The fact that none of the story content at all is paywalled is a bigger draw than many seem to realize.
100% agree with this. STO is the only MMO I've stuck with, mainly for this reason. I tried The Old Republic and DCUO, but despite them both having worlds and stories that interested me, the paywalling put me off quite quickly.
> @captainkoltar said: > 100% agree with this. STO is the only MMO I've stuck with, mainly for this reason. I tried The Old Republic and DCUO, but despite them both having worlds and stories that interested me, the paywalling put me off quite quickly. > > K
Couldn't have said it better myself, besides the Paywall idea was a dumb one that didn't need to exist in the first place,
> @captainkoltar said:
> 100% agree with this. STO is the only MMO I've stuck with, mainly for this reason. I tried The Old Republic and DCUO, but despite them both having worlds and stories that interested me, the paywalling put me off quite quickly.
>
> K
Couldn't have said it better myself, besides the Paywall idea was a dumb one that didn't need to exist in the first place,
paying for the most recent expansion I get but after a new expansion comes the old one should go to the "base game" pile so that players get access to that content for free and the way DCUO did was just bad, which why I never could really get to it. TOR F2P model was super bad at first but I don't know what it is now.
Well, one way or the other, someone's got to pay somehow for the game to keep it going.
Right now that means they have to sell ships that are so expensive you could buy an entire game if you didn't buy that ship. Does anyone think that's an ideal situation?
Truth is, it's not a choice between paying for content or not. It's a choice between paying for content, or paying for ships. More specifically in this case: having whales pay insane prices for ships.
And that isn't going to keep the game thriving forever, due to aforementioned diminishing returns with each new purchase. Ships simply aren't going to keep their appeal and it's going to be ever more difficult to justify spending the sums we are expected/required to pay if this is to remain the game's only source of income.
In fact, there are already multiple signs that this source of income is drying up:
- With each new release, I'm seeing fewer of the boxed ships appearing. Even ones that you'd expect to be very popular, like the Borg ones, are rarely seen.
- Which would also explain why prices have exploded: because almost nobody is supplying these ships anymore.
- Add to that the apparent desperation seen in reselling the same old ships through different means (removing a character-bound restriction that should never have been there in the first place) and releasing ten varities of the same ship.
All of this because, simply put, the whales aren't doing their whale-thing anymore.
Personally, I'd rather pay for non-main story, species-specific starter content, than pay for ships that can only be used in the same TFO's I've played a thousand times before. And clearly I'm not alone in this, the signs are clearly visible in-game. At some point, the game will either need to diversify its sources of income, or not having sufficient income at all.
Ships are not the only source of income, they also have mini-transactions like buying character slots and other utility purchases, speculators buying keys, etc. and that stuff builds up when tens of thousands of people cycle through each day. The chances that paywalling content would somehow lower the price of ships (which have been pretty steady for a long time anyway) are vanishingly small, but the chances of it negatively impacting the image of the game in the community are very high.
I suppose they could spin some of it, like the species-specific start stuff, as a kind of themed community housing or somesuch without completely trashing the game's good image (though I doubt it), but I doubt enough players would actually buy it to even come close to recouping the expense of making it, much less actually becoming a positive revenue source.
Their best bet would be to bring out more theme props for the cstore (or Lobi store, though that is probably slightly less effective as a revenue source since the event campaigns came out) and whatnot, as well as do things to make at least the major races/cultures more distinctive in subtle ways to encourage people to make more characters to try them out. Even stuff as far out and unintuitive as buffing up the singularity cores slightly would help with that as it is one of the main things that defines Romulan style in the game.
And the way things are going with streaming Trek, STO is going to have to do something to make SNW content easier to access than just a time-travel mission or two since the shows seem to be zeroing in on that era more and more and new players are going to want to play in the era they are currently watching (not to mention they are close enough to TOS to attract a lot of the oldschool Trekkies as well), and that is more likely to keep revenue coming in than instituting niche experience DLCs.
