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So is Cryptic all about the Benjamins?
virtualfog
Member Posts: 92
I keep hearing lots of people say that this company now has a history of greed about it. I was wandering if it is safe to say that this MMO Developer is really in it just for the money in this genre? I wander what some of you veteran Crytpic players might have to say regarding this as well.
Many seem to say that the use of Subs, Cash shops, and pushing a lifetime sub and deluxe/special retail boxes is really greedy.
So is Cryptic all about the Benjamins?
Do not try to be a great gamer, just be a gamer. Cause, I don't care how good you are anyway.
Comments
They all in it for the benjamins....
Just a quick question, name one company that is formed that does not attempt to make profit? Im not referring to tax schemes either, but legitmate companies. Greed is the driving factor in capitalist economies. Welcome to capitalism.
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
What is your obsession with Cryptic OP? ofcourse they have business to run and they are after money. Welcome to the real world.
Just a quick question, name one company that is formed that does not attempt to make profit? Im not referring to tax schemes either, but legitmate companies. Greed is the driving factor in capitalist economies. Welcome to capitalism.
Cheers!
Yeah so true, but there are always a few that try not to nickel and dime their players. Sometimes I love to hate Capitalism. I do still think Cryptic is just taking it a bit too far though, although they might change their ways.
Do not try to be a great gamer, just be a gamer. Cause, I don't care how good you are anyway.
I don't know...
I don't have first hand experience as a Cryptic customer. I do know Atari is, which is who owns Cryptic now. They are widely known to release lemons, in this day and age any way. It's a shame such a positive name in gaming for many ( a lot of us were bred on our 2600's) has been dragged through the mud as it has. By people who have nothing to do with the name in the first place, they merely bought it.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Of course they want the Benjamins. Every company wants money...But how many companies are willing to spend a good amount of their initial profit of launch or the money they already had to make their game better in order to gain money in the long run. Not many companies have this kind of patience *cough cough* cryptic. Yet there is always a brighter star, and by that i mean a company like CCP. Always listening to their community and spending a lot of money to make the game that the player want to play, and look at their numbers. Increasing everyday and they do not leave the path they have set their game out to be. I may not play EVE but CCP has the spot for my favorite company. These guys gave me a whole new respect for them with their way to help Haiti.
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...
All MMO devs are really in it for the money, but Cryptic is becoming infamous for it due to how much they basically cheat their customers out of their money.
Both Champions Online and Star Trek Online had Lifetime Subs offered prior to launch, only for the game to be so dramatically changed just days before launch that many people who bought into the lifetime offer were no longer interested. Now, those people were able to get refunds but I expect many didn't bother, and thus Cryptic made more money than they would have otherwise.
They also use their cash shop to sell things that most subscription-based MMOs offer for free, like the Champions Online respec. It is possible to get it using in-game cash but I hear the pricing behind it is still so bugged that no one can reasonably ever afford it.
They really are much greedier than other MMO devs given what I've seen from in their latest two launches. The bait and switch style launch of CO could have been dismissed as a mistake but seeing as there were reports of them doing the same things for STO I'm seeing it as more of an underhanded money grabbing ploy.
Every, and i do mean EVERY, Company with the goal of staying in business and turning a profit is all about the Benjamins. Take EA for instance they have destroyed so many MMO's in their quest for the benjamins. Then theres Atari that has the ship on time no matter how big a steaming pile of poo it is viewpoint. Even small indy developers like Aventurine will spout so much BS and refuse to update import information about their game for years in the hopes of catching some uninformed players. And Just ask any SWG vet about what they think anout SOE
Try not to be so naive. If your trying to play the part of the Drama queen you did well. (OMG they have lifetime subs, and delux / special retail boxes like just about 99% of every other MMO out these days!)
I think that you are the first person to mostly get what I meant by my thread. Of course MMO games are about making money, but what happens after those dollars are made. And that is the meat of what I am getting at here.
Yes they all want to make money, my argument is that Cryptic's motivations perhaps are only greed centered. Yes they are releasing new content, but they already were releasing a major patch 45 days after launch way before all the QQ in the OB forums even started.
