never put on the breaks. It triggers supremacy so you literally keep during combat max energy returns... an amazing trait.
Everyone that says the discovery constitution is the best ship in the game don't really know what they are talking about. They are just regurgitating what they heard or what they fantasize it to be and are not looking at it for what it is. It's a decent ship. It's not even the best ship in the promo box. It's not the strongest, not the stoutest, and the law out isn't the best either. It is simply a good ship that happens to be very attractive. You can live your life without the constitution.
I am not attempting to belittle this ship but simply pointing out facts. There are better ships out there. For your game play find your ship. Chances are more then likely its not this ship.
Not everyone wants a particular ship for stats. Any ship in this game can easily be made viable for play on normal with very rare weapons. It's a D7, one of the most iconic Klingon ships. I bought mine for my Retro Gorn that I created close to 9 years ago before PWE messed up the Gorn skins by ruining them and removing the old skins.
Sigh, people and their ideological high horses. You have three pretty big holes in your argument there that are pretty problematic.
1. You compare these people to drug dealers. Wouldn't, by your terminology the biggest drug dealer here be cryptic? A vast majority of drug dealers are created by the failures of so called "Legal" Companies. Most drug addicts, a majority in fact, are created by Doctors and pharmaceutical companies who pump up these people and then drop them flat when they can no longer afford their fix. This then allows people to sneak in and fill that void for a tidy profit. So in this analogy you used to prove your point you literally made cryptic look even worse for being the root of the problem to begin with. They got the players addicted and then left them high and dry where they had to look to these other avenues. And i highly doubt, with the way financial institutes work these days that there is a such thing as player theft. If you lose your money, ALL CC's ALL banks and all online financial institutes will return it back to you and even some 1-2 years out from the transaction... Look at Wells Fargo, look at PayPal, look at Citibank... they will literally return to you your money so this so called player theft fallacy is a red heron.
2. How exactly would you know if you purchased an item from an RMT? Unless you literally go through that channel and buy that specific item from them, how would you know? My point as i pointed out was that SOME OF THE SHIPS ON THE MARKET ARE OWNED BY THESE SAID COMPANIES. And when you provide them with payment1.1-1.5B ec's is a lot of credits and can buy a lot of keys and promo boxes to restock your shelves. Sale some on the market sale some through more financial avenues. You assumed on your own volition that they are doing something nefarious like stealing from players which is laughable on its face and juvenile at best, When we have explained a hundred times how players can raise millions of ec's, do you not think they can do the same and provide these avenues.... legally? Even if the act is so called illegal, the process is not.You take the risk, you reap the rewards. And like all things in capitalism there doesn't seem to be much risk and a tooooooooon of reward.
3. Why is the onus for policing the TOS for this company put on players and not the company that created it and profits from it? To what benefit do the players gain for all of a sudden being the security for this particular corporation? For you, to say, you would personally see to it that you will see them go down in flames. How exactly would you do that? Sounds fishy to me. How exactly could you tell the difference between an RMT and a hard working player? Put that in any other concept and you're literally saying people should police each other to the benefit of a company. The company makes more money, the player base gets what? So when we take out so called good guy with a gun attitude and go about slandering and attacking everyone what exactly will that do? Will it stop these players from selling items? No. They will just simply find another avenue. So your buggy whipping makes absolutely no sense and would simply make it worse. They only people who can change this system is the people that created it. I will not for one police anyone and will praise these people for using capitalism to it's fullest.
As I said before, it is a part of the market and it does exist. A reason no matter how big or small as to why some of these ships are on the market to begin with, no matter how many be it 1 be it 100 is because an RMT put it there and they will always always have a supply, even when the demand is not there. Because it is cyclical. It literally is a self contained system.
Gonna pretend you didn't say that first line for the moment and give you a slight bit of leeway. Don't make me regret it. I also advise you to pay attention as this is the only time I'm going to say some of this stuff below.
