I havent read the whole thread, but the last couple of pages had me thinking that many players have been asking for 4* and 5* collections, and many players have been asking for more slots. Maybe its the ideal combination to have rewards for those collections be increased slots - it makes sense that those who can start to hit tiered rewards in a collection for those cards are also the ones who probably need the additional slot room.
+1
I had been thinking about something like this or alongside the dilithium in the achievement.
Add a Stasis Chamber module to the Starbases that adds slots. Give Fleets a new project and a new draw.
W.W. CarlislePlayed since January 20, 2019Captain Level- 99 (May 9, 2022)VIP 14Crew Quarters: 485/485Most recent/Lowest- Anbo-jyutsu Kyle Riker (1/5* Lvl 30) 5/29/23Immortalized x-866 5* x184, 4* x 490, 3* x91, 2* x62, and 1* x27Most recent Immortal - Tearful Janeway 4* 5/25/23Current non-event project- Improving my Science base skill. Retrieval Project- Mestral 1/5*
It may also be useful to tie a few benifits to levels to make leveling feel like it means something. Not just slots, but those would fit.
A compromise might be to create one or two of the following
It may actually be more complex on the dev team, but if you had a command staff (or more creatively, main crew) flag (kinda like the heart) to toggle for immoralized crew these could be flagged to no count toward crew slots. Could expand with level like 5 per 10 levels. Objectively you could veiw these crew as arena/skirmish. Locking them to that and away from factions and voyaging may be the trade off. Put a cool down to prevent constant toggles. Not blocking non immortal crew from sitting a ship in a skirmish, just creating a strategy option that has a trade off for expanding slots. Similarly perhaps create a voyage exclusive pool and a gauntlet exclusive pool. The main pool being free to enter all mini games but the sub pools being limited. I don't know that it would address the problem head on, but it would add some flexibility and trade off strategy.
The other solution could be to have the cryo remember previously owned cards and allow players to recall or unretire a single copy of a previously owned card you dont already have, for a cost of cite or honour hall crew or somewhere in the middle. Kinda like a personal honour hall of airlocked cards. Single copy only. Additional copies would still be needed, but the effort and resources you put in wouldn't be entirely lost if you ran out of slots and had to airlock. It shouldn't take away from revenue. I'm sure paying players on tight budgets would appreciate being able to postpone working on a gold rather than being forces to airlock and wait for a Rerun.
Neither of these would eliminate the need for slots or desire to pay for them. All they would do is give players more flexibility in when they spend it. Slots would still be an important strategy factor and the need to buy them wouldn't be lessened all that much.
If the game is so tenuously held together that merely offering a discount on crew slots risks compromising it, it's in deep trouble.
The obvious (IMO) solution, if that is in fact the case, is to permanently lower the crew slot price to 1500 dil and do away with slot sales altogether. Then, the occasional 5 free slots and increase in the maximum will, once again, feel like a special gift; not much needed relief towards the hemorrhaging of crew.
Very good thought.
I believe that there will be a very good offer for dilithium this week or next just before the mega event announcement. This will be followed by a crew slot sale. Because of how I choose to focus, I'll be fine however it goes, but I believe a sale will be soon and I'll buy 60 slots.
If the game is so tenuously held together that merely offering a discount on crew slots risks compromising it, it's in deep trouble.
The obvious (IMO) solution, if that is in fact the case, is to permanently lower the crew slot price to 1500 dil and do away with slot sales altogether. Then, the occasional 5 free slots and increase in the maximum will, once again, feel like a special gift; not much needed relief towards the hemorrhaging of crew.
Very good thought.
I believe that there will be a very good offer for dilithium this week or next just before the mega event announcement. This will be followed by a crew slot sale. Because of how I choose to focus, I'll be fine however it goes, but I believe a sale will be soon and I'll buy 60 slots.
It may be a technical limitation, but it was a business decision to monetize that limitation.
This a card collecting game and game play requires cards. Monetization of card storage, especially at the prices that have been established, does not and will never have good optics.
Equally bad optics-- four years in, "technical limitations" is the last best defense any player (or the company apparently) has for this sad state of affairs. The costs of one data engineer and an upgrade to Redshift are not credibly much more expensive that this type of investment would break the financial viability of the game.
The only viable solution players have is to either A) spend way more or spend way less and play way less. We see which way the engagement numbers are going, so have fun convincing yourselves that appealing to "technical limitations" is winning messaging.
