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Astral Diamonds
ashisbrin
Member Posts: 7 Arc User
I really wish there was a better system in place to convert your astral diamonds into zen. I have almost 600,000 diamonds that i can't sell for zen. Not sure what to do with all those diamonds as you can't use them for currency on the market to buy keys. Any suggestions?
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Many things from the Zen Store are found on the Action House for AD. That may not help with everything, but some stuff...
@ashisbrin there is nothing I find of any value in the zen market. If you read here on the official wiki, I posted my personal thoughts on how to generate AD. However there is nothing I really want to buy, thus at present I am sitting on a mountain of AD and a lot of items in my banks.
The amount of astral diamonds entering the game each day is 10% of the active player base x 100k = billions of astral diamonds entering the game economy each day. This causes the purchasing power of astral diamonds to drop little by little each day. This means that a player exchanging their Zen for Astral Diamonds is not worth it. Zen is worth more than the cap allows. Zen should be trading around 1500 to 2000 ad per 1 zen but the exchange doesn't allow that exchange rate to occur. So it sits idle.
- You must list your AD->Zen at the highest rate, currently 750 AD : 1 Zen. Reason being, the system will satisfy *everyone* at the highest rate before doing a lower rate -- all at 750:1, then all at 749:1, all at 748:1, etc.
- You must be prepared to wait. The exchange is a queue -- first in, first out.
In mods 1-15 with the 500:1 exchange cap, the Zen backlog went down at slowest about a million per day. Day in, day out. Rain or shine. It seemed too much like clockwork to be 100% a function of Real-$ Zen -> AD, but that was how it rolled. (Big sales, it went down faster than a million/day, but that was rare.) At Mod16's 750:1, it's still a little early to fully tell the backlog speed, whether it's still 1 million/day or 1.5mil/day which would seem more mathematically probable.Show me where I need to buy something for AD that I cannot buy with zen?
Everything in the AH is from players buying items with Zen and flipping the item for profit. I want to personally thank those who convinced the developers at Cryptic for jacking up the ratio from 500:1 to 750:1 @krumple01 I really do, hope you get your wish. I will become a very wealthy player in the game. Players will pay 2 Million AD for 1000 zen just to get their VIP and I don't use VIP. My items like the 5 Hellfire Tank Mounts, I just bought, will increase beyond belief, and I will sell them for tens of millions. Eventually in the future 1 of 2 things will occur, the game is shut down and we all move on to play something else. Otherwise they will have to balance the AD yet again at which time I will make out like a bandit. At present I am sitting on a mountain of gold and pile of AD.
So I thank you Mr. @krumple01 and all the misguided players, who think charging the free to play player more is going to work. I am assuming you do the right thing and buy your zen with cash.
I'm a f2p player and, whether I want to pay more or not (instead of longer and longer wait times), @krumple01 is right about the cap. Anyone who asked for a 750 cap has no idea what they're talking about or were looking to make more (like what you were half joking about, but 1500-2000 would've been better for them/you, so...?). You've mentioned that STO and others do things better. I'll take your word for it and wish they did that here - they don't. Either way, the cap should be removed from all the games.
If a game/market hasn't hit the cap, removing the cap won't change anything. If it has hit the cap, that's a sure sign that the currency (zen) is worth more than what the cap is set at and, yes, it will go up until it reaches the price it's worth (probably over compensating, at first, then coming back down to what it's really worth). No one can/would charge infinite AD for 1 zen. Besides being impossible, no one would buy it, so their choices would be to lower the price or quit selling it (a free market balance). 10000:1 would be possible, but again, no one would buy it (10,000 AD = 1 zen = 1 cent? Not happening, certainly not your 10 million "joke").
Again, I'm your mentioned f2p player, and I don't know why you think discussing caps, the real value of zen and economics in the *current* system (not STO), etc vs. backlog/wait times is misguided. In the *current* system, I might consider paying @krumple01's calculated 1500-2000 AD for less/no wait times. It's all in how you look at it. Do I want to wait longer and pay less (aside: I don't understand why some people sell zen for less than it's worth instead of buying something to sell for more on the AH) or pay more for less/no wait time? Taken to the extreme, infinite:1 would be 0 wait time, lol, and 1:1 would be infinite wait time.
It is not the production of AD, it is the connection of Cash to Zen to AD to AH that is the problem. They need simple solution, delete the zax, switch the AH to use Gold, and open a better version of the AD store. Sure that will make me poor again, but I am seriously not in it for myself.
