Seriously, as long as it is just cosmetic I dont have a problem with it at all. I highly doubt you will be able to buy an "elite bridge officer", or some uber weapon, as that would unbalance the game and virtually destroy it, and Cryptic is smarter than that. Its just another way to gain revenue and that all cycles back into the game development and funding more content being added into the game. To me its a win win. Will I buy items? Sure,most likely Ill buy some cosmetic ship parts or uniforms. I get things I want Cryptic makes money that allows the game im playing to stay running, again, for me its a win win situation. Until I see it become a way to "buy your way to the top" (witch again, I HIGHLY DOUBT), Im not gonna panic or give it another thought. Most MMOS have some form of Micro Transactions (oh god I said the dreaded words!!), but just call it something else and people dont even give it a second thought until the dreaded words are spoken. In a increasingly competitive MMO market get use to seeing it ,as they need all they can get to keep the ship afloat and running with the high development costs of making and running  an MMO.

Originally posted by kcypher2000

A: You are raltor or you not clever enough to realize i don't give a damn about getting your name correct you blind pc fanboy. 

B: Lets see how many good pc games with a lot of options have come out lately?  Oh wait they were all either released on a console as well or in most cases like KOTOR and Mass Effect they were released on a console first. 

C: There is no different mindset anymore!! 

D: Gamers want games and most people who have a console also have a pc. 

E: Consoles are now just pc's with set, and often weaker specs, but is more stable and convenient to use. 

F: guess what genius, you shouldn't have to work to get a game to run. 

A: Ohhh! Spelling my name wrong and failing to use a capital "I" when referring to yourself. You are clearly the most clever person on this forum! I'm so sorry I dared to challenge your intellect oh mighty one!

B: That would be exactly my problem with console development! Developers are abandoning the PC platform to go to consoles and develop their games for console owners. They see the higher cost of developing on the PC, plus the higher standards that PC gamers have over console players and they see how much easier and quicker it is to get a game out on a console. This has lead to a decline in quality for the entire industry. A great example: "ES3 Morrowind" vs "ES4 Oblivion". Why did oblivion have a smaller world, less content, fewer skills and a shorter story? Console development. Then came Fallout 3... which was just Oblivion running a Fallout mod.

C: I beg to differ. My mindset is quite different from yours and all other console owners.

D: You say that as if its a new development. It isn't. I was telling console fanboys that YEARS ago. I would ask: "You already own a desktop PC, why would you spend $500 on a console when you could take that money, use it to upgrade your PC and have a vastly more powerful machine which can play many more games?" and they would reply "Because I don't what to do all that! I just want to put the game in and play!" which is exactly the lazy attitude that leads console developers to take advantage of the situation when they see what low standards console players have. As long as you can put it in the machine and get instant gratification you will shell out fifty bucks for it, even if it gets boring a week later.

E: Thanks for admitting that consoles have lower specs and appeal to people who just want something simple and easy to use. You are making my job easy by typing up my own arguements for me.

F: And there you have my entire arguement in a nutshell: Console owners just want everything to be easy and to be given to them right away with no work. Its not the work itself I advocate, its the fact that the work is a barrier which keeps out the people I don't want to share my game with... people like you for example.

Actually, this whole discussion has reminded me of an essay I read a while back which was written by a guy who had just Goatse'd Myspace. He wanted to explain why he had done what he had done and in the process he had to explain a bit about the history of the internet: How it began, how it was available to a small number of people at first, how that changed over time, how more people got access and how the end result of that was Myspace and other "web 2.0" sites that have now taken over the net.

Here is that essay: Freedom, Justice and a Disturbingly Gaping Ass (for the record, you will not see any offensive content by clicking that link, just the essay the guy wrote about showing said content to other people.)