There are literally two different common TNG type 1 phasers. I'm not saying they don't, I don't work there. But if they can keep dumping unique equipment items and have multiple versions of the same item, I simply don't believe the technical limits defense. If the database was as serious limited as is suggested we should be seeing that in the character builds. They have added ships, unique character equipment, and new galaxy events. All of which would hammer a bad database. I'm sorry, I don't buy that explanation. Could be wrong, but it just doesn't make sense on the evidence available.
I havent read the whole thread, but the last couple of pages had me thinking that many players have been asking for 4* and 5* collections, and many players have been asking for more slots. Maybe its the ideal combination to have rewards for those collections be increased slots - it makes sense that those who can start to hit tiered rewards in a collection for those cards are also the ones who probably need the additional slot room.
+1
I had been thinking about something like this or alongside the dilithium in the achievement.
Add a Stasis Chamber module to the Starbases that adds slots. Give Fleets a new project and a new draw.
The problem is what do you do when someone leaves a fleet? Removing stat boosts or chron cap is easy. But crew slots is more complicated. Someone was at capacity and is now suddenly 5 crew over. But it's not just new crew that get added to overflow, it's 5 crew from the active roster? Which 5 does the game choose? Are these level 1 crew or are they potentially FE? Now imagine someone stops playing for a week or two, their fleet kicks them out, 5 crew that were safe on their roster are now in overflow. A week goes by and those potentially FE crew are now gone. The player comes back and is suddenly missing 5 crew. It's a support nightmare.
It's a decent idea to add slots to a new endgame collection, but it would ONLY help long term players and I suppose if there are enough of senior players and newer players are not necessary for the bottom line this would work for TP. ( but I seriously doubt this, as newer players are usually essential for any business/game).
The other suggestion to finalize the price at half off, and on rare occasion gift +5 to everyone is a fantastic idea! This helps everyone no matter the level, and could help TP. Players might be more willing to buy packs to collect new crew in a collection game if they could actually keep them in their collection.
I havent read the whole thread, but the last couple of pages had me thinking that many players have been asking for 4* and 5* collections, and many players have been asking for more slots. Maybe its the ideal combination to have rewards for those collections be increased slots - it makes sense that those who can start to hit tiered rewards in a collection for those cards are also the ones who probably need the additional slot room.
+1
I had been thinking about something like this or alongside the dilithium in the achievement.
Add a Stasis Chamber module to the Starbases that adds slots. Give Fleets a new project and a new draw.
The problem is what do you do when someone leaves a fleet? Removing stat boosts or chron cap is easy. But crew slots is more complicated. Someone was at capacity and is now suddenly 5 crew over. But it's not just new crew that get added to overflow, it's 5 crew from the active roster? Which 5 does the game choose? Are these level 1 crew or are they potentially FE? Now imagine someone stops playing for a week or two, their fleet kicks them out, 5 crew that were safe on their roster are now in overflow. A week goes by and those potentially FE crew are now gone. The player comes back and is suddenly missing 5 crew. It's a support nightmare.
Absolutely. It’s one thing to lose out on starbase bonuses when you leave or are kicked from a fleet, but to lose crew? And based on how the inventory bug seemingly had a preference for eating gold citations instead of 3* furs or 0* communications earpieces, I imagine that partially-fused legendary crew would be the ones to go after starbase-powered crew slots were taken away.
Unless there were a new kind of crew slot overflow functionality, where they could be held (and unusable) indefinitely, it would make potentially a lot of unnecessary work for the support team in addition to the dev time to code the feature in the first place. I can’t imagine the cost/benefit analysis at WRG would be in favor of adding that feature.
Before discarding Voyage spares or fusing, on top of several waiting for slots, I think I've had 12 or 13.
I've never counted, but thinking about voyages is a good point. I've run the table on a voyage(minus the 3 two parters you can skip), so that's 33+ crew. They all went into overflow. I would guess there is no cap on the waiting room. Just the time limit.
Could send a ticket but I think the response would go something like this: "Adding crew slots in-game is a big endeavor and not as easy as it sounds. We know limited slots can be very frustrating but this issue is on our backlog and is not a priority at this time." Hmm, that sounds vaguely familiar.....
Founding ADM - PoF family of fleets (POF, POF2 & POF3) - Dear TP: Non sequitur. Your facts are uncoordinated.
Could send a ticket but I think the response would go something like this: "Adding crew slots in-game is a big endeavor and not as easy as it sounds. We know limited slots can be very frustrating but this issue is on our backlog and is not a priority at this time." Hmm, that sounds vaguely familiar.....
Out of curiosity- does anyone know the overflow limit?
I.e. how many cards can I have waiting in the 7 day countdown?
