Yes... I'm honestly surprised that they'd ignore all the negativity in this thread. How is that even good business sense!?

It's hilarious that on STOked they talk about letting people play how they want, but instead they're forcing everyone to grind dailies and Doff Assignments for dilithium to buy a ship. I suppose being able to play how you want only applies to people who make it to 51 in their connies or novas

How did you get your test points? I purchased some as well but they never came over. I ensured that I purchased the day they anounced it. I better get what I paid for.

Welcome to testing - if stuff like this upsets you, you would have hated closed beta back in the day as they did full character database wipes multiple times. Such is the life of a beta tester (and make no mistake a beta is what we're in.) If it really upsets you; you take a break from testing until the F2P client is WAY closer to release in December. But stuff like this is normal for a beta.

And for the reciord, I too don't like a lot of the changes like:

- The fact that ALL story missions are interconnect now to the point you can't skip one you don't like, as they all need to be done (and in the same order for every toon you make too); front to back to unlock all the content, and the pre-F2P FE series.

- I don't like making all Explore missions dailiies; and (IMO) stuff like this is really counter intuative to drawing ppeople in and keeping them playing as with what they've done, people will log in, do the dailies, and log out; and EVERYONE will be watching the clock (and probably be upset if they find they have 15 minutes to play one evening; log in, and find they CAN'T do anything they want because the daily still had 20 minutes to go.

- I understand the reason for the 'refining dilithium' mechanic, as they don't want runaway inflation; BUT I will say again, the argument that "They can get all the raw dilithium they want..." somehow thinking that will keep players playing -- IMO - wrong, because once players realize they can only refine so much per day, if they have a HUGE raw diilithium stockpile; WHY play and get more, when they CAN'T refine the stockpile they have to buy what they want? In the end, (with F2P) all taht means is eventually, players will be logging in once a day to click the 'refine dilithium' button, and log out again. maybe after a month or two, they MAY play a mission here or there if their raw dilithium gets low; but I don't think they'll be all that enthused.

But, again, testing is and can be a pain in treh butt; but if you want to provide valid feedback, (that may or may not get listened to); you grin and bear it; or walk away and hope those who did test felt like you and were able to make their feedback heard.

Well, at least we now know what they plan on calling the f2p version of STO:

Star Trek Online: Mining and Piracy in Deep Space

correct I have not noticed anything but the skill points. I was sure I read somewhare you can get dilithium doing the exploration missions. I guess I have to go fix a satellite.

I'll be honest: None of this is surprising me. Not the C-Store price increases (though apparently the +1 ship prices got cut in half? Really?) and not the incentivizing of real money transactions.

Never forget, by he way, that in going F2P that the producer MUST find some way to make money, else this is a useless venture. STO *must* make a profit somehow. Now, how it makes that profit is clearly a point of contention, but 'free to play' does have to mean 'free to play but we have to get paid somehow.' They've cut themselves off by saying all content will be free (what there is of the content, anyway) so they have to look to some other source of revenue. When providing suggestions, please keep this in mind. (Side note: I have some ideas; none of them are what we're seeing on Tribble; big surprise! But I'm probably not the one to ask since I have loathed the C-Store for some time now.)

However, I don't think the solution is for STO to die horribly. It is entirely possible that if CBS pulls the license (if they even can; I'm sure there are clauses regarding when they can do that) then we will not see a Trek MMO for at least another ten years. And there is no garauntee that a "Star Trek Online Again" will not stink like rotten apples.

Keep in mind too that it takes a LOT to kill an MMO. NCSoft killed Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa (*******S!) over politics, but Ultima Online has been going on for 14 years, FFXI is still going pretty strong, and even EverQuest is still progress-questing. You'd kind of need an isolytic charge to the server farm to kill STO at this point, I think.

One can also not count on PWI pulling a Paragon, and putting STO into the hands of an in-house development group. This did a lot of good for CoH but I don't think it would do anything in this case: Consider that most of these in-game economic changes appear to be driven strongly by PWI dictates. Changing developers will not change the economic model of STO, only the names of the people we yell at.

So Cryptic dying a horrible death might satisfy schadenfreude but in the long run I don't think that it will automagically result in some nebulous "someone better" getting the license to do a Trek MMO. At this time I would encourage people to make their voices heard by Cryptic, exhaust all patience and avenues of appeal, remind Cryptic and PWI that 'free to play' does not have to mean 'gouge the players for everything in their wallets' (CoH's free-to-play seems to be going amazingly well for them, and I was very happy with DDO,) and then and only then give up.

And if you have already reached that point, I can't say that I blame you. =P

Didn't you get the memo. This is testing a new faction - The Ferengi

Dear Cryptic: I couldn't be bothered to help test if you're going to continue to treat us like idiots. I don't need to in order to point out your blatant arrogance and short-sightedness.

You can't buy a ship for what you're given in dilithium, even with a discount token? Please... Everyone knows that this is just an audacious cash grab, and a serious slap to the face against subs, who get ships free currently on rank up.

You can only refine 8000 dilithium per day? Now you're just rigging the system to force people into your C-Point exchange or outright buy Cryptic Points for the C-Store. Yeah, that'll go over well.

The prices of the dilithium shops are horribly inflated because Cryptic, despite wanting to control inflation (my behind, btw), set the prices too high? Just how stupid do you think we are, anyway? How much time do you think we really have? How much money do you think we have to burn? You guys are seriously out of touch with reality.

I understand you guys need to make money, but what you're doing is morally bankrupt. The more I look at these rollouts to Tribble, the more my opinion and hunch get confirmed. I'm also seeing people starting to turn on you guys everyday. So please, stop being so damned arrogant and start wising up.

I see a lot of fail in this update.

Too bad we can use the sun to slingshot to Dec 20th.