test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options
What do we do with the Phoenix Box?
disqord
Member Posts: 567 Arc User
Mudd's Market has continued to expand into the Phoenix Box's territory of old event ships and items, and while I don't think that's a bad thing (I like having them be account unlocks, even if the prices are ridiculous), it gives the Phoenix Box basically no draw. Sure, it has a few exclusives to it NOW, but eventually it'll all appear in Mudd's Market, save for the consumables which aren't exactly special. The prices on the box are potentially much cheaper, assuming you get lucky, but they're still only for that single character and require luck to ever obtain anything even slightly meaningful.
How do you all think they could change it to be useful once more?
How do you all think they could change it to be useful once more?
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
The admiralty cards and event gear are great for new players.
The doffs and Red Matter Capacitor are useful to new characters.
The prices in Mudd's Market are fine as long as you wait for the inevitable sales, which they even encourage you to do in every product description in that market.
Aside from the EMH BOff, there's no crossover between the offerings, and no indication that there ever will be. There are quite a few offerings to put in Mudd's from the last year or so, and several that were from other sources that could easily be made available there that aren't already in the Phoenix Prize Pack.
For people like me that's always swapping things out and constantly in need of upgrades.. the Phoenix Box is currently one of the most valuable sinks the game offers.
After all that, I'll need to start looking at upgrading my kit and the phoenix packs seem the best option so my dil will be heading that way it seems.
I fairly strongly believe that if they made it so one P-token splits into two lower, or four of them could be traded for one higher, you'd see a lot of Phoenix sales just for people to 'build their own' higher tokens to cash in for ships.
The agony phaser torp is in there. It's a very rare (Tier III) reward.
"There's No Way Like Poway!"
Real Join Date: October 2010
Must have missed that the last time I looked, thanks for the info.
I've NEVER seen one since inception of the Phoenix box, last week needing upgrades for a few toons and really wanting the Breen Carrier that I missed i blew away 5,000,000 dill on boxes and got 2 URs. 500 boxes, plus the hundreds I've already opened and I'm still opening about a 10 pack a day.
Insane how stupidly rare the epic tokens are for a CHARACTER unlock
The drop rate is definitely crazy low since I got my epics during the first 2-3 events, and haven't gotten any more in the years since then despite opening at least another 1,000 boxes.
The Thompson was later than everything that's been added to Mudd's Market, so it will almost certainly go there, rather than the Phoenix Pack. I think it was the next event reward after the Terran Guerrilla Armor, so that would likely put it in the next batch of things for Mudd's Market.
That way players can decide whether they want to pay a large sum of Zen for all characters, or some dilithium if they only want one item for one character.
I've only worn the Kelvin admiral uniform on one character. I certainly would not have bought it from the C-store, but would have bought a token to get it on that one character. To give just one example.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
Even on sale Mudd's prices are too high to consider for a lot of FtP players. Making that split and putting new things in both, as a single character item in the phoenix boxs and and an account unlock in Mudd's would probably help the economy in two ways, the direct cash input from Mudd's, along with FtP's spending dil to get the single unlocks over time to help keep the dil exchange ratio reasonable.
It was the First Contact day reward either last year or the year before.
That would solve a number of issues. People complaining about the poor drop rates would have an option to obtain higher tokens at a known cost. People who say "I've got 300 common P-tokens and nothing to do with them, I don't need that many P-upgrades and trading 10 of them for 1 box is a stupidly expensive option". It would address the huge thread on "making P-unlocks account wide" etc. - people would have a method to unlock whichever ship for whichever character simply by opening P-boxes until they had sufficient tokens. And finally it would magnify Phoenix's dil-sink effect by quite a bit, IMO.
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.'
I tossed out '4 tokens combine to make a higher token' just as a rough notion. The math actually puts 5 combining into one higher as a fairly reasonable number. Assuming 10 boxes normally comes to 7 Commons, 2 Uncommon, 1 Rare (a fairly generous estimate in my experience), that would make an 'Ultra Rare' token cost roughly $5 for a single char ship unlock.
$20 would get you enough tokens for approx. 1 Epic ship unlock and 1 UR ship unlock and some smaller tokens left over. As these were originally 'free, event participation' ships I think a single-char UR unlock for $5 and an Epic +UR for $20 is competitive with other ship pricing. It's not like any of them are OP.
At "combine 6 tokens to get 1 higher" it becomes roughly $25 to unlock an Epic and almost a UR. Probably works out to about $28 on average for an Epic + UR token. Again, as single char unlocks of not-OP ships that were previously available free, it seems in the range.
At 7 tokens and higher the cost becomes something that I think very few people would pay.
"But it's a single character unlock" -- yes, but most people only have 1 or 2 characters.
I would support combining for higher, it's already a thing with duty officers after all. Why would anyone would trade 10 uncommon tokens for another box though? Only an epic token would be worth more than the 10 uncommon ones, and the chances of that are about the same as getting a ship out of a lockbox.
Let me fix that. There are many players, with many characters. I personally have 16, 10 I do the alt and doff with, 3 that are low levels for opens gear/kit boxes to get Mk II stuff, for kits one of each career, a Rom Delta Recruit I need to work on for rewards, and the 2 that I main.
There are a lot like this, with varying numbers in characters they actually play. Some play one, some play two, and some just kind of no life it and try to play them all.
So UR and Epic Phoenix tokens becomes a debate as to which character they want to use them on.
There are many players with alts, but Cryptic posted an infographic (7th anniversary?) showing the average characters per player was either 1.9 or 2.9. I can't find it with a quick Google search but maybe someone else can.
The average number is bumped up by the minority of us with more -- for example if the number was 1.9 then my 12+ characters mean 11 other people have only 1 captain. If it's 2.9 then it's still 5 other people to my 1 person. (me x 12 + 5 x 1 = 17)
Maybe, just maybe, when I have maxed out reps and fully kitted out 3 or 4 ships I may do an alt but considering I'm a casual that will take a damned long time. Once I've got all the honour guard stuff I need I'll be dumping dil into phoenix boxes just for the upgrade stuff.
Don't count said alts out. Look through the episodes, especially Delta onward where it gives VR basic gear as the reward. Playing these, while working on your main, allows you to outfit you alts decently enough to play. You can also craft or buy said gear off the exchange. Most times it's pretty cheap.
Then while your working on your main, just get the alts to level 11 and get their doffs, and level via doffing. It's slow to do it this way. But you can level up an alt to max with doffing, and then adm when you unlock it at 52. Plus with this, it starts build up more dil for you to use in getting said phoenix boxes for upgrading.
Crafting cost never bothered me about them, it's the dilithium cost per use is what makes them worthless IMO...may as well just buy phoenix boxes with the dilithium.
I wasn't talking about the R&D upgrades. I was talking about VR R&D gear to give to alts. When I make an alt, I make them a full set of VR MkII gear. If I have them, or have the dil to get enough, I'll toss giving phoenix upgrades to it as well. At Mk II one phoenix upgrade per piece should get that gear into the Mk XI or XII range.
What's the draw to get people to spend more dilithium than we already do?