I hsve not played SWTOR since before it went Free to Play... Have they adopted a secondary currency system like Dilithium which can be traded for cartel points? If not, then there is no real comparison between games.
[...]
Do we only play the game to get shinies?
Isn't he game fun and engaging enough that we play it without them dangling a carrot in front of us?
I have asked and been told no real need for cartel coins except for just a few things, and anything can be bought from the player exchange using F2P and they are really the cheapest from any big MMO.
Hmm. It's been awhile since I played SWTOR, but back then it was hard for f2p to buy anything actually "good" on the exchange - everything was priced far above the (tiny) max credits you could have, and those consumables to let you temporarily have a higher credit limit were absurd.
(it was especially silly when people put the credit-cap increasers on the exchange for more than the f2p credit limit. /facepalm)
They removed some of the ridiculous restrictions for F2P Players last year or so. The Loot crates in SWOTOR now have a mechanism that increases the chance of a 'Purple' drop the more of them you open.
'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.'
Cryptic is not going to make any changes to how loot boxes work. They are plugged into PWE's business model.
Don't worry... some countries are cracking down on loot boxes in games and fining the hell out of companies on grounds of violating that country's gambling laws. It's only a matter of time before PWE reaps the whirlwind for them as well.
If/when that does happen then they're gonna be be in Mudd's market....it's a sad day when EA is less scummy than Cryptic
EA in SWTOR planned a long time ago for the eventual collapse of loot boxes so they began selling almost any obtainable gamble box item on their store. You could either obtain the item for a large cost or you could still do boxes. But Cryptic on the other hand put in Mudd's market when it looked like things were getting questionable in the US, then covid came alone and things quieted down...so they're happy to be as greedy as possible to milk the whales.
EA of all people offered a alternative while I'm guessing Cryptic will be predatory till the day gamble boxes are made illegal in the US
There is a huge difference in SWTOR(which I play every day). Apart that items got rotationally in discout the most expensive item is 5500 cartel points. Thats is 35 euros as you can see in
Now compare that with the most expensive things here or usual mudd prices and you see Cryptic prices way more
I hsve not played SWTOR since before it went Free to Play... Have they adopted a secondary currency system like Dilithium which can be traded for cartel points? If not, then there is no real comparison between games.
Mudd's store may cost a fortune if one were to pay directly for the Zen needed to purchase those items. But for someone who has stockpiled massive amounts of Dilithium, even those prices are manageable. We keep forgetting that unlike most MMOs with a cash shop, STO lets us earn dilithium which we can trade for Zen. So without spending a dime, we can get anything the game has to offer. It just may take a long time for some people.
Not that it matters at the end of the day
Do we only play the game to get shinies?
Isn't he game fun and engaging enough that we play it without them dangling a carrot in front of us?
You can play and have cool appearance and everything without ever spending but they do sell a ton of cosmetics in cash store which are often found in their auction house(named GTN) sold by players for ingame currency. You also get a small amount of cartel coins for achievements. For the fun factor its a very fun game, especially on endgame and has various things to do depending on how casual you want to be. Also, unlike STO, SWTOR shop doesnt sell blatantly "powercreep" based items, only cosmetics, species unlocks, level boosts etc, whereas STO sells T6X tokens, Traits(through ships) etc which are part of the powercreep of this game
However they are different games. Whereas STO has focus in space combat and ground is the less fun one, SWTOR is mirrored whereas ground is where the fun is and space battles are just fairly good and not a focus of development. I personally want both games to thrive but was pointing out the price differencial. For me it also isnt a good sign (for health of finances) when a company tries to overprice things but it may not have to do with STO but rather with general finances needed for the (whole) company. Lets not forget they have almost made Magic Legends and game development is very expensive nowadays. That said I think if PWE ever sold Cryptic we may see better days cause I think a lot of what we see might be Cryptic trying to reach the goal profits stated by PWE
They removed some of the ridiculous restrictions for F2P Players last year or so. The Loot crates in SWOTOR now have a mechanism that increases the chance of a 'Purple' drop the more of them you open.
I still think all "gaming gambling" should be required to publish official odds, but that type of mechanism that gradually increases you chances the more you lose I agree with, I think of it as some sort of "progressive stacking odds".
The thing with lockboxes in this is they always give you lobi, which is sort of a consolation prize. Open enough and you'll eventually be able to get a nice ship or some exclusive gear.
Cryptic is not going to make any changes to how loot boxes work. They are plugged into PWE's business model.
