Redefining Free-to-Play. Star Trek Online.

[@hoodwinkiez]

You missed one group. The smallest, but most profitable group. The Gifted Streamer. No, I don't mean they have a gift for streaming. I mean they are streamers who receive gifted ships.

[@stephenkelly8312]

I think this is a pretty good model. When I was playing around with making a “budget build” on a new toon just to see how it could do, this is how I thought. I targeted the amount of money it would take to buy one AAA game. One or two cstore traits, some lockbox traits from the exchange, and no premium ship traits or consoles. It did surprisingly well.

[@alternative915]

A good example of a free to play is warframe you grind, you grind, it drop something of good value, you trade, you spent for your own QoL and repeat. Star Trek Online is on paper "free to play" but in reality it's real life darksouls simulation where 50% give you hope and the other half is a pit of despair if you dont keep giving them money, while yea you can still be F2P for life, but it gonna take forever to acquire everything just like dark souls 3, the cycle forever repeating while everything is crumbling with the exception of the 1% aka the lord of cinder whales..

[@lord_viper_amk5155]

ye WF was the best free to play model back in the day. getting worse now tho. i remember the dev streams where they used to ask us what things should cost. damn i love WF

[@advukat]

As for STO I am a happy dolphin, I haven't spent a dime sometime after the 12th anniversary bundle. The moment that my wallet closed was when the items that I had for 6-8 months were altered without notice & overly nerfed. Since, The devs updated items without a proper notice and diminishing the items' value to many of the player base. It showed me that things weren't being run properly at Cryptic. It shed a light that Cryptic truly did not understand a strong percentage of the community and their play styles. I am fine if the devs want to change something that is OP but do not allow many ppl to use their resources over many months to acquire an item(s) and then change it to the point that it holds very little value. It was a great lesson learned on my end. It was a poor business model on their end. As a dolphin, I divided how many years I have played and how much I have spent over that time per year. The sad reality for STO is that things are not linear. Many games are not about what someone is spending now or then, it is a healthy balance of spending from the new player base. If a game has too many whales and not enough new peeps then it is the death of things. Sadly unless STO changes the gambling aspect it will be on a decline... There is not enough new interest into the game. If it wasn't for the new shows the nail would be in the coffin years sooner. It appears we have a double edged sword moment unfolding. The game cannot be f2p & it cannot survive off of the backs of whales much longer.

[@DrunkFlux]

Seems like i'm a dolphin slowly downgrading into a fish here. As I used to spend 50-100 dollars a month on STO, but i've been slowly cutting back as burnout hit from having far to many events. I simply couldn't keep spending on a game which left me feeling exhausted. This exhaustion has been passing recently, but atm i'm not in a position to throw money at the game now (in between jobs, I just moved to a slightly pricier place to live to but i'll be starting the search very soon, hopefully by the end of the month once I have some things I need for job interviews taken care of). But i'd been playing more, and I don't plan to let the fact cryptic itself is being liquidated to stop me. I just hope DECA doesn't ruin STO, if they do well, they'll get money from me as i can afford and assuming they make new C store/legendary stuff, if not and say it goes into perma maintenance mode well....yeah they won't get anything from me.

[@QuantumNova]

STO Vegan. Spent $50 on a KDF Batttlecruiser pack back in 2012. Haven't spent anything on STO since. It's 2023 now. Grinded 4 legendary packs with just Dilithium. Romulan (2ships), Dominion mega pack (9 ships), Terran Galaxy-X (1 ship), and the newest Battlecruiser pack (2 ships). 28k Zen in total grided. Currently on my way to the Mudd's 'carried away' mega pack (30.000 zen). Dyson battlezone with 12 toons is all I need. I earn around 13,000 Zen every 90 days via dil exchange.

[@Robotrik1]