For the moment lets set the whole goatse thing aside and focus on the more historical part of his essay. He describes how in the early days of the internet there was what he calls a "barrier-to-entry" which kept the population of the internet small. Before massive service providers like AOL came along the net was most used by colledge students who knew how the internet worked and played by an unwritten set of rules. Then AOL did come along and every idiot and their brother was on the net. The barrier-to-entry got smaller when that happened, but some aspects of the net were still restricted to those with actual knowledge of how the net works. You couldn't for example just throw a website up without knowing something about HTML and what a server is for. But then along came sites like Myspace and the barrier-to-entry dissapeared completely. As the author of the essay put it: "It is possible, very possible, to go from Tweener at Hot Topic to Webmistress of the Dark and Foreboding Webpage of Sin without ever using a single bracket."

The gaming industry has been going through a very similar change over the last decade. It used to be that gaming was just for nerds. Teenagers and adults who knew how to use a PC mostly played PC games while somewhat less intellectual teens and younger children mostly played consoles. But as new consoles, like the Playstation and later the Xbox, became more popular the industry expanded and its appeal spread to a much larger audience. And as a result of that expansion it is now possible, very possible, to go from the same Tweener at Hot topic to the asshole who 'pwns' people in Team Fortress 2 servers then talks shit about it on an internet forum without ever using a single brain cell.

I still remember the days when the "barrier-to-entry" around the gaming industry kept out guys like our buddy Kcypher2000 here. And I wish we could go back to those days. The games were a lot BETTER back then.

As for the cash shop  i  wont use it. As for the console hate going on, you better get used to it , they are not only here to stay but getting better all the time.  Personally i have both but the PS3 is a pretty amazing piece of hardware.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

As for the cash shop  i  wont use it. As for the console hate going on, you better get used to it , they are not only here to stay but getting better all the time.  Personally i have both but the PS3 is a pretty amazing piece of hardware.

I agree, I also own a PS3 and I do think its an amazing piece of hardware, but I still buy all of my FPSers for the PC and I try to keep it somewhat upgraded. There are games that only come out for the consoles that for me are a must have, for example Uncharted and LBP.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

I would just add that MMO's have lower minimum requirements than single player games. Bioshock and Mass Effect takes more to run than any MMO ive played and as said, it was released on console as well as PC.

Good catch. The games that are on consoles as a general rule are far superior when it comes to specs. In fact, games like GTA aren't even released for PC until 6 months later because of that fact.

And as far as levels of difficulty, please. MMOs have never been that complicated. All you need is some patience and time. If the days of mindless grinding,long lines to get buffed or healed and standing around shouting LFG is considered the good ole days then I'm glad those good ole days are over.

Originally posted by Bureyku

Cryptic recently announced Champions Online will have a cash shop on top of a subscription in which you can buy with real money items that can also be earned in game.  Do you have faith that the Star Trek IP is in good hands, and will you play it if they have a cash shop?  

For me this has put Cryptic in the same boat as SOE, and I don't think i'll support this model, but to me RMT destroys games in so many ways.  How does it affect you?

The OP has a simplistic an uninformed opinion.

WoW has real money transactions and its doing just fine, and people enjoy that game.

I have Champions Online. It's RMT isn't even working atm, and when it does, it won't matter because it will be selling fluff.

I still have faith!

I'm fine with it as long as MT's are only cosmetic stuff and you can't "buy an advantage"

Well I have problemm with cosmetics, I just can not create in my head a bird of prey with some stupid logos or other "cosmetics" that do not belong in ST lore.

I didn't bother reading your essay or great rant of text to try and justify why you think pc elite nerds are special like babylon there. Oh and bab I'm sure you thought your insult was very creative and since your family tree probably goes in a circle i'll just choose to ignore everything you post. Even okay?

Yes Ral PC games were a very elite community for only the most brightest to install. With games like half life.... wait thats a popular game meaning it must be bad. So then Baldurs gate....wait that was popular and inspired many console games so it must have also sucked. So i am curious to what in your great wisdom do you actually consider a great game that is forsaken now because of consoles and pc popularity? Zork? X-com? Or did it have to be particularly hard to install and need a lot of patches to get it to play properly? You know since apparently you don't want games to be easy to play.

