So I finally managed to get my alts up to VA and BG. That meant it was time to start upgrading to Purple Mk XI and XII gear. This was the first time I was looking in to crafting since S5.
The first thing that I noticed is crafting costs MORE than the Dilithium store.
Store: 22,620 Dilithium = Phaser Cannon Mk XI [CrtH] [Dmg]x2
Crafting: 23,150 Dilithium = Phaser Cannon Mk XI [Acc] [Dmg]x2
Why in the world is it more expensive in Dilithium (not to mention all the required particles and rare traces)? This makes absolutely no sense.
I had heard there would be a crafting system re-vamp (again) down the road. This can not possibly come soon enough. I have been collecting materials for months and now they are effectively worthless. All they buy me is the privilege to pay more for something and take longer to get it.
It's almost enough to make me stop logging in until this is resolved.
The plus side about crafting is that energy credits are so easy to come by that you can just buy the unreplicatable materials on the exchange and save your dilithium for something useful.
There is something seriously wrong with this system. I put a lot of time and effort in to maxing out 2 crafters.
I think it's time you and I got better acquainted Dunnlang. I know we probably got on each others bad sides during the Fleet Admiral debate, but lets let bygones be bygones. We are allied in this.
Read over my proposal, and let me know if it's a system you would be comfortable with. But be forewarned, as always, my goal is to move STO closer to canon.
Crafting is broken entirely and the prices on the exchange are ridicously high.
My Charakter has 3.7 Mil EC while a single decent Beam Array can be bought for 2.5 Mil:mad:
Exchange and crafting are seriuosly out of control.
The problem wouldn't be so bad if the cost for uncommon unreplicateable materials materials wasn't so hight. 1000 dilithium ea? Seriously? I too ran into the problem that crafting would cost me MORE than buying items of the vendor. What a great thing right? I can make inferior items for more effort after investing a lot of time and effort maxing my R&D.
In its current state crafting is simply not worth it. That doesn't mean it can't be saved, nor that I'm agains the inclusion of dilithium in the process. But either reduce the amount of unreplicateable materials required per schematic or reduce the price of the uncommon variant. 1000 dil ea is way, way too much if you need More than 15 of them for one measly phaser bank.
You did your math wrong.
A MkXI Very Rare cannon needs: 23 Common Unreplicateable Materials, which require 10 Dilithium each to buy, or 230 Dilithium total.
AND
The cannon needs: 15 Uncommon Unreplicateable Material, which is 1000 Dilithium each, or 15,000 Dilithium.
A total of 15,230.
So Crafting saves you 7,390 Dilithium, aka, nearly a whole days grind.
The Vertion, Tranium, Technical schematics and such will cost you less than 100kEC currently, and others have said, EC is easy to get.
AND, There is the "Time to Craft! event, that will save you 20% moree off the nonreplicateable materials.
So that crafed cannon would only require 12,190 Dilithium, or save you 10,430 dilithium.
@Crafting: it's on the Schedule for Borticus to revamp crafting and it may possibly be tied into the DOff System.
Fact is for Season 5 Crafting was low priority and this was a cheap an easy way to make it work in the new system without breaking the economy for months.
The Feedback was heard already and Crafting is on the schedule again, also Borticus has a good background in Crafting (*points at short but good MMOrgue podcast*) i trust the man 100% to not F*** this up, not more than it already is anyway
Personally i crafted all that i needed way before this change and have yet to even look at this system again.
To ever go back to the dilithium store (which now has a fulltime button on my UI *facepalm*) or to crafting i need Mk XIII or MK XIV Items anyway.
For now i am happy to sell all my crafting supplies on the exchange and buy DOffs + Colonists for the EC i get out of it ;P
The problem wouldn't be so bad if the cost for uncommon unreplicateable materials materials wasn't so hight. 1000 dilithium ea? Seriously?
Given that common costs 10dil uncommon should only be 10x that cost so 100dil I could understad the cost if they were rare or even very rare but uncommon there isno justification. At the moment they just cost too much to make it worth using them as it seems the increase is really not worth the bother, as you say, when you look at the item that is one step down and uses no unreplicated materials.