Good question, I also believe it is, theoretically, infinite. It has been awhile, but I've have had anywhere from 50-100, at least, in the overflow. This would have been when I was trying to complete all 1*-3* crew collections. I had 50 million+ credits and I just let everyone go into the overflow, thinking I'd figure out who I could immortalize after. That said, if a 1&2* riker or Torres had disappeared, during this process, I would not have noticed.
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I have had 16 crew in the overflow; and someone mentioned 33 crew, and there are plenty of people with 300+ slots.
So most pleayers can "flex" to thier allocation +30 at any given point for 7 days without a drop in peerfomance.....
Based on this, and the fact that any tech firm that has not solved or looked to solve Database scaling and perfromance issues in 4 years, especialy when peole pay real money for slots or dil and then slots.....any old fool running a business should be able to justify paying for perfromance tuning / database migration etc etc etc
I just don't buy the whole "increasing slots is a technical burden" and causes performance hits or the other excuses offered in defense of the developers.......
just saying - it comes down to something else (hint: $$ & laziness)
Even with 370 slots, I still have a couple in overflow a month. Usually, it's an unexpected new crew from a Voyage or portal. Nearly always a 5*, since I'm down for 34 4*s needed. I just work on a couple crew until I find one I can freeze. With ~60 FF and needing immortalized and 17 4* and 3 5*s FE and needing copies, I always manage to get them in within a day or two. It often inputs my overall roster, weeding out lower crew and making room for something potentially better.
W.W. CarlislePlayed since January 20, 2019Captain Level- 99 (May 9, 2022)VIP 14Crew Quarters: 485/485Most recent/Lowest- Anbo-jyutsu Kyle Riker (1/5* Lvl 30) 5/29/23Immortalized x-866 5* x184, 4* x 490, 3* x91, 2* x62, and 1* x27Most recent Immortal - Tearful Janeway 4* 5/25/23Current non-event project- Improving my Science base skill. Retrieval Project- Mestral 1/5*
Maybe they are about to get rid of crew slots? Hardly anyone buys them at the normal price anyway, and if we got a sale now people would go nuts with their dil. If WRG announced to remove the limitation a few months later it would be a desaster.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
Maybe they are about to get rid of crew slots? Hardly anyone buys them at the normal price anyway, and if we got a sale now people would go nuts with their dil...
I played a different game a few years back with ZERO limitations on space for characters, but that was 5 years ago so older tech and a different backend, but yeah players never ever once discussed not spending real money for the brand new weekly character because they could not fit....
But maybe TP makes more money from slots than selling crew packs..... Hopefully some real analysis is being done.
Even one of the very first AAA console games to explore loot Boxes like EA Mass Effect was seeing individual players spend $13,000, but they didn't have limits so.......
Could have to do with the lack of variety in the Arena. Some might just quit arena. I don't play the two lower levels anymore. I have all 3* ships maxed and all but the newest additions to the 4* line-up. The 5* schematics are still useful to me, for now. That might explain the choice of Arena for the temporary achievement. Does anyone know if more people were playing? It seemed like it.
Finally we have our crewslots sale well done to everyone who commented on here. Start saving your Dilithium now. Thank you TP for listening but please don't make us wait 6 months for the next one.
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Comments
+1
I had been thinking about something like this or alongside the dilithium in the achievement.
Add a Stasis Chamber module to the Starbases that adds slots. Give Fleets a new project and a new draw.
A compromise might be to create one or two of the following
It may actually be more complex on the dev team, but if you had a command staff (or more creatively, main crew) flag (kinda like the heart) to toggle for immoralized crew these could be flagged to no count toward crew slots. Could expand with level like 5 per 10 levels. Objectively you could veiw these crew as arena/skirmish. Locking them to that and away from factions and voyaging may be the trade off. Put a cool down to prevent constant toggles. Not blocking non immortal crew from sitting a ship in a skirmish, just creating a strategy option that has a trade off for expanding slots. Similarly perhaps create a voyage exclusive pool and a gauntlet exclusive pool. The main pool being free to enter all mini games but the sub pools being limited. I don't know that it would address the problem head on, but it would add some flexibility and trade off strategy.
The other solution could be to have the cryo remember previously owned cards and allow players to recall or unretire a single copy of a previously owned card you dont already have, for a cost of cite or honour hall crew or somewhere in the middle. Kinda like a personal honour hall of airlocked cards. Single copy only. Additional copies would still be needed, but the effort and resources you put in wouldn't be entirely lost if you ran out of slots and had to airlock. It shouldn't take away from revenue. I'm sure paying players on tight budgets would appreciate being able to postpone working on a gold rather than being forces to airlock and wait for a Rerun.
Neither of these would eliminate the need for slots or desire to pay for them. All they would do is give players more flexibility in when they spend it. Slots would still be an important strategy factor and the need to buy them wouldn't be lessened all that much.
