Options
Looking a gift horse in the moth :)
Etienne
✭✭✭
in The Bridge
Personally, I am happy to receive some sorrytons in the mail. I wasn't effected by the server problems and free is free.
However, I kind of feel like DB should send all the guys lv10 - 40 600 more. We all got 1000 sorrytons back in the day. The new people are sort of getting hind-tit... it would be more fair to give them a little more don't you think?
However, I kind of feel like DB should send all the guys lv10 - 40 600 more. We all got 1000 sorrytons back in the day. The new people are sort of getting hind-tit... it would be more fair to give them a little more don't you think?
5
Comments
I guess I really put my foot in my moth this time :P ( Just pretend I am Canadian)
You aren't??
Chronitons were very hard to come by then. I remember getting 250 for first contact day and was thrilled. At one tone I finished third in a pure galaxy with 16,000. A while back I finished second with 158,000. That should give you an idea of the difference voyages have made. Plus the double rewards on cadets, all the additions. 400 is a pretty sizable gift. Seems to be scaled accordingly with the times.
So explain it to me again please. The relative value of chronitons has dropped dramatically since 2016-2017, ie every chroniton is worth less today than in the begining, which is why DB should give less than they used to for technical issues?
I am not sue that I really agree that it's easier nowadays to be a lv 20. Sure they have a few more ways to get chronotons then we did but there are tons more guys they have to build plus people at a much higher levels then we had to deal with. I mean, I can run a 9.5h voyage w/o a refill most of the time, can a lv 20 do that?
Our fleet the Northern Oklahoma Defenders is open to guys lv 20 guys + , and they struggle, just like we did....it'd be nice to help them out a little.
No. If it costs a wheelbarrow full of money for a loaf of bread when it used to cost a pocket full, if you’re going to give someone enough to buy a loaf of bread, now you have to give them a wheelbarrow full
We all struggled at the beginning and we all put in the time and effort to get to a certain point, they should too
I could not disagree more with this sentiment more. Catch up mechanics are a staple of good games. DB (and the existing playerbase) would benefit hugely from an influx of both new and returning players and currently that doesn't seem to be happening. Making it easier to catch up with the existing playerbase might help with that. Why would I even take up a game that essentially locks me out or makes it prohibitively expensive for me to compete.
I am not saying to eliminate time to catch up completely, but anything that can be done to reduce it would be fantastic. I say this as someone who has been playing for 3 years, so this is not about earning anything for myself. But I am concerned about the long term survival and continued development of this game and we need fresh fuel to keep the fires burning here.
Agree, we need new players joining to keep the game going and helping them become competitive is essential.
I suppose there's an argument for jumpstarting newer players, since the gap is larger for a new player today than it was "back in the day", but the game mechanics have also expanded to make it easier for players to develop their crews. I don't know from experience (having not started an alt account), but I'd bet that a new player could earn a 5* card more quickly/easily in 2019 than in 2016.
Regardless, I'm happy to get the 400 chroniton gift.
I’d like to add my half-a-penny as a player who joined not so long ago (about 5 months) - the mechanics and overall attitude of this game can be really discouraging for new players to a point when they start to think “gosh, why have I even deal with this? Screw this, I’d better go to another game” So is this good for DB and existing player base? That’s a rhetorical question.
23k?
Pffft! Amateur!
I also started reading EVERYTHING I could get my hands on to improve...
[Cut for time because no one cares]
... I was the underdog, now I'm not. Here is how I got there.
I think in threads like this, people need to define what they mean by "compete". I am still laughably behind the true whales, but I have the resources to to do as well as I want to. But I paid for that advantage. A while back I was dissatisfied with my Arena performance so when the Rura Penthe Commandant event happened, I bit the bullet, spent the $100 on the offer, and now I'm top 1% every day and skirmishes got a thousand times easier.
Do we really want to define competition such that new players can just walk in off the street and compete with people who have paid (lots of) money? TP/DB provides the means to get better, now more than ever with Campaigns. To any new player trying to make progress, buy the monthly card, buy the premium campaign, and snag the occasional pop up offers that fit what you're trying to do. My other advice is set your sights lower, focus on what is achievable and make steady progress.
Very well said my friend. If you like the game and feel it’s worth keeping going, then put in the work. If you want to build a garden, the city shouldn’t provide you the tools or people, you buy the tools and do the work. As for the Darwinism, it’s apples and oranges. Darwinism involves reproduction. I know there’s a thing called social Darwinism and that is the concept that is trying to be related here, but it’s not relatable. They are two different things
I started late this March and would say I did well. Occasionally my voyages go beyond 10 hours and usually around 9.5, I can make the top 1% in each Arena division (though I do not care for Commander division) and I rank in the top 1500 in every event (even Galaxy although I hate it) if I try.
But also for me this came with a price tag named VIP13. I buy the monthly card and the campaign, this is what can be considered "normal". But I also started to buy the 15pack/3k/3k packs twice whenever they appear when I realized how rare they became. And I bought the Elusive Treasures which I quite regretted as it was poor value for the money.
