It was absolutely not an exploit, remember folks- Cryptic added 50 fleet marks to the Foundry Daily for the sole purpose of quickly adding fleet marks into the system to support season six. They knew the Foundry Daily would be used that way, and encouraged it and it was by design.
It wasn't without problems, it cheapened the content produced by the Foundry and needed to be addressed, but that several hundred million dilithium bubble was in the economy and now is not.
The problem is, the entire dilithium economy is priced around an economic model that is now several hundred million per week smaller. It you shrink GDP by that much, you get an economic crash. What is happening is Economics 101, Cryptic knows and understands it's happening, they just haven't found a way to fix it within the framework of their game design yet.
And no way will changes announced to begin Thursday solve the problem, there is still a floor yet to be determined.
It also benefits Cryptic that more Zen needs to be bought to get the same amount of Dilithium as before... this increases their passive revenue stream, which of course is augmented by active sales every month or so.
Not sure why the would want to fix something that will increase their revenue.
And for the record, anyone suggesting there is no problem is wrong. There is clearly a problem with the Dilithium economy, it simply impacts different folks in different ways. It really hurts fleets, and has limited impact on casual solo players.
Btw, anyone noticing the deflationary impacts on the EC exchange? ZEN is slowly losing purchasing power across the entire ingame economy. That is very bad news for a free to play game, and it is hard to believe Zen is selling well right now when it is worth less than at anytime in the history of the game.
We will know for sure soon, all of this will be able to be seen on PWEs filings. If Cryptic is taking a huge financial loss with Season 7 - and all indications suggest they are, PWE Corporate is going to start asking tough questions like "why the hell Daniel Stahl killed the buzz around Season Seven with this enormous economic miscalculation?"
There is no good answer for the tough questions hanging out there.
And for the record, anyone suggesting there is no problem is wrong. There is clearly a problem with the Dilithium economy, it simply impacts different folks in different ways. It really hurts fleets, and has limited impact on casual solo players.
Btw, anyone noticing the deflationary impacts on the EC exchange? ZEN is slowly losing purchasing power across the entire ingame economy. That is very bad news for a free to play game, and it is hard to believe Zen is selling well right now when it is worth less than at anytime in the history of the game.
We will know for sure soon, all of this will be able to be seen on PWEs filings. If Cryptic is taking a huge financial loss with Season 7 - and all indications suggest they are, PWE Corporate is going to start asking tough questions like "why the hell Daniel Stahl killed the buzz around Season Seven with this enormous economic miscalculation?"
There is no good answer for the tough questions hanging out there.
I'm pretty sure they knew this was going to happen and that PW/PWE actually wanted this change because it fits more in line with their development model. That is to force people to grind a lot to get anywhere or in frustration buy Zen to reduce the grinding. I think if they are testing the water to see if the Western market will accept this change or revolt... early indications seem to report dissatisfaction amongst the playerbase that voice their concerns here but that is not the entire demographic... so who knows how this will turn out.
But I see what they are trying to do, that is increase revenue by frustrating players into buying Zen.
Dilithium market has fallen between 10-12 dil per zen, this is something like 7% drop, hardly a crash, just down turn. Chill out wait a couples weeks and it will head back to normal.
It also benefits Cryptic that more Zen needs to be bought to get the same amount of Dilithium as before... this increases their passive revenue stream, which of course is augmented by active sales every month or so.
Not sure why the would want to fix something that will increase their revenue.
There is no evidence anywhere suggesting that is working for them. The dilithium exchange has less product, both Zen and Dilithium, for trade than at any time in memory. Do the math, it's only a few thousand dollars on the exchange right now.
Not to mention that historically we have seen Zen sales at the highest levels when the exchange is at 170, and those like me who have millions of dilithium and thousands of Zen know this because we saw our money moving the most, not to mention it is reflected by prices on the EC exchange where items purchased with Zen would be priced very high and move in minutes, sometimes seconds. Right now the exchanges are moving at sluggish speeds and everything bought with Zen is getting cheaper.