Very good thought.
I believe that there will be a very good offer for dilithium this week or next just before the mega event announcement. This will be followed by a crew slot sale. Because of how I choose to focus, I'll be fine however it goes, but I believe a sale will be soon and I'll buy 60 slots.
One can hope.
This a card collecting game and game play requires cards. Monetization of card storage, especially at the prices that have been established, does not and will never have good optics.
Equally bad optics-- four years in, "technical limitations" is the last best defense any player (or the company apparently) has for this sad state of affairs. The costs of one data engineer and an upgrade to Redshift are not credibly much more expensive that this type of investment would break the financial viability of the game.
The only viable solution players have is to either A) spend way more or
🖖
The problem is what do you do when someone leaves a fleet? Removing stat boosts or chron cap is easy. But crew slots is more complicated. Someone was at capacity and is now suddenly 5 crew over. But it's not just new crew that get added to overflow, it's 5 crew from the active roster? Which 5 does the game choose? Are these level 1 crew or are they potentially FE? Now imagine someone stops playing for a week or two, their fleet kicks them out, 5 crew that were safe on their roster are now in overflow. A week goes by and those potentially FE crew are now gone. The player comes back and is suddenly missing 5 crew. It's a support nightmare.
The other suggestion to finalize the price at half off, and on rare occasion gift +5 to everyone is a fantastic idea! This helps everyone no matter the level, and could help TP. Players might be more willing to buy packs to collect new crew in a collection game if they could actually keep them in their collection.
Absolutely. It’s one thing to lose out on starbase bonuses when you leave or are kicked from a fleet, but to lose crew? And based on how the inventory bug seemingly had a preference for eating gold citations instead of 3* furs or 0* communications earpieces, I imagine that partially-fused legendary crew would be the ones to go after starbase-powered crew slots were taken away.
Unless there were a new kind of crew slot overflow functionality, where they could be held (and unusable) indefinitely, it would make potentially a lot of unnecessary work for the support team in addition to the dev time to code the feature in the first place. I can’t imagine the cost/benefit analysis at WRG would be in favor of adding that feature.
I.e. how many cards can I have waiting in the 7 day countdown?
I've never counted, but thinking about voyages is a good point. I've run the table on a voyage(minus the 3 two parters you can skip), so that's 33+ crew. They all went into overflow. I would guess there is no cap on the waiting room. Just the time limit.
Ya, that does sound familiar. And, again, @any-with-power-who-is-listening, don't add slots, just have a sale.
Visit us on discord to find out more:
https://discord.gg/hg8ZRyn/
Good question, I also believe it is, theoretically, infinite. It has been awhile, but I've have had anywhere from 50-100, at least, in the overflow. This would have been when I was trying to complete all 1*-3* crew collections. I had 50 million+ credits and I just let everyone go into the overflow, thinking I'd figure out who I could immortalize after. That said, if a 1&2* riker or Torres had disappeared, during this process, I would not have noticed.
Visit us on discord to find out more:
https://discord.gg/hg8ZRyn/
So most pleayers can "flex" to thier allocation +30 at any given point for 7 days without a drop in peerfomance.....
Based on this, and the fact that any tech firm that has not solved or looked to solve Database scaling and perfromance issues in 4 years, especialy when peole pay real money for slots or dil and then slots.....any old fool running a business should be able to justify paying for perfromance tuning / database migration etc etc etc
I just don't buy the whole "increasing slots is a technical burden" and causes performance hits or the other excuses offered in defense of the developers.......
just saying - it comes down to something else (hint: $$ & laziness)
They jam them all in those bunks!
This would be of real benefit to newer players, and not me so much, but I still like the idea...
Ov (Overall) | Vo (Voyage) | Fa (Faction) | Ga (Gauntlet)
Sb (Ship Battle) | Bt (Boss Battle Traits) | Co (Collection) | (Cd (Cadet)
I played a different game a few years back with ZERO limitations on space for characters, but that was 5 years ago so older tech and a different backend, but yeah players never ever once discussed not spending real money for the brand new weekly character because they could not fit....
But maybe TP makes more money from slots than selling crew packs..... Hopefully some real analysis is being done.
Even one of the very first AAA console games to explore loot Boxes like EA Mass Effect was seeing individual players spend $13,000, but they didn't have limits so.......
EV SUIT SPOCK!!!!!!!!!!
Finally we have our crewslots sale well done to everyone who commented on here. Start saving your Dilithium now. Thank you TP for listening but please don't make us wait 6 months for the next one.
50.000 honor for 5 slots.