There has been what could be a troubling course of action in the eye of a user on the STO forums with thread closing and comments made by forum moderators. Also, there has been a lot of complaints about the C-Store in regards to what is being added and whether or not that should have been part of the game as is.

Some thoughts:

In regards to the first sentence, it seems troubling that complaints are quickly closed or hidden. I understand that the forum has guidelines and Cryptic has an image to sell, but at the same time, shouldn't Cryptic be concerned about the players it already has? I'm a player that subscribes monthly and so are my complaints illegitimate? If I quit, does Cryptic care or did they care enough to the complaints I had.

Cryptic;'s response, however, has not all been negative by a long shot. In development, Cryptic has done an amazing job of responding to the community. However, on the marketing end of things, not so much. The C-Store is troubling.

Let us not consider just current players who may or may not be prompted to leave due to the C-Store's theoretical greedy basis, but also new players, and to you Lifers out there, this should be of tremendous importance. If I am a new user coming into STO, I have expectations of what the game should feature via my purchase. Granted the game is selling at quite the low price currently, but that doesn't excuse my expectations for fifteen dollars a month. Yes, inflation has occurred since the MMO genre started charging fifteen a month, but economic downturn is also at a high, and so that fifteen a month may mean as much in many ways as it did in the early days of MMOs. So, the price is justified in many ways in the same way that it would have been justified seven years ago. With that justification of price, comes a similar expectation of content, and with the development leaps that MMOs have made in the past ten years, more expectations to boot. So as a new player, someone might be discouraged by all that's on the C-store and not in the game, particularly when Season 2 debuts and ships like the Excelsior and Nebula that appear quite often in the TV shows are in the C-Store and may have game altering mechanics at a certain level. Yes, I know that transwarp is not an I-win button, but it is quite the feature, and while leveling up in Diplomacy will feature a similar offer: this offer does not include being able to transwarp to any sector.

Season 2 has a lot of nice options. It's enough to put me on the edge of sticking around. Particularly with the diplomacy system and because you guys gave me the option to rid myself of the secondary array on the DSSV. But that doesn't mean that Season 2 won't make people upset if they are just joining the game and come to find that a good portion of what appears to be Star Trek, cosmetically or not, is on the C-Store and not even close to being an option just in game. And how about other forums? This isn't the only forum out there to talk about STO. What if people wanted to look up those forums as to find out a less biased or less controlled idea of what STO really is all about?

I understand that despite the dire situation of our global economy and US economy, the fifteen a month might not cover it all the way in terms of great profit. However, I would imagine that the rate of subscriptions lends itself to an exponential increase in profits. So, the more subscriptions STO has, the bigger the profits, the much bigger the profits. And there's longevity to think of. Even if TOR wasn't coming out next year, there would still be longevity problems due to C-Store activity, but with TOR coming out, depending on how they operate and how the game is, there should be much, much more concern for longevity. I think it would be highly beneficial for Cryptic to be more concerned with luring people into the game with all its great achievements in Season 2, than for Cryptic to be concerned with nickel and dimming people on the C-Store.

No, I'm not paid to market STO. I'm paying you to. I, and other posters, should be able to post discussions about this, on the main discussion board freely, as this does not just portend to the C-Store, but also to the future of the game itself. Threads should not necessarily be closed just because it doesn't make Cryptic happy. This is not the early days of STO during its launch phase, where the boards were filled with Cryptic bashing and no constructive criticism.

I'm not one to apologize for Cryptic, but honestly, how many of those threads about the C-Store are constructive? How many of those threads offered anything other than uncivil gripes? It seems to me that if you want your criticism to be heard and taken seriously, you would do well to make it constructive.

i have no complaints of cryptic closing down duplicate threads or threads that have no constructive criticism

i also have no complaints of them moving threads into the appropriate sub forum

its their boards and if they want to keep it tidy then that is their right, if people want to call conspiracy theory because they cant post in the right place of keep discussions to one thread then thats their problem

there ya go

/10chars

Cool,
I and other people pay for a product and expect a freer exchange on the forums.

People ask for things
Cryptic puts it in the C-Store
People say they dont want things in the C-Store
Cryptic ignroes them and puts more things in the C-Store

I wonder why these gripes are so uncivil and unconstructive, eh ?

It's not what you say, it's how you say it, eh?

well tough, you do not pay for the boards, it is a privilege. its their boards and they can do what they like. read the terms of service about the forums. they can move threads around or close them if they feel like it. if people just posted anything, anywhere, any number of times then the boards would get swamped with spam.

edit - you can more or less say what you like just keep it in the right places, keep it constructive and keep it civil, so things dont get out of hand

im sick of people posting an i quit thread knowing full well that it will be closed then complain that cryptic dont care or are not listing. the only reason they have used the words i quit is to make cryptic close the thread down and then complain they did it. the know full well it will be closed yet they do it anyway.

im tired of seeing people make posts about the c-store in the wrong place then complain that its been moved or buried. no its being moved to the correct place. all you have to do to find it is scroll down the page, find an existing thread that someone has made and post in it. simple

these things are not difficult to do. blaming them for trying to keep order is pointless

"Please Cryptic, can I have some more C-Store wallet raiding ?"

Thats the only response Cryptic are interested in which has become abundantly clear since people have tried and emphasised they dont want the C-Store, dont want items put in the C-Store and definetly do not want the trend of increasing amounts of NON-cosmetic items being slapped into the C-Store, to continue.

Cryptic continue to ignore this and barge on ahead resulting in making their CUSTOMERS get annoyed.

Oh right, its completely the fault of the customers and not Cryptic for this state of affairs.

It most certainly is. If you don't like their business practices, don't give them your business. They sell stuff on the C-Store because people buy it. Period.