It is as I initially said. They are unhappy that players are hitting their dil caps and therefore not buying as much Zpoints as they'd like.
This solution is a good one. What is not good is the lack of direct communication and the implied belief they can't be honest about their monetization intentions.
are u stupid u dont need duffs to hit the dill cap i hit the dill cap every day with in 5 to 30 mins of play time
(not by trashing duffs)
but due to the cap i found it easyer to just trade up and down the dill exchange as all dill comes thu allready refined
and it good to hear they putting allmost back to how it was as anything els just ment they would need to remove the duff seller off the sb as there would be no need for him in the game
and trashing duffs for the dill the amount u have to bin just to hit the 8k limit its easyer to do stfs and trash the chips
I was wondering why some of the Flight Deck Officers and Hazard Doffs weren't being recognized by the fleet starbase project as Operations Duty Officers?!?
How do you tell the difference?
So that you don't dismiss one and get nothing?
So that you don't buy one that 'refuses to do work' on a starbase?
Maybe they should put an image of 'the finger' in front of a Doff's image that gets no dil when dismissed and cannot be used for fleet starbase projects?
I put a bug check in on this, but if it's just 'messed up' then I guess I'll just put them back out on the exchange for the next sucker to come along and buy for nothing...
I was wondering why some of the Flight Deck Officers and Hazard Doffs weren't being recognized by the fleet starbase project as Operations Duty Officers?!?
How do you tell the difference?
So that you don't dismiss one and get nothing?
So that you don't buy one that 'refuses to do work' on a starbase?
Maybe they should put an image of 'the finger' in front of a Doff's image that gets no dil when dismissed and cannot be used for fleet starbase projects?
I put a bug check in on this, but if it's just 'messed up' then I guess I'll just put them back out on the exchange for the next sucker to come along and buy for nothing...
My instinct is that these are fleet doffs. They should be usable when the patch on Tribble hits Holodeck (almost certainly tomorrow).
Thank you Cryptic for listening to us and restoring this mess into some sort of working order. Hopefully now people won't be dismissing DOFFs, instead they will be selling them on the exchange which will drive the prices down.
All in all a satisfactory solution and once again showing the power of our community.
My thoughts exactly. Cryptic fixed their mistake within a week
Huh? What are you on? They didn't listen to us. They made a decision because they felt they weren't making enough on Zpoint sales then went and did their own thing, at their own pace, without informing or consulting the community.
Huh? What are you on? They didn't listen to us. They made a decision because they felt they weren't making enough on Zpoint sales then went and did their own thing, at their own pace, without informing or consulting the community.
...Either you didn't see the patch notes on Tribble yesterday or you're missing something. I don't know which.
People thought it was outrageous to be able to not be able to contribute the doffs to starbase projects that a doff vendor on our starbase gave out. Borticus said they were looking into it and they reversed their policy while addressing their concern about it generating too much dilithium. This is a win.
People thought it was outrageous to be able to not be able to contribute the doffs to starbase projects that a doff vendor on our starbase gave out. Borticus said they were looking into it and they reversed their policy while addressing their concern about it generating too much dilithium. This is a win.
Highlighted the relevant part for you.
The only winner is PWE. It's just that they didn't win at as great a cost to the playerbase as they could have. PWE's goal was to nerf Dil rewards so they could take more money from the playerbase. They've accomplished that goal.
Donating fleet doffs to starbases is a red herring. PWE groused they COULD have gouged the playerbase EVEN HARDER by more aggressively pushing the sale of doffpacks and other P2W economic aid. As it is, they're getting more money, just not as much more as they might like.
man get this 200 diffs = 100k fleet cred = 15k dill not everyone has 100k fleet cred let alone half depening fleet size and u can only refine and use 8k umm
(most people will now be broke on fc and spending weeks rebuilding it)
now 5 hours play running just stfs
all 3 for 5 hours = 15k dill (now here the extra u got chips trashing then can gain anything from 3k to extra 10k depening chips) (still limited to 8k aday)
so lowing the dill count on trashing duffs dose that go for all duff?? ( or just sb duffs) as klinks get tons of prisoners and u can trash them too (also u can mail them to feds and have the same out come) ( trash them on klink and send the dill to ur fed) ( still have 8k aday limit)
so over all theres no differences between them, both takes aslong as each other.
2. if u have a few brians in ur head u can run the dill exchange and turn 15k in to 150k pre refined dill ( if u know how) so dose this mean they going to rework the dill exchange?