Anyway, I recognize your little joke there, but no, the price won't hit the cap (especially if it's infinite) unless it's worth that or more (again, there'll be people who put the price at the cap when it's not worth that, but will have to bring it down or quit selling, eventually, because people won't pay that). I don't use the AH much, except to sell junk (not zen bought), so I can't say a whole lot about that. I haven't noticed much change, though, in the prices of the things I'm selling, pre or post mod 16, other than, mostly, undermountain gear dropping like a rock after the first day, lol, but that's to be expected. As for your healing item example, it might just be mod 16, which happened at the same time as the zax raise. I see a lot of people talking about how they're spamming potions and stones after mod 16, so that could be the main reason healing items jumped in price.
Your second paragraph sounds somewhat like your STO example, which I agreed with, but as a f2p player, the main things I'm interested in in the zen store are things I can't get (possibly ever) in the AH like character slots or unlocking races, so I'd hate to see the zax go if I couldn't get those things in AH or AD store. I'm not just talking about me, but all f2p-ers. I can get those things, eventually, and won't have much use for the zax after that, personally, but that doesn't mean others won't still be trying for them.
Also, you did, previously, say that there needed to be AD sinks, not less production, which still amount to the same thing *and* agreeing with @krumple01 in reverse. I don't post much, but that was just too good to pass up (no disrespect). ;p
Edit: I forgot to mention that when I first started selling in the AH, I used suggested prices or the lowest price others were using. Those things, often didn't sell again and again. I lowered the price and lowered it some more until it sold. That's about the price I sell those things at, now, sometimes a little lower or higher, sometimes I test the waters. Afaik the AH doesn't have a cap, I came down in price and the items sold for what they were worth, not more.
If you sit on AD in the ZEX, every time there's a sale you'll end up getting some Zen from it;most likely not between sales.
Its new players who cause the ZAX to move.
10% of the active daily player base x 100k = the daily AD entering the game. In fact the number is higher because it excludes players who refine less than 100k rough ad per day.
This number is in the billions. Billions of AD is entering the game each day. Granted its by 100k per player outside AH trades.
Players are aware that each day another billion AD enters the game so they nudge prices around and sure enough things get bought. This by itself even if the ZAX cap wasnt raised would still have happened and has been happening, its just short sighted players want to blame the ZAX because their understanding of economics is limited.
You can't have billions of AD entering the game each day without meaningful sinks for that AD without it becoming an issue for trading.
And the game DO have numerous AD sinks. Companion upgrades, 10% AH fee, refining marks etc. The AD flow can't be very much unbalanced or the economy would collapse a lot faster than it is currently.
Actually, the last few weeks the ZAX queue has been falling slowly but steadily, and not only during Zen sales. It could very well be that Cryptic finally has finally managed to make AD burn bigger than AD production.
Sure, Zen will always be worth a bit more than what the exhange cap is..it was worth around 800 when the cap was 500 and it seems worth around 1100 now, but for some, getting 750 AD per Zen now is preferable to getting 1100 AD per Zen at some point in the future.
The bottom line though, is that thete are various issues with the economy. We need more relevant AD sinks and we need to cut the Zen->items->AH->AD->ZAX->Zen loop.
As for "billions of AD per day", that's probably too high as far as the PC platform is concerned right now. A large number of players (like myself) just log in to claim their VIP key and log out...and many of those who do play do not bother chasing the 100k limit.
Meanwhile free to play users are grinding the AD tossing it in the Zax, buying items (especially bundles that can be broken up), selling them in the AH, rinse and repeat. This is not how the exchange works in Star Trek or Champions, because their AH operates on the gold standard. The players can sell boxes of ore (questionite) in the AH, because their ore based material actually has a decent store to buy items. We have the Wondrous Bazaar that sells a very limited selection of items at outlandish prices and only the newest of players would ever buy an item from there. The only way for the Wondrous Bazaar to work, and do its job as an AD sink, is to remove the AD from the AH. AD in the AH just floats from player to player this fails to remove it from the system.
Pretty sure that NW isn't that active. Also that the '10% of the player base' is well off, as well.
But back to the topic: Yes, NW has a lot of Astrals coming in daily, and has a few sinks, but not enough sinks. NW has also had bugs/exploits in the past where truly ridiculous amounts of AD were farmed, and all that AD is still pretty much circulating. (Because the amount of new AD farmed each day outweighs the total sinks)
If you need Zen, you put your AD on the market and wait a month (roughly, currently).
If you want to fix the ZAX, for now and the long term, it is true that we need far more AD sinks in the game, to remove excess AD from circulation. They've already put a pretty decent cap on AD creation (100k per account per day), now they need to improve AD destruction in a way that players actually choose to burn AD on - as opposed to simply tossing in some blatant "You need to give 5,000,000 AD to this NPC to progress further" ripoff like the South Sea Trading merchant. (Yes I am aware you could also do it by farming crafting for a month)
300k-1mil ad would not be unreasonable for something like that.