Random thoughts : - When Cryptic introduced the Yearly Event Campaign, they radically changed the game . The game changed both in terms of access of players (particularly those belonging to your first 2-3 categories) to ships or "gimmics" via the Lobi (store) , and the game also changed the incentive for / to / in retention span . From another angle, I also found the timing of the introduction of the Yearly Event Campaign interesting (in retrospect) -- as it's introduction happened in parallel (more or less -- not exactly) to the "beginning of the end" , i.e the grand reduction of Cryptic's playable content and actual "Seasons" . In short, the Yearly Event Campaign runs pretty much in parallel to what in the last few years has been considered a "years worth of material" , coming to 2-3-4 missions and a few TFO's . I would be interested in an exploration of the Yearly Event Campaign from these and other angles . Perhaps a topic for a video . - As for your chart, I do not consider the example of Trizander to be someone who spent once but isn't spending now to be a F2P player, especially when he spent (by your chart) in "Dolphin" territory . If I'm not mistaken he has a F2P account on PlayStation, but that is something different . If he got a Lifetime account on PC (like I have) he isn't F2P, because he has a clear monetary advantage of 500 Zen per month over F2P players, and it doesn't matter if he no longer puts money into the game . A true separation between F2P and the rest should have been a block where the amount is 0$ spent . They can still unlock the EC cap , and within a couple of years get not only a free Lockbox ship, but enough Lobi to gear out that ship . That in itself seems to be a huge "return on time invested" from a certain (beginner) player perspective, however from a wider perspective it's a "huge return" in a game that is no longer going anywhere ... except at turle speed instead of warp speed -- with a considerable portion of it's Dev Team "open to other opportunities" on LinkedIn . As I'm not a "gamer" I don't know of all the F2P models out there, but even in STO there are players who said that there are other, more generous F2P models out there, including Cryptic's own Neverwinter that has a better/more obvious "pity point" system for the gamblers out there . So just from 3rd party heresay , STO seems to be stuck at an intentionally sucky F2P model .

[@eol6632]

I kinda like a monthly subscription. At least for a game and development team that works hard to give you your money worth. There not trying to sell you or fuck you out of penny they can . All systems of free to play or subscription can work. It's just all in the companies & teams running it FFXI was a good example of this when it works. Game always runs well with bugs/issues being fixed immediately. Lots of content & changing to fit the player base. STO has been a story of failed potential. I first started playing about 3/4 years ago. I was shocked that a game that been active as last as it has had so little actual content.

[@Retset]

I'm not a virgin because I bought a couple of timecards way, way back and was so desperate for a dil that I bought a bit of zen. In total, I spent circa £40, or the cost of a game. Back then, at sub 100dil per zen, it was pretty easy to grind out a number of C store ships and, via weapon manufacture, to buy some exchange ships. Now, I am fortunate enough that I COULD put a lot of money into the game BUT I only spend money on something that I believe gives me value for that cash. Well, I believe £30 for a C-store ship, or even £20 on sale, is horrific value compared to other games I play. I feel so strongly about this that I have put no money in for the last 10 years and nor will I whilst the value is so poor. I have every C-store ship I want (admiralty rosters are 220-250 ships per toon), quite a few lobi ships and a fair few promo ships, including my biggest ever splurge of $1.2B on the Gorn Hunter Pilot Raider. I have all the anniversary bundles apart from the 11th (often regret not having it) and the zen is in place for the 14th. Now, I have no Ruin or Universal Designs but my ships are stuffed full of meta consoles and weapons and can pound any elite content in the game. I seriously can't see why anybody would want any more unless they play the game a lot, can access pre-made teams and push hard for a place on a DPS leaderboard. Even then, is that worth enough money to but a half decent used car? Not to me. TLDR: There is no micro in STO micro transactions!

[@ReyOfLight]

I'm for the most part a minnow and that's been the case most of the time since I started playing properly in 2018. At the most I've been a fish, maybe between fish and dolphin in 2021 when I built up my main toon, but then back to fish or minnow again. Sadly going to have to spend some soon as I've been on an extended break and need to buyout one or two more events for the yearly campaign and don't have enough refined Dil at the moment to just exchange for zen (already did that to buyout one event), but considering how much the ship I want/need from yearly campaign would have cost me if buying keys or gamblinf for it, buying about $40-50 worth of zen really isn't all that bad, and any leftover zen I get from it will be kept for a later date. If I hadn't gotten little over halfway on the yearly by playing, I probably would have just said FTS and skipped out instead, and even now, I honestly haven't ruled it out...

[@Lysergi25]

Great video again. Glad you're back!

[@kumori0ookami]

0-60 6-150 150... to 3K? what a jump lol. I have 3 accounts. A lifetime (PC), a f2p (PC) with rules (spending money on the game directly is a no, but if there is a charity that just happens to come with some goodies that's fine), and a playstation account 100% f2p, not one penny on that one

[@tenalpoen]

The 80/20 trend generally works here. 80% of the money spent by all players in F2P games comes from the top 20%, and 80% of that money comes from the top 20% of that group, and so on.

[@davidlawrenz2061]

i bought a lifetime sub when it launched and havent spent a dollar since. It really worked out, i have a deployment every few years and I get lots of zen for free. But i can easily spend a few weeks in teh field in the middle of events so I never get to complete the campaigns.