Overall I think I continue to spend too much which is around 56 to 70 € a month as it is no necessity any more. But I know that the money spent after starting a game pays off much more than later on, and I will lower my spendings over time like I did with other games before. Being aware of this should encourage DB even more to attract and keep new players as they usually spend more than old hands (whales aside).
But this is rather offtopic anyway.
The outages not only affected FTP players. I have colleagues in my fleet which were concerned about achieving the final campaign goals. And this is where the compensation should have targetted to. 400 chrons compensate for like 0.7 to 2 voyages depending on one's roster but they do nothing for the campaign achievement and the other things people missed out on.
And I agree that chron inflation should be compensated correspondingly. So if an outage of this extent was worth like 200 chrons in the early days it should have been much more than 400 today. But again... for me chrons were only half of the rent anyway.
And I don't think that anyone here were talking about new players walking in off the street and competing with big spenders. It's impossible even for non-new players to compete with whales. But new players should have the ability even to enter that competition with old non-big spenders.
Because there is a high correlation between those words within the confines of this subject both literally and figuratively. To remove any nebulous interpretations of that, do you think people are paying hundreds of dollars to coast or to win?
Yeah we're getting some massive whale tears because someone says it's not enough, even though it clearly isn't for a day+ worth of outage. That's potentially 800 chrons from voyages down the drain + 6-12 shuttle packs from cadets + fleet chrons and honour + campaign goodies + a lot of faction items from every day shuttles.
Like, I get it you spent a bit of money on the game and expect your edge to be eternal, but giving away 1k chrons for what was for some a full day of outage even though it's not DB's fault would still not have fully compensated everyone involved.
On a more theoretical note, preserving a large gap between spenders and non spenders is what kills games like these, just FYI but that's beside the point. If the parties involved could stop this ridiculous whale drama every time someone asks for something though that would be nice and the overall morale would greatly improve.
Well, it’s a game. In games effort != money.
My interpretation of spending money in games is “okay, you want to cut-off that long road and get some things faster for yourself, you have to pay money for that”. Not “the more competitive you want to be - the more money you have to spend, and if you even want to be slightly competitive you have to spend regularly”.
It's obvious that there has to be a difference between VIP0, low spenders and whales when it comes to achievements and enjoyment. I mean, DB is not a non-profit. But I also think that there has to be some balance in it and I think that they found a good one over the last couple of years. I was a VIP0 player for the first 12-15 months, starting in late 2016, and it was often very frustrating (the no warp at VIP0 thing almost made me quit several times). I think things are better now for those who want to play for free.
As to the actual topic here, I think it would be best if those who have been significantly affected by this issue wrote to CS to ask for proper compensation. I have a fleetmate who hasn't been able to login to the game for about two days now and the admiral had to temporarily kick him from the fleet because he was a squad leader and his squad had no shared crew. But as far as I know he's the only one in the fleet who has been affected to this degree.
For everyone else 200 or 400 or any amount of chrons seems fair. For new players and VIP0 it might be useful, for everyone else it's just a small gift and that's fine.
If DB wanted to avoid CS tickets then yes, they would have to send out something like 1000 chrons to everyone, but I'm sure that that would generate complaints too, especially since there's a galaxy event around the corner.
Also, I think that old players should have some advantage over newer players, whether they are big spenders or not, but I also think that they already do and that so far the advantage we have is relatively balanced. I can't see how DB would be able to remove the disadvantage of new players if compared to old ones in any way that wouldn't be completely pay to win. They could maybe add a new feature to the game where the amount of crew one has doesn't matter, but that's basically what skirmishes already are.
You are perfectly justified in feeling that way, but that is not how the people you are trying to compete with feel. Which is why I asked at the outset for people to define what it is to compete.
When the company offers up a $10 offer of 10x Premium packs (for example), I do not always pick that up, but I give it thought every time, and I promise I'm not thinking about the people "ahead" of me or "behind" me, I'm thinking of it as around 9K Honor with a chance of getting a begold. If you buy it, great, but if you don't, understand that a lot of people will, and they just got a little stronger.
A key aspect of every society is (or rather should be) progress. Every generation is standing on the shoulders of the giants of the previous generation. Every following generation should have it better than the previous one, and if people are real honest with themselves, they probably have uttered the sentence "I'm working hard so that my kids have it better one day" in some shape or form. That is part of the Social Contract. If you reject the idea, you should live as a hermit somewhere far off other people. Decrying that the kids actually do have it better now just makes you look frustrated and begrudging.
In Star Trek Timelines, as someone who has been here not since the beginning, but could at least sport a Spot avatar, and has not spent his way to VIP14-elite, I welcome any rubber-bands that make it easier for newcomers to catch up. In many fleets people are leaving faster than newcomers trickle in. The game is stagnating - at best. Any incentive for newcomers to not quit the game after the first few hours in compete frustration is helping the game at large. Especially since they are not some random insuffrables, but fellow Star Trek fans.
So much this!