Raptr doesn’t track it, but I have been playing quite a bit of Star Trek Online recently, it’s just all been on the Tribble server. This is where the F2P testing is being done and I’ve been working on getting a new officer up to Lieutenant Commander so I can start playing around with the Duty Officer system.
If you’re interested in the game and you haven’t been reading the Path to F2P Dev Blogs, they’re worth checking out. For the most part, they’ve not contained a lot of new information, but they have been a good way to get a feel for the new interim Executive Producer, Stephen D’Angelo. The latest one, part 5, is about to cause a drama storm on the forums. Cryptic is planning to open the C-store for testing on Thursday, and as part of that testing they’re setting up Test Points for people to use to test out some of the F2P changes. Anyone with a character on Tribble will get some free points to spend, which is standard procedure. The other way people will get Test Points, is to buy Cryptic Points. Basically, if you buy a 500 point bundle for $6.25, you also get a matching 500 point bundle for Tribble.
Stephen explains this as a way for Cryptic to get a realistic idea of how well they’re doing with pricing for F2P, since if players had an unlimited pool of free points then they would just buy everything. Since they’ll be using points they actually paid for, then they’ll value Tribble purchases just as much as Holodeck purchases.
I can see the logic in that, but I don’t think it’s worth the bad PR that’s bound to come from it. The thread is here if you want to keep tabs on the community reaction.
Shotgun. Foot. Pull trigger.
Seems pretty average for a dumb decision from Cryptic.
Sadly true.
Do all of those points/ purchases vanish when FtP goes live? If so, this seems like a pretty major blunder to me. Even if not, it’s a pretty strange way to handle things.
Ahh, Ok… from now until FtP goes live when you buy CP you get an equal number of TP. That doesn’t sound horrible, but I seriously doubt it’s going to give them a very good idea of how to price things. Most players buying CP likely aren’t even on Tribble, and who in their right mind would buy CP just to purchase something on tribble that will vanish when FtP goes live?
That’s exactly what I was thinking, and a fair number for forum posters have said the same thing. Basically, it doesn’t really hurt anything except for the PR end of things, because it can be perceived as promoting buying points at a time when players know that things will be changing soon. For example, there’s an Exocomp companion pet just released on the store that I would like to own, but I’ve no intention of buying it until I see whether prices are going up or down (ignoring the fact that with F2P I’ll be getting 400 points a month for free).
Wow…I can understand the reasoning behind the move, but not a very wise decision. The storm brewing is making me get flashbacks to last year when they still seemed to be in the habit of making questionable choices.
One good thing about this is I’ve read some follow up posts by D’Angelo and it’s been pretty educational watching him handle the situation. He’s not as chatty as Dan was, but he is doing a good job keeping the level of communication up.