(and free zen)
now only idout noobs would wast money on duff packs
now if they wanted to get more money for duffs what they should do is make it more better to be a gold member or move the duff officer to be only unlockable by gold members
so over all there not realy making any more money then befor the only extra money they made is they noobs with no brains with bank cards and people with too much money and dont care!
The only winner is PWE. It's just that they didn't win at as great a cost to the playerbase as they could have. PWE's goal was to nerf Dil rewards so they could take more money from the playerbase. They've accomplished that goal.
Donating fleet doffs to starbases is a red herring. PWE groused they COULD have gouged the playerbase EVEN HARDER by more aggressively pushing the sale of doffpacks and other P2W economic aid. As it is, they're getting more money, just not as much more as they might like.
That argument would make sense if there were people who made substantial sums of dilithium from dismissing officers -- I haven't seen much to support that case. As others have pointed out, you can make a lot of dilithium much faster. In 30 seconds doing the Foundry daily you can make more than dismissing 19 white doffs (under the old 75 ore per common) -- even if these only cost 20k EC a piece that'd still cost you 267 EC per 1 dilithium. And yes, while that means you could get 8000 dilithium for only 214k EC a day at that rate, if the zen/dil rate is 150 (I haven't checked lately) that means you're spending 40k EC per zen (or 4 million EC for 100 zen = $1 USD). That's still quite a bit more than the going rate from zen to EC via exchange.
These changes mean that there's a guaranteed way of getting certain department doffs at a fixed cost, greatly de-incentivizes removing doffs via dismissing (and thus lowering their prices on exchange), and makes it safe to buy on the exchange again. The only losers of note from this are those who wanted to make dilithium from dismissing duty officers and those wanted to price gouge duty officers. The big winners are those that want cheap doffs and those who wanted to advance their starbases. In terms of player size, I'd say the latter is several orders of magnitude that of the former.
That argument would make sense if there were people who made substantial sums of dilithium from dismissing officers -- I haven't seen much to support that case. As others have pointed out, you can make a lot of dilithium much faster. In 30 seconds doing the Foundry daily you can make more than dismissing 19 white doffs (under the old 75 ore per common) -- even if these only cost 20k EC a piece that'd still cost you 267 EC per 1 dilithium. And yes, while that means you could get 8000 dilithium for only 214k EC a day at that rate, if the zen/dil rate is 150 (I haven't checked lately) that means you're spending 40k EC per zen (or 4 million EC for 100 zen = $1 USD). That's still quite a bit more than the going rate from zen to EC via exchange.
These changes mean that there's a guaranteed way of getting certain department doffs at a fixed cost, greatly de-incentivizes removing doffs via dismissing (and thus lowering their prices on exchange), and makes it safe to buy on the exchange again. The only losers of note from this are those who wanted to make dilithium from dismissing duty officers and those wanted to price gouge duty officers. The big winners are those that want cheap doffs and those who wanted to advance their starbases. In terms of player size, I'd say the latter is several orders of magnitude that of the former.
The issue was that downgrading duty officers provided more dilithium than you would otherwise have.
Dismissing 1 very rare was 500 ore
Dismissing 3 rares was 250*3 = 750 ore
Dismissing 9 uncommons was 150*9 = 1350 ore
Dismissing 27 commons was 75*27 = 2025 ore
Thus you'd get more than 4 times as much dilithium by downgrading a very rare duty officer to 27 commons, along with Recruitment XP. Considering there were also missions to remove colonists and prisoners (say, 10 prisoners for chance at 1000 ore -- vs dismissing them immediately for guaranteed 750 ore) it didn't make much sense to do anything else if you didn't want them.
With today's patch,
Dismissing 1 very rare was 50 ore
Dismissing 3 rares was 25*3 = 75 ore
Dismissing 9 uncommons was 10*9 = 90 ore
Dismissing 27 commons was 1*27 = 27 ore (wouldn't 4 dilithium per be a little more in line?)
The most you could make would be less than 2 times as much dilithium, while the magnitude is 95% less than you would get under optimal conditions before.
As I've stated before, this is a big win for more people than the rather minor loss it is for a handful. The only issue was that some assignments generally weren't worth doing and that 4 very rare doffs could get you a day's worth of dilithium.
The issue was that downgrading duty officers provided more dilithium than you would otherwise have.
If that were true they would have simply rationalized the yield rather than globally nerf it.
You're expending a lot of words, time and energy on making long-winded arguments that a moment's thought is sufficient to defeat. The only common theme I see is that you are trying to spin a clear win for PWE (less dil for players; more Zpoint sales and resultant $$$) at the players' expense (reduced dil supply) as a win for players when the truth is quite obviously the contrary; players simply did not lose as hard as they might have.
