Greed is Eternal
May. 13th, 2012 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenStar Trek Online’s developers have come up with a clever little money-making scheme: Lockboxes. Basically, every enemy in the game has a chance of dropping a locked box when killed. To open the box, you have to buy a one-use key… with real money, from the online store.
The reason you want to open the box is that they have a – very small – chance of containing a unique ship not available elsewhere. Last time it was a Cardassian Galor-class, this time it’s a Ferengi Marauder. The problem, of course, is that most of the time the box doesn’t contain the ship, it contains some far less exciting item, quite often one that could be acquired easily through normal gameplay.
Ah, but that’s alright – because every box does contain something useful! In addition to the main ‘prize’, they also all give you some ‘lobi crystals’, a new currency that can be spent at a special store for unique equipment, outfits and weapons. Of course, as it turns out, it’s still a rip-off, since it turns out on average each box contains just under two crystals, and all the good stuff in the store costs several hundred crystals.
What’s interesting is the name, which was stuck in my head for a few days, until finally I plugged it into the Star Trek wiki. And there it was, Lobi crystals are from the show! Specifically, they’re from Voyager’s pilot episode – they’re the worthless trinkets Quark tries to scam Harry Kim into buying as souvenirs before Paris intervenes.
You have to admire a game company that doesn’t just try and rip off its customers, but goes the extra mile to make sure their rip-off is still perfectly consistent with their setting…
The reason you want to open the box is that they have a – very small – chance of containing a unique ship not available elsewhere. Last time it was a Cardassian Galor-class, this time it’s a Ferengi Marauder. The problem, of course, is that most of the time the box doesn’t contain the ship, it contains some far less exciting item, quite often one that could be acquired easily through normal gameplay.
Ah, but that’s alright – because every box does contain something useful! In addition to the main ‘prize’, they also all give you some ‘lobi crystals’, a new currency that can be spent at a special store for unique equipment, outfits and weapons. Of course, as it turns out, it’s still a rip-off, since it turns out on average each box contains just under two crystals, and all the good stuff in the store costs several hundred crystals.
What’s interesting is the name, which was stuck in my head for a few days, until finally I plugged it into the Star Trek wiki. And there it was, Lobi crystals are from the show! Specifically, they’re from Voyager’s pilot episode – they’re the worthless trinkets Quark tries to scam Harry Kim into buying as souvenirs before Paris intervenes.
You have to admire a game company that doesn’t just try and rip off its customers, but goes the extra mile to make sure their rip-off is still perfectly consistent with their setting…