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Dear devs/Kael: how can I use my money to "show" that I want more mission/episode type content?
thegrandnagus1
Member Posts: 5,166 Arc User
The new episode was really great. Major kudos to the devs and everyone involved. My only complaint is "I want more", which is exactly how a business should WANT their customers to feel.
So here is my issue: I want more mission/episode type content, and am not really interested in buying yet another variant of a ship I already have multiple variants of. However, because they don't actually sell any mission/episode content, there is nothing I can buy that "shows" I want more of that. And if I just buy ships, I can only assume it tells them "make more ships".
I genuinely want to support this game, but I want to use my money to "show" what I want more of. So how can I as a customer use my money to "show" that I want more mission/episode type content?
PS: And just to clarify, I don't simply mean "another episode in several months". I'm talking about an increase in frequency. What can I spend money on that will help increase the staff needed to make that happen?
So here is my issue: I want more mission/episode type content, and am not really interested in buying yet another variant of a ship I already have multiple variants of. However, because they don't actually sell any mission/episode content, there is nothing I can buy that "shows" I want more of that. And if I just buy ships, I can only assume it tells them "make more ships".
I genuinely want to support this game, but I want to use my money to "show" what I want more of. So how can I as a customer use my money to "show" that I want more mission/episode type content?
PS: And just to clarify, I don't simply mean "another episode in several months". I'm talking about an increase in frequency. What can I spend money on that will help increase the staff needed to make that happen?
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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I could imagine a model where they continue the main story missions like they do now, but offer "side missions" in between which are purchasable via Zen, featuring unique rewards and maybe a bit less production value (no voice actor specifically for them, less cutscenes).
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Oh wait.. Even if they read that feedback, it will be immediately disregarded as "the vocal minority".
I think angrytarg hit the nail on the head: don't buy zen until story content releases become more frequent.
I own dozens of ships myself, and I'm not a collector who cares about owning them all. Releasing new ships (especially 32c ones) does not get me to open my wallet.
Story episodes are exactly what I want more of.
Admins PLS check out OP's ridiculous request.
Lately, I've been wondering if the reason we're getting fewer and fewer story missions is because of all the voiceover they're adding to every mission. That stuff takes time to record (hiring the actors, scheduling them to do a recording session, multiple takes, editing), not to mention the expense of the whole process. What if they did a hybrid, where they released 4 major story mission a year with voiceover, fancy cinematics, the works (basically what we're getting now), and in between those episodes they released missions that are more scaled down, like a bottle episode of a TV show. Minimal to no VO, minimal cinematics, just the crews of our ships investigating something that sets up the next major mission that moves the story arc forward (sort of like patrols, only more story focused and no endless waves of enemies).
Let's us the Klingon Civil War arc as an example. At the end of Khitomer Discord, players are essentially fugitives from the Khitomer Alliance and their respective governments. What if they'd added a couple of episodes between Khitomer Discord and Partisans where it's just your ship on the run, trying to evade everyone as you head toward Nimbus III to rendezvous with J'Ula? Maybe along the way you stop at the automated dry dock from Enterprise to make repairs and you end up solving the mystery of why it exists and who it's murdering people for. The missions wouldn't really be anything major, just small bridges between the major missions to fill in some details and add some flavor to the overall story arc
^^
If this WASN'T the case, their Lockbox design and reward paradigm would have changed greatly, or all out disappeared/been removed.
(And remember, to have been able to buy such a ship from the Exchange/Trade Channel, SOMEONE had to first 'win' the ship via a Master Key and a Lockbox so they could put it on the Exchange/Offer it for sale in game.)
The sale of Zen for hard RL currency for players to buy Master keys to open Lockboxes is the driving profit force behind STO.
Everything else they do in the game is secondary or in service of trying to bring someone to the game who just wants to emulate their favorite character/hero ship combo; and they get interested enough to acquire said Hero ship buy directly buying/using Master Keys on Lockboxes - or - acquiring selling keys on the Exchange until the ship they want is acquired.
The reward of an actual Lockbox for a year of continuous gated content play was a reward for those who are addicted enough to play the game regularly/daily or had acquired enough of the various currencies, but felt they had nothing worthwhile left to spend it on; so they could buy out every event and still get the Lockbox ship reward.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
> That isn't want he suggested and I suggest you re-read the OP. He wasn't making a suggestion, he was asking for ideas - and yes, Pay for Content may be ONE of those ideas - but perhaps you could suggest something rather than dismissing your interpretation of what was said based on your feelings on the matter?