If that were true they would have simply rationalized the yield rather than globally nerf it.
You're expending a lot of words, time and energy on making long-winded arguments that a moment's thought is sufficient to defeat. The only common theme I see is that you are trying to spin a clear win for PWE (less dil for players; more Zpoint sales and resultant $$$) at the players' expense (reduced dil supply) as a win for players when the truth is quite obviously the contrary; players simply did not lose as hard as they might have.
Nope, I'm not spinning anything. I call it how I see it.
The clear win is for the players who want cheap doffs and advanced starbases. The people who lose out are those who *relied* on doffs for dilithium -- even though there are *far* easier methods avaialble, and those who were engaged in price gouging on the exchange to build up their EC. Since I don't trade dilithium for zen or dismiss doffs en masse regularly, this is a huge net win for me personally.
Does this effect PWE's bottom line in some way? Sure -- it makes people more likely to continue doing the starbase projects and that means they'll be spending dilithium ultimately on projects instead of on zen. Keep in mind that dilithium doesn't *create* zen -- it is only bought from whatever reserves that those who paid real money have put into the system. PWE makes its money the moment someone buys the zen, regardless of whether you paid 1 dilithium for it or 1 million.
The clear win is for the players who want cheap doffs and advanced starbases. The people who lose out are those who *relied* on doffs for dilithium -- even though there are *far* easier methods avaialble, and those who were engaged in price gouging on the exchange to build up their EC.
Using the argument that there are "far easier methods available" is illogical because if this were true then there would be no need for the change.
The former group gets nothing it didn't already have, so it's not "winning".
The latter group is a study in lynch-mob demagoguery: victimizing alleged bogeymen to prop up real injustices.
There is no basis to imply a connection between disbands and high doff prices, because it's never the pricey doffs that get disbanded - only the cheapest. Someone disbanding a white Entertainer with a market value of 10k for 25dil has no connection to grousing about white Sensor Officers going for 500k.
Players disbanding fleet doffs has no impact on other players because they come from the doff vendor and not the exchange, and there's no basis to conflate Dil farmers with XC "gouging". To even call it "gouging" implies that the market is somehow biased or unfair which it is not because this is an MMO and no one has an unfair advantage...except those who spend real money on it...which are the people who AREN'T doing what you describe. So really your claims are contrary to truth.
Does this effect PWE's bottom line in some way? Sure -- it makes people more likely to continue doing the starbase projects and that means they'll be spending dilithium ultimately on projects instead of on zen. Keep in mind that dilithium doesn't *create* zen -- it is only bought from whatever reserves that those who paid real money have put into the system. PWE makes its money the moment someone buys the zen, regardless of whether you paid 1 dilithium for it or 1 million.
This is completely contrary to truth.
You're trying to equate "policies that get PWE $$$" with "STARBASES FOR ALL!!!" The highlighted portion underscores the fallacy. The intent is manufactured scarcity, to keep players grinding Dil so they HAVE to buy Zpoints for $$$ instead of with Dil.
It is in PWE's interests to limit the supply of Dilithium to ensure that players have reason to buy Zen to satisfy their needs, instead of farming whatever they need. Your claim that PWE makes "the same profit" whether someone buys it for 1dil or a million is very obviously contrary to truth: obviously if a Zen sold for a million dil then players would buy a hell of a lot less Zen because they'd need less to satisfy their demand. If Zen sold for one Dil then again players would buy a lot less for cash. This is a study in what economists call the supply curve: the sweet spot where sales are maximized.
All exchange-type systems dealing in virtual currency have two mathematical components besides the actual exchange rate. There is a tare, and a coefficient. The tare is the base cost of the item; an exchange with no tare would be like a car without an ignition. The coefficient determines the impact of supply and demand on the overall price (it isn't actually 1:1). A market with no coefficient is like a car without a clutch (or automatic transmission). The proper real-life analogy would be the money supply and interest rate, or, mechanically, weighting a scale, versus truncating the wire on one side of the scale.
What you're actually trying to do here is to assert fallacies about how the Dil exchange actually works. PWE is a business. Businesses exist to make a profit. There is no law against weighting a virtual currency exchange. If PWE could make more $$$ doing this - and they can - it is only sensible that they do so.
You're expending a lot of words, time and energy on making long-winded arguments that a moment's thought is sufficient to defeat. The only common theme I see is that you are trying to spin a clear win for most of the player base (cheaper doffs, advanced starbase) at the expense of a few (selling doffs for high EC, or dismissing them for quick dilithium) as PWE pulling the wool over everyone's eyes when the truth is quite obviously the contrary; players simply did not lose as much as you would have them think. We're almost 500 comments in and your arguments have convinced...anyone?