Something you need to understand, is it doesn't matter what you or I think of these 3rd party companies, whether they should be allowed to exist or not, it matters what the law says and what the agreement you made with Cryptic says when you accepted the Terms of Service and so on to play this game. Bottom line, unless those companies are authorized directly by Cryptic they are NOT allowed to sell those items on their shop as legally it's not theirs to sell. In this instance they're costing Cryptic money they could be using to create new content, something I'm sure you want just as much as I do. I used the drug dealer analogy as it was something I knew folks could relate to and understand. You don't count illegal activity as part of an economy because it's not supposed to exist to start with and is not legitimate. That would be like Rolex counting the sales of knockoffs of their own watches in with their own sales, you just don't do that. A bank is under no obligation to refund money you spent on an illegal activity and generally won't. However that's not the point I was making. Folks are allowed to farm out as much EC as they can earn, ships, and so on. What they are not allowed to do is then turn around and sell it for cash outside the game. In regards to the gold sellers, every time someone buys from them that's money that's not going to Cryptic but going to what amounts to a scalper.
When gold selling companies get desperate enough, they almost always resort to ripping off players in game and stealing the items from other players in game. I've seen it happen and had a gold seller try to hack my account years ago in World of Warcraft and is why I now have an authenticator. Let's just say there was a "digital disagreement" between myself and the hacker and I won. It got to the point that blizzard themselves stepped in after I locked the dude out the last time.
There is a difference between buying from a gold seller directly, and unknowingly so perhaps on the exchange. If it can be demonstrated the person legitimately didn't know, then they typically have nothing to fear as far as major repercussions to their account. Depending on the company and the item they might have their credits refunded and the item removed from their account. Or perhaps the company will generate a new one to give to the rightful owner if it's stolen and just nuke the gold seller. However if you knowingly buy from a gold seller, then may Q have mercy on your soul.
In regards to gold sellers on the exchange, I know more than you think I do. I pull double duty as a Bug Hunter as well as a Forum Mod. part of those other duties is to catch bugs, exploits, gold selling and such. I'm not going to tell you exactly how much I know or what cause NDA, so we'll leave it at that.
As I explained above, folks are free to make as much EC and such as they can raise provided they do it legitimately. What they're NOT free to do is turn around and try to sell it for actual cash outside the game, as they don't have the rights to do that, only Cryptic does, and thankfully they don't sell EC. This is in plain black and white in the ToS you agreed to when joining this game. Your argument is basically a variation of "ends are justified by the means" type of argument which holds no weight. So I seriously hope you're not advocating folks be allowed to sell EC and stuff via third parties. The right thing done the wrong way is still wrong.
As to why its important players help out, this is for a number of reasons. First off, like I explained prior ever dollar given to a third party is a dollar not going into the game. This is money that could have gone to new features, bug fixes, or new content that now won't, but is instead going in the pocket of someone trying to take advantage of vulnerable players and so on. By contributing to that, you're essentially saying you want your new shiny now and are flipping the finger to the game.
There is no way to tell if what a gold seller is offering you is stolen or they generated it on their own in game using only player-side tools. That's just one reason you don't do business with gold sellers. Even if they generated the item on their own naturally, it's still against ToS and illegal for them to sell it to you for real life cash outside the game. There are legitimate channels you can go through in game that folks buy and sell items in via in game chat, without having to touch the exchange. Generally alot of those folks would rather take a little less than exchange prices vs missing a sale outright. There is ZERO excuse to go to a gold seller with the options people have today.
Every dollar in a business adds up. Last numbers we had there were 7.5m captains created between consoles and pc. If just one of them guys $5 of EC one time from a gold seller, no big deal right? Now if even just 5% of those 7.5m were to do it just once that's $1,875,000 that's going to the gold seller and not the game (7,500,000 * 0.05 * 5.) That's $1.875 million that could be going to the game for bug fixes and improvements to the game overall. Now if we assume each of those 5% bought a lockbox ship for $90 it gets far far worse at $33,750,000 that could be going into the game for fixes or otherwise, that's now going into the pockets of gold sellers. (average price of box ship 350m ec. Divide 350m by 4.7m average price of a key for 74.4 keys. 1125 zen for 10 pack of keys. Multiply 1125 by 8 to get 9000. Divide 9000 by 100 to get dollar amount of $90. From there (7,500,000 * 0.05 * 90) = 33,750,000.) That's at just 5% of the playerbase only doing it once and you see how quickly it gets into the millions of dollars range. I don't know about you but I would much rather that go into the game and not a 3rd party gold seller's bank account. So do you really want to stick to that argument about "using capitalism to its fullest?"
