Having developed a supposed premium game with a premium price, and paying a subscription fee, then to have a store that offers anything for real-money-transaction, rather than blending it into the game as a reward or craftable item is the eptimomy of cheap and shallow.
I didn't like STO enough to buy it, but really a $2 emote pack is pretty low on the list of things they have done wrong.
This $25 celestial horse is much worse than any micro-transaction that Cryptic has done. People will defend Blizzard and say that "the difference is that their game has enough content." OK, Blizzard's game is so packed with content that you can beat 10 boars or 10 skeletons, and every 6 months there is a new synchronized swimming routine through an intestinal labyrinth to face a big new dance off at the end.
Who cares about all these quests, do people actually play these games to do quests? What happened to gameplay?
Seriously, look at a platformer like Super Mario Bros. Remember how the Japanese SMB2 is the same game, but with about 100 new platform levels. The new levels add nothing because the gameplay and mario's abilities are pretty much unchanged from the original:
The same game, just more of it. They didn't bother to release this in the US until 8 years later. Am I the only one that finds gameplay more important than content?
So this is cryptics fault eh? Have you noticed that many mmo's out there are doing this now? Why dont you go bitch at blizzard for selling an in game horse for $25! They made over 2 million bucks in just 4 hours of that horse going up. None of these items are something that you just HAVE to have. They are fluff items that are meant to make the company extra money. You are not forced into having to buy them at all. Feel free to bitch about it all you want, but you should really try to focus your anger on the industry itself, not onto cryptic. The way you guys are acting, its like cryptic is the only company out there that has an item store. The sad truth is, they are pretty darn cheap in the stuff they are putting up there compared to their competition. Good luck on your crusade!
If I was still playing WoW I would.
Sure crypic isn't the only MMO with a mt store but I find their version of it slightly underhanded. Remember when ferengi were in beta but pulled for "bugs"? Strange how it showed up in the c store went STO went live.
I assume by directing our anger at the mmo industry you mean atari? Still can't believe people are defending cryptic using that old chestnut. Cryptic claimed they could produce an mmo in 2 years. Who's fault is that? Atari's? No. Atari didn't force cryptic to make any claims before they bought them. Cryptic couldn't meet their own deadline and atari held them to their original claim because they spent millions on cryptic due to their claims. So atari is the bad guy?
That pretty much sums it up perfectly. Not to be on Cryptic's defense but there are many forum posters asking for these items and willing to pay for them. It gives them some sense of uniqueness it seems to have said items. The C-Store is the wrong venue to acquire unique items with the current state of the game. If they had the budget set aside or decided to put revenues back in the game to make these unique items achieved in game there wouldn't be these objections. As it stands it's just a money grab with willful participants. So who is exactly at fault?
I didn't like STO enough to buy it, but really a $2 emote pack is pretty low on the list of things they have done wrong.
This $25 celestial horse is much worse than any micro-transaction that Cryptic has done. People will defend Blizzard and say that "the difference is that their game has enough content." OK, Blizzard's game is so packed with content that you can beat 10 boars or 10 skeletons, and every 6 months there is a new synchronized swimming routine through an intestinal labyrinth to face a big new dance off at the end.
Who cares about all these quests, do people actually play these games to do quests? What happened to gameplay?
Seriously, look at a platformer like Super Mario Bros. Remember how the Japanese SMB2 is the same game, but with about 100 new platform levels. The new levels add nothing because the gameplay and mario's abilities are pretty much unchanged from the original:
The same game, just more of it. They didn't bother to release this in the US until 8 years later. Am I the only one that finds gameplay more important than content?
Hmmm I hate to have to be the one to tell you this but gameplay is achieved through content, no content no gameplay. And I for one care about the quests, that's what I play mmo's for (sorry to disapoint the sandbox crowd) but I am an rpg player have been since before there were mmo's but when I buy an mmo that's what I buy it for to play the quests so if you can add enough quests that I don't run out of things to do I don't care what other things they do.
I don't pvp and did it infrequently in WOW so I don't care what they do to the pvp. I don't buy vanity items from a cash shop so I don't care what they release or how much they charge for it nor who pays for it. I do care that STO is a game I wanted to play and for the most part found it fun until a month in you realise that's the end of the ride so to speak (and for me that was long before reaching end game my highest character was a captain maybe level 3) only to look at two concurrent updates and see there are more itmes inthe cash shop than the free content which only consisted of a few task forces that I could care less about running.
I don't mind if someone is against a cash shop, but I'm not and am not going to pretend to be either but I'll continue to rally against companies that reach the lows that I see Cryptic reaching with their trade on fanboyism.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I think the big slap in the face that most people are feeling with STO is the fact that they are already content lite, and on top of that are using their time to create useless emotes and shucking them in the C-Store when their actual game is not finished by any standards.