Your post illustrates a number of fallacies.
1) There are far easier methods to get dilithium, but this created a fast-tracked EC-to-dilithium->zen path (the reverse has a much better rate, but uses money->zen).
2) The gouging of the market is created by people who try to corner the market (i.e. those who desperately want to keep item A above price X). They know who they are.
3) PWE makes its profit whenever someone buys ZEN. People that only go from dilithium-to-zen do not affect their bottom line directly. Sure, there may be some people who would have bought more items with money instead of using dilithium if the dilithium exchange was substantially in their favor, but I have no reason this is a substantial portion of the community.
a clear win for most of the player base (cheaper doffs, advanced starbase)
You are contradicting yourself. You said yourself that players will take longer to fulfill their starbase Dil needs and spend Dil on that and not Zpoints. Therefore, by your own prior claims, this change will slow starbase construction.
You keep bringing up defeated arguments...we have established why this change will have no impact on the price of doffs: because the issue was that only fleet doffs, or very cheap and useless white civilians, were being disbanded - not the costly and scarce security and sensor officers that are bottlenecking construction.
1) There are far easier methods to get dilithium, but this created a fast-tracked EC-to-dilithium->zen path (the reverse has a much better rate, but uses money->zen).
Fleet doffs do not cost EC so that claim is untrue.
Another contradiction, how can it be a fast track if it's slower than the alternatives?
2) The gouging of the market is created by people who try to corner the market (i.e. those who desperately want to keep item A above price X). They know who they are.
The BOOGEYMEN! It's an old trick to blame anonymous "They" and "Them" to defend unjust policies.
Anyone who has played MMOs (or knows anything about market economics) knows that market cornering is very difficult in real life and impossible in MMOs, because attempts to corner the market can be sustained only by either:
a) constricting access to the market (which is impossible in an MMO)
b) monopolizing production (also impossible in an MMO)
c) pumping currency into the market to acquire all supply
"C" is ultimately self-defeating, because the would-be monopolist arouses market forces in his attempts to corner the market: he must constantly expend currency on buying up all supply, then raising his own prices to ensure he makes a profit. This makes producing the good more profitable, so producers ramp up production, forcing the monopolist to expend even more resources on maintaining control. Eventually, the monopolist goes bust and the bubble he has created bursts in a liquidation of the abnormal surplus created by his artificial demand. (Some of our readers in their 20s and 30s may remember when they were kids, silver was $4-5 an ounce in the aftermath of the Hunt Brothers).
In STO it is completely impossible to corner the doff market because of its sheer scale and the myriad means of acquiring doffs. No one player, or group of players, have enough wealth (or roster space) to acquire all doffs nor even enough time to do so. So your "bogeymen" are no more real than any other such group.
3) PWE makes its profit whenever someone buys ZEN. People that only go from dilithium-to-zen do not affect their bottom line directly. Sure, there may be some people who would have bought more items with money instead of using dilithium if the dilithium exchange was substantially in their favor, but I have no reason this is a substantial portion of the community.
Highlighted the fallacy. The mission of business is not to make a profit. It is to MAXIMIZE profit. If people are buying Zen with Dil to satisfy their needs, then they aren't buying Zen with $$$. That's $$$ PWE wants, to MAXIMIZE profit.
Why are you so tenacious in trying to make an obviously flawed argument?
You are contradicting yourself. You said yourself that players will take longer to fulfill their starbase Dil needs and spend Dil on that and not Zpoints. Therefore, by your own prior claims, this change will slow starbase construction.
You keep bringing up defeated arguments...we have established why this change will have no impact on the price of doffs: because the issue was that only fleet doffs, or very cheap and useless white civilians, were being disbanded - not the costly and scarce security and sensor officers that are bottlenecking construction.
Nope: Very cheap doffs not being dismissed results in (drum roll) cheaper doffs. Also, some will sell fleet doffs.
Fleet doffs do not cost EC so that claim is untrue.
Another contradiction, how can it be a fast track if it's slower than the alternatives?
Nope. No one was dismissing fleet doffs for dilithium -- they don't reward any. It's fast in that you click a button instead of running missions. People were paying EC for doffs, then dismissing. The process is fast, it's just EC intensive.
The BOOGEYMEN! It's an old trick to blame anonymous "They" and "Them" to defend unjust policies.
