the game star trek online is very easily compared to eternal crusade. both started off paid and have now gone free. but star trek online does one thing that this game doesn't do: ingame economies of scale, and things for sale so pointless it's like throwing money into a hole. but the game stays open with often less players than eternal crusade has. the 'key' (no pun intended) to star trek online is that any time you open a lockbox with a key, it's a gamble. you have about a 1:200 chance of getting a shiny new ship, but most of the time it gives you trash that isn't worth the price tag, but because of how the game works people are forced to grind out or buy at least 50 lockboxes to get the best gear. the thing about keys in STO is that they're worth a lot of currency and they can't be made ingame, only bought. so somebody is constantly buying the keys. they've actually become a necessity for players, since many people have exceeded the money cap, meaning they have to use keys as a proxy for credits. in becoming a secondary currency keys also gained value in utility, and so more people buy them again. but it gets worse. they put the best ships in special packs that are even more expensive than the keys, with even worse common rewards, raising the stakes again. you could win 1BN credits or get nothing for a pack worth 20m. as time goes on, this game should release more and more relics, ones that people would actually want to use and work for. a lot of the current relics are just a different version of the original with one stat changed. stick them into a new tier of crates above relic. 50k crates would be hard for an f2p to get and would take a long time to grind from scratch for a p2p. at this point, RTC-RQ or RQ sales should be added, so that people can pay to get crates faster. this game has it's own "useless junk" in weapon mods, and they sort of need to stay in the higher boxes so people want more boxes, but at the same time, if you spend 50k or 100k on a crate, you're probably hoping for something actually good. and considering the time spent gathering RQ, perhaps the weapon should reflect the effort it took to get? the LP cost should pay for the upsides. TL;DR? make more, better crates, that contain relics that are actually better than their predecessors, ornate visuals and maybe even unique effects. make them expensive and interesting enough that people might want to buy/use rtc to grind them, like unlocking something in world of tanks.
F2P players make only a third of the Req P2P make off of every game. They already are grinding to get the same gear a P2P player is. The incentive to go to P2P is that all that xp is stored, and they get a lot of RTC if they buy the game. That said, the philosophy for the in game store, as shaky as it has been, has always leaned on pay to look cool, and RTC can be earned through playing the campaigns. I personally hate randomized loot boxes and am glad they limited them to just the Req. I think it's a good thing the devs said, "you earned it, you buy it." No WoW item grind necessary.
Oh look, a zoggin' gambler. Go back to unboxin' crates in CS GO ya addicted knife diddler. Get yer gamblin' out of my 40k
Oh good Idea. Lets compare a game with a shitty pay2win with one that saids there will be no p2win. If you say now, but you can buy keys from other players thats shit and just means the longer the game drags on and the fewer player play the game the higher the prices will get, and your idea is even something else than the STO model since you cant trade with players. Every game which lets you accelerate progression by payment just means company will slow down progression so people are forced to spend money. Especially if there are op weapons waiting for them and pay money for lootboxes is cancer anyway and should be against the law, especially on games that are not Adult rated
yeah the model here would just be you can buy loot crates with RQ earned ingame a new player still has to unlock all the crates to get what they want unless they're lucky.
The key with any game to continue is new players and cash flow. As I stated in another thread a system with some micro sales would be good IMO. Say $2.99 for an individual item or shiny piece of armor.
this is why i kinda think the 10k RTC weapons should all have special perks like abbaddon's grace does. right now everyone says "NOOO WAIT" when somebody says they're gonna buy an RTC weapon. at the least they should actually be worth the 10$. you can get skins just as good as most of the weapons from crates anyway.
True. What I think should happen is also items that are no longer available but only through Twitch give away should be made available as well.