If they were actually creating them de novo I wouldn't have as much of a problem. These are standard emotes they ripped from the CO engine and decided to charge people to re enable them.
Cryptic wouldn't have a c-store, if there wasn't demand for it. So in a way, we've made our own devil. As for Cryptic charging for emotes and still charging a premium price, that's also not a surprise.
On a personal note, I'm a Star Trek fan. But I've got to say, I'm now disappointed and disillusioned with the game. STO is not true Trek, it's what I would call Trek like.
That pretty much sums it up perfectly. Not to be on Cryptic's defense but there are many forum posters asking for these items and willing to pay for them. It gives them some sense of uniqueness it seems to have said items. The C-Store is the wrong venue to acquire unique items with the current state of the game. If they had the budget set aside or decided to put revenues back in the game to make these unique items achieved in game there wouldn't be these objections. As it stands it's just a money grab with willful participants. So who is exactly at fault?
I think though this statement is subjective, I've not heard how well Cryptic does in the C-store and am also aware that on atleast one occasion a nice bunch of c-store points were given away so I don't know how rabid people are to spend money on those items. I also would never take it out on the community either, the question is what is the more attainable goal convincing Cryptic they need to include much more free content in game in the first place or convincing an entire community of people you don't even know to not spend money in the cash shop.
If I went the route of blaming the community I'd be like Nik trolling posts of players and bashing them senselessly to no avail but if I speak with my wallet and my mouth Cryptic as a single entitty of far less people than the mmo community may actually change how they do what they do.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
That pretty much sums it up perfectly. Not to be on Cryptic's defense but there are many forum posters asking for these items and willing to pay for them. It gives them some sense of uniqueness it seems to have said items. The C-Store is the wrong venue to acquire unique items with the current state of the game. If they had the budget set aside or decided to put revenues back in the game to make these unique items achieved in game there wouldn't be these objections. As it stands it's just a money grab with willful participants. So who is exactly at fault?
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't cryptics position that there wouldn't be anything in the C-store that could be had ingame as well?
Just another crock of BS from a lame development house.
I will never touch another cryptic game as long as their "fast food" versions of MMO's in their standard M.O.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Cryptic wouldn't have a c-store, if there wasn't demand for it. So in a ways we've made our own devil. As for Cryptic charging for emotes and still charging a premium price, that is not surprise.
On a personal note, I'm a Star Trek fan, but I've got to say, I'm now disappointed and disillusioned with the game. STO is not true Trek, it's what I would call Trek like.
You are right there is and was a demand for the C-store the only problem is it was not the demand of the player base more like the suits or the devs themselves. I mean do you really think that players asked them to include a cash shop?
It points right to why I am opposed to Cryptics use of the cash shop they are trading on the fanboyism of us, the community to turn a very good profit especially when you consider the garbage we are paying for that is STO.
I love your last line too it sums up STO very well Trek like.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Must be a slow day for some of you, or something. Cryptic selling stuff via C-Store? Whooopeee. This thread is a new low for the cryptic haters. The cheek of it hey, an emote! How can anyone bare to play without this emote, or a costume?
You guys keep kicking the hornets nest, only many of the hornets don't give a rats ass any longer. Soon there will be a new title launch for you people to hate on.
I really can not imagine how some of you folks would react in the face of a real crisis, or real bad news. But in light of this devastating news delivered in this thread I am off to make peace before the end of the world draws in, as surely it must now.
Oh yes and good lord what an end the world must be coming to, mmo players posting about games they don't like and goodness me, some of us even post about games we even like, yes you are right the world must be coming to an end, how close are we to 2012?
If you want truly "devastating news" go to CNN but considering you are on a site dedicating to gaming you're going to read comments about gaming, and unlike watching CNN you have a choice here and since you chose to read this thread anyway I'd have to say your comment only labels you a troll considering you had to have known how we would feel and what we would be saying.
and the irony is you, and the op are complaining about just that; Choice. I'm as much a troll as the OP is, given his wording and title. This thread is complaining about a business, that makes and sells computer games, selling items to make money ~ vanity items at that.
Many, many things in life come with optional extras at a fee. had Cryptic started charging a fee for missions, loot, access to chat or for each login I could see the problem.
This thread was akin to kicking the ants nest so you can watch them get mad.