Anyone who has played MMOs (or knows anything about market economics) knows that market cornering is very difficult in real life and impossible in MMOs, because attempts to corner the market can be sustained only by either:
a) constricting access to the market (which is impossible in an MMO)
b) monopolizing production (also impossible in an MMO)
c) pumping currency into the market to acquire all supply
"C" is ultimately self-defeating, because the would-be monopolist arouses market forces in his attempts to corner the market: he must constantly expend currency on buying up all supply, then raising his own prices to ensure he makes a profit. This makes producing the good more profitable, so producers ramp up production, forcing the monopolist to expend even more resources on maintaining control. Eventually, the monopolist goes bust and the bubble he has created bursts in a liquidation of the abnormal surplus created by his artificial demand. (Some of our readers in their 20s and 30s may remember when they were kids, silver was $4-5 an ounce in the aftermath of the Hunt Brothers).
Actually, its called obeying the forum's rules. While C is bad for those in the long-term, it doesn't stop people in short-term.
Why are you so tenacious in trying to make an obviously flawed argument?
Why are *you*? I haven't seen you convince a single poster in this thread of almost 500 posts. You seem to just want to argue with anyone and everyone.
Summary, people, is PWE in essence admitting that the real issue was, as I said, people hitting the Dil cap. Proof being so much effort goes into spinning it into something else.
Nope: Very cheap doffs not being dismissed results in (drum roll) cheaper doffs. Also, some will sell fleet doffs.
Fleet doffs were salable before the controversial change.
The doffs that were being dismissed for Dil were useless and that is why they were being dismissed. This has been said many times. You keep bringing up obviously false arguments that don't seem to have any angle other than to support PWE.
Nope. No one was dismissing fleet doffs for dilithium -- they don't reward any. It's fast in that you click a button instead of running missions. People were paying EC for doffs, then dismissing. The process is fast, it's just EC intensive.
This thread is about a change to fleet doffs, acquired though the fleet vendor, not other doffs - so clearly your argument is a red herring.
The former claim is untrue (I dismissed a lot of them for dil).
How do you presume to know what other players are doing, anyway?
]Why are *you*? I haven't seen you convince a single poster in this thread of almost 500 posts. You seem to just want to argue with anyone and everyone.
This is another PR tactic - appeal to herd mentality.
The only person I am arguing with is...you. In fact no one else has posted during this dialogue, so that is all your remark is, a baseless appeal to herd mentality in an effort to make it seem like there's more to your claims than you saying so.
1) PWE admitted no such thing.
2) You're trying to change the nature of the debate. It's not on the initial release of doffs, it's on the latest patch changes (August 30). Since these fleet doffs are still not dismissable for dilithium this is a win for those who want more white doffs on the market and at lower prices. *That* is what is important to most players concerned with starbases.
3) Some people like to brag about it. I pay attention.
4) PR tactic? I have no relation with PWE. Your arguments are unpersuasive and fundamentally flawed.
In fact no one else has posted during this dialogue
This is because most people recognize you as that guy who spends his free time obsessively trolling DOFFJOBS and realize that trying to argue with you is like trying to play chess with a pigeon - it just knocks over the pieces and craps on the board, flies off, and squawks as if it has achieved victory.
Why Phyrexianhero has continued trying to reason with you is beyond me.
Comments
are u stupid u dont need duffs to hit the dill cap i hit the dill cap every day with in 5 to 30 mins of play time
(not by trashing duffs)
but due to the cap i found it easyer to just trade up and down the dill exchange as all dill comes thu allready refined
and it good to hear they putting allmost back to how it was as anything els just ment they would need to remove the duff seller off the sb as there would be no need for him in the game
and trashing duffs for the dill the amount u have to bin just to hit the 8k limit its easyer to do stfs and trash the chips
How do you tell the difference?
So that you don't dismiss one and get nothing?
So that you don't buy one that 'refuses to do work' on a starbase?
Maybe they should put an image of 'the finger' in front of a Doff's image that gets no dil when dismissed and cannot be used for fleet starbase projects?
I put a bug check in on this, but if it's just 'messed up' then I guess I'll just put them back out on the exchange for the next sucker to come along and buy for nothing...
My instinct is that these are fleet doffs. They should be usable when the patch on Tribble hits Holodeck (almost certainly tomorrow).
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Huh? What are you on? They didn't listen to us. They made a decision because they felt they weren't making enough on Zpoint sales then went and did their own thing, at their own pace, without informing or consulting the community.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
Yes, on tribble you can now use fleet doffs again for projects. Will hopefully be pushed to Holodeck tomorrow.