There is no way Cryptic is making money right now. There is no evidence anywhere that Zen is being purchased to be traded in an economy where Zen is this worthless. The exchange shows no evidence to support what you are saying. Players aren't as dumb as you think.
Dilithium market has fallen between 10-12 dil per zen, this is something like 7% drop, hardly a crash, just down turn. Chill out wait a couples weeks and it will head back to normal.
162 at season seven launch to 130 last night.
That's almost 15%.
The weekly dilithium earnings by the playerbase is down hundreds of millions. Thousands per lvl 50 character on average.
STF conversion of EDC, Salvage, and tech was a one time boost in the season seven economy. The economy has overperformed to date thanks to that initial spike early in the season.
We are nowhere near the floor, and the announced changes cannot add back enough dilithium to cover the bubble that burst.
We won't know what players will tolerate until we hit the floor, and we may be a few weeks yet from finding the floor. Still a long way to go before this issue goes away.
There is no way Cryptic is making money right now. There is no evidence anywhere that Zen is being purchased to be traded in an economy where Zen is this worthless. The exchange shows no evidence to support what you are saying. Players aren't as dumb as you think.
Your forgetting that there is less dilithium about and people want more of it to progress it is in demand. Whatever the value of Zen is in relation to that is only important when considering what volume of players will stop at that point from trading... the Zen Sale over the weekend has shown that regardless of the drop, players were still putting a lot of Zen up for exchange. I saw over 80k zen being sold @ 130 on the weekend. Even now after the sale there is still 23k Zen on sale at 129.
Tell me what was the purpose of Season 7... you know the purpose was to increase the grind. That is what has happened. As I said before it's part of PW development model in Asia to do this, perhaps they thought they'd try it here... and perhaps it's not working, but I need to see where we are in January.
Starbase building is still going strong, Reputations are getting a fix on the 29th, all of that encourages use of resources. We are seeing the leading edge of fleets in Tier 4, as more and more fleets break that barrier, we will see still more use of Dilithium. 1.9 Mil dil for just upgrade to Tier 4, not including all the project leading up to it etc. Never mind the cost of getting the ships, and other material available as a result.
We are seeing a good number of folks returning as a result of S7, and we are leading into the winter holiday, which is guaranteed to be key/lock box opening season, with whatever ship will be released. After that we have one off FE, and rerun period for all the FEs. All of which encourages folks to get their alts up. All of which is good for the economy.
We are seeing a good number of folks returning as a result of S7
Actually Star Base construction in my fleet has ground to a halt, as a lot of members have quit or moved to bigger fleets due to S7 changes.
The folks that have returned to the game so far have in my discussions with them a pretty low appreciation of Season 7, many of who logged in last week to look around and then left again not to return until Season 8.
It also benefits Cryptic that more Zen needs to be bought to get the same amount of Dilithium as before... this increases their passive revenue stream, which of course is augmented by active sales every month or so.
Not sure why the would want to fix something that will increase their revenue.
Yup.
And they can argue having dilithium buy more ZEN mitigates P2W by making the C-Store accessible.
There are a few points.
1) In the short run, they make the same profits with 25 dil per ZEN as they do with 159 dil per ZEN even if only 16% as many dilithium/ZEN trades occur. (There are some issues with this. One of which is that fewer trades will raise the price back unless Cryptic is pumping ZEN into the exchange to keep the price there.)
2) The problem is this: In the short run, at least one input is fixed. (Number of players being a key one here. Nobody quits when you're looking at a snapshot in time.) In the long run, no inputs are fixed. Producers tend to apply that to themselves but fail to recognize it's true for consumers too. So while they can get by with 16% of the transactions they had before in a bottomed out economy, the issue is the fallacy in thinking it won't drop further.
3) The whole thing seems conveniently designed by someone who is Keynsian or perhaps someone without an economic background because it matches up with forum posts I and others have made in the past but the analysis stops where our posts stopped and there is a more detailed picture here.
4) I think this whole thing is being done to pave the way for the return of PvP in a big way. And to that, I say: "Really. Stop and look at yourselves."