Don't worry... some countries are cracking down on loot boxes in games and fining the hell out of companies on grounds of violating that country's gambling laws. It's only a matter of time before PWE reaps the whirlwind for them as well.
Most likely the game would just be made unavailable with a region restriction for countries that have "banned" lock boxes like the ones Perfect World uses.
The thing with lockboxes in this is they always give you lobi, which is sort of a consolation prize. Open enough and you'll eventually be able to get a nice ship or some exclusive gear.
True, they give you lobi as a boobie prize, but not enough to actually make it a practical exchange. Lobi is by far the most expensive currency in the game and the ships you buy with it run about the same as Mudd ships when they are not on sale, or even more, in cash equivalence.
One partial solution would be to reduce both the odds of getting the grand prize and the price of the keys so people would impulse buy them (that is how microtransactions actually work, and like STO few games really use them).
Personally I like the keys and the boxes, for one solid reason. only spend EC on a new account for 1 key at a time allows me to never need to buy Anything off the Exchange other than keys while maintaining a below currency credit cap... and feeds the people who want to buy keys for Real Cash for EC.. Fair is Fair imo.
"bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'"
Revenge is a Dish, Best Served Cold ~ Khan Noonien Singh
The thing with lockboxes in this is they always give you lobi, which is sort of a consolation prize. Open enough and you'll eventually be able to get a nice ship or some exclusive gear.
There is no guarantee. 500 keys used to attempt to get the grand prize? That equates to $500.00. Whether the player paid Zen for the keys or bought them on the exchange is beside the point. Keys enter the game by being purchased with Zen. Whether zen was obtained by trading dilithium is beside the point. Zen enters the game by the spending of real money.
So that failed 500 attempts to unlock the grand prize represents $500 of revenue generated by the community. And this is just one instance of failed attempts to hit the jackpot, as it were.
If you ask me, if it is in a lockbox, it also needs to be on the Lobi store. They can set the price however high they want. They can still run the lock boxes the same way. But there needs to be a way to directly obtain the grand prize so no matter how many failed attempt to unlock it directly, eventually, enough Lobi can be obtained to buy it.
A Lobi-Zen Exchange would be good as well.
Of course, like I said, nothing is going to change...
no one said you have to spend the money to attain your items from the lockboxes its not like someone is magically pulling your arm like a slot machine to pay for said items. the fact that Zen is paid for is also besides the point when we all know STO has some significant deep pocket "whales" in this game who can afford said Zen.
If those people with deep pockets do this in exchange for EC I have no issues helping them out for what they want. simply put if you cant afford it, don't pay for it, the game will survive without someone who has to remortgage there home for Zen or Keys.
"bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'"
Revenge is a Dish, Best Served Cold ~ Khan Noonien Singh
Last time i played swtor the updates were sooo lagged it took 2 hours and i was forced to stop playing.
Never could figure out why it took sooo long to update.
That's a function of using the streaming client; the non-streaming client updates much faster. Everyone is defaulted to the streaming client when they first install. If you swap to non-streaming, you have to download the whole game again, but from that point onward the updates go much faster. Search the SWTOR forums for more info.
There's some massive misconceptions people in here have that I wish would burn in the fires of Gre'thor already that I will address in a moment. First an obligatory statement, take it from someone who has opened his fair share of phoenix, lockbox, and promo packs over the course of his STO career. If you're opening those packs with the expectation of pulling a ship, you are going to have a bad day more likely than not. I've opened well over 10k phoenix packs at this point at a minimum and picked up more boxes and promo packs than I care to admit. I went in with the expectation of getting the minimum prize, and the times I did get the big ship was just icing on the cake.
The biggest misconception I wish would burn in the fires of Gre'thor already is that you simply must have lockbox, lobi, and promo items to succeed in game. While those items can help, they are absolutely not required to do well at all. You can do well enough to get through any normal, advanced, and elite content with just the stuff that comes from the cstore and missions. You may not set the record for DPS for 2^100m or whatever the record is now, but you will be able to do virtually anything you could want to do in game. lockbox, lobi, and promo items again are just icing on the cake if you have them. Folks do NOT need them to succeed in game.