And there was much rejoicing.....
...Either you didn't see the patch notes on Tribble yesterday or you're missing something. I don't know which.
People thought it was outrageous to be able to not be able to contribute the doffs to starbase projects that a doff vendor on our starbase gave out. Borticus said they were looking into it and they reversed their policy while addressing their concern about it generating too much dilithium. This is a win.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
I saw another thread bemoaning the loss in dilithium for doff exchanges.
I count it as a win.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
Highlighted the relevant part for you.
The only winner is PWE. It's just that they didn't win at as great a cost to the playerbase as they could have. PWE's goal was to nerf Dil rewards so they could take more money from the playerbase. They've accomplished that goal.
Donating fleet doffs to starbases is a red herring. PWE groused they COULD have gouged the playerbase EVEN HARDER by more aggressively pushing the sale of doffpacks and other P2W economic aid. As it is, they're getting more money, just not as much more as they might like.
man get this 200 diffs = 100k fleet cred = 15k dill not everyone has 100k fleet cred let alone half depening fleet size and u can only refine and use 8k umm
(most people will now be broke on fc and spending weeks rebuilding it)
now 5 hours play running just stfs
all 3 for 5 hours = 15k dill (now here the extra u got chips trashing then can gain anything from 3k to extra 10k depening chips) (still limited to 8k aday)
so lowing the dill count on trashing duffs dose that go for all duff?? ( or just sb duffs) as klinks get tons of prisoners and u can trash them too (also u can mail them to feds and have the same out come) ( trash them on klink and send the dill to ur fed) ( still have 8k aday limit)
so over all theres no differences between them, both takes aslong as each other.
2. if u have a few brians in ur head u can run the dill exchange and turn 15k in to 150k pre refined dill ( if u know how) so dose this mean they going to rework the dill exchange?
(and free zen)
now only idout noobs would wast money on duff packs
now if they wanted to get more money for duffs what they should do is make it more better to be a gold member or move the duff officer to be only unlockable by gold members
so over all there not realy making any more money then befor the only extra money they made is they noobs with no brains with bank cards and people with too much money and dont care!
At 5.30pm their time things are still "working as intended" - seems strange
Patch is going live tomorrow, you may now begin jumping up and down.
That argument would make sense if there were people who made substantial sums of dilithium from dismissing officers -- I haven't seen much to support that case. As others have pointed out, you can make a lot of dilithium much faster. In 30 seconds doing the Foundry daily you can make more than dismissing 19 white doffs (under the old 75 ore per common) -- even if these only cost 20k EC a piece that'd still cost you 267 EC per 1 dilithium. And yes, while that means you could get 8000 dilithium for only 214k EC a day at that rate, if the zen/dil rate is 150 (I haven't checked lately) that means you're spending 40k EC per zen (or 4 million EC for 100 zen = $1 USD). That's still quite a bit more than the going rate from zen to EC via exchange.
These changes mean that there's a guaranteed way of getting certain department doffs at a fixed cost, greatly de-incentivizes removing doffs via dismissing (and thus lowering their prices on exchange), and makes it safe to buy on the exchange again. The only losers of note from this are those who wanted to make dilithium from dismissing duty officers and those wanted to price gouge duty officers. The big winners are those that want cheap doffs and those who wanted to advance their starbases. In terms of player size, I'd say the latter is several orders of magnitude that of the former.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
I'll spell it out again for you.
The issue was that downgrading duty officers provided more dilithium than you would otherwise have.
Dismissing 1 very rare was 500 ore
Dismissing 3 rares was 250*3 = 750 ore
Dismissing 9 uncommons was 150*9 = 1350 ore
Dismissing 27 commons was 75*27 = 2025 ore
Thus you'd get more than 4 times as much dilithium by downgrading a very rare duty officer to 27 commons, along with Recruitment XP. Considering there were also missions to remove colonists and prisoners (say, 10 prisoners for chance at 1000 ore -- vs dismissing them immediately for guaranteed 750 ore) it didn't make much sense to do anything else if you didn't want them.
With today's patch,
Dismissing 1 very rare was 50 ore
Dismissing 3 rares was 25*3 = 75 ore
Dismissing 9 uncommons was 10*9 = 90 ore
Dismissing 27 commons was 1*27 = 27 ore (wouldn't 4 dilithium per be a little more in line?)
The most you could make would be less than 2 times as much dilithium, while the magnitude is 95% less than you would get under optimal conditions before.