Ok so do like most of us do, when a business is using a practice others see as a problem but you don't ignore their complaints, or state in plain english why you disagree. You came in the post talking like we are in the wrong for commenting how we see fit about a game on a gaming site, and you are like the first person to disagree which shows you many share the opinion that the practice as used by Cryptic is wrong. If you disagree good for you but please don't act like you are concerned by so many more important things when you are on the same gaming website as us just angry that we don't share your opinion.
So this is cryptics fault eh? Have you noticed that many mmo's out there are doing this now? Why dont you go bitch at blizzard for selling an in game horse for $25! They made over 2 million bucks in just 4 hours of that horse going up. None of these items are something that you just HAVE to have. They are fluff items that are meant to make the company extra money. You are not forced into having to buy them at all. Feel free to bitch about it all you want, but you should really try to focus your anger on the industry itself, not onto cryptic. The way you guys are acting, its like cryptic is the only company out there that has an item store. The sad truth is, they are pretty darn cheap in the stuff they are putting up there compared to their competition. Good luck on your crusade!
Because I don't play WOW and I don't even have a problem with the practice of having an item shop, if you actually read the posts before Nik started the flame war you would see that. My problem is with a company that releases the most content lite and boring game of the millenium and then releasing almost half of the items as cash shop items. Really read the entire post first.
If everygame on the market had as much content as Blizzard I would have no problem with vanity items in a cash shop my post history shows it, I've defended the practice tons of time, I've even defended Cryptic until I realized that they were using the rabid nature of mmo players to what I consider to be a dupe on the public, there is very little game for fifteen bucks a month and absolutely no fluff for free and in my opinion that's a bad sign for the industry to create games the way cryptic is and if we don't say anything maybe Blizzard releases a game as content defficient as Cryptics and thinks it's ok to charge for it. I'm not willing to sit by and watch that happen though and I could not care less how cheap their items are in comparison to the rest of the industry, their game is lacking of content unlike the rest of the industry.
This is a really good point imo. If the game had enough content to keep people playing for more than a month, then I could see it being more reasonable. Although I still think 15 dollars a month is already ample enough. WoW (which I've never played) is already a well established game content wise.
I think the big slap in the face that most people are feeling with STO is the fact that they are already content lite, and on top of that are using their time to create useless emotes and shucking them in the C-Store when their actual game is not finished by any standards.
People also forget that WoW has been out like 5 or 6 years now. of course they have more content. Hell, look at EQ1, they are on what, 12 expansion packs now. NOBODY has more content than they do! I will agree however, STO launched with not enough content. There is absolutely no denying that.
I am a lifer and right now my routine is to log in and do my daily and log out. Here is the thing though, I like the game. I LOVED the stories all the way up to 45. To me, it felt 100% like star trek all the way. I do wish there was more content and it will get here and since I paid all my money up front, I will just wait till it comes in. Those of you who are paying monthly fees should simply stop playing till they add more content. but the least of their worries is the item store. They have put things in the item store and they have added things to the game to. Fluff items are that, fluff. I dont care if they put a million emotes in it, I dont care about that. They put a million ship skins in however, and I might buy a few. The big thing is that the industry has already learned from sony that trying to sell adventure packs that contain content that you have to pay for outside of an expansion pack, does NOT work. So they dont do it.
Oh and as a side note, I am pretty sure they have stated on a few occasions that most of the items in the cstore are things that people have done in their down time. Not all, but most.
About the WoW horse, I think that's outrageous also, but I don't give a crap about WoW. There was much teeth gnashing over that on this very site BTW, so let's not pretend Cryptic is being singled out. If 140k out of 4.5 mil Western subscribers bought the horse, that's a little over 3%, so apparently not that many people embraced it.
Like others have said, when a game launches so content barren as STO, to have to pay for half the new content is the problem. Cash shop for extra slots? Ok, assuming they have a decent number of slots which STO doesn't even have. Paying for emotes...seriously? Taking races out that were in beta so they could add them to the store...just really shady business practice IMO.
You are right there is and was a demand for the C-store the only problem is it was not the demand of the player base more like the suits or the devs themselves. I mean do you really think that players asked them to include a cash shop?
Somebody as got to be buying them, they wouldn't have added it, if it wasn't worth it.
Originally posted by jaxsundane
I love your last line too it sums up STO very well Trek like.
Must be a slow day for some of you, or something. Cryptic selling stuff via C-Store? Whooopeee. This thread is a new low for the cryptic haters. The cheek of it hey, an emote! How can anyone bare to play without this emote, or a costume?
You guys keep kicking the hornets nest, only many of the hornets don't give a rats ass any longer. Soon there will be a new title launch for you people to hate on.
I really can not imagine how some of you folks would react in the face of a real crisis, or real bad news. But in light of this devastating news delivered in this thread I am off to make peace before the end of the world draws in, as surely it must now.