And who knows, maybe DECA has, or is willing to acquire, better scenario making tools that can be adapted to building STO missions and eventually they might be able to start bringing new missions and the like out at a faster pace.
since ultimately everyone from non-fed & non-kdf factions all end up as part of the fed or kdf factions anyway, so any new races would be more likely to be added if the requests were for them to just be added directly into the base fed and/or kdf race selection instead of having them added into any faction where even minor story line changes or additions would be needed to fit them in, although the Romulan faction probably wouldn't be a bad place to add some new races since there is already an option there to use a custom(Alien) character instead of a Romulan or Reman, so if any currently unplayable/unaffiliated races were added, it wouldn't be that far of a stretch to just say that some may have found homes among the Romulan colony worlds after the destruction of Romulus, or even as early as during the aftermath of Shinzons Coup.
since ultimately everyone from non-fed & non-kdf factions all end up as part of the fed or kdf factions anyway, so any new races would be more likely to be added if the requests were for them to just be added directly into the base fed and/or kdf race selection instead of having them added into any faction where even minor story line changes or additions would be needed to fit them in, although the Romulan faction probably wouldn't be a bad place to add some new races since there is already an option there to use a custom(Alien) character instead of a Romulan or Reman, so if any currently unplayable/unaffiliated races were added, it wouldn't be that far of a stretch to just say that some may have found homes among the Romulan colony worlds after the destruction of Romulus, or even as early as during the aftermath of Shinzons Coup.
The problem with that is the fact that a character made in the wrong faction has the wrong transporter SFX, the wrong GUI, the wrong boffs and doffs, and cannot participate in anything that is unique to the faction they are supposed to be from in canon (like certain recruitment events) or even purchase the captain's bundle for their show-canon faction. And there are no factions that would need significant changes to the tutorial, though a few tweaks might make some of them slightly smoother for adding races to.
As it is, most canon races that do not have their own tab in the generator can be built easily enough using the 'Alien' tab of the character generator (though a few, like Ithanites, lack appliance or color options to do them properly), only two factions currently lack that tab and they would be vastly improved by correcting that lack.
Ships are not the only source of income, they also have mini-transactions like buying character slots and other utility purchases, speculators buying keys, etc. and that stuff builds up when tens of thousands of people cycle through each day. The chances that paywalling content would somehow lower the price of ships (which have been pretty steady for a long time anyway) are vanishingly small, but the chances of it negatively impacting the image of the game in the community are very high.
I suppose they could spin some of it, like the species-specific start stuff, as a kind of themed community housing or somesuch without completely trashing the game's good image (though I doubt it), but I doubt enough players would actually buy it to even come close to recouping the expense of making it, much less actually becoming a positive revenue source.
Their best bet would be to bring out more theme props for the cstore (or Lobi store, though that is probably slightly less effective as a revenue source since the event campaigns came out) and whatnot, as well as do things to make at least the major races/cultures more distinctive in subtle ways to encourage people to make more characters to try them out. Even stuff as far out and unintuitive as buffing up the singularity cores slightly would help with that as it is one of the main things that defines Romulan style in the game.
And the way things are going with streaming Trek, STO is going to have to do something to make SNW content easier to access than just a time-travel mission or two since the shows seem to be zeroing in on that era more and more and new players are going to want to play in the era they are currently watching (not to mention they are close enough to TOS to attract a lot of the oldschool Trekkies as well), and that is more likely to keep revenue coming in than instituting niche experience DLCs.
And who knows, maybe DECA has, or is willing to acquire, better scenario making tools that can be adapted to building STO missions and eventually they might be able to start bringing new missions and the like out at a faster pace.
But most of that stuff like character slots, bank slots etc. are only going to remain a source of income if people see reasons to create new toons.
Which is why I believe they need to give players more reasons to create toons of different species. Years ago, when we still got those overviews of how many players created toons of each career, species etc., I think one of the facts presented was that on average, players have very few toons.
I doubt that, as of now, services and other non-ship C-store stuff are very important source of income. Because you don't need much of that when you only have few toons. It could become a good source of income though, if they gave players more reasons to create new ones.
They made it easier to level new toons with things like
- the annual EXP boosts from the First Contact event
- Recruitment bonuses
- All sorts of event rewards
But easiness by itself isn't going to encourage people to do something. If they want to sell more non-ship things (besides other services, also stuff like Elite and Boff upgrade tokens) then I think more unique starter experiences are needed.
since ultimately everyone from non-fed & non-kdf factions all end up as part of the fed or kdf factions anyway, so any new races would be more likely to be added if the requests were for them to just be added directly into the base fed and/or kdf race selection instead of having them added into any faction where even minor story line changes or additions would be needed to fit them in, although the Romulan faction probably wouldn't be a bad place to add some new races since there is already an option there to use a custom(Alien) character instead of a Romulan or Reman, so if any currently unplayable/unaffiliated races were added, it wouldn't be that far of a stretch to just say that some may have found homes among the Romulan colony worlds after the destruction of Romulus, or even as early as during the aftermath of Shinzons Coup.
