Sounds like DCUO has a far cleaner feeling lockbox system. It's a shame that the gameplay in it was so monotonous that I dropped my sub after a month or two.

The gameplay's dependent on if you like brawler/action games or not. They've done a lot to diversify it on the back end since release, though.


That's wasn't really the point of my post however, and it's a bit off topic, so I won't get into that. Suffice to say that I was trying to demonstrate how a good developer/company can implement stuff like lockboxes and actually win the approval of the community for doing so.

Cryptic did almost the exact opposite with their lockboxes. They tend to not have anything of use in them (A 2K CXP booster is not desirable except for very specific people.), or not really anything at all, in the case of the many reports i've seen of people getting 5 or 1 lobi crystal from the boxes. Which is not around what they said the average worth of a box would be in the FAQ.

To top that off, the only alternative is to farm them for in-game cash at a glacial pace. And the decent lockboxes (Golds.) are entirely dependent on dumb luck or grinding out STF's. A bit of both, really.

This week has been really bad for STO. Gozer just announced that a whole ton of changes are coming to make end-game STF's a pain to do, and be more of a time sink. And then the whole thing with the lockboxes. Which as bad as they were by themselves due to how they were designed, came after a big sale that inflated the dilithium exchange.

Some of the stuff they're doing is really starting to grate on more then a few people that know about the changes. As the topics in question show, and discussion in-game tends to show. I barely ever post on the forums anymore as i've, in all honesty, found that a ton of people over-react to many things that are announced on here. Unfortunately, I had to comment on some of the stuff I saw in the hopes that someone at Cryptic would read it, because this stuff seems completely mental from a development perspective. Never mind from a customer service perspective.


Also, I never thought i'd say that SOE was a good company. But, yeah. There you go. They've been doing a good job with this whole "F2P" thing from the marketing and customer service ends of things. Given their track record, I am pretty sure that's one of the signs of the apocalypse.

If that's true then its yet another reason to stay away.

Anyone have photos of the stuff from the Lobi store?

I got a box with 100 lobi crystals and don't know if I should spend them or save them for the console.

So you spent real money for keys and the boxes were completely empty???

Wow.. the only thing worse than an obviously deperate attempt to fleece your customers is selling them the chance to get absolutely nothing.

To be honest, I am sure that the empty boxes were not intentional. It just goes to show the utter lack of thought and quality control in this game.

Looks like this game has lots of Dabo players in Real Life

Personally, I consider those paying Real Money for Master Keys to unlock Lock Boxes to be subsidizing those Free-To-Players who are not spending one single cent of real life money

yes but all they are subsidizing is additional dev time on making $$$ lucky bag items..not genuine content.

Well, unless you disable flying notifications (second thing down when you open the options menu.)

I'll agree with statements about dcuo, the free to play mentality they have adopted in that game has hands down proven that honest commitment to fans and the game will trump quick cash grabs in the long run.

I just patched up TOR, and I guess between that, DCUO and big sexy guild wars coming down the pipe my playtime in STO is going to fade, maybe when I read about a change of ethics surrounding lottery gated content I'll come back in earnest, but for now with the other options I have out there the reality is I can play a game that unfortunately isn't Star Trek, at least it doesn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.

At this point, it's quite possible it WAS on purpose. Not saying it was but that it could possibly be.

Keep in mind, these business decisions are the focus of PWE owning them. They have a new master to bend their will to, and if PWE can do one thing right it's milk it's playerbase for money.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least