I've reread it, sorry about my earlier outburst, how about side content like the Orion Syndicate.
I play FFXIV too - but if you'll notice, the 'rush' is over and the ques have gone back to what they were pre EndWalker. Why? Same reason as STO - There are many who just play to experience the story and they've played the new story content to its completion (including the gear requirements needed to just play through said content) - and they'll now go away, and then come back when the next batch of story content hits.
And yes, Subscription models allow better predictability because they usually give a discount for subscribing for multiple months up front, so yes, its easier to predict the bare minimum the game will make as opposed to most F2P models who rely on RMT sales of items exclusively - and this it's harder for them to be accurate with just how much a certain item will sell (and yes, they'll look at past trends; but F2P is more directly tied to the economy and how much 'disposable cash' a player has AND said player's willingness to spend said cash to acquire said new items in the game; but nothing is a sure bet. The only thing you have with a sub model is y9ou can more easily see an impending upward or downward trend and adjust your budget accordingly - whereas in a F2P model - if an item doesn't do as well as predicted, you have to scramble to adjust and try to make and release items that you believe will do better, and a real nasty miscalculation can effectively kill your game.
That's why once they have an business model (read: Popular Hero ships in Lockboxes); that they've had success predicting over a long period; they're loathe to do anything different that might affect it until it no longer is viable.
STO WAS heading in that direction UNTIL all the new series (5) Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Short Treks (they want to do more Short Treks but COVID threw a wrench in that), Picard , Lower Decks, and Start Trek: Prodigy; and we'll soon have a 6th - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
^^^
The point being all these shows will provide MANY 'new ships' that STO can create and sell via Lock Box and Zen store for YEARS to come. They know (and have metrics) showing that business model works, and works well for them, so it's the one they'll continue to stick with.
Yes, we WILL get new mission content; but said content will ALWAYS be tied to new ships, or other items directly related to the content<--- And these new Ships and Items will be the focus to be the main generation of Profit for STO as they have been for many years now.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
While I would love to see more stuff for STO, combination of factors like VO work (which is pretty impressive) and team size get in the way. Could STO bring back a subscription option? Maybe. But this late in STO's life I wouldn't want to gate any content behind a paywall. That's actually one of the biggest draws for STO. Being able to play the story without hitting a paywall.
Its not ideal, but short of getting a lot more resources opened up we may have to make due.
As for the "being ignored regarding ideas" bit earlier in thread... we don't know that for sure. Its entirely possible that they do discuss some of our ideas. Hell... them ASKING for our input shows interest. However they are not under any obligation to include us in their internal discussions. And the more complex a problem, the longer it takes to figure out. They can't just flip a switch and the problem is solved.
They got teams working on many things. Assuming that they're not working on X because Y and Z are getting attention is unfair to pretty much everyone, and implies that they are incapable of multitasking. Its in a similar vein as people suggesting an absolute dead stop to ANY content until they fix ALL the bugs. A: You can't have a bug free MMO because the second you add something new, some new bit of code won't like some old bit of code, and we have a bug. B: What are the environmental artists supposed to do during this "shutdown"? What are the character artists supposed to do? What are the sound people supposed to do?
It basically assumes that everyone is a jack of all trades and can fill any role, which they can't. An Environmental Artist isn't gonna know how to deal with an Invisitorp. Artists are not Coders.
All we can hope for is that Gearbox sees the merit of having an MMO set in an active, big name IP, and helps allocate more resources into said MMO. Or at the very least glares at PWE until they loosen the purse strings a bit so that Cryptic CAN grow.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
Respectfully disagree. Asking for an opinion can be a platitude, it doesn't necessarily mean that the opinions shared are actually considered. I will admit heavy bias here though, I was one of the first to suggest re-roll tokens being available for dilithium and had that idea perverted into 'removing things you already have and selling them back to you,' so I am rather jaded on giving Cryptic feedback or ideas.
That being said, as far as the OP's question is concerned.. as much as I like and respect where he's coming from, I don't see any way to encourage Cryptic to make more story content. Again, this might be my jaded opinion talking, but to me it feels like the story missions are just put in to support the ship bundles, not the other way around. Meaning that the only reason the company even uses any resources on these things to begin with is that people need an excuse to drop $150-$300 per bundle, they need something to use those purchases in, so making this content is just an extension of that. We all like to think that it's the other way around and that the story is the main part of the game and the ship/lockboxes/promos are 'add on' but in my opinion it's the opposite.