I'm getting very sketchy on what they are doing here to this game.... I think they have worked just about everything into a system where you are left with the likely choice of having to spend some points to get or do anything, and that in the end now means your wallet, unless you want to spend more time than an employed person can on your beam banks...
They are going to see a brief surge in $$$, then when people start feeling used and dirty, they will find something that's not so cash-4-fun intensive to play...
For a brief surge, in the long run, they will lose because they did all this...
For a brief surge, in the long run, they will lose because they did all this...
I guess that's the $64,000 (or really, multiple million) question. Most of the playerbase seems to agree with you, Cryptic/PWE clearly don't. I suppose time will tell who was right.
Then again the conspiracy-theory answer is that PWE wants STO to fail too. It's an expensive MMO that costs them in license fees. Some have theorized that PWE bought Cryptic for its game engine technology, and not necessarily any of its current MMOs or IP. If this were the case, they'd simply monetize the TRIBBLE out of STO and pump what dollars they can out of it while it dies, and then move on using Cryptic's technology to develop more MMOs that don't require licensing fees, thus generating more profit for them.
You can tell that some of this is happening already. They have all but abandoned the Foundry in STO and instead have diverted all those resources to push it forward on their new MMO, NWN.
The problem is two fold. Firstly, the economy of STO is unable to stabilize around a feature that lets people buy currency with out-world monies. And secondly, the STO economy cannot stabilize at all when Cryptic goes in and arbitrarily changes values and prices. They want you to buy MORE dilithium AND C-store points which is like "printing money" that leads to hyperinflation. Then they increase the cost of the items you buy with those things to off-set the hyperinflation which causes the in-world currency to depreciate. It is all very complicated.
I don't believe the current management have any economists working for them to point out the way these things work. Sure, it is a "game" but you're dealing with a functioning game economy which needs to be treated like a, you know, economy.
I understand they want to make the most money possible in the shortest amount of time, but just like every economy in the rest of the world, you imperil the entire operation when you don't understand how these things function.
My recommendations would be as follows:
Allow the C-store currency to stabilize on its own which means not increasing the use of dilithium to increase the amounts that need to be bought. In fact, I would take dilithium entirely out of crafting for anything other than replicating the uncommon and common unreplicateable materials.
Secondly, allow Gold Pressed Latinum to be the currency of the black-market, NOT dilithium. There isn't a point in having three competing currencies for the same things. It also devalues the crafting mechanisms which should be discouraged. Crafting is a valuable use of time and resources and should be more exclusive not less.
Lastly, If you want to encourage people to use the C-store then extremely rare items which cannot be earned in the game need to be sold there and, while they don't have to be "I-win" gear, they need to be valuable beyond the confines of normal gameplay. Like consoles that do multiple things regular consoles do - a Neutronium-hybrid console that minimizes all damage by a particular factor or something like that. Personalization options (unique color schemes) and hybrid weapons. C-store items simply shouldn't be available in the game UNLESS they come from the C-store - this further ensures the viability (and desirability) of the C-store purchases.
That is just my particular view based on the economics of the free market.
Comments
There is something seriously wrong with this system. I put a lot of time and effort in to maxing out 2 crafters.
I think it's time you and I got better acquainted Dunnlang. I know we probably got on each others bad sides during the Fleet Admiral debate, but lets let bygones be bygones. We are allied in this.
Read over my proposal, and let me know if it's a system you would be comfortable with. But be forewarned, as always, my goal is to move STO closer to canon.
My Charakter has 3.7 Mil EC while a single decent Beam Array can be bought for 2.5 Mil:mad:
Exchange and crafting are seriuosly out of control.
In its current state crafting is simply not worth it. That doesn't mean it can't be saved, nor that I'm agains the inclusion of dilithium in the process. But either reduce the amount of unreplicateable materials required per schematic or reduce the price of the uncommon variant. 1000 dil ea is way, way too much if you need More than 15 of them for one measly phaser bank.
You did your math wrong.
A MkXI Very Rare cannon needs: 23 Common Unreplicateable Materials, which require 10 Dilithium each to buy, or 230 Dilithium total.
AND
The cannon needs: 15 Uncommon Unreplicateable Material, which is 1000 Dilithium each, or 15,000 Dilithium.