[@NotoriousNickNorris]

That covers it well. Nicely done. I'm sure there's a plethora of ways to approach it, but your model works. I typically factor what I'd be paying for other games and forms of entertainment. I give myself an 'entertainment budget' and spend accordingly. Despite having spent 2-3k on this game over the years, my time spent on this game brings my cost per hour of entertainment to a laughably low number that no one can balk at and be taken seriously. It's like spending thousands on a pair of Taylor Swift or Rolling Stones tickets for a 1.5-2 hour show versus years of gaming fun. (I'm an avid concert goer as well, so I know what I'm talking about. I just choose my concert spending more wisely).

[@syran7848]

Good video, I think your concept is fairly accurate.

[@MatthewBluefox]

If I had a sponsor, I would spend thousands of dullies a month in STO or STFC just to test out stuff that my sponsor would want me to try out for them. =D

[@h4rdkn0x]

Free to play is good for kids, I have seen dads buy games for their kids that the dads enjoy playing but the kids might play for an hour and end up playing something else so buying the kids a Life Time sub would be a terrible investment. F2P is also good way to make the game feel populated, I noted that as soon as a server in New World became lower pop then more people jump to servers with more people on and the game charges a $15-20 server move fee, so yeah population count matters in MMOs.

[@SGz_Eliminated]

I actually like the first model more and I'll explain why. If you buy a game at full price you've made a one off payment for that game and never spend another penny on it, this is how games used to be, but you wouldn't in this scenario even if you haven't paid for anything else in the game like DLC ever be considered a F2P player because you bought the game. In Trizanders example he has continually reaped the benefits of the lifetime sub everyday since he bought it, he gets free zen every month, the extra slots, the bigger refine cap and has enjoyed those benefits the entire time so in my opinion no he is most definitely not F2P and never could be. I do understand a true F2P player could have the exact same stuff as someone who paid so in terms of content there's no difference but there will forever be the difference of the F2P having spent more time to get the same stuff the payer had just paid for. I do think your model is quite good for measuring the different type of paying players but I don't think it does a good job of measuring the F2P players from the Payers, as per your own admission you prefer to throw them in with the minos players, but in my opinion there's still a big distinction between someone that has put money into a game and someone who hasn't. The perfect example being Trizander, who I would assume in your model would be in the minos category since he did spend a decent sum of money but hasn't spent any money for years. So if you took the lifetime sub and divided it over how many years he's played he'd probably fall under the minos category. So for the same reasons I explained in my first paragraph there can be substantial difference in resources or time investment between a true F2P and a minos.

[@Grievous-]

There could have been another group before dolphin, as the gap is too big between $150 and $3000. $150 is not a lot of money, and $3000 is enough to buy a car.

[@Lumii_Iseyaki]

I like this model - and can include that not paying monetary currency in the minnow group can translate into spending more time ‘currency’

[@mattsmith1859]

Ok, this is all very interesting but... does it matter? Free or not defining categories for players isn't the issue in STO at the moment. The economy in the game, for either type, is so screwed up it doesn't actually matter. You can't reasonably sell for Zen to make enough to make a difference and if you're looking for EC you'd be better off with a voodoo ritual. Look, I'm not knocking the video but right now what STO needs is a way to get and most of all keep new players and that not going to happen until we can get something done about the economy and for that content creators need to use their platform. Let me explain this a little better. Most people who play STO or will play STO are doing it mostly on the free side of things. They might put some money into it but most of their stuff isn't coming from Mudds. So, let's say you're a normal person and you have 5 characters you can regularly max the dil amount on. (Yes, I know there are quick and easy ways to get more but most people won't spend the time to do that.) If you max out each day you're talking 40k, 40k at the current rate is 80 Zen. (First off, you're not getting 80 Zen a day, the market isn't moving near that fast.) A ship is 3000 Zen, that's just over 30 days' worth of work for a single ship. No, this is not a reasonable free-to-play model. The majority of your player base isn't going to be willing to put that much extra time into something just to get a ship that's going to be half-powered without the right equipment and traits It is going to take you even longer to farm before and that doesn't count everything else locked behind Zen (including something idiotic like renaming a character). This model used to work but clearly isn't working anymore. There are a number of causes but the biggest is that Dil is nearly useless after a point so no one is buying large amounts of it. Let's face it, most of us are spending more Dil on rerolling isomags than anything else these days. To fix this issue Dil needs to become useful again and the amount a single account can put on the exchange at a time needs to be limited. (Yes, I have some ideas and most of them might piss people off.) As far as energy credits... That market is busted and anyone saying otherwise is simply wrong. The old tricks to make EC don't work anymore. Trying to save up tens of millions isn't at all an enjoyable process and is making quite a few people I know turn to outside services to get the EC they need.

[@Mr_Waffle.]

Makes sense, if you bought the lifetime sub you'd get 500zen/month stipend forever, so that's approx $60/year- I guess that's where you got that number for for the minnows. I haven't spent money on the game in a while but I do have enough resources sitting around that I could pool into getting a few promo ships.