Oh yes and good lord what an end the world must be coming to, mmo players posting about games they don't like and goodness me, some of us even post about games we even like, yes you are right the world must be coming to an end, how close are we to 2012?
If you want truly "devastating news" go to CNN but considering you are on a site dedicating to gaming you're going to read comments about gaming, and unlike watching CNN you have a choice here and since you chose to read this thread anyway I'd have to say your comment only labels you a troll considering you had to have known how we would feel and what we would be saying.
and the irony is you, and the op are complaining about just that; Choice. I'm as much a troll as the OP is, given his wording and title. This thread is complaining about a business, that makes and sells computer games, selling items to make money ~ vanity items at that.
Many, many things in life come with optional extras at a fee. had Cryptic started charging a fee for missions, loot, access to chat or for each login I could see the problem.
This thread was akin to kicking the ants nest so you can watch them get mad.
Ok so do like most of us do, when a business is using a practice others see as a problem but you don't ignore their complaints, or state in plain english why you disagree. You came in the post talking like we are in the wrong for commenting how we see fit about a game on a gaming site, and you are like the first person to disagree which shows you many share the opinion that the practice as used by Cryptic is wrong. If you disagree good for you but please don't act like you are concerned by so many more important things when you are on the same gaming website as us just angry that we don't share your opinion.
So this is cryptics fault eh? Have you noticed that many mmo's out there are doing this now? Why dont you go bitch at blizzard for selling an in game horse for $25! They made over 2 million bucks in just 4 hours of that horse going up. None of these items are something that you just HAVE to have. They are fluff items that are meant to make the company extra money. You are not forced into having to buy them at all. Feel free to bitch about it all you want, but you should really try to focus your anger on the industry itself, not onto cryptic. The way you guys are acting, its like cryptic is the only company out there that has an item store. The sad truth is, they are pretty darn cheap in the stuff they are putting up there compared to their competition. Good luck on your crusade!
Because I don't play WOW and I don't even have a problem with the practice of having an item shop, if you actually read the posts before Nik started the flame war you would see that. My problem is with a company that releases the most content lite and boring game of the millenium and then releasing almost half of the items as cash shop items. Really read the entire post first.
If everygame on the market had as much content as Blizzard I would have no problem with vanity items in a cash shop my post history shows it, I've defended the practice tons of time, I've even defended Cryptic until I realized that they were using the rabid nature of mmo players to what I consider to be a dupe on the public, there is very little game for fifteen bucks a month and absolutely no fluff for free and in my opinion that's a bad sign for the industry to create games the way cryptic is and if we don't say anything maybe Blizzard releases a game as content defficient as Cryptics and thinks it's ok to charge for it. I'm not willing to sit by and watch that happen though and I could not care less how cheap their items are in comparison to the rest of the industry, their game is lacking of content unlike the rest of the industry.
This is a really good point imo. If the game had enough content to keep people playing for more than a month, then I could see it being more reasonable. Although I still think 15 dollars a month is already ample enough. WoW (which I've never played) is already a well established game content wise.
I think the big slap in the face that most people are feeling with STO is the fact that they are already content lite, and on top of that are using their time to create useless emotes and shucking them in the C-Store when their actual game is not finished by any standards.
People also forget that WoW has been out like 5 or 6 years now. of course they have more content. Hell, look at EQ1, they are on what, 12 expansion packs now. NOBODY has more content than they do! I will agree however, STO launched with not enough content. There is absolutely no denying that.
I am a lifer and right now my routine is to log in and do my daily and log out. Here is the thing though, I like the game. I LOVED the stories all the way up to 45. To me, it felt 100% like star trek all the way. I do wish there was more content and it will get here and since I paid all my money up front, I will just wait till it comes in. Those of you who are paying monthly fees should simply stop playing till they add more content. but the least of their worries is the item store. They have put things in the item store and they have added things to the game to. Fluff items are that, fluff. I dont care if they put a million emotes in it, I dont care about that. They put a million ship skins in however, and I might buy a few. The big thing is that the industry has already learned from sony that trying to sell adventure packs that contain content that you have to pay for outside of an expansion pack, does NOT work. So they dont do it.
Oh and as a side note, I am pretty sure they have stated on a few occasions that most of the items in the cstore are things that people have done in their down time. Not all, but most.
I remember when WOW was released, I was there for the launch but I also know that if WOW released with the lack of content STO did it would not be the juggernaught that it is today which STO will never be. And I also have seen Cryptic lie enough to not just buy that all these items are ebing created in someones spare time. I don't see who is going to work overtime on soemthing the company is going to make so much money on for free. I also recall Cryptic saying there would be no skill cap and that items released through the C-Store would also be attainable in game some way.