Please list me one game out right now that requires a 2000 dollar pc? Oh right there is none so why spend so much money on a pc when a cheaper computer can play the same games with nearly the same quality and you can get another system in the process? The real barrier to pc gaming was that they were more expensive but that has changed over the years and pcs are more accessible to everyone. So the only barrier to gaming isn't technology or ease(love to see your idea of a challenging pc game that wouldn't work on a console) but your own insecure epeen that you lost something that you desperatly needed in order to feel special.

Since you claim to be an intellectual please link me your source to where only smart people played PCs? Please i will love to see the scientific study that proved this. Oh wait there is none and you are just making stuff up....

Oh and if your best insult for my posts is that i don't care to click shift sometimes when argueing with a self righteous internet nerd then you are really desperate. Cause i don't even bother rereading my posts. Your opinion isn't worth more than what i can type up on the spur of the moment. So you can blame console gamers all you want but something tells me that with you its a little more personal. Perhaps years of playing dungeons and dragons and eye of the beholder all alone while the cool kids talked about blaster master warped you to resent the opinions of others. So let that inner child go, be happy for who you are and stop kidding yourself that you are the only unique snowflake and that all pc games should center around your demographic.

Btw i won't be checking STO boards again for quite sometime, planning to give Aion a try until this game is closer to release, so if you really feel some need to retalitate against me in some internet tirade feel free to email me. kcypher2000@yahoo.com I will even let you get the last word and not even reply back if you need to feel you won something here.

Originally posted by sdgd

I'm fine with it as long as MT's are only cosmetic stuff and you can't "buy an advantage"

 I agree with this. In fact I support the use or Mirco transactions for cosmetic uses

I am fairly certain I have seen posts on startrekonline.com from the devs at Cryptic indicating that nothing in the shops will provide any major gians beyond the cosmetic, and everthing offered there would be obtainable in game without spending additional rreal cash, so I see no problem.

Well the issue I had with SOE is Swg, while I continued to play that game after the major changes, what killed it to me was the card addition. When they added the card game they added items you could get "only threw buying cards" that in a game like swg that has been made into a collector game it is a cash hog. Any good items worth anything (cool looking) or even (Usable) like speed bikes etc are bought threw card decks which don't even garrenty you a certain item. Its all chance and I am sure those % a manipulated to get more people to buy more cards.

In that excample only do I have issue with such an idea, while profitible to them obviously, I refuse to pay into it but people do, swg is a prime excample of it. If they do that here I probably won't mind thou, because in the end, STO really doesn't have a collector feel to it or even a world that has such. Unless ofcourse they added a cash mall for say "being able to have a certain holodeck theme" then ya, I might be a bit upset. But in the end sto is not what swg is atm and that is A: not even out and B: not a collector game.

It's a hard call for me atm, I can see myself playing this game for a long time to come and maybe even buying some odd thing in the future, but if it becomes something like swg did in it's collecting game I just won't participate as I didn't there. Eh its the wave of the future in MMO's as so many have stated here and in the end , you have a choice, don't buy it or do.

Originally posted by Bureyku

Cryptic recently announced Champions Online will have a cash shop on top of a subscription in which you can buy with real money items that can also be earned in game.  Do you have faith that the Star Trek IP is in good hands, and will you play it if they have a cash shop?  

For me this has put Cryptic in the same boat as SOE, and I don't think i'll support this model, but to me RMT destroys games in so many ways.  How does it affect you?

Why both? Are they really that greedy?

I have been a startrek fan for over 40 years, and I have COMPLETE faith in Cryptic. They are the first company that appears to legitamitely care about the StarTrek fans base. They have open forums, live chat, and take suggestions. I asked tham a while back about what they were doing to help the handicapped, and was immediately answered in private, on the forums, and they even brought it up in an interview. They are CONSTANTLY  taking input from their forums and tweaking the game. If the franchise isn't in good hands with Cryptic, then it won't be in good hands with anybody at all. Don't jump them because they are trying to make a profit. These games cost an insane amount of time and money to make, and I've never seen a company go so far out of it's way and bend over backwards to please the StarTrek Fans.

...and I've seen all the games come and go over the years.

