From DStahl

[Christian M. Hanson]

"Gold Lock Boxes work as intended. You have much better odds of getting everything from the standard lock box. The fact that the Gold Lock box tooltip is incorrect and doesn't display two of the items that you also get in the standard lock box does not adversely impact your odds of getting everything else in the box with the exception of the lowest possible reward, which was a LOBI.

So for example, the reward table checks to see if you win something from tier 1 (like the ship)? nope ok did you win something from tier 2? nope ok did you win something from tier 3? nope? ok did you win something from tier 4? Yes you won a consumable. So in that instance, for players who got consumables, I can see the argument that they purchased the Gold Lock Box expecting to get a LOBI and instead they got a consumable. Your odds for getting the upper items were not impacted by the consumables.

As I mentioned in the initial post, to compensate we are doing 2 things. We are going to add a way for players to get some LOBI that don't involve the lock box. This will happen during the entire Month of May and will be tied to some Feature Episode Rerun Episodes (which will also have the FE limited time rewards return each week). In addition, in regards to prices in the LOBI store, we do intend to add some items for low prices. It is clear that because boxes can drop 1 LOBI, there needs to be at least something you can purchase at this price point and along with the free LOBI in the event, we expect players to be able to spend that LOBI on something worth the price of the box. If the expectation was that we would remove the consumables and give you the LOBI, that is not going to happen. We are instead just going to give out LOBI as part of the event. Just as in the standard lock box, the consumables were an intended low tier prize.

As far as addressing the high end prices in the LOBI store, it is important to note that LOBI is intended to be a part of lock boxes moving forward and are not specifically tied to the Ferengi Box. So whether it is from opening lock boxes or earning LOBI through events, players will be able to obtain more LOBI throughout the months and years to come. We also plan to add more items in the LOBI store as time moves on (as well as the GPL store for those who asked). Note that as in any game system, we reserve the right to make changes to contents of lock boxes, prices, and even odds at our discretion."


(Originally Posted by The.Grand.Nagus
Al said they wanted the GPL store to be cosmetic items, not game performance items. Which would make sense, except they added the new clothing to the LOBI store, not the GPL store.)

DStahl: "I agree with this. In hindsight, I would have preferred the costumes on the GPL store instead. We are going with Al's design that GPL store will be focused on cosmetics in the future."

[Christian M. Hanson]

More from the man.

dstahl
Cryptic Studios Team

Join Date: Aug 2008


Quote:
Originally Posted by Valenn View Post
Thinking a night about it...
Isn't it time for an account-shared bankslot, just a few slots (4-10) to transfer some bound items between chars like featured episode special rewards, ECD's, rare borg salvage and lobi chrystals?

DStahl;
A quick heads up about this...

Account shared bank is in the works and will most likely hit either at the end of May or at the launch of Season 6. Gold will get some amount of slots free as part of their plan.

Since we wanted to leave the option to give out LOBI as content rewards (which we have now decided to do) we kept the LOBI bound to prevent exploits.

That said, we are considering tech that would allow for some items to become Account-Bound so that they can be shared in your shared bank slots, but the binding would not be retroactive and would only apply to new items you acquired.

[Christian M. Hanson]

Quote:
Originally Posted by bluegeek
...And I repeat, no matter which way you cut it a one-crystal reward is extremely miserly given that people are paying money for the equivalent value of a cereal box-top...

DStahl:

This is an area where there was a failure on our part to provide appropriate rewards at the low end of the LOBI store. In other PW games there are similar drops of a token, but there are items that you can get with that.

That is why we are addressing the issue and will be adding more rewards to the low end of the LOBI store as early as our May 4th update so that there is an appropriate value for the money spent on the key. As stated, we do reserve the right to update the contents of the lock box at any time and we did adjust the ratio of LOBI and items in the short term so that you get a little bit of both instead of one or the other until we can get the LOBI store setup with the new items. To compensate for the players who either got a LOBI or didn't get a LOBI we are doing two specific things. 1) we are adding an in game event to get Free LOBI throughout the month of May for those who didn't get LOBI from their box. 2) We are taking one of the premier items we had planned to add to the high end of the store and we're going to make it available for minimal LOBI.

As far as the communication issues... yes there have been some and it is highlighting the fact that Cryptic is still adjusting to working with the Perfect World team (which is in a different site and location than us). Add to that the fact that Brandon is pretty much awesome and proactive and is usually doing everything he can to stay up to speed on things and it is unfortunate that our internal miscommunications led Brandon to post what he did (as he was only trying to help).

We are taking clear steps to address this. We have our external producer in house now at least one day a week for key synch up meetings, and I'm now in their office at least once a week to ensure we are all on the same page on issues. It is already getting better.