As I've stated before, this is a big win for more people than the rather minor loss it is for a handful. The only issue was that some assignments generally weren't worth doing and that 4 very rare doffs could get you a day's worth of dilithium.
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Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
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If that were true they would have simply rationalized the yield rather than globally nerf it.
You're expending a lot of words, time and energy on making long-winded arguments that a moment's thought is sufficient to defeat. The only common theme I see is that you are trying to spin a clear win for PWE (less dil for players; more Zpoint sales and resultant $$$) at the players' expense (reduced dil supply) as a win for players when the truth is quite obviously the contrary; players simply did not lose as hard as they might have.
Nope, I'm not spinning anything. I call it how I see it.
The clear win is for the players who want cheap doffs and advanced starbases. The people who lose out are those who *relied* on doffs for dilithium -- even though there are *far* easier methods avaialble, and those who were engaged in price gouging on the exchange to build up their EC. Since I don't trade dilithium for zen or dismiss doffs en masse regularly, this is a huge net win for me personally.
Does this effect PWE's bottom line in some way? Sure -- it makes people more likely to continue doing the starbase projects and that means they'll be spending dilithium ultimately on projects instead of on zen. Keep in mind that dilithium doesn't *create* zen -- it is only bought from whatever reserves that those who paid real money have put into the system. PWE makes its money the moment someone buys the zen, regardless of whether you paid 1 dilithium for it or 1 million.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
I'm content to stick to the facts of the post - style, motives and apparent fallacies - and let other posters arrive at their own conclusions.
Pointing out that your personal experiences and views are just that is redundant.
Using the argument that there are "far easier methods available" is illogical because if this were true then there would be no need for the change.
The former group gets nothing it didn't already have, so it's not "winning".
The latter group is a study in lynch-mob demagoguery: victimizing alleged bogeymen to prop up real injustices.
There is no basis to imply a connection between disbands and high doff prices, because it's never the pricey doffs that get disbanded - only the cheapest. Someone disbanding a white Entertainer with a market value of 10k for 25dil has no connection to grousing about white Sensor Officers going for 500k.
Players disbanding fleet doffs has no impact on other players because they come from the doff vendor and not the exchange, and there's no basis to conflate Dil farmers with XC "gouging". To even call it "gouging" implies that the market is somehow biased or unfair which it is not because this is an MMO and no one has an unfair advantage...except those who spend real money on it...which are the people who AREN'T doing what you describe. So really your claims are contrary to truth.
This is completely contrary to truth.
You're trying to equate "policies that get PWE $$$" with "STARBASES FOR ALL!!!" The highlighted portion underscores the fallacy. The intent is manufactured scarcity, to keep players grinding Dil so they HAVE to buy Zpoints for $$$ instead of with Dil.
It is in PWE's interests to limit the supply of Dilithium to ensure that players have reason to buy Zen to satisfy their needs, instead of farming whatever they need. Your claim that PWE makes "the same profit" whether someone buys it for 1dil or a million is very obviously contrary to truth: obviously if a Zen sold for a million dil then players would buy a hell of a lot less Zen because they'd need less to satisfy their demand. If Zen sold for one Dil then again players would buy a lot less for cash. This is a study in what economists call the supply curve: the sweet spot where sales are maximized.
All exchange-type systems dealing in virtual currency have two mathematical components besides the actual exchange rate. There is a tare, and a coefficient. The tare is the base cost of the item; an exchange with no tare would be like a car without an ignition. The coefficient determines the impact of supply and demand on the overall price (it isn't actually 1:1). A market with no coefficient is like a car without a clutch (or automatic transmission). The proper real-life analogy would be the money supply and interest rate, or, mechanically, weighting a scale, versus truncating the wire on one side of the scale.
What you're actually trying to do here is to assert fallacies about how the Dil exchange actually works. PWE is a business. Businesses exist to make a profit. There is no law against weighting a virtual currency exchange. If PWE could make more $$$ doing this - and they can - it is only sensible that they do so.
You're expending a lot of words, time and energy on making long-winded arguments that a moment's thought is sufficient to defeat. The only common theme I see is that you are trying to spin a clear win for most of the player base (cheaper doffs, advanced starbase) at the expense of a few (selling doffs for high EC, or dismissing them for quick dilithium) as PWE pulling the wool over everyone's eyes when the truth is quite obviously the contrary; players simply did not lose as much as you would have them think. We're almost 500 comments in and your arguments have convinced...anyone?
Your post illustrates a number of fallacies.
1) There are far easier methods to get dilithium, but this created a fast-tracked EC-to-dilithium->zen path (the reverse has a much better rate, but uses money->zen).