Here's how I do it Lukari would be a Fed race, Kentari will be Romulan Republic considering they use RR Assets in their fashion, with Traditionalists being more KDF aligned and Reformists being Fed aligned, you can explain it like some Kentari got lost on the way to New Kentar, as for Lukari they can space orphans like Odo, with no knowledge of their race or culture,
A "race" I would like to see would be TOS Romulans though it would be an era difference rather than a race, the problem would be that they would have to be a subfaction like the TOS Federation one because of SFX limitations inherent in the game.
If mid 23rd century Romulans were ever added to the game (besides just the uniform, which is already available) they would need a different set of communicator and transporter animation/SFX that do not exist anywhere in the game so far.
The TOS propmaker never made a Romulan communicator, so originally they were just going to use the Klingon one (which is a 'flip phone' style similar to the Federation one but smaller and sharply angular and somewhat reminiscent of a coffin shape rather than rounded-edged rectangles like the Starfleet ones) but someone forgot to give it to Joanne Linville (who played the female Romulan Commander in The Enterprise Incident) at the start of the scene so instead of causing a reshoot when she realized she didn't have it, she talked into her sleeve like a contemporary Secret Service agent and it caught on, so any Romulans they would have shown in later seasons (which never happened because the show ended before they did any more with the Romulans) would have talked into their sleeves as well.
For transporters, it turns out that the Romulans never developed transporters themselves and started using the ones they got from the Klingon/Romulan tech exchange alluded to in that same episode, so they would have had the nearly silent "flame" style transport effect as the Klingons. The transporter effect is at about 1:26 in this clip:
And a good part about that is that the devs would be able to use it for the Klingons as well (of course, if they wanted to stick with the red for Klingons and use a "green flame" for Romulans that would work too.
Also, since the Klingons and Romulans have that treaty in that era they could get by with one tutorial for the both of them, though probably with different intro cutscenes, and spin it as cross-training in each other's equipment at the same facility. If they really wanted to get crazy with it the first officer could be a member of the other faction, though the Klingons would be getting the better part of that deal if the Romulan first officer was an SRO. If they really wanted to avoid making a 23rd century warbird map they could always just use a B'rel and an adaptation of the 2409 Klingon tutorial for both of them, and consider them one faction until they get to 2409.
If they did that, the Klingons would probably automatically bind to the 'red' KDF faction and the Romulans would probably have to go through more 'factionless' stuff until they hit the red/blue choice (or simply skip to the choice on arrival or whatever).
Comments
100% agree with this. STO is the only MMO I've stuck with, mainly for this reason. I tried The Old Republic and DCUO, but despite them both having worlds and stories that interested me, the paywalling put me off quite quickly.
K
> 100% agree with this. STO is the only MMO I've stuck with, mainly for this reason. I tried The Old Republic and DCUO, but despite them both having worlds and stories that interested me, the paywalling put me off quite quickly.
>
> K
Couldn't have said it better myself, besides the Paywall idea was a dumb one that didn't need to exist in the first place,
paying for the most recent expansion I get but after a new expansion comes the old one should go to the "base game" pile so that players get access to that content for free and the way DCUO did was just bad, which why I never could really get to it. TOR F2P model was super bad at first but I don't know what it is now.
Right now that means they have to sell ships that are so expensive you could buy an entire game if you didn't buy that ship. Does anyone think that's an ideal situation?
Truth is, it's not a choice between paying for content or not. It's a choice between paying for content, or paying for ships. More specifically in this case: having whales pay insane prices for ships.
And that isn't going to keep the game thriving forever, due to aforementioned diminishing returns with each new purchase. Ships simply aren't going to keep their appeal and it's going to be ever more difficult to justify spending the sums we are expected/required to pay if this is to remain the game's only source of income.
In fact, there are already multiple signs that this source of income is drying up:
- With each new release, I'm seeing fewer of the boxed ships appearing. Even ones that you'd expect to be very popular, like the Borg ones, are rarely seen.
- Which would also explain why prices have exploded: because almost nobody is supplying these ships anymore.
- Add to that the apparent desperation seen in reselling the same old ships through different means (removing a character-bound restriction that should never have been there in the first place) and releasing ten varities of the same ship.
All of this because, simply put, the whales aren't doing their whale-thing anymore.
Personally, I'd rather pay for non-main story, species-specific starter content, than pay for ships that can only be used in the same TFO's I've played a thousand times before. And clearly I'm not alone in this, the signs are clearly visible in-game. At some point, the game will either need to diversify its sources of income, or not having sufficient income at all.
I suppose they could spin some of it, like the species-specific start stuff, as a kind of themed community housing or somesuch without completely trashing the game's good image (though I doubt it), but I doubt enough players would actually buy it to even come close to recouping the expense of making it, much less actually becoming a positive revenue source.