Next, no one is going to hold a phaser to your head and tell you "buy this box or get vaporized". If you buy boxes or promo items, you are doing so of your own free will. For the folks that spent $500+ to get a ship or similar and "got hosed" point blank as cold as this will sound, I don't feel sorry for them as they were bad shoppers. If you're able to afford a $500 drop on the game to open boxes and packs randomly, you could have just bought straight promo packs or keys and then sold the packs or keys themselves to get whatever you wanted. As it sits currently, assuming you picked up 2 of the $200 zen packages and a $100 zen package, that's a total of 57,000 zen with the normal bonuses, and that's NOT including a potential zen charge bonus. If you went pure keys that's 50 of the 10 packs of keys and some change left over for a total of 500 keys. At current prices of 9.7m per key last I looked, that's 4.85 billion EC. If you're doing pure promo packs while available that's 57 4 packs, or 228 promo packs. At current prices of 30m a pop, that's 6.84 billion EC. Nothing is going to come anywhere close to those numbers in terms of cost. So if you're able to pump several hundred dollars into the game to randomly open stuff and there is something you want, seriously just flip keys and/or promo packs and call it a day. If you choose to blow all of that on random packs and get nothing from it, that's on you and not on Cryptic. They didn't make you do that, you chose to do that. Even if you assume the ship itself costs 2 billion EC, that still leaves you several billion EC more left over. Shop smarter not harder.
Folks also are NOT entitled to any kind of specific drop beyond the basic minimum prize. If you buy keys or promo packs and decide to open them, you're paying for the basic minimum prize, and anything beyond that is a bonus. Just like a pack of trading cards. If I go pick up a pack of MTG cards at a shop. When I pay my $3 for the pack, I am paying for 15 cards. I might get lucky and score a foil 16th card, get a card I wanted, or even score a card worth alot more on the secondary market, or I could get 15 cards not even worth the $3 I paid. Either way you go, I paid for 15 cards and I'm getting 15 cards. They may not be 15 cards I need or want, but it's still 15 cards. Simply because folks didn't get what they wanted from a lockbox or promo pack doesn't make it unfair or anything else.
Overall too many folks have this flawed notion that they're entitled to specific drops from a box, and you're not. The only thing you're entitled to is the basic prize. Folks have options to get what they want in game, but at the end of the day, lockboxes and promo items are wants, not needs. They're there for folks that don't mind spending the cash and supporting the game but are optional.
As the last bit, I will say, I agree with publishing the odds so folks can have more transparency in what they're investing in. However beyond that, it's 100% on the player whether they will buy or not. If you don't like boxes then vote with your wallet.
"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
darkbladejk made several valid points in that post. There were more statements I agreed with than I didn't by far & I usually think of darkbladejk as somewhat a sycophant mouth-piece for Cryptic since being the forum moderator.
Personal responsibility is a good discipline to practice & some days are easier than other days.
But contrary to darkbladejk's: "it's 100% on the player whether they will buy or not." I disagree with the 100%, perhaps it's not the case with Cryptic or perhaps it is but other companies use "predatory" algorithms to take advantage of any "addictions" from people/players. I'm just not sure how comfortable someone should ever be taking advantage of anyone with an addiction whether physiological, psychological, or social. That slippery slope to a possible, "they were asking for it," just sounds bad! Then again, how to guard against such a circumstance???
As "this is the way" currently in STO if no one performed the gambling there wouldn't be any of those cool uber prizes in the game.
Compared to last year at this time something surely feels off in light of the massive price increase of infinity ships.
What I don’t get is why we assume the drop rates are reduced.
I think the explanation is a bit simpler. Nobody is opening those stupid boxes anymore.
not nobody, cuz i see the flashes of people always winning TRIBBLE. i mean, im not opening them, i tank them each time i come back from a mission anymore. i just dislike them.
id probably say less are opening them, and thus they justify the large cost of ships and stuff in the store now.
while FTP, if they keep it up, they may find themselves in a stasis field after a time. eventually the price point for things, the cost of stuff on the exchange, lobi, etc, will deter many from playing anymore.
You are right. I exaggerated a bit but I think you got the meaning.
Supply of ships is down and combined with the fact that we have a highly reduced number of lock box keys offers (at least compared to last year) I must conclude that the whole gambling system is not working out well for cryptic at the moment.
Even though it’s a bit frustrating that I cant get the stuff I want at a reasonable price (if at all) at the moment a broken gambling system could be a good thing as it would force cryptic to make changes in our favour.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Compared to last year at this time something surely feels off in light of the massive price increase of infinity ships.
What I don’t get is why we assume the drop rates are reduced.
