How much of a P2W?

[Varcarus™]

Well, How much of a P2W is this game? I saw a DLC pack on steam at the price of £100! but at the moment down to £80...

So what is it?

[Zee_]

Its not pay to win at all.

Especially considering you can get access to everything completely free if you're willing to grind for it. You can buy and sell zen (PWE cash shop money) with dilithium (earned in game, you can refine 8k dilithium per day as a free player), which means the true cheapskates that never want to pay a dime on a game can get even the most expensive cash shop ships if they are willing to work for it.

What you are talking about is the Legacy pack, not the expansion. The Romulan expansion is 100% free, the Legacy pack is a bunch of account wide ships, a title and playable remans right out of the box. Check on the forums here and you'll see most long time players suggesting people avoid the Legacy pack.

That said, if you're thinking of giving STO a try you might want to wait a week or so. Because the expansion just got released yesterday the servers are stressed big time right now. Theres about an hour queue to get on atm, and the servers are also a bit laggy at times because of all the people logging in for the expansion.

Generally speaking I would suggest playing a character or two to lvl 50, finding out which type of ships you like along the way then just buying the VA retrofit version of your favorite ship. Level 50 ships cost $20 to $25 and they are account wide, so any other characters you create will have access to that ship as well once they reach the proper level.

Also mabey subscribing for a single month, subbing for a month will give you alot more pack space, extra character slots and other bonuses. You won't lose the extra pack space or character slots when your sub runs out so its cheaper than buying them with real money, and faster than grinding QoL stuff like that out. I would suggest waiting until you get a character or 2 to lvl 50 first. That way if you like the game you won't mind spending a little money, if you don't care for it all you've lost is a bit of time.

[Game of Ur]

I consider it to not be P2W, but it all depends on alot of factors: how much of a trekkie/trekker you are, how much patience you have, how much you like playing with others, how much you like sci-fi and space, how much money you have in your pockets (a minor factor), How many friends you have that are willing to play with you, and the list goes on.

[Szeron]

The game is about 80% knowledge and skill. The last 20% is gear. People have cleared all of the end game content using just beginner frigates.


I've put together 'freebie' ships with around 200k energy credits(fairly cheap, end game) and completely outclassed people flying around in their $25 show-boats.

Most of the paid stuff is flashy gimmicks, that is usually interesting, but not really gamebreaking(ships that can split into multiple parts, but each is fractionally weaker, or come with quad-cannons that also draw from engine power when they fire).

The only point where the 'pay to win' argument might fly.. is at the super-high level PvP stuff where people are squeezing every last decimal of performance they can get. Honestly though, you'll probably have to play the game for atleast a year before you have enough of a grasp of the game to even be worthy of being target practice for such people. (There is a 'super-elite' class of players, but they are far in the minority and most of the community is quite friendly.)

[Gearhart]

Yes the ships you have to pay real money for what sets them aside is usually they get a unique ship skin and weapon like quad cannons (on one of the defiant class ships) or a special console(tac,engineer,science,universl). are they game breaking no? some of them are even fairly useless.

[Chris5626]

You can complete all of the content with common gear and as stated earlier by someone you can grind to purchase the same items that you buy with real money.

[AbsynthMinded]

Technically it would be Pay to shorten a misery of grinding and looting and bartering to get all the stuff you really want. You see in the end game there is no more winning cept on the PvP side. And those people have spent rediculous amounts of time refining their PvP ships, crew equipemt, gaming macros, and choosen team mates. Otherwise its a quest of obtaining the ships that best suit your captians combat prefrences, or interests. Many C-Store Ships are purchased not for the ship so much as the universal consoles which come with them.

[BE4R]

OP, compare it to something like league. You can spend money if you want to support devs for cool play things. Although you can easily get buy without spending a dime. I've spent 10$ because I wanted to support them for a little bit after 70 hours but I never had to spend anything.