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Funny Business in the Dilithium Exchange
theroyalfamily
Member Posts: 300 Arc User
This is probably old news, but it has been something I've noticed.
Earlier today I took a look at the ol' dil exchange. Funny enough, while people have been hoarding dil for the upcoming s7 requirements, the price of zen has gone up, ever so slightly. It has generally been sitting at 158 for best price, but earlier it was 159, as seen here. It would seem that 159 would be the lowest price, all lower prices being bought up already. If one were to buy zen at any of those prices, one would get their zen almost immediately - which makes sense, as there's a big pool there. And if one were to pick another price, lower than the lowest shown, it would take some time until it traded, when someone put up their zen for your lower offer. This would make sense.
Except, that doesn't seem to be the case. Well, the waiting is true. But it looks like, if one were to sell their zen for dil, the best prices would be a bit different. As we can see, there's lots of zen being sold at lower amounts than the Buy Zen tab shows.
So, seeing as how there looked to be a bit of zen being offered for 154 dil a pop, a tad better than the 159 shown in the Buy Zen screen, I decided to take one lucky person up on that. While one would expect to immediately receive from such a bounteous pot of zen, I didn't. Not only that, but hours later I am still waiting for my 1Z.
I have heard some folks on this very forum suggest that Cryptic is artificially keeping a high price in dil for zen, so folks will buy zen for the purpose of obtaining dil. Now, I certainly don't believe in such conspiracy theories, but there is a discrepancy here. What is the reason for this? Is it just a bug?
Earlier today I took a look at the ol' dil exchange. Funny enough, while people have been hoarding dil for the upcoming s7 requirements, the price of zen has gone up, ever so slightly. It has generally been sitting at 158 for best price, but earlier it was 159, as seen here. It would seem that 159 would be the lowest price, all lower prices being bought up already. If one were to buy zen at any of those prices, one would get their zen almost immediately - which makes sense, as there's a big pool there. And if one were to pick another price, lower than the lowest shown, it would take some time until it traded, when someone put up their zen for your lower offer. This would make sense.
Except, that doesn't seem to be the case. Well, the waiting is true. But it looks like, if one were to sell their zen for dil, the best prices would be a bit different. As we can see, there's lots of zen being sold at lower amounts than the Buy Zen tab shows.
So, seeing as how there looked to be a bit of zen being offered for 154 dil a pop, a tad better than the 159 shown in the Buy Zen screen, I decided to take one lucky person up on that. While one would expect to immediately receive from such a bounteous pot of zen, I didn't. Not only that, but hours later I am still waiting for my 1Z.
I have heard some folks on this very forum suggest that Cryptic is artificially keeping a high price in dil for zen, so folks will buy zen for the purpose of obtaining dil. Now, I certainly don't believe in such conspiracy theories, but there is a discrepancy here. What is the reason for this? Is it just a bug?
Post edited by theroyalfamily on
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What you are showing in your links is just that, market manipulation - It is a way to safeguard the exchange.
Think Wallstreet.
What I believe you are seeing are the Vesta-class ship fans exchanging their Dilithium to Zen in order to have their Zen ready for when the ship comes out with S7. It happen with the Atrox, Armitage, and the Regent (less so the Regent for some strange reason).
Give it time and it should flux back.
(UFP) Ragnar
That doesn't explain the discrepancy between the Buy and Sell Zen tabs, and why the 1 zen isn't bought when there is clearly zen to buy at that price.
My character Tsin'xing
What is displayed there is that the are 40145 Zen ALSO wanting to BUY(Sell displayed means Zen) at 154 per dilthium - but there is no-one to BUY the Zen from you at 154 dilth
on the BUY side tab is shows you the price per Dilthium people are willing to sell - which would probably be 159 - per Zen
So you order would only be filled after all the Zen is bought at 158/157/156/155 and most of 154
You are looking at things backward
(might need to edit tomorrow its 2 am and I can't think straight)
Interesting idea. That might very well be how it works.
However, it goes against both how the regular Exchange works, which would influence how the zen sellers would price their zen. In the Exchange, if you want your thing to sell quick - indeed, often at all - you want to make your price the lowest, so people will want to buy it, because it is at the top of the first page. It would only make sense that the Zen Exchange would work the same way - the stuff that is the lowest price would sell first, since folks want to get the most zen for their dil.