Anyway, thanks for understanding even if it wasn't your intention to do so.
Do not try to be a great gamer, just be a gamer. Cause, I don't care how good you are anyway.
Thank You for understanding. I was about to jump off a virtual pier. But I also meant in that they seem to care less about what their players want and just ignore them mostly.
Do not try to be a great gamer, just be a gamer. Cause, I don't care how good you are anyway.
Anytime man. But what I don't understand is how well Cryptic did with CoH and CoV. I played both and that was the best service I had ever got in a MMO. It just frustrates me to see a company with so much damn potential to be overcame by greed and try to be the leader in MMO market. They need to just relax and be how they used to be, dependable.
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...
Well of course they' re in it for the money hello how else are they going to pay everyone. At the end of the day we all want the Dev to make money because that's what pay's for the regular updates. While people like to bash WOW Blizzard does put out a first class game that has a lot of fun things to do. The reason for that is they have the cash to pump into the IP that makes it the game it is today.
So if Cryptic doesn't make money they will not have the resources to make STO into the game it should be and the game will die.
Something to think about.
Edit: Oh and they are listening to the players we ask for more klingon PVE content and they re giving it to us in the first major patch with more to follow I hope.
Just a quick question, name one company that is formed that does not attempt to make profit? Im not referring to tax schemes either, but legitmate companies. Greed is the driving factor in capitalist economies. Welcome to capitalism.
Cheers!
Im sorry but no my liberal friend. The idea of anyone in business is to make money..it is not simply about greed. Capitalism is competition. Believing in your product, taking pride in your work and providing the best service to your customers is the driving force behind capitalism.
Putting out a reskinned game snd slapping the words Star and Trek on it without making it any way shape or form star trek (apart from skins and sound effects) just because it will bring in box sale money is greed.
Thank You for understanding. I was about to jump off a virtual pier. But I also meant in that they seem to care less about what their players want and just ignore them mostly.
And yet people keep purchasing and subscribing to their games.
Some (myself included) may not agree with their business model, but it seems to be working for them. You can say they nickel and dime their customers to death, or they throw in unexpected changes, they don't care about their own customers, but why do people keep buying their games? They charge for the game, they charge a monthly sub, they charge for an in-game store, and people buy it..
You can only be greedy if people are purchasing your product. It's obvious people are, they must like something about the company, or the product they are producing.
On that last part, your kidding right? The Klingon PVE was nothing they did because of the customer. It was mentioned many many times they had to make some tough choices and cut back some items in order to launch the game in the time frame they had. That content you think they added cause you wanted was laready a planned content release.
I do agree that people must like something about the game, I concede on the issue that the game IS fun. However, the game is only fun toa certain extent. And in your game of choice's forums there is already an Admiral whining after less then a week of gameplay time! I give you two months, then you'll all play klingon content for one more month before you get bored and move on.
Do not try to be a great gamer, just be a gamer. Cause, I don't care how good you are anyway.
All businesses want your money, some are just more subtle than others. I work for an organization that puts a lot of 'we care' policies into writing, but as soon as the bottom line is affected, it becomes very clear what the real objective is. And I can't say that I blame them; without money we don't get paid.
Who isn't in it for the benjamins but the bigger issue is that they keep making craptastic mmos and still charging a premium price.
To answer your question, think of it this way: Cryptic's lifetime subscription option.
Let's assume for a second they DIDN'T know Champions Online was going to be a complete failure. Let's assume they had the utmost confidence in their MMO. Would they honestly limit the date of the lifetime subscription option BEFORE players had the chance of actually playing the game? Nope. Instead, they went right ahead and put up lifetime subs, but you could only purchase them before the game released.
That right there tells me that they knew the game was going to be a massive flop and they wanted to get as much money off of it as possible before it is scrapped, or possibly made free to play. In conclusion, yes. Cryptic is entirely in it for the money. They have no talent at creating an MMORPG and due to recent issues with Star Trek Online (and Champions Online I suppose), it's clear as day they don't listen to their player base. Don't support them, spread the word, and hopefully by some miracle, they won't live to develop another MMO again.