And I have stopped subbing and unfortunately I'm not just waiting for new content I don't think I will sub back because my opinion of Cryptic has fallen that low.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I remember when WOW was released, I was there for the launch but I also know that if WOW released with the lack of content STO did it would not be the juggernaught that it is today which STO will never be. And I also have seen Cryptic lie enough to not just buy that all these items are ebing created in someones spare time. I don't see who is going to work overtime on soemthing the company is going to make so much money on for free. I also recall Cryptic saying there would be no skill cap and that items released through the C-Store would also be attainable in game some way.
And I have stopped subbing and unfortunately I'm not just waiting for new content I don't think I will sub back because my opinion of Cryptic has fallen that low.
Then you will also remember the shear amount of bugs that WoW had at release and took years to fix. Class balance wasn't even a thought in their minds. Yeah WoW had more content and it also had more bugs. They took a stance of monthly updates only, the only deviation from that is when there is a game breaking bug. Didnt matter if they screwed something up in a class that ruined their game play, you were stuck for a month at least and hoped they fixed it. yeah, WoW isn't the game to strive to be, sorry, I dont care how many millions they have. When EQ1 released, they only had the first 20 levels ready at release. They had hardly any loot tables past 20 and struggled to get the loot tables in there. bugs everwhere, falling through the worlds and gm's who wouldn't give you back your lost stuff even if you could reproduce the problem and show it to them every single time. The gaming industry has always been jaded when it comes to mmo's.
As for the skill cap, yep they did say that and they changed it. They also said the klingons where going to be a fully playable race, they lied there. However, I dont remember them saying that about the c-store. They did say it for champions online but I dont remember seeing it for this game. But I don't know if I would be so bold as to say they lied. I think they fully intended all the above stuff but ran out of time so they had to cut stuff.
As for them creating things in their spare time. Maybe they get bonuses if something is used in the cryptic store. Who knows, they could be lieing about that or they could be telling the truth.
For me it has become a moot point. The skill cap debacle, the pr stunts that backifred, releasing with very and i mean very little content and the abusurdity of an MT store when their is no real end content has made me a dissatisified customer who will go out of his way to tell people to never buy into anything cryptic ever has to offer. To me i care little what they do now they have gained an enemy who has a long memory and THAT is all that matters to me now.
Well CoH does sell 'packs' which often include but are not limited to emotes.
I dont mind buying a pack of things which might include temporary powers, extra costume features and additional emotes if the price is right!
What is the price of these emote packs?
CoH does indeed sell booster packs. However, the sheer amount of free stuff they release puts the small amount of content in a $5 booster pack to shame.
Here is the free Issue 17: http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/game_updates/issue_17/issue_17_overview.html. This Issue includes new costume parts, emotes, missions, upgraded graphics, upgraded sounds, numerous QoL improvements, etc, etc. They've also released (rather are soon going to release) 6 free issues in the past two years while they've only released 4 much smaller booster packs in the past two years (in other words, you'll essentially be paying $10 a year to buy extra stuff.)
By constrast, for the upcoming stuff being added to the game in STO, over half of those items will be C-Store items: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3485205#3485205. There are 24 items on that list, and 13 of those items are paid C-Store items. Looking at all the current C-Store items it would cost 2040 points to buy all the store items (not counting renames, respecs, character slots, etc.) 1000 C-Store points cost $12.50. That means that STO has been out for three months and it already costs $25 to buy all the extras! At this rate it's going to cost someone $100 extra every year to buy all the extra stuff in STO!
There is a line between adding extra paid stuff to earn a bit of extra cash from the playerbase and adding as much extra paid content as you can to nickel and dime your players. One is slightly greedy, but not too onerous, the other is completely greedy and shows a disdane toward your players.
It's especially bad with a half finished game like STO. Why aren't they adding content instead of adding paid stuff?
I have no problem with companies charging for non game play related things IE emotes and pets and the rare epic mount. I do draw the line at game play related items and content. they started offering Fed Science Variant "Nimbus in the STO store now IMO that's just way to far it might be ok if it's just a cosmetic thing but anything more than that is a reason to cancel the sub. You are paying a sub of $15/month for that everyting that has any bearing on combat at all should be included in the sub at no cost outside a exp pack.
That pretty much sums it up perfectly. Not to be on Cryptic's defense but there are many forum posters asking for these items and willing to pay for them. It gives them some sense of uniqueness it seems to have said items. The C-Store is the wrong venue to acquire unique items with the current state of the game. If they had the budget set aside or decided to put revenues back in the game to make these unique items achieved in game there wouldn't be these objections. As it stands it's just a money grab with willful participants. So who is exactly at fault?