Their best bet would be to bring out more theme props for the cstore (or Lobi store, though that is probably slightly less effective as a revenue source since the event campaigns came out) and whatnot, as well as do things to make at least the major races/cultures more distinctive in subtle ways to encourage people to make more characters to try them out. Even stuff as far out and unintuitive as buffing up the singularity cores slightly would help with that as it is one of the main things that defines Romulan style in the game.
And the way things are going with streaming Trek, STO is going to have to do something to make SNW content easier to access than just a time-travel mission or two since the shows seem to be zeroing in on that era more and more and new players are going to want to play in the era they are currently watching (not to mention they are close enough to TOS to attract a lot of the oldschool Trekkies as well), and that is more likely to keep revenue coming in than instituting niche experience DLCs.
And who knows, maybe DECA has, or is willing to acquire, better scenario making tools that can be adapted to building STO missions and eventually they might be able to start bringing new missions and the like out at a faster pace.
The problem with that is the fact that a character made in the wrong faction has the wrong transporter SFX, the wrong GUI, the wrong boffs and doffs, and cannot participate in anything that is unique to the faction they are supposed to be from in canon (like certain recruitment events) or even purchase the captain's bundle for their show-canon faction. And there are no factions that would need significant changes to the tutorial, though a few tweaks might make some of them slightly smoother for adding races to.
As it is, most canon races that do not have their own tab in the generator can be built easily enough using the 'Alien' tab of the character generator (though a few, like Ithanites, lack appliance or color options to do them properly), only two factions currently lack that tab and they would be vastly improved by correcting that lack.
But most of that stuff like character slots, bank slots etc. are only going to remain a source of income if people see reasons to create new toons.
Which is why I believe they need to give players more reasons to create toons of different species. Years ago, when we still got those overviews of how many players created toons of each career, species etc., I think one of the facts presented was that on average, players have very few toons.
I doubt that, as of now, services and other non-ship C-store stuff are very important source of income. Because you don't need much of that when you only have few toons. It could become a good source of income though, if they gave players more reasons to create new ones.
They made it easier to level new toons with things like
- the annual EXP boosts from the First Contact event
- Recruitment bonuses
- All sorts of event rewards
But easiness by itself isn't going to encourage people to do something. If they want to sell more non-ship things (besides other services, also stuff like Elite and Boff upgrade tokens) then I think more unique starter experiences are needed.
Here's how I do it Lukari would be a Fed race, Kentari will be Romulan Republic considering they use RR Assets in their fashion, with Traditionalists being more KDF aligned and Reformists being Fed aligned, you can explain it like some Kentari got lost on the way to New Kentar, as for Lukari they can space orphans like Odo, with no knowledge of their race or culture,
If mid 23rd century Romulans were ever added to the game (besides just the uniform, which is already available) they would need a different set of communicator and transporter animation/SFX that do not exist anywhere in the game so far.
The TOS propmaker never made a Romulan communicator, so originally they were just going to use the Klingon one (which is a 'flip phone' style similar to the Federation one but smaller and sharply angular and somewhat reminiscent of a coffin shape rather than rounded-edged rectangles like the Starfleet ones) but someone forgot to give it to Joanne Linville (who played the female Romulan Commander in The Enterprise Incident) at the start of the scene so instead of causing a reshoot when she realized she didn't have it, she talked into her sleeve like a contemporary Secret Service agent and it caught on, so any Romulans they would have shown in later seasons (which never happened because the show ended before they did any more with the Romulans) would have talked into their sleeves as well.
For transporters, it turns out that the Romulans never developed transporters themselves and started using the ones they got from the Klingon/Romulan tech exchange alluded to in that same episode, so they would have had the nearly silent "flame" style transport effect as the Klingons. The transporter effect is at about 1:26 in this clip:
And a good part about that is that the devs would be able to use it for the Klingons as well (of course, if they wanted to stick with the red for Klingons and use a "green flame" for Romulans that would work too.
Also, since the Klingons and Romulans have that treaty in that era they could get by with one tutorial for the both of them, though probably with different intro cutscenes, and spin it as cross-training in each other's equipment at the same facility. If they really wanted to get crazy with it the first officer could be a member of the other faction, though the Klingons would be getting the better part of that deal if the Romulan first officer was an SRO. If they really wanted to avoid making a 23rd century warbird map they could always just use a B'rel and an adaptation of the 2409 Klingon tutorial for both of them, and consider them one faction until they get to 2409.
If they did that, the Klingons would probably automatically bind to the 'red' KDF faction and the Romulans would probably have to go through more 'factionless' stuff until they hit the red/blue choice (or simply skip to the choice on arrival or whatever).