2) The gouging of the market is created by people who try to corner the market (i.e. those who desperately want to keep item A above price X). They know who they are.
3) PWE makes its profit whenever someone buys ZEN. People that only go from dilithium-to-zen do not affect their bottom line directly. Sure, there may be some people who would have bought more items with money instead of using dilithium if the dilithium exchange was substantially in their favor, but I have no reason this is a substantial portion of the community.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
You are contradicting yourself. You said yourself that players will take longer to fulfill their starbase Dil needs and spend Dil on that and not Zpoints. Therefore, by your own prior claims, this change will slow starbase construction.
You keep bringing up defeated arguments...we have established why this change will have no impact on the price of doffs: because the issue was that only fleet doffs, or very cheap and useless white civilians, were being disbanded - not the costly and scarce security and sensor officers that are bottlenecking construction.
Fleet doffs do not cost EC so that claim is untrue.
Another contradiction, how can it be a fast track if it's slower than the alternatives?
The BOOGEYMEN! It's an old trick to blame anonymous "They" and "Them" to defend unjust policies.
Anyone who has played MMOs (or knows anything about market economics) knows that market cornering is very difficult in real life and impossible in MMOs, because attempts to corner the market can be sustained only by either:
a) constricting access to the market (which is impossible in an MMO)
b) monopolizing production (also impossible in an MMO)
c) pumping currency into the market to acquire all supply
"C" is ultimately self-defeating, because the would-be monopolist arouses market forces in his attempts to corner the market: he must constantly expend currency on buying up all supply, then raising his own prices to ensure he makes a profit. This makes producing the good more profitable, so producers ramp up production, forcing the monopolist to expend even more resources on maintaining control. Eventually, the monopolist goes bust and the bubble he has created bursts in a liquidation of the abnormal surplus created by his artificial demand. (Some of our readers in their 20s and 30s may remember when they were kids, silver was $4-5 an ounce in the aftermath of the Hunt Brothers).
In STO it is completely impossible to corner the doff market because of its sheer scale and the myriad means of acquiring doffs. No one player, or group of players, have enough wealth (or roster space) to acquire all doffs nor even enough time to do so. So your "bogeymen" are no more real than any other such group.
Highlighted the fallacy. The mission of business is not to make a profit. It is to MAXIMIZE profit. If people are buying Zen with Dil to satisfy their needs, then they aren't buying Zen with $$$. That's $$$ PWE wants, to MAXIMIZE profit.
Why are you so tenacious in trying to make an obviously flawed argument?
Nope. No one was dismissing fleet doffs for dilithium -- they don't reward any. It's fast in that you click a button instead of running missions. People were paying EC for doffs, then dismissing. The process is fast, it's just EC intensive.
Actually, its called obeying the forum's rules. While C is bad for those in the long-term, it doesn't stop people in short-term. Why are *you*? I haven't seen you convince a single poster in this thread of almost 500 posts. You seem to just want to argue with anyone and everyone.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Fleet doffs were salable before the controversial change.
The doffs that were being dismissed for Dil were useless and that is why they were being dismissed. This has been said many times. You keep bringing up obviously false arguments that don't seem to have any angle other than to support PWE.
This thread is about a change to fleet doffs, acquired though the fleet vendor, not other doffs - so clearly your argument is a red herring.
The former claim is untrue (I dismissed a lot of them for dil).
How do you presume to know what other players are doing, anyway?
How do you know who these BOGEYMEN are?
You can't know who is listing what. You're trynig to use XC BOGEYMEN as a red herring to justify PWE's efforts to gouge players on Zpoints.
This is another PR tactic - appeal to herd mentality.
The only person I am arguing with is...you. In fact no one else has posted during this dialogue, so that is all your remark is, a baseless appeal to herd mentality in an effort to make it seem like there's more to your claims than you saying so.
2) You're trying to change the nature of the debate. It's not on the initial release of doffs, it's on the latest patch changes (August 30). Since these fleet doffs are still not dismissable for dilithium this is a win for those who want more white doffs on the market and at lower prices. *That* is what is important to most players concerned with starbases.
3) Some people like to brag about it. I pay attention.
4) PR tactic? I have no relation with PWE. Your arguments are unpersuasive and fundamentally flawed.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
This is because most people recognize you as that guy who spends his free time obsessively trolling DOFFJOBS and realize that trying to argue with you is like trying to play chess with a pigeon - it just knocks over the pieces and craps on the board, flies off, and squawks as if it has achieved victory.
Why Phyrexianhero has continued trying to reason with you is beyond me.