I think the explanation is a bit simpler. Nobody is opening those stupid boxes anymore.
not nobody, cuz i see the flashes of people always winning TRIBBLE. i mean, im not opening them, i tank them each time i come back from a mission anymore. i just dislike them.
id probably say less are opening them, and thus they justify the large cost of ships and stuff in the store now.
while FTP, if they keep it up, they may find themselves in a stasis field after a time. eventually the price point for things, the cost of stuff on the exchange, lobi, etc, will deter many from playing anymore.
You are right. I exaggerated a bit but I think you got the meaning.
Supply of ships is down and combined with the fact that we have a highly reduced number of lock box keys offers (at least compared to last year) I must conclude that the whole gambling system is not working out well for cryptic at the moment.
Even though it’s a bit frustrating that I cant get the stuff I want at a reasonable price (if at all) at the moment a broken gambling system could be a good thing as it would force cryptic to make changes in our favour.
To be honest, I kinda hope that the whole gambling system is starting to fail for them. I mean, I don't want the GAME to fail, but I wouldn't shed any tears if the emphasis continued to shift away from prize boxes in favour of bundles.
I agree with this sentiment, not just STO but overall for gaming. I think gaming developers/publishers have for too long focused too much on the online in-game gambling instead of cultivating a better game & innovations. With STO it seems far many more ships are released via gambling mechanics compared to Store option nowadays. However if you only measure the success of STO by reading a spreadsheet of financials I'm sure the in-game gambling makes sense.
Comments
Hmm. It's been awhile since I played SWTOR, but back then it was hard for f2p to buy anything actually "good" on the exchange - everything was priced far above the (tiny) max credits you could have, and those consumables to let you temporarily have a higher credit limit were absurd.
(it was especially silly when people put the credit-cap increasers on the exchange for more than the f2p credit limit. /facepalm)
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.'
You can play and have cool appearance and everything without ever spending but they do sell a ton of cosmetics in cash store which are often found in their auction house(named GTN) sold by players for ingame currency. You also get a small amount of cartel coins for achievements. For the fun factor its a very fun game, especially on endgame and has various things to do depending on how casual you want to be. Also, unlike STO, SWTOR shop doesnt sell blatantly "powercreep" based items, only cosmetics, species unlocks, level boosts etc, whereas STO sells T6X tokens, Traits(through ships) etc which are part of the powercreep of this game
However they are different games. Whereas STO has focus in space combat and ground is the less fun one, SWTOR is mirrored whereas ground is where the fun is and space battles are just fairly good and not a focus of development. I personally want both games to thrive but was pointing out the price differencial. For me it also isnt a good sign (for health of finances) when a company tries to overprice things but it may not have to do with STO but rather with general finances needed for the (whole) company. Lets not forget they have almost made Magic Legends and game development is very expensive nowadays. That said I think if PWE ever sold Cryptic we may see better days cause I think a lot of what we see might be Cryptic trying to reach the goal profits stated by PWE
I still think all "gaming gambling" should be required to publish official odds, but that type of mechanism that gradually increases you chances the more you lose I agree with, I think of it as some sort of "progressive stacking odds".
Most likely the game would just be made unavailable with a region restriction for countries that have "banned" lock boxes like the ones Perfect World uses.
True, they give you lobi as a boobie prize, but not enough to actually make it a practical exchange. Lobi is by far the most expensive currency in the game and the ships you buy with it run about the same as Mudd ships when they are not on sale, or even more, in cash equivalence.
One partial solution would be to reduce both the odds of getting the grand prize and the price of the keys so people would impulse buy them (that is how microtransactions actually work, and like STO few games really use them).
"bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'"
Revenge is a Dish, Best Served Cold ~ Khan Noonien Singh
no one said you have to spend the money to attain your items from the lockboxes its not like someone is magically pulling your arm like a slot machine to pay for said items. the fact that Zen is paid for is also besides the point when we all know STO has some significant deep pocket "whales" in this game who can afford said Zen.
If those people with deep pockets do this in exchange for EC I have no issues helping them out for what they want. simply put if you cant afford it, don't pay for it, the game will survive without someone who has to remortgage there home for Zen or Keys.
"bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'"
Revenge is a Dish, Best Served Cold ~ Khan Noonien Singh
That's a function of using the streaming client; the non-streaming client updates much faster. Everyone is defaulted to the streaming client when they first install. If you swap to non-streaming, you have to download the whole game again, but from that point onward the updates go much faster. Search the SWTOR forums for more info.
What I don’t get is why we assume the drop rates are reduced.