As long as the instore cash items are able to be earned in game as well for free I'm not upset. Quite frankly some people just have more money than time on their hands like people with jobs that aren't able to put in several hours of MMOing a day. Having a job shouldn't limit you from achieving something that someone who plays MMO's for 40 hours a week or more can other wise do because he just plays all day. I would be significantly upset however if the cash shop offered overpowered items that only people who pay can get. This would just be unfair to everyone.

 I think the cash model could work.   But I'm not confident about Cryptic's ability to design it into the game effectively.  

mrroboto40,

They are merely opening up multiple revenue streams thereby improving their business model and increasing their viability. If you do not like the idea of these shops don't use them. I doubt that I will use them, but it does not bother me if others do.

They have specifically stated that most of what will be available will be cosmetic, and the little that provides some advantage is available through game play. I realize that means some people will decide to get items through purchase rather than through game play, but like most games I am sure that those items will only be useful to particular levels and as such the effects would be minimized. Hey if somebody wants to spend money to short change themselves on game play, who am I to complain.

im playing champions right now and i dont even know how to use the item shop. i would say there would be no advantage to buying anything in the item shop for this game anyway.

i guess then EVE is big failure too sience u can buy ISK for cash.

Who cares about that u can buy items in game. u will be able to buy only cosmetic upgrades 

Please don't accuse someone that disagrees with you that they are a shill for Cryptic. That is accusing Cryptic of a nasty thing, and you should apologize for that.

Here's the thing, people act shocked that Cryptic is trying to make money. Thats what companies do. That is what they have to do. They have bills to pay, employees, creditors, etc. They need the money.

Something that Zinc or Jack Emmert told us, is that with the MT, they're able to afford a bigger team, and better content. This is nothing but good for STO. And that means also non-store content as well.

People are ridiculous.  Champions Online's cash shop sells friggin cosmetic pets. At the moment that's ALL they sell.

Woo Boy that's a game breaker! Let's start an endless argument about how Cryptic is Evil and the Devil because they probably plan on selling Nerd-Bling for spaceships in STO.

And blast you all again because I got sucked into reading some of this.

Originally posted by ishist

People are ridiculous.  Champions Online's cash shop sells friggin cosmetic pets. At the moment that's ALL they sell.

 

"At the moment". Correct. However, they have stated that they will, in the future, be selling items that give in-game advantages.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by ZerothLaw

Please don't accuse someone that disagrees with you that they are a shill for Cryptic. That is accusing Cryptic of a nasty thing, and you should apologize for that.

No, you should wake up. If it was made clear how prevalent corporate shills are on game site fora, I think a lot of people would be shocked.

Just ask yourself this: why wouldn't companies have some of their employees post incognito to sway public opinion on their products?

Here's the thing, people act shocked that Cryptic is trying to make money. Thats what companies do. That is what they have to do. They have bills to pay, employees, creditors, etc. They need the money.

Something that Zinc or Jack Emmert told us, is that with the MT, they're able to afford a bigger team, and better content. This is nothing but good for STO. And that means also non-store content as well.

 

No, it doesn't stand to reason at all. As you pointed out - they are in it for the money. They will lie if it serves their interests to do so.

So your answer is to just assume everyone is a company shill? I don't deny that companies that do this, but really, you haven't thought ahead on what happens to a company if they do that course of action.

Lets say the shill is discovered; people lose trust in the company, which hurts potential subscriptions. Cryptic relies on the continual goodwill of its customers, and its not going to do stupid things like that.

Besides, Awen has no need for forum shills when she has dedicated fans like... us. We'll do it all, for free, because we like what Cryptic is doing, and we understand why they're doing it.

Now, if you continue to accuse people of being shills just because they disagree with you, I will report you. People will disagree with you, for... many reasons, not least of which is that you are wrong in your assertions. Its like anti-vaxxers calling everyone that disagrees with them a pharma-shill. Its not conducive to dialog, and really, it exposes just how weak your arguments are if you must accuse someone of stuff.

I am inclined to agree with Zeroth here.

MMO_Doubter you do seem to just be cynical to the point of maliciousness. You seem to be under the impression that the devs of a game are going to do underhanded things regardless of whether they actually need to or not, just for the sake of being underhanded.