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't cryptics position that there wouldn't be anything in the C-store that could be had ingame as well?
Jack seems to side with this thinking but someone else in power is over riding him. For benefit of the doubt I say this.
Just another crock of BS from a lame development house.
I will never touch another cryptic game as long as their "fast food" versions of MMO's in their standard M.O.
Same here until they prove other wise. Not sure how they will change since the deal is done with Atari to continue with this M.O.
cryptic defense force, their particularly fanatical version of the fanboy.
Last night some guy who perceived himself as an internet lawyer was claiming that posting negative opinions on other websites was dangerously close to libel. LOL That's only true if the statements are false. I guess they expect cryptic to start filing lawsuits against their ex customers now. That will do wonders for their corporate image.
LOL, if they are going to play internet lawyer..at the very least they could wikipedia the definition of what they were talking about. "Opinions", by definition, can't be libel. In order for a statement to be libel it has to be construed as a statement of fact. Claiming that something was an "opinion" rather then statement of fact is one of the standard defenses used in libel cases if I'm not mistaken.
Is there anyone left to pay for their stupid emotes anymore?
Just the people that are life time subscribers who paid a high price for being able to F2P and have a long term reason for sticking around and spending more money collecting all the store items. They have a completely different attitude about the store compared with someone paying monthly subscription who questions the worth of stuff in the store.
Excusing the store with arguments like "it's due to inflation" "it's due to a study that EA did" "the developers did it all in the spare time we should pay them extra" "customers don't like raised subscription fees that's why there are store items" are all pretty sad, desperate, full of apologies and make me lol.
Plenty still play, so its nowhere near doom. So either they have a hell or a lot of lifers or somone is just BS'ing.
When they did the forum name color change for lifers, there were a LOT more lifers than I ever expected on the forums. That's only the people who post on the forums so I imagine the actual number would surprise people if it was ever released. I started in OB and the regular posters who were not LTS have pretty much disappeared.
Comments
Having developed a supposed premium game with a premium price, and paying a subscription fee, then to have a store that offers anything for real-money-transaction, rather than blending it into the game as a reward or craftable item is the eptimomy of cheap and shallow.
I dont care what the game is. That is all.
I didn't like STO enough to buy it, but really a $2 emote pack is pretty low on the list of things they have done wrong.
This $25 celestial horse is much worse than any micro-transaction that Cryptic has done. People will defend Blizzard and say that "the difference is that their game has enough content." OK, Blizzard's game is so packed with content that you can beat 10 boars or 10 skeletons, and every 6 months there is a new synchronized swimming routine through an intestinal labyrinth to face a big new dance off at the end.
Who cares about all these quests, do people actually play these games to do quests? What happened to gameplay?
Seriously, look at a platformer like Super Mario Bros. Remember how the Japanese SMB2 is the same game, but with about 100 new platform levels. The new levels add nothing because the gameplay and mario's abilities are pretty much unchanged from the original:
The same game, just more of it. They didn't bother to release this in the US until 8 years later. Am I the only one that finds gameplay more important than content?
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
If I was still playing WoW I would.
Sure crypic isn't the only MMO with a mt store but I find their version of it slightly underhanded. Remember when ferengi were in beta but pulled for "bugs"? Strange how it showed up in the c store went STO went live.
I assume by directing our anger at the mmo industry you mean atari? Still can't believe people are defending cryptic using that old chestnut. Cryptic claimed they could produce an mmo in 2 years. Who's fault is that? Atari's? No. Atari didn't force cryptic to make any claims before they bought them. Cryptic couldn't meet their own deadline and atari held them to their original claim because they spent millions on cryptic due to their claims. So atari is the bad guy?
That pretty much sums it up perfectly. Not to be on Cryptic's defense but there are many forum posters asking for these items and willing to pay for them. It gives them some sense of uniqueness it seems to have said items. The C-Store is the wrong venue to acquire unique items with the current state of the game. If they had the budget set aside or decided to put revenues back in the game to make these unique items achieved in game there wouldn't be these objections. As it stands it's just a money grab with willful participants. So who is exactly at fault?
Hmmm I hate to have to be the one to tell you this but gameplay is achieved through content, no content no gameplay. And I for one care about the quests, that's what I play mmo's for (sorry to disapoint the sandbox crowd) but I am an rpg player have been since before there were mmo's but when I buy an mmo that's what I buy it for to play the quests so if you can add enough quests that I don't run out of things to do I don't care what other things they do.