If it works like you say, any schmo could artificially drive up the mean price of zen - you just put a high-ball offer up, then it knocks the lowest price off the screen, making the next lowest price the lowest, etc. It screws all the people selling low, not just all the folks that were selling for the former lowest price, but also everyone who thinks the Dil exchange works like the EC Exchange and are low-balling the price in hopes of selling their zen faster.
I guess that could be tested...
EDIT: Doesn't seem to work that way. Just tried putting a high price on some zen, didn't bump the prices shown for buying zen for me or someone else.
The best offer to sell is the lowest prices, namely 159 dilithium per zen. The best offer to buy is the highest price, namely 158 dilithium per zen. Since the lowest offer to sell is 159, no sale will take place until there is a matching buy order at a price of 159 or higher. None of the buy offers in the system are that high, so they will not be matched by the exchange.
Think about it from the point of view of the person offering to sell zen for 159. You would not expect to offer your zen for 159 but instead only get 154. Your zen will not sell until someone offers 159 for it.
On the buy side things are flipped. If you are the guy offering to buy zen for 158, you would not want to be charged 163 for that zen. Your buy order will not be completed until someone enters an order at 158 or less.
The important thing to keep in mind is that the best buy order is the lowest price, and the best sell order is the highest price.
See my edited post - its too hard to think straight right now but it is right - not saying that Cyptic is not supporting the price - but you are looking at this backward - confusing dilth with Zen in your reasoning.
That makes sense.
But what of the people that are willing to sell zen at 154 (or whatever price), and someone that wants to buy at that price. The system does not seem to want to let that happen, for whatever reason. What the system looks like to me is that there is a pool of zen that folks are selling for x price, y price, z price, etc, which pool is represented on the screen. Is that not what is actually being shown?
A sell offer will always be matched with the "best" buy offer, which is the buy offer at the highest price. If there are buy offers at 158, a better price than 154, then the 158 buy offers will be the ones that are matched.
And, even if I offer to buy a zen at 166, I will still only pay 159.
Since that is the case, why show the other prices at all?
Why is it not set up like the EC exchange (which is what it looks like, albeit simplified), where folks can create their own offers, and thus have a true market?
Also, why the one dil difference? If I buy a zen, and then sell that same zen, I lose 1 dil. Why are they not the same?
I guess I'm asking for the formulas used to determine all this stuff
The system will not let you cheat yourself by paying more or receiving less. It will always give you the best deal. The system was specifically not designed to apply players to pay more than they need to, because that can lead to support problems and other types of manipulation of the system.
Sorry, but this doesn't make any sense to me. If you offer to sell 1 zen at price X, you will never get less than X dilithium. The only way you will lose one Dilithium is if you offer to sell your zen for one dilithium less than you bought it for. Of course you might have to wait until someone enters a buy offer at the same price as your sell offer.
Crash because?
Thanks for the clarification, it makes perfect sense now.
Yeah, that's right.
They're increasing the net amount of dilithium you can get per character in a couple of hours and clearly marking where to get it in S7.
The only way you lose out is if you used alts to acquire dilithium.
But I think the net goal if actually people refining more dilithium per day and that the shifts are actually to try to get people to do Fleet Actions over other types of content rather than actually dilithium starving people.
The long-run direction the dilithium economy hinges in S7 depends on three things (everything else is fairly short-run):
1) Do heavy economic participants lose out by not having frontloaded dilithium on lots of alts?
2) Do players bother with Foundry with a mission length requirement and pursue Fleet Actions? Do they bother with ESTFs?
3) Is having purple DOffs worth paying an upgrinding fee?
The first is an economic referendum on the value of economic changes from a system that makes alts advantagous to one that eliminates most of the economic advantage for alts.
The second and third are a question of whether high quality DOffs, lengthy Foundry missions, ESTFs, and Fleet Actions are "worth it." The net result could be players rejecting all four.
1. With the change to the Foundry my alts will likely no longer be used.
2. The change to STF's is enough to stop me from bothering with them. I did them with the rest of my fleet as fleet events primarily, but secondly did them for the dilithium. If the dilithium reward is gone, then I will stop doing STFs.
3. I will NOT be paying the upgrinding fee. The doff system was one of my favorite parts of the game. I am not happy about this new dilithium sink. With Star Bases requiring hundreds of thousands of dilithium to complete projects that was a sufficient enough sink for me. I will not be putting my dilithium any where I didn't put it before this new season.
This is one player that will likely reject all four.
If I do not find a new way to access dilithium that isn't hours of grinding, then this game will have stopped being fun for me, and I will find a new place to play.