I find this whole sky-is-falling idea to be amusing. The market is either good or bad depending on which side you are on. Are you buying or selling Zen? For those buying Zen this is a good thing. For sellers, not so good. Either way it has nothing to do with Cryptic wanting to fleece anyone.
For people who actually spend time playing the game this is good.
__________________________________
STO Forum member since before February 2010. STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
Your forgetting that there is less dilithium about and people want more of it to progress it is in demand. Whatever the value of Zen is in relation to that is only important when considering what volume of players will stop at that point from trading... the Zen Sale over the weekend has shown that regardless of the drop, players were still putting a lot of Zen up for exchange. I saw over 80k zen being sold @ 130 on the weekend. Even now after the sale there is still 23k Zen on sale at 129.
Tell me what was the purpose of Season 7... you know the purpose was to increase the grind. That is what has happened. As I said before it's part of PW development model in Asia to do this, perhaps they thought they'd try it here... and perhaps it's not working, but I need to see where we are in January.
You clearly are not speaking from the perspective of a player who has actively been engaged on the dilithium exchange for very long, or with enough currency to know what you are talking about.
The amount of currency being traded right now is tiny relative to any day in Season six. If you had any actual wealth in Zen or Dilithium you would know this.
I'm well known as Moneybags. One of the wealthiest players in Jupiter Force. Let me inform you sir, as a player who can burn through 900000 dilithium for breakfast like I did yesterday when I single handedly filled our Tier IV shipyard on our KDF starbase yesterday morning, the economy is in the dumpster and the only people getting rich are rich folks like me, and the poor in STO are getting poorer at breakneck speed.
This isn't an economy that will produce positive things for the STO community, and it's hard to imagine this economy can sustain revenue for Cryptic in any way better than the Season Six economy did- and count me among those who believed the season six economy was good for both Cryptic and the community.
I find this whole sky-is-falling idea to be amusing. The market is either good or bad depending on which side you are on. Are you buying or selling Zen? For those buying Zen this is a good thing. For sellers, not so good. Either way it has nothing to do with Cryptic wanting to fleece anyone.
For people who actually spend time playing the game this is good.
This is so very true, the amusing thing about the falling value of Zen is it means the value of Dil is actually rising, which is pretty funny when you consider it. Really it makes sense, put out enough things to use Dilithium on and natural demand causes its value to rise.
If you are really experienced in market trading then, you'd simply know the market will adjust. See if you can get Cryprtic to implement, Short Calls on zen lol
This is so very true, the amusing thing about the falling value of Zen is it means the value of Dil is actually rising, which is pretty funny when you consider it.
shhh don't tell them that, they want to belive this is all some Obama/Zombie-Nixon Keynesian plot to ruin there vast virtual holdings in an online game. OMG how are they going to feed here children if the bear market never recovers, it might take a week it do a star starbase upgrade
shhh don't tell them that, they want to belive this is all some Obama/Zombie-Nixon Keynesian plot to ruin there vast virtual holdings in an online game. OMG how are they going to feed here children if the bear market never recovers, it might take a week it do a star starbase upgrade
+1. lol
Hehe, the sad point being many that starbase upgrade for many fleets are frozen this week b/c of doff mission mess up. Its complicated but until the fix, we can only get the needed Doffs by failing a doff mission which has something like 3% failure rate. So the whole things is pretty funny.
And they can argue having dilithium buy more ZEN mitigates P2W by making the C-Store accessible.
There are a few points.
1) In the short run, they make the same profits with 25 dil per ZEN as they do with 159 dil per ZEN even if only 16% as many dilithium/ZEN trades occur. (There are some issues with this. One of which is that fewer trades will raise the price back unless Cryptic is pumping ZEN into the exchange to keep the price there.)
2) The problem is this: In the short run, at least one input is fixed. (Number of players being a key one here. Nobody quits when you're looking at a snapshot in time.) In the long run, no inputs are fixed. Producers tend to apply that to themselves but fail to recognize it's true for consumers too. So while they can get by with 16% of the transactions they had before in a bottomed out economy, the issue is the fallacy in thinking it won't drop further.
3) The whole thing