[@jessicacole5955]

It's giving Prof. Gauss

[@joshuamccurry3675]

11 grand for me over past 8 years, own every t6 ship and bundle

[@martinarg1979]

Interesting video Gauss,i can say my case as an example,i made some videos showing what i have in STO,that's all Zen Store,all lock box ships,all promo ships,all lobi items and all mudd's ships,the items from events in mudd's i already have it from the original event,same for phoenix prices and i'm always waiting new releses to get them,but i don't need to keep spending once i have the last release item,so that can be a problem for Cryptic because they can't keep taking more money from me because i already have all,so i spend the necesary money to get the new ship (Lock Box,Promo or a new Zen store bundle) i don't do gambling anymore because Epic games cut the regional prices,there is still regional price but not like before February of 2023 when the big bundle of zen (20.000+3.000) was at 41.49 dollars,now it cost 139.99 Dollars so that change my way to spend in the game and do some things,now i'm just buying enough keys or promo boxes to sell them in the exchange or trade for the new ship,in both cases is like 10k zen but that depend of the price in the exchange of course,that's what i do now in the game,oh and i use 4 characters to get zen via dili exchange,just 8k dili x4 and 1 more from my secondary account,both accounts have lifetime so i can get some extra keys or promo boxes from that account and move it to my main account,same with the campaign,lobi from the secondary account to get 2 ships when there is a sale so i can get some extra EC too.i hope this help :D

[@gausssto570]

That's quite insightful. Thank you.

[@martinarg1979]

@@gausssto570 No problem Gauss,i'm glad you're back 😁🖖

[@short72hp1]

I did want point out In regards to Tri. he also as creator has gotten gifted ships whic

[@short72hp1]

which save him from having to purchase them

[@Flight--tz5nf]

I get cheated against and treated differently by them as is. Why on Earth would I pay to experience this? I refuse to pay for a subscription. I do buy ZEN and I almost always regret it. And when it comes to prizes. Some players are given better odds then the rest. That is why you see the same players with said prizes over and over again. Now I can't say I didn't win once in a blue moon. I have. But I am not one of the "god" players that are practically given the prizes on a silver platter. Nothing in this game is done fairly. From basic gameplay to rewards. I can tell you my intentions are to try to enjoy this game. Cryptic's intentions are to make that a impossibility through their actions. As for Whales? They are the ones still living in their parents basements. While players like me have obligations in life. (Bills and what not).

[@stofsk]

yAy im a dolphin :D

[@radeadcool]

I dont know man. Vegans freak me out and thats when you lost me. Nothing else but just the name.

[@lord_viper_amk5155]

i dont really understand y u would want to put people into insulting little groups in the first place. if u ask someone what they are they will tell u or say mind your own. the better way to do this would be to group the actual account rather than the people. u have a £10 account with £100 material access. or something like that . if people start calling me fish/mammal names im just gonna take it as insult no matter where i fall on the food chain, but if u ask what i have spent and what i have earned im likely to tell u proudly.

[@gausssto570]

I actually had a line in the video about how this was at the account level and not the player level, but I cut it during editing. I didn't come up with any of this terminology. The point of this isn't really to make a value judgement about anybody, but to figure out the best way (at least for me) of making videos for the audience I want to reach. We are about to get a new free event ship, and a lot of creators like to make build videos for these ships that are as accessible as possible, but what does that really look like? If I make it "free-to-play" so I just exclude all paid items, that is probably not the reality of most players even the f2p ones. I also can't assume that just because something was free in the past that they have it. I hope that makes some sense. If I offended you, it wasn't my intention.

[@lord_viper_amk5155]

@@gausssto570 i see your issue.i was not personally offended but would be if referred to in that animal manner lol. as u said some people spent more time than money on the game and different people have different goals (pvp, story, guild/social ...ect). i only ever wanted 1 main ship that can do most of the above to varying degrees for example. your best option is to make as many variations on build vids as possible and perhaps dividing them by price/availability and build function. this build is for newer or low res players for the purpose of entry level Pvp for example. "this is a fat whale build for u money wasting gamblers" or "i made a build for poor broke pathetic Minos chek it out" mite go down poorly was my original point. its not always what u say but the attached connotation u must consider as well as how its said and who its said to lol. for example you may be able to call an old friend a broke mino in a ironic tone and that would be fine but u call a group of your sub base u never met that same thing some people will be POff

[@lord_viper_amk5155]

was just trying to help

[@short72hp1]

wow there are people who actually hsve that much money 😵‍💫😮

[@jessicacole5955]

Sadly, no, that's part of the problem with this kind of game :(