Just a quick question, name one company that is formed that does not attempt to make profit? Im not referring to tax schemes either, but legitmate companies. Greed is the driving factor in capitalist economies. Welcome to capitalism.
Cheers!
I think you're missing the point the OP is trying make. The key word in the phrase in "all about the benjamins" is the word 'all'.
The question isn't about whether Cryptic wants to make money or not. That would be silly. The question is: Is making money the ONLY thing Cryptic cares about?
It is possible to care about making money AND care about making a good product. They're not mutually exclusive. You can make money by having a good product or you can have a business model that doesn't rely on a good product, using other means to get potential customers to give you their money.
Just a quick question, name one company that is formed that does not attempt to make profit? Im not referring to tax schemes either, but legitmate companies. Greed is the driving factor in capitalist economies. Welcome to capitalism.
Cheers!
I think you're missing the point the OP is trying make. The key word in the phrase in "all about the benjamins" is the word 'all'.
The question isn't about whether Cryptic wants to make money or not. That would be silly. The question is: Is making money the ONLY thing Cryptic cares about?
It is possible to care about making money AND care about making a good product. They're not mutually exclusive. You can make money by having a good product or you can have a business model that doesn't rely on a good product, using other means to get potential customers to give you their money.
Very true, he/ahe as well as many others missed the point. You broke it down and summarized it nicely. I sometimes forget that there is an international crowd here and not everyone lives in the U.S., and even those that live in the U.S. could possibly miss the point as well.
Do not try to be a great gamer, just be a gamer. Cause, I don't care how good you are anyway.
Dunno about that, some stuff it seems like they made for fun. But they are owned by Atari and they want profit badly right now so at least some of it is true.
It seems to me that most MMO companies are a lot focused on making money instead of firstly making a good game (A good game will bring in money however but that is a different thing).
Some companies are different, like Arenanet but it seems at least to me that the reason so many MMOs are so close to Eq and Wow is because of greed, some corporate dude see all the money Blizzard makes and want a piece of that too instead of someone making a game they think want to play themselves. That is what have gotten Mythic on their knees now.
I don't think Cryptic is worse or better than SOE, Blizzard, Turbine and NC soft, all those companies were started by people who just wanted to make a good game but in later years it seems like they are spending more and more time to figure out how to get more cash instead of making better games.
All those artists, programmers and customer service types want a paycheck.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Cryptic is fail ive played COH and thats it, im glad I dont buy new games right off the bat and waste money. Reading the forums from STO and CO without even playing there 2 newest games is proof of Cryptics fails oh and there official forums to. It seems like alot of the companies now are going the route EQ 2 with Micro Transactions and what not as well. Just makes me want to keep playing single player games more and more hell alot of people solo in mmo's now days anyways. And Im more keen to an actual story in games now days like reading a book than whats in most online games.
It never ceases to surprise me how many people in threads like this fall under the assumption that the original poster doesn't understand that creating and running an MMO isn't free.
I really don't believe that anyone who accuses a development studio of 'just being in it for the money' really thinks that they ought to sacrifice their jobs to make us briefly happy.
That said, I do think it's an unfair criticism, even levied toward Cryptic. Yes, their business practices lately have been absolutely money-grubbing and they may appear to be doing this out of disregard for artistic principles, but one must understand that they weren't stable going into this. Cryptic, and more so Atari, have been in dire financial straits for some time. Atari is practically relying on Cryptic to pull them out of their ditch. Their tactics are very consistent with this kind of need.
I honestly doubt that it will work for them in the long run, but that's not to say I hope that I'm right. I'd like to see Cryptic have the financial freedom of BioWare or CCP. We'll see.
Like others have said, all development houses are in it for the money.
Whats different about cryptic, and a few others, is that they are only interested in the short term money infusion. Make as much money as fast as possible with very little thought about 2-3 years from now. Much like shovel-ware developers pumping out movie license games, knowing that people will buy them. Also knowing that most people will forget who developed the crappy game and end up buying yet another poorly made movie game from them 6 months later.
From a money standpoint, its much easier to pump out cheaply made crap and then change your name when people catch on, then to have pride in your products.