What does this mean? It means there is really no way to financially support new content, the sad truth is, the way to do this is to buy the over priced bundles so they make more content to sell more bundles. The content exists to support the bundles, not vice versa. I hope I am wrong, but objectively.. I don't think I am.
The two-parter "The Measure of Morality" for the 10th anniversary springing readily to mind, that shot with all the legendary ships we would soon get...
"There's No Way Like Poway!"
Real Join Date: October 2010
Currently, we only have that in the form of time-gated events, episode-rewards (despite the better episodes) have been worse and worse recently, and it's often not even a choice between setpieces or something.
PS: If Cryptic wants people to buy the L-irror bundle, they need to put the Mirror Constitution in it :P
At the end of the day, the game has well over a 100 hours of episodic content, not to mention all the other activities, that's superior to most AAA games.
Subscription models are very rare nowadays, so that just won't work for STO, despite FFXIV's 'success', but the FF series is vastly more popular than STO. It still wouldn't guarantee more regular content, and they're more likely earning more money from their sales than they would've ever made from subs.
Maybe it's because of higher ups interference, most of the Devs we know don't have the power to hire more members, they don't have the proper clearance, they're just employees doing grunt work, you'll have to go above Kael's head if you want more people working on the game.
Yeah...especially when they keep telling us the game is having it's "best year ever" or similar statements.
Because if the game is doing so well, then we should be seeing the team grow and the pace of content increased.
And if PWE(or whoever-owns-the-company-this-year) has simply placed a "cap" on the dev team (meaning no matter how much the game makes, they will never actually grow enough to matter) then I personally don't even want to hear about how much money the game is making anymore. Because it creates this frustrating situation of "if the game is doing so well, why isn't the team growing?".
If PWE/etc isn't going to grow the team regardless of the game's success, then stop bragging about the game's success.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Yes, the game is profitable because of the way the game is run - IE - Putting Ships in Lockboxes and selling keys for cash to open said boxes; and creating content in support of, to tie into, and promote the items in said boxes IS PROFITABE.
^^^
Thus, they continue in the above business model and use their Human and available Technical Resources to continue with that business model BECAUSE it is profitable.
What you and others suggest is a change to a business model they KNOW works. The goal of any business is ultimately to make profit. Anything else positive is a welcome side effect. Change in the business model will happen when generated profit drops below a certain level, with the caveat that if it drops too low for too long; or profit stops entirely for a long enough period - the result will be that that Star trek Online MMO is sunsetted.
Now, please understand I like you would LOVE more STO story like that which was recently released at a faster pace; BUT, I understand the business and economics side of all this and thus understand why the release cadence is as it is, and also WHY they are not in a hurry to change it. You don't mess with what works - and they are happy with their current business model and how they are implementing it.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Anyways... maybe its time to start drifting AWAY from this particular subject, as its almost getting into the "lets bash them over decisions we don't agree with" phase.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
This is an opinion I very much share, I am personally tired of hearing how successful the game is and still seeing lack of growth, slow development and emphasis on monetization over content. The way the game is currently being run is an example of how games usually run with the Devs are telling people 'we're just trying to keep the lights on,' not when a game is at an all time high for profitability.
Except this is not how any successful business works. People that run businesses understand the importance of adapting even when successful, just sticking with 'what we know works' puts you out of business. It's an ever changing landscape and those that don't adapt are swept away. It also implies that any business turning a profit is doing everything right and has no room for improvement which I think you have to agree is not going to be a valid argument. The goal in business isn't just to turn a profit, you learn what's working and you evolve it to grow as a business. What you're pushing for here is stagnation that eventually leads to extinction. You're advocating for 'this is good enough, lets stop trying.' Not a good plan.
That is ultimately your decision, but I would hope that some breathing room is allowed here. These are legitimate concerns from players of this game on how the game is being run and monetized. There are some trends with how the game is being run that are causing some of us concern, the point here isn't to 'bash' Cryptic, but many of us question how we can support the parts of the game we enjoy or if it's even possible. I'll wrap it with a quote that I think fully describes the situation..
Pretty much that. We're all here because we enjoy the game, or at least we once did. Cryptic has done many things well with this game, that's why we are all here. But I honestly hope they understand the things they are doing poorly as well so that they can at least try to remedy them before it's too late.
I share the OP's desire to support the parts of the game I enjoy, I also just simply don't know how I would do that.