Nowhere in the patchnotes does it say that. There's more sources of dilithium, yes, but the rate at which you gain from those sources is lower than before, and there's no mention of a refining cap increase, so I'm unsure what you think you're saying. When you're talking about a timebased currency, and that term's their own invention, having to spend more time to get the same amount of currency constitutes a nerf, no matter how often you do the big-eyed-lip-quiver routine and stutter "But there's other ways to get it now!".
A bit early, maybe, but consider it a prediction, cause I'd be amazed if the outcome were any different:
1) Yes. Anyone who had and continues to have a vested interested in collecting a great deal of dilithium is going to take a loss if they *gasp* take a loss. It might not make a big dent for the ones who convert it to Zen, as with scarcer dilithium the exchange rate for Zen is likely to drop a long way toward normalizing their Zen income, but those who need the dilithium and only the dilithium, either cause they're in a big rush to gear out characters or they're building a small fleet/solo fleet starbase, are going to feel the strain.
Mind you, if you're just talking about the clickies... Their removal's excusable, understandable. It's not just the clickies though. It's not just the clickies and B'Tran. It's everything. I'll be interested to see if the PvP and PvE dailies still award 1440, or they'll have been nerfed too, or not longer exist at all.
2) No or Not Enough With Issues. I don't think the mystery box is going to be of much interest to people who weren't inclined to play the spotlights already anyway, if the contents are as projected. There'll be a very small increase there. Same for the Fleet Actions. I always rather liked the (space) fleet actions, so I'm getting a little extra incentive to want to do them, but people who don't like them probably aren't going to be doing them that much more often. Though the difference there will be bigger, cause a little bit of garanteed dilithium beats what's in the mystery box every day. Problem there, though... garanteed dilithium. Idlers. And a lot of them. It's a lot safer to idle in a relatively anonymous environment like a fleet action or a warzone (see these a lot) than it is in a 5-man grouped instance, so we may need a lower tier of rewards for those, that affords no dilithium. Of course, that means, once the idlers catch on, and stay away, some unlucky science officers in science vessels who came in last will feel they got screwed.
3) No. Even if dilithium had been made easier to get, it wouldn't be. Not with them being as they are. If they'd just adjust the upgrinder to let you pick the exact profession, or at the very least the department of the better-quality duty officer that's supposed to come from this, 5000 dilithium might've been worth a purple. You'd still have less choice and control than than you would picking up a 12,000 dilithium doff from Ferra, but at least you'd know you're not getting a bartender or refugee. As is, that slot machine's too expensive for me and, if what I hear ingame is any indication, almost everyone else.
The real problem is that u dont see the entire sell and buy orders , PWE shows u only what the want you to see .
I have tried to help my friend get some zen so i told him to put 100 zen for sale at 500 dilitium per zen , when i went to the exchange i could not find the listing .
On the same note u can see the buy orders that are already there .
I conclusion the only reaso they would want that is to have room to artificially intervene , i played other PWE games and they have full trasnparecy , you can even make a low buy order and give the transaction number to a friend and he can sell u zen to fill your order specificaly .
Transparency will make it better for this game , and players will find ways to help each-other .
You can do a Fleet Action in ten minutes and get 900+ dilithium. Awards are now for participation in three participation tiers.
People who had one alt will have increased opportunity with Fleet Actions. However, less frontloading and costs associated with getting DOffs (think of how many free DOffs alts allowed before there was a cost) discourages having farming alts, which devalues alts. If I play Fleet Actions, I'll be getting the same amount of dilithium per day as I got before but it discourages using alts to maximize it.
And there's the issue: Choice. Cryptic is making economic referendums on old, paid-for content by trying to incentivize the things THEY want us to be doing. And putting a referendum on specific content makes the health of the game hinge on that content.
Really?
you took the time to make Alts, and the only thing you did on them was the console click daily...what a damn waste. While the free dil was nice it is easly made up with stacking resolve doff missions
If you go to the sell screen, you'll notice all the counter offers, which works in the same manner except reverse direction. The system is not rigged, so far as I can tell. It's an exchange market, there is not profit as it is a zero sum exchange, meaning Cryptic doesn't even take commission.
If you buy a zen, it will (at that particular time; I don't know what it is now) cost you 159 dil, because that is the best buy price. If you were to go and sell that same zen, you would sell it at 158, since that was the best sell price. You would lose (and when I experimented last night, it happened to me) 1 dil in the process. Even when I wanted to sell that one zen back for 159, to make back what I had spent on it, I couldn't, since that was above the best price listed.