I think the explanation is a bit simpler. Nobody is opening those stupid boxes anymore.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The biggest misconception I wish would burn in the fires of Gre'thor already is that you simply must have lockbox, lobi, and promo items to succeed in game. While those items can help, they are absolutely not required to do well at all. You can do well enough to get through any normal, advanced, and elite content with just the stuff that comes from the cstore and missions. You may not set the record for DPS for 2^100m or whatever the record is now, but you will be able to do virtually anything you could want to do in game. lockbox, lobi, and promo items again are just icing on the cake if you have them. Folks do NOT need them to succeed in game.
Next, no one is going to hold a phaser to your head and tell you "buy this box or get vaporized". If you buy boxes or promo items, you are doing so of your own free will. For the folks that spent $500+ to get a ship or similar and "got hosed" point blank as cold as this will sound, I don't feel sorry for them as they were bad shoppers. If you're able to afford a $500 drop on the game to open boxes and packs randomly, you could have just bought straight promo packs or keys and then sold the packs or keys themselves to get whatever you wanted. As it sits currently, assuming you picked up 2 of the $200 zen packages and a $100 zen package, that's a total of 57,000 zen with the normal bonuses, and that's NOT including a potential zen charge bonus. If you went pure keys that's 50 of the 10 packs of keys and some change left over for a total of 500 keys. At current prices of 9.7m per key last I looked, that's 4.85 billion EC. If you're doing pure promo packs while available that's 57 4 packs, or 228 promo packs. At current prices of 30m a pop, that's 6.84 billion EC. Nothing is going to come anywhere close to those numbers in terms of cost. So if you're able to pump several hundred dollars into the game to randomly open stuff and there is something you want, seriously just flip keys and/or promo packs and call it a day. If you choose to blow all of that on random packs and get nothing from it, that's on you and not on Cryptic. They didn't make you do that, you chose to do that. Even if you assume the ship itself costs 2 billion EC, that still leaves you several billion EC more left over. Shop smarter not harder.
Folks also are NOT entitled to any kind of specific drop beyond the basic minimum prize. If you buy keys or promo packs and decide to open them, you're paying for the basic minimum prize, and anything beyond that is a bonus. Just like a pack of trading cards. If I go pick up a pack of MTG cards at a shop. When I pay my $3 for the pack, I am paying for 15 cards. I might get lucky and score a foil 16th card, get a card I wanted, or even score a card worth alot more on the secondary market, or I could get 15 cards not even worth the $3 I paid. Either way you go, I paid for 15 cards and I'm getting 15 cards. They may not be 15 cards I need or want, but it's still 15 cards. Simply because folks didn't get what they wanted from a lockbox or promo pack doesn't make it unfair or anything else.
Overall too many folks have this flawed notion that they're entitled to specific drops from a box, and you're not. The only thing you're entitled to is the basic prize. Folks have options to get what they want in game, but at the end of the day, lockboxes and promo items are wants, not needs. They're there for folks that don't mind spending the cash and supporting the game but are optional.
As the last bit, I will say, I agree with publishing the odds so folks can have more transparency in what they're investing in. However beyond that, it's 100% on the player whether they will buy or not. If you don't like boxes then vote with your wallet.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Personal responsibility is a good discipline to practice & some days are easier than other days.
But contrary to darkbladejk's: "it's 100% on the player whether they will buy or not." I disagree with the 100%, perhaps it's not the case with Cryptic or perhaps it is but other companies use "predatory" algorithms to take advantage of any "addictions" from people/players. I'm just not sure how comfortable someone should ever be taking advantage of anyone with an addiction whether physiological, psychological, or social. That slippery slope to a possible, "they were asking for it," just sounds bad! Then again, how to guard against such a circumstance???
As "this is the way" currently in STO if no one performed the gambling there wouldn't be any of those cool uber prizes in the game.
You are right. I exaggerated a bit but I think you got the meaning.
Supply of ships is down and combined with the fact that we have a highly reduced number of lock box keys offers (at least compared to last year) I must conclude that the whole gambling system is not working out well for cryptic at the moment.
Even though it’s a bit frustrating that I cant get the stuff I want at a reasonable price (if at all) at the moment a broken gambling system could be a good thing as it would force cryptic to make changes in our favour.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I agree with this sentiment, not just STO but overall for gaming. I think gaming developers/publishers have for too long focused too much on the online in-game gambling instead of cultivating a better game & innovations. With STO it seems far many more ships are released via gambling mechanics compared to Store option nowadays. However if you only measure the success of STO by reading a spreadsheet of financials I'm sure the in-game gambling makes sense.