How many of you are paying the monthly subscription and is it worth it?
monthly cost
There are 8 replies in this Thread. The last Post () by Whiskyrunners_Inc..
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me not, dont think its worth. if ever the lifetime subscription
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monthly subscription takes ages until you reach the point where you can take benefits like the veteran rewards
in the end you might need 3 years to get the best rewardslifetime subscription might be an alternative as it grants all rewards at once
BUT i personally would wait until they come up with a special offer again for lifetime subscription to reduce the costsjust like huor im not a subscriber... i got what i needed via different ways
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And the only really good thing you get with the Lifetime subscription is the 700 day vet 5% bonus on everything. I've checked out some of the top PvP'ers and winners of the "no win scenario". They are almost always 700 day vets. That extra 5% seems to tilt the game balance in their favour. Other than the 5% bonus, you get access to some somewhat useless things [Captain's Yacht shuttle, various titles, extra free ship and character slots, the ability to play liberated Borg characters etc]. Here's the list from the STO site which I have [IMHO] tagged as useful or not so useful:
100 Days Vet [monthly subscriber for 100 days]
Stalwart Accolade and Title - useless
FREE Full Respec - can be bought for 500 Zen [$5]
FREE Costume Piece - Veteran Badge - useless
A 2% Skill Point and Officer Skill Point Boost - useful200 Days Vet
Redoubtable Accolade and Title - useless
FREE Extra Ship Slot - useless [how many ships do you really need?]
FREE Costume Piece - Special Veteran Uniform Option - useless
A 3% Skill Point and Officer Skill Point Boost - useful300 Days
Dauntless Accolade and Title - useless
FREE Character Slot - useless [2 char slots can be bought for 625 Zen [$6.25]
FREE Ship "Firework" emote - useless
A 4% Skill Point and Officer Skill Point Boost - useful400 Days
Valiant Accolade and Title - useless
FREE Full Respec - if you've played STO for a year and can't build a char, you need to find another game, useless [worth $5 as listed above]
FREE Access to The Captain's Table - social, non-combat area for vets to hang out in - useless
FREE Unique Small Craft - Captain's Yacht (Fed), DujHod Chariot (KDF) and Commander's Gig (Rom) - fancy shuttle, useless
A 5% Skill Point and Officer Skill Point Boost - useful500 Days
Relentless Title - useless
FREE Extra Ship Slot - useless
FREE Exclusive Costume Piece (Fed): "Jupiter" Uniform Variant - useless
FREE Exclusive Costume Piece (KDF): Shoulder Cape - useless
FREE Exclusive Costume Piece (Rom): Romulan Admiral Uniform - useless600 Days
Magnificent Title - useless
FREE Vice Admiral Ship Token - I assume this is C-Store ships worth 2500 Zen [$25]
FREE Full Respec - worth $5
FREE Costume Slots (set of 2) - useless700 Days
The Impressive Title - useless
FREE Android Bridge Officer - not really that useful
FREE Character Slot - useless
A 5% Skill Point and Officer Skill Point Boost to your Team - very usefull800 Days
Vigilant Title - useless
FREE Mugato Companion - non-combat, useless
Unique Duty Officer Assignment - another duty assignment, like there wasn't enough already900 Days
Guardian Title - useless
FREE Exclusive Starship "Material" - cosmetic and useless
FREE Exclusive Uniform Variant - useless
FREE Full Respec - worth $51000 Days
Starfleet Veteran (Fed), Empire Veteran (KDF), and Republic Veteran (Rom) Title - useless
FREE Exclusive Veteran Starships - not sure how these ships compare to free or C-Store ships, could be useful
Chimera Heavy Destroyer (Fed)
Peghqu’ Heavy Destroyer (KDF)
Daeinos Heavy Destroyer (Rom)
FREE Starship Slot - useless
Two Exclusive Forum Titles to Choose From
Starfleet Veteran - useless
Empire Veteran - useless
Republic Veteran - uselessAs you can see, not much really useful stuff and a whole lot of stuff that have no effect on gameplay. Doing some quick math, it looks like maybe $100 U.S worth of stuff if you just bought Zen. All this can be yours for a mere $300 U.S. !!!