I don't pvp and did it infrequently in WOW so I don't care what they do to the pvp. I don't buy vanity items from a cash shop so I don't care what they release or how much they charge for it nor who pays for it. I do care that STO is a game I wanted to play and for the most part found it fun until a month in you realise that's the end of the ride so to speak (and for me that was long before reaching end game my highest character was a captain maybe level 3) only to look at two concurrent updates and see there are more itmes inthe cash shop than the free content which only consisted of a few task forces that I could care less about running.
I don't mind if someone is against a cash shop, but I'm not and am not going to pretend to be either but I'll continue to rally against companies that reach the lows that I see Cryptic reaching with their trade on fanboyism.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
If they were actually creating them de novo I wouldn't have as much of a problem. These are standard emotes they ripped from the CO engine and decided to charge people to re enable them.
Cryptic wouldn't have a c-store, if there wasn't demand for it. So in a way, we've made our own devil. As for Cryptic charging for emotes and still charging a premium price, that's also not a surprise.
On a personal note, I'm a Star Trek fan. But I've got to say, I'm now disappointed and disillusioned with the game. STO is not true Trek, it's what I would call Trek like.
I think though this statement is subjective, I've not heard how well Cryptic does in the C-store and am also aware that on atleast one occasion a nice bunch of c-store points were given away so I don't know how rabid people are to spend money on those items. I also would never take it out on the community either, the question is what is the more attainable goal convincing Cryptic they need to include much more free content in game in the first place or convincing an entire community of people you don't even know to not spend money in the cash shop.
If I went the route of blaming the community I'd be like Nik trolling posts of players and bashing them senselessly to no avail but if I speak with my wallet and my mouth Cryptic as a single entitty of far less people than the mmo community may actually change how they do what they do.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't cryptics position that there wouldn't be anything in the C-store that could be had ingame as well?
Just another crock of BS from a lame development house.
I will never touch another cryptic game as long as their "fast food" versions of MMO's in their standard M.O.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
You are right there is and was a demand for the C-store the only problem is it was not the demand of the player base more like the suits or the devs themselves. I mean do you really think that players asked them to include a cash shop?
It points right to why I am opposed to Cryptics use of the cash shop they are trading on the fanboyism of us, the community to turn a very good profit especially when you consider the garbage we are paying for that is STO.
I love your last line too it sums up STO very well Trek like.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
People also forget that WoW has been out like 5 or 6 years now. of course they have more content. Hell, look at EQ1, they are on what, 12 expansion packs now. NOBODY has more content than they do! I will agree however, STO launched with not enough content. There is absolutely no denying that.
I am a lifer and right now my routine is to log in and do my daily and log out. Here is the thing though, I like the game. I LOVED the stories all the way up to 45. To me, it felt 100% like star trek all the way. I do wish there was more content and it will get here and since I paid all my money up front, I will just wait till it comes in. Those of you who are paying monthly fees should simply stop playing till they add more content. but the least of their worries is the item store. They have put things in the item store and they have added things to the game to. Fluff items are that, fluff. I dont care if they put a million emotes in it, I dont care about that. They put a million ship skins in however, and I might buy a few. The big thing is that the industry has already learned from sony that trying to sell adventure packs that contain content that you have to pay for outside of an expansion pack, does NOT work. So they dont do it.
Oh and as a side note, I am pretty sure they have stated on a few occasions that most of the items in the cstore are things that people have done in their down time. Not all, but most.
About the WoW horse, I think that's outrageous also, but I don't give a crap about WoW. There was much teeth gnashing over that on this very site BTW, so let's not pretend Cryptic is being singled out. If 140k out of 4.5 mil Western subscribers bought the horse, that's a little over 3%, so apparently not that many people embraced it.
Like others have said, when a game launches so content barren as STO, to have to pay for half the new content is the problem. Cash shop for extra slots? Ok, assuming they have a decent number of slots which STO doesn't even have. Paying for emotes...seriously? Taking races out that were in beta so they could add them to the store...just really shady business practice IMO.
Somebody as got to be buying them, they wouldn't have added it, if it wasn't worth it.
Thanks....
I remember when WOW was released, I was there for the launch but I also know that if WOW released with the lack of content STO did it would not be the juggernaught that it is today which STO will never be. And I also have seen Cryptic lie enough to not just buy that all these items are ebing created in someones spare time. I don't see who is going to work overtime on soemthing the company is going to make so much money on for free. I also recall Cryptic saying there would be no skill cap and that items released through the C-Store would also be attainable in game some way.