Lastly as part of my alternate duties as a Bug Hunter, I'm tasked with seeking out cheats, exploits, and gold sellers that could do harm to the game. Due to these duties I'm required to keep in at least semi-regular contact with some of the folks at cryptic. I don't think that should come as a surprise. If you have information you wish to submit to myself or one of my cohorts, I can guarantee personally it will be seen by the right people.
As for "I will not for one police anyone and will praise these people for using capitalism to it's fullest," I really hope you didn't just endorse gold selling against forum rules.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
The ship is desirable for many reasons.. partially for performance and largely for the aesthetic. It's the only way to get the Advanced Phasers that have a unique firing effect and even post nerf are still among the best beams you can get in the game. If you broke the aesthetic and loaded it up with Cannons, it's DPS potential is among the best in the entire game hands down. The Pets are also still among the best pets you can get, not sure where you're getting your information.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that no one 'needs' this ship. There are C-Store ships like the Gagarin and the Jem'Hadar Vanguard Warship that can dish it out with the best of them. Those two are still two of the best ships in the game and no one 'needs' a lock box ship in order to complete even elite content. The demand for the Discovery Constitution is generated from want.. not need. That being said, you have some bad information about the ship itself, it's an excellent performer with beams and an unreal monster with cannons. I don't use the trait either, most people don't.. but the actual ship stats are quite good.
Cryptic might, in general, understand the in-game economy and market forces well but like any company they can still frequently make mistakes either due to poor gameplay decisions, misunderstanding the behavior of the player base or simply by getting too greedy. A few good examples here are the implementation of gear and level cap increases in Delta Rising when we had a significant upgrade cost for Mk XIV gear but didn't see any effective "value" because the NPCs were actually harder to kill than they were before. Cryptic clearly hoped that players would be "encouraged" to upgrade their gear and yet were seeing less actual gameplay value by doing so. Don't even get me started on the JHAS T5U/T6 debacle where Cryptic literally edited out a prior statement and replaced T6 with T5U after the fact despite multiple screenshots showing their original statement. I actually stopped spending any significant money on STO for several years because of the JHAS debacle as I no longer trusted Cryptic at that point. I eventually returned to the game but only once we got certain content added, i.e., the Jem'hadar characters and ships in Victory is Life and all the Discovery content and ships they've added over this past year. I'd like to think that Cryptic learned from those mistakes and is now showing their playerbase more respect as a result of pushback on those issues. The point here is that it's entirely possible for Cryptic to misread the market and overcharge for something that players are unwilling to purchase for various reasons. I don't think that the promo ships are completely unreasonable, which his why I purchased the Discovery Connie from the exchange, despite this being around $250 USD for a single ship. At the same time, I wouldn't assume that simply because Cryptic makes a business decision that it is a good one, or that they somehow can't make mistakes, because they have certainly made those over the years.
For what it's worth, Cryptic has run into many of the same problems in Neverwinter (except even worse) with the Level 70 level cap increase because your character effectively got nerfed while the NPCs were turned up to ludicrous difficulty (similar to Delta Rising). Many players left the game during that time and Neverwinter never really recovered. They also made various changes to refining and invoking and I haven't returned to the game since as their ingame economy is in far worse shape than STO. It's entirely possible for Cryptic to lose sight of the playerbase in STO as well and they do need to pay attention to threads like these, even if promo packs are still selling well. I don't necessarily agree with many of the arguments in this thread, as some of them amount to "why are you selling a popular ship for so much money", which should be rather obvious. I do however agree that Cryptic needs to understand and respect their player base rather than simply try to extract as much money from them as possible.