A total of 15,230.
So Crafting saves you 7,390 Dilithium, aka, nearly a whole days grind.
The Vertion, Tranium, Technical schematics and such will cost you less than 100kEC currently, and others have said, EC is easy to get.
AND, There is the "Time to Craft! event, that will save you 20% moree off the nonreplicateable materials.
So that crafed cannon would only require 12,190 Dilithium, or save you 10,430 dilithium.
So, overall, Crafted is the way to go.
*puts Pitchfork back down*
herpa derp derpa derp
@Crafting: it's on the Schedule for Borticus to revamp crafting and it may possibly be tied into the DOff System.
Fact is for Season 5 Crafting was low priority and this was a cheap an easy way to make it work in the new system without breaking the economy for months.
The Feedback was heard already and Crafting is on the schedule again, also Borticus has a good background in Crafting (*points at short but good MMOrgue podcast*) i trust the man 100% to not F*** this up, not more than it already is anyway
Personally i crafted all that i needed way before this change and have yet to even look at this system again.
To ever go back to the dilithium store (which now has a fulltime button on my UI *facepalm*) or to crafting i need Mk XIII or MK XIV Items anyway.
For now i am happy to sell all my crafting supplies on the exchange and buy DOffs + Colonists for the EC i get out of it ;P
Given that common costs 10dil uncommon should only be 10x that cost so 100dil I could understad the cost if they were rare or even very rare but uncommon there isno justification. At the moment they just cost too much to make it worth using them as it seems the increase is really not worth the bother, as you say, when you look at the item that is one step down and uses no unreplicated materials.
They are going to see a brief surge in $$$, then when people start feeling used and dirty, they will find something that's not so cash-4-fun intensive to play...
For a brief surge, in the long run, they will lose because they did all this...
I guess that's the $64,000 (or really, multiple million) question. Most of the playerbase seems to agree with you, Cryptic/PWE clearly don't. I suppose time will tell who was right.
Then again the conspiracy-theory answer is that PWE wants STO to fail too. It's an expensive MMO that costs them in license fees. Some have theorized that PWE bought Cryptic for its game engine technology, and not necessarily any of its current MMOs or IP. If this were the case, they'd simply monetize the TRIBBLE out of STO and pump what dollars they can out of it while it dies, and then move on using Cryptic's technology to develop more MMOs that don't require licensing fees, thus generating more profit for them.
You can tell that some of this is happening already. They have all but abandoned the Foundry in STO and instead have diverted all those resources to push it forward on their new MMO, NWN.
Did Time to Craft come back? Because it disappeared about a month ago, as I recall.
It's around. Not every day like it used to though.
Ya, there was one today actually, 6 hours ago and another one coming in 11 hours, from the time of this post.
I don't believe the current management have any economists working for them to point out the way these things work. Sure, it is a "game" but you're dealing with a functioning game economy which needs to be treated like a, you know, economy.
I understand they want to make the most money possible in the shortest amount of time, but just like every economy in the rest of the world, you imperil the entire operation when you don't understand how these things function.
My recommendations would be as follows:
Allow the C-store currency to stabilize on its own which means not increasing the use of dilithium to increase the amounts that need to be bought. In fact, I would take dilithium entirely out of crafting for anything other than replicating the uncommon and common unreplicateable materials.
Secondly, allow Gold Pressed Latinum to be the currency of the black-market, NOT dilithium. There isn't a point in having three competing currencies for the same things. It also devalues the crafting mechanisms which should be discouraged. Crafting is a valuable use of time and resources and should be more exclusive not less.
Lastly, If you want to encourage people to use the C-store then extremely rare items which cannot be earned in the game need to be sold there and, while they don't have to be "I-win" gear, they need to be valuable beyond the confines of normal gameplay. Like consoles that do multiple things regular consoles do - a Neutronium-hybrid console that minimizes all damage by a particular factor or something like that. Personalization options (unique color schemes) and hybrid weapons. C-store items simply shouldn't be available in the game UNLESS they come from the C-store - this further ensures the viability (and desirability) of the C-store purchases.
That is just my particular view based on the economics of the free market.