Webstore - a wasted opportunity?
Oomox
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Dear All,
I am interested to hear from the users of the Timelines webstore concerning their experiences.
It has been a while since this feature has been introduced, and I'd like to open a thread on it. Personally, I think this is sadly a very much an under-utilised resource, with considerable potential, and one which could probably be easily changed with a little thought and application. As it stands, it mostly iterates, albeit slightly more cheaply here in Europe, the offers already available through gameplay.
For example, as a player with a few years gameplay under their belt, one of the banes of my gameplay experience is to buy an offer, and find that every crew member or ship schematic obtained in the offer has already been frozen years ago, and has to be airlocked or burned as replicator fuel in the case of schematics. I have now reduced my spend only to buy offers after the Portal is updated (and the timing of those updates is already ridiculously arbitrary).
What would be useful for me is a webstore facility with I can buy a number of citations to cite the ever growing 1/5* and 2/5* in my crew manifest, cite and immortalise them, and then shuffle them off to the freezer to make way for newbies. What I think would also be useful is to have a facility in the webstore to 'buy' crew members who have already been introduced to Gameplay, but who are not yet in the Portal, and buy these off the 'shelf'. As this is specific to crew who are not currently in the Portal, there should be no interference with the Crew Retrieval feature currently in place.
What features would be useful for you to have there? And to anyone with IT skills, how feasible are these suggestions?
Oomox
I am interested to hear from the users of the Timelines webstore concerning their experiences.
It has been a while since this feature has been introduced, and I'd like to open a thread on it. Personally, I think this is sadly a very much an under-utilised resource, with considerable potential, and one which could probably be easily changed with a little thought and application. As it stands, it mostly iterates, albeit slightly more cheaply here in Europe, the offers already available through gameplay.
For example, as a player with a few years gameplay under their belt, one of the banes of my gameplay experience is to buy an offer, and find that every crew member or ship schematic obtained in the offer has already been frozen years ago, and has to be airlocked or burned as replicator fuel in the case of schematics. I have now reduced my spend only to buy offers after the Portal is updated (and the timing of those updates is already ridiculously arbitrary).
What would be useful for me is a webstore facility with I can buy a number of citations to cite the ever growing 1/5* and 2/5* in my crew manifest, cite and immortalise them, and then shuffle them off to the freezer to make way for newbies. What I think would also be useful is to have a facility in the webstore to 'buy' crew members who have already been introduced to Gameplay, but who are not yet in the Portal, and buy these off the 'shelf'. As this is specific to crew who are not currently in the Portal, there should be no interference with the Crew Retrieval feature currently in place.
What features would be useful for you to have there? And to anyone with IT skills, how feasible are these suggestions?
Oomox
2
Comments
Something similar happened to me too Bylo. Because the amount I paid in € for the reduced $ amount available from the webstore, in conjunction with the company I nominated at check out to handle the transaction, some algorithm at my credit card company was tripped, and my card shut down. It took an hour on the phone and god-awful waiting muzak before I got to talk to a human. I can't blame WRG for any of that but it made me think twice before buying again.
The muzak left awful ear worms ...
This is simply because it is a different place to put in information for my credit card. I won't do it. I don't even give Google Play that information. I go to the store and buy a gift card and use that. No fuss. No personal information needed. I simply enter the code on the back. Easy. I can't use a gift card with no personal information on the website, so I won't do it.
There are still missed opportunities, and headscratching ones at that, with the webstore. Again, using today's examples, you can only get two 10 for 10+cits on the webstore; why not the full four, like in the game? I'd also like to see them introduce a basket feature, so I can buy more than one offer at a time. And, yes, selling specific cards would make sense (though the whole EV Suit Boimler did not go over well with ANYONE). But I'm betting there are limits with the vendor they are using for the website.
Still, I would recommend to everyone to use the webstore: If you're already buying offers, you'll get more for the same price.
Agree #1 gripe is if you use a credit/debit card, after the 3rd straight purchase, a phone call happens. PayPal tends to fix that for me.
I've spent more in the webstore than I have in the game in the last year (June 2022 is when Babka shows my first receipt)
YMMV if you are a non-spender or light spender vs. idiot lighting his money on fire
Buying non portal crew is just 🤦♂️ That is the reason for events. And there is a reason for the long gap in portal updates
Any offer/deal that you can think of could be offered in game. If WRG/TP didn't want to offer a deal before, being on the web store doesn't suddenly make them want to offer it.
There are currently just under 700 legendary crew, and over 1000 crew slots can be purchased.
Next time there is a slot sale, and the 23k dil at the same time, buy the dil and use it for 25 tiers of slots, it will give far more value for your money.
Meh.
'🤦♂️' reply, D- at best. You're failing 'Thread flaming 101' and thus are required to repeat the whole year of your BA in Trolling studies.
Sometimes life prevents others from participating in or completing events.
Sometimes technical complications occur in gameplay, and players are locked out of events.
Suggesting what you would like in to buy from the webstore and when it is available, buying what you want from the webstore is about customer choice.
That's a certainly a possibility. However, I already find it a drudge to police occupancy of the 750 slots I currently have available without adding further slots.
Or you could not waste any DIL on crew slots and use your DIL for something that's actually useful like Quantum, Valour or even the occasional pack.
See my signature for details.
😭😭😭😭
And that's life! You move on. I know if I don't care for an event - new crew or not - I will sit it out. It's a game, not a job & mandatory
It's not the end of the world.
You can't participate or complete events? You can still buy the packages during the event - unless you are somewhere where there is no web access & you can't get anyone to log in to your account for your
It's got nothing to do with customer choice but business & competition. What is the point of selling Tuesday packs & exclusive crew in mixed beholds that people will chase - & many will buy until they get them! If you can just get them a few months later?
So yes, you can buy non portal crew at the time of release & then buy honour to cite them up
Oh & of course anyone that disagrees with somebody else is instantly a troll
It's not possible to have an opinion of your own anymore. It's just a way of avoiding the subject matter & I won't even approach your follow up #hypocrisy
Or be more selective in the crew you want. Plus with the amount of introduced crew, the golds that used to be considered good & useful no longer are. Take a look & full them. You will be surprised at how many get chopped
I’d say that your tone is what’s causing people to say you’re a troll.
Yes, people (myself included) should be more disciplined when it comes to Timelines. But to be fair, the people who spend the most are undoubtedly the ones who have kept Timelines alive.
They must have a reason. But, I too wonder, now that you mentioned it.
This. Thank you.
Great point - as the webstore transactions route through the DBID. Perhaps the level of encryption on this site isn't sufficient for secure processing of payments, but even if so, in my experience payments are normally routed through secure third party sites anyway.
Imagine an Amazon inspired Promenade, where Amazon Marketplace meets Quarks Bar, where every player can set up a shop and trade surplus crew, surplus schematics, and surplus items ...
Imagine new gameplay issued on AWS, offering new adventures and new challenges for players wishing to pay for access ...
Imagine it all ...
It does not need secure processing on this site. All it needs is a weblink to the store, that supplies your ingame DBID to the store.
There's not even a direct link from the forum without passing the game id.
So you are saying that everything I said in my first reply is trolling? That none of what I said makes sense? I stand by every word I say & as I repeatedly say, you should work for the items in this game, not expect them given to you for gratis/the easy way
Plus I'm talking about all who are labelled trolls who have an opinion.
If you constantly target the same person - especially across multiple threads or try to start conflict, that's a troll (princess uhura being the obvious example )- that's why I never bothered to respond to Oomox's opening about my "education": it would just cause more trouble not to mention had nothing to do with the topic we are discussing
I will always stand by freedom of speech & anti-censorship, even when I disagree with that person's views. You can't have yin without yang. As Frank Miller summed up - & rightly predicted - years ago
This is exactly what I do
Oh, I see it so differently. With the current state of FBB you want as many people out as possible. I use the merits saved to buy the merit packs instead (which is mostly just for honor). I don't think spending dil on Quantum or Valour is a good use at all. I guess it depends how advanced your roster is and how good your fleet is. All I spend Dil on is packs with very high chances of legendaries I don't have, slots and I'll spend 5k dil on Mirror Tuvok if I ever see him.
But, each to their own.
Ya see, that's the awesomeness of lots of slots, there is no policing because there is no need to make choices. (Now, maybe the new mechanic will change that, but for now, it's the lazy option.)
But that's effort. It's a game and the chill way to play is just to not have to make banal choices at all. You do you of course, but there's nothing wrong with the wild amount of slots approach.
I don't disagree with your absolutism approach to free speech, but I am careful not to give any credit to people on the far right. It is an unfortunate coincidence of views, but where as I want people to have the unfettered freedom to speak truth to power, others want the ability to be as abusive as they want. It's important not to conflate the two approaches even if they are in broad agreement on the intermediary objectives. Frank Miller is a controversial figure despite his talent.
I never said there was 🙂
I don't think I could cope though mith that many even if I had the option. I'm at 450-ish right now & can't imagine all the scrolling at 700+ 😮 Even with search function. THAT to me would be effort 😉