That is not necessarily unexpected depending on what you're getting from the pack, i.e., if a less popular random ship drops that might be less expensive than the random pack itself that still has a chance for a more popular ship. Where it becomes really unusual is when I recently bought the Kelvin Destroyer from the exchange buying the non-random multiple-choice pack (where you get to choose from several options) that was around 600 mil EC at the same time that the Kelvin Destroyer itself was selling for around 700 million EC. In other words, a non-random choice pack was going for less than one of the ships from that pack, which made no sense. Sometimes people try to sell something that is actually a worse value and hope that there is someone out there willing to buy it, which is more of a problem with players then it is with the STO economy itself.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
A fair assesment, no ship is going to be good for all those builds you mentioned and the Discoprise is no exception.
I will say though, for pure energy weapon build with Cannons I would take the Discoprise over the Juggernaught hands down. The only thing the Jugger has over the Discoprise in a DHC Build is that intel seat which is erased by the Discoprise pets and superior inertia rating. The Jugger, much like the Scimitar line flies like a drunken whale while the Discoprise can be brought to a sudden stop for those great 'park, shoot and then take off' scenarios. It's basically a Gagarin with 2 hangars of high damage pets.
As a pure beam FAW ship, with the Advanced Phasers and the Tactical Fliers, it remains the best beam build ship in the game in my opinion.
Nothing you typed was inaccurate or incorrect, the ship does not excel in the areas you outlined. It's a great ship for pure energy weapon builds, beyond that.. I would agree it's sub par at best. Though I would say the same for the Jugger and other stellar ships like the Gagarin or the Jem'Hadar Vanguard Warship. Trying to use a Discoprise as a Sci-Scort is trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
I'll ignore your first reply since it seemed to be nothing more than a needlessly hostile rant and it's pretty hard to follow your weird writing style.
For this one though, how exactly are you claiming that ships are created for free? The only people that can do that are Cryptic themselves, so unless you're alleging some kind of corrupt practices at Cryptic I don't think that is remotely reasonable to assume.
So what we are left with is someone has to create Zen to get a ship. This can't be done for free. Either you spend real money or you spend time on a lifer account. You can't profit in the long run buying zen to open boxes for ships and then sell them for real $$ unless you're the luckiest player in the game that somehow gets ships at something like quadruple the rate of everyone else.
Of course you can convert dilithium to Zen, but that is not free either, not remotely so. It takes a lot of time to convert and earn the dilithium in the first place, time that is better spent doing a real job to earn money for zen.
On the other hand, it doesn't take a lot of effort to automate the creation of accounts to automatically spam people with RMT advertisements. The return is low, but now and then you'll get a bite, someone who for some reason doesn't understand they can do legitimate RMT with Zen. However it works, they contact the website, pay, and then at some time they are made to believe they will get something for their payment. They tell you to wait more and more because there are difficulties or something. It's not on the up and up is it so who can you contact to complain? The game company? So you have to wait, but it never comes. You tell me, does your CC/bank let you cancel a payment you already paid the bill on 3 months ago?
It's also my understanding that some of these sites will demand your login information since they need to get whatever you ordered to you securely without you being able to trace it and get them in trouble. Since you know this isn't a legit process as far as ToS goes, you do it which makes perfect sense somehow. So then at some point they steal your account, either using it to send out more RMT adverts, or just loot it for everything not bound, maybe both. Then you go cry on the game forums of whatever game it is about being TRIBBLE, adamant that you have no idea how its possible and blame someone else for your stupidity.
Actual transfers, whether the extremely rare "legit" kind or just to loot the account are probably a lot less common these days since it isn't hard for the game company to create special logging, especially for a sting account, but that's only if they care enough/have a widespread enough problem to justify the time and money to do it. Two factor authentication can also stop this too.