And I have stopped subbing and unfortunately I'm not just waiting for new content I don't think I will sub back because my opinion of Cryptic has fallen that low.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Then you will also remember the shear amount of bugs that WoW had at release and took years to fix. Class balance wasn't even a thought in their minds. Yeah WoW had more content and it also had more bugs. They took a stance of monthly updates only, the only deviation from that is when there is a game breaking bug. Didnt matter if they screwed something up in a class that ruined their game play, you were stuck for a month at least and hoped they fixed it. yeah, WoW isn't the game to strive to be, sorry, I dont care how many millions they have. When EQ1 released, they only had the first 20 levels ready at release. They had hardly any loot tables past 20 and struggled to get the loot tables in there. bugs everwhere, falling through the worlds and gm's who wouldn't give you back your lost stuff even if you could reproduce the problem and show it to them every single time. The gaming industry has always been jaded when it comes to mmo's.
As for the skill cap, yep they did say that and they changed it. They also said the klingons where going to be a fully playable race, they lied there. However, I dont remember them saying that about the c-store. They did say it for champions online but I dont remember seeing it for this game. But I don't know if I would be so bold as to say they lied. I think they fully intended all the above stuff but ran out of time so they had to cut stuff.
As for them creating things in their spare time. Maybe they get bonuses if something is used in the cryptic store. Who knows, they could be lieing about that or they could be telling the truth.
For me it has become a moot point. The skill cap debacle, the pr stunts that backifred, releasing with very and i mean very little content and the abusurdity of an MT store when their is no real end content has made me a dissatisified customer who will go out of his way to tell people to never buy into anything cryptic ever has to offer. To me i care little what they do now they have gained an enemy who has a long memory and THAT is all that matters to me now.
CoH does indeed sell booster packs. However, the sheer amount of free stuff they release puts the small amount of content in a $5 booster pack to shame.
Here is the free Issue 17: http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/game_updates/issue_17/issue_17_overview.html. This Issue includes new costume parts, emotes, missions, upgraded graphics, upgraded sounds, numerous QoL improvements, etc, etc. They've also released (rather are soon going to release) 6 free issues in the past two years while they've only released 4 much smaller booster packs in the past two years (in other words, you'll essentially be paying $10 a year to buy extra stuff.)
By constrast, for the upcoming stuff being added to the game in STO, over half of those items will be C-Store items: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3485205#3485205. There are 24 items on that list, and 13 of those items are paid C-Store items. Looking at all the current C-Store items it would cost 2040 points to buy all the store items (not counting renames, respecs, character slots, etc.) 1000 C-Store points cost $12.50. That means that STO has been out for three months and it already costs $25 to buy all the extras! At this rate it's going to cost someone $100 extra every year to buy all the extra stuff in STO!
There is a line between adding extra paid stuff to earn a bit of extra cash from the playerbase and adding as much extra paid content as you can to nickel and dime your players. One is slightly greedy, but not too onerous, the other is completely greedy and shows a disdane toward your players.
It's especially bad with a half finished game like STO. Why aren't they adding content instead of adding paid stuff?
I have no problem with companies charging for non game play related things IE emotes and pets and the rare epic mount. I do draw the line at game play related items and content. they started offering Fed Science Variant "Nimbus in the STO store now IMO that's just way to far it might be ok if it's just a cosmetic thing but anything more than that is a reason to cancel the sub. You are paying a sub of $15/month for that everyting that has any bearing on combat at all should be included in the sub at no cost outside a exp pack.
LOL, if they are going to play internet lawyer..at the very least they could wikipedia the definition of what they were talking about. "Opinions", by definition, can't be libel. In order for a statement to be libel it has to be construed as a statement of fact. Claiming that something was an "opinion" rather then statement of fact is one of the standard defenses used in libel cases if I'm not mistaken.
Is there anyone left to pay for their stupid emotes anymore?
Mostly it is only the blues now. And some blues who are masquerading as whites to make the forums look better.
Pathetic bunch of people who i am laying the blame on for destroying what little respect i had left for craptic.
Just the people that are life time subscribers who paid a high price for being able to F2P and have a long term reason for sticking around and spending more money collecting all the store items. They have a completely different attitude about the store compared with someone paying monthly subscription who questions the worth of stuff in the store.
Excusing the store with arguments like "it's due to inflation" "it's due to a study that EA did" "the developers did it all in the spare time we should pay them extra" "customers don't like raised subscription fees that's why there are store items" are all pretty sad, desperate, full of apologies and make me lol.
Plenty still play, so its nowhere near doom. So either they have a hell or a lot of lifers or somone is just BS'ing.
When they did the forum name color change for lifers, there were a LOT more lifers than I ever expected on the forums. That's only the people who post on the forums so I imagine the actual number would surprise people if it was ever released. I started in OB and the regular posters who were not LTS have pretty much disappeared.