In the end, you are paying about $200 for a %5 bonus on your skills.
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f2p guy here...if I was ever gonna pay, I would wait for one of the big sales on lifetime subscription. TBH tho...I haven't been impressed enough with the makers of the game (although I enjoy the game when it works) to really ever consider giving them my cash. Maybe if one of my side jobs can only pay me in paypal or something then I'll consider it. I think Rex has it figured pretty accurately...does seem that the 5% can come in handy. I haven't done much pvp, but I bet a lot of the guys do have that bonus in their favor.
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Haven't had time to read all of your replies completely yet, getting late over here, but here are my thoughts:
it can be very useful to get the subscription once, best while leveling a new character as there are some bonuses that every character you play while being a subscriber (so called Gold Members) gets to keep:
For each promotion (level 10, 20, 30, 40, and i think 45) you get an additional Bridge Officer slot and a number of inventory and bank slots (i think the same as one c-store upgrade each). these are all activated retroactively.
you also get 2 of the account bank unlocks to keep. (account wide unlock)
if you're leveling a char while subscribed that char also gets a free respec token for each promotion. considering these are 500 zen each and you'll definitely want to use one sooner or later i find myself resubbing each time i start a new char. also leveling in this game is so easy, it's no problem getting one or more chars to lvl 50 during the month of a subscription.IMO it's worth to do it while leveling for the unlocks, then quit until the next char you level.
if you're shooting for the veteran awards / ship ... you'll get more bang for your buck on a lifetime sale. -
Then I suppose it's up to the individual to determine if a subscription is worth it or not. I have an account bank, 7 characters, a couple C-Store ships, pet kitty cat for Gol'Lum, and uncapped my money and spent a grand total of $25 CND so far. Using only duty assignments and dailies with my characters, I easily grind 30k dilithium per day [about 2 hours]. I convert about half that into Zen [usually 125 Zen per day], and the rest goes for fleet gear and on the projects. That's 3750 Zen in 30 days.
For those of us who don't require the best of the best and the highest numbers, it probably not worth it. The downside of that is we can't compete with those who do have the best that [real] money can buy and a 5% bonus to everything on top. If you're serious about competing in PvP, that 5% bonus is worth it.
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As with most everything, it certainly depends on the individual, whether it is worth it to you.
Personally i rarely refine 30k or more worth of dill a day. if i do it's usually because i've saved up some unrefined dill due to burning large quantities of omega marks and processors or hitting a couple tier 5 rep rewards.
What dill i get usually gets spent gearing one of my many chars, some goes into the fleets and occasionally some gets saved up for a major C-Store purchase.
I did throw some real cash into some of those upgrades before finding out about these gold unlocks and becoming convinced enough they are permanent that i gave it a try myself.If you see yourself throwing some cash at the game from time to time you might as well go gold once for the unlocks and respecs and cancel after 30 days (or once you reach lvl 50).
If you really end up loving the game and are not going to miss the cash you can get the lifetime during a sale for the "free" 500 zen each month. The Veteran rewards are of minor effectiveness or just plain vanity stuff.
But as rex said most of the stuff can also be had for ingame purple rock turned into zen, if you got the patience and determination.I might just get the lifetime myself, should i happen to find myself with some disposable funds at the time of a sale, but honestly it's primarily because of the fireworks emote, lol
Also, if you're relying on the 5% Vet Bonus for PvP you're probably doing it wrong and are likely to get your ass kicked either way and it's a team-wide bonus so you can just get someone who has it on your team if you really want it. I got along just fine without it or stuff like VR MK XII Tactical consoles. in many Arena / C&H you're getting teamed with someone who has it anyways.