The fact is, though, the scammers don't need to go to that step. They don't need to farm anything. They don't need to actually have a ship or gold or whatever. They just need to make you think they do.
This stuff came up at a time when you couldn't readily turn real money into in game items. Farmers and so forth made real money offering goods that peopled wanted. Then game companies cracked down on it and finally got the bright idea that they could make more money by letting people turn real money into in game items, and make everything bound.
People still believe that gold farming is somehow possible, though, and buy into the scams. Case in point, this happens even in games where its physically impossible to trade items between players, where there is literally no in game economy like World of Tanks.
The prices of virtual items in MMO or MOBA and many MP games are quite frankly disgusting.
I own the virtual racing simulation Assetto Corsa by Kunos Simulazioni.
They sold several car packs for this game over its actively supported life cycle. For any one of these cars I have no doubt they put in more work in terms of modelling, animation, coding and testing than most MMO and MOBA companies including Cryptic has for any of its virtual goods.
A car pack is between 1,99€ and 6,99€ and includes between 3 and 10 cars.
Any of their beautifully animated, modelled, textured, realistically adjustable with simulated damage model and real to life performance cars comes in at about 0,66€.
0,66€!
Most MOBA and MMO companies like WarGaming, Cryptic, NCSoft etc. on the other hand sell their mid to high tier items, or only some skins etc. for the price of an entire game sometimes beyond even 100€.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I no longer want to partake in this fruitless exercise.
I rather buy entire games for that money. I decided to cut down on playtime for MMOs and play something else, something complete like for example recently the rather good GreedFall.
I’m not poor, far from it. I own a life time subscription in STO and in the past I bought some Zen here and there. But no more.
I’m not saying I will stop playing STO. And I will use the Zen I get for my life time subscription but I will never ever gamble again or buy additional Zen.
I can either afford something by playing casually or I will move on.
While I now find the greed of these companies abominable I have to admit that it is to no small part an issue with the players and of course with me as well.
They can only charge that because people, including me in the past, actually paid it.
There is also an apologetic culture to it. People e.g. saying “you can get it for free” or “it is optional”.
They grossly over gloss the fact that the developer/publisher uses several psychological tricks to get people to pay for it anyway and that “free” isn’t actually free.
There is FOMO, peer pressure, sunk cost fallacy, addiction, mimetic desire etc. the list goes on and on.
Saying there is a “free” option or that it is entirely optional isn’t changing the fact they exploit the living TRIBBLE out of their customers. I would argue that it is in fact entirely irrelevant.
But people won’t change easily and the industry as whole is currently entranced to condition following generations on mobile devices to line their pockets with gold.
Sadly legislation ins slow but even if something happens within the next few years I doubt there will be reflection within the industry but rather new creative ways to avoid or bypass regulations…
Anyway I agree with the sentiment of the OP.
And Asetta Corsa is not a F2P game. Everyone that plays that game has to buy it first. STO is different. IF you don't want to pay, you can still play it. You can even, if you have the time, get whatever you want for it.
So the whole model of F2P games is predicated on getting a small amount of your customers to pay for game for all of your customers.
If a 1,000 people play Asetto Corsa, they made ~20,000 bucks from them already. If a 1,000 people play STO, Cryptic has earned no money yet. If 100 of them are willing to pay 200 bucks for a space ship, then they finally broke even with the Asetto Corsa model.
Asetto Corsa cannot make money from people that are not willing to spend the money to buy hte game in the first place. STO has a chance of benefiting from them, because these people can serve as "content" for the paying players (For example, as Dilithium Provider, or a team mate in an STF, or as someone wearing a cool custom or something like that). That's why F2P games usually are multiplayer-focused and often encourage trade between players, too.
I mean, that doesn't mean that stuff like lockboxes aren't of a questionable predatory nature (IMO), but there are things to consider - F2P games can offer gameplay for more players than non-F2P games, becuase they allow people to join that don't pay. But someone still has to pay for the game'S development and the profit margin of the developing/publishing companies - and that's the ones that pay. This might really be the closest we come to actual trickle-down economics...