I’ve been thinking more about last week’s post on Star Trek Online, F2P, and lock boxes. I’ve looted a few lock boxes since then and left them sitting in my cargo bay. I’m still not planning on spending money or dilithium on keys, but I’m not as bothered by having them show up as drops as I expected.
Judging by the number of messages I’m seeing in game announcing when someone wins a Galor, there are a lot of players spending money or dilithium on keys. I’m sure that having lock boxes as drops and keys in the store generates more sales than just having the boxes in the store. A player might not think to buy a box from the store, but if their in the game and loot a lock box then they’re more likely to purchase a key.
I’m still not a fan of the practice but there are a lot of people in game having fun with it. Besides, the more money that Cryptic and Perfect World makes, the more they can reinvest in the game. More money means more content designers creating story missions, more programmers adding features to the game engine, and more systems designers working on new game features.
While I agree with the content of this post, I’m much more in agreement with the feelings of your first post on the subject.
In part, this is because I’ve always really, really wanted a Galor in-game (what? The Cardassians are my favorite!), and I deeply resent that the game wants me to gamble for it. And I’m not going to.
I totally get that, however from what I’ve heard in interviews the only reason Cryptic got CBS’s approval to but the Jem-Hadar bug and Galor in-game for Federation players is because they were able to guarantee that the ships would be rare. So at least this way you have a chance to get one without waiting for a playable Cardassian faction, which may never come.
Keep an eye on the Exchange if you really want one but don’t want to gamble.
Cryptic making money to reinvest back into devs, missions, the game as a whole is a good thing. What not a fan of is collecting the boxes in game as drops and having to purchase a key and play roulette trying to open the boxes.
First time I saw the box drop just getting back to STO now that it’s FTP I was like cool a box, wonder what’s in it. Try to open it says need Key. What? So finally I convince myself to spend on some Cryptic Points to open it. Nothing of real value. Duhh. Next 2 boxes I get soon after I still had enough points so was like what the he’ll I got 2 more keys. Nothing of real value maybe a green gear or something like that. At that point I was like he’ll no this ends right here buying anymore keys. It’s a crap shoot for a sucker to gamble on boxes that require keys.
So since then refusing to buy anymore keys I now have 24 of the boxes stacked up in my Bank and I not buying any keys to open them and don’t care if a Galor is in the next one I would of opened.
Agreed, despite moderating my opinion on the lock boxes somewhat, I still don’t plan on opening any of them and for exactly the scenario you outlined above. Some people though, and I don’t understand why, get a real charge out of gambling and consider that the payoff even if they don’t get something they wanted.
I have two stacks of boxes at the moment, I’m either going to drop them in the Fleet’s bank or put them on the Exchange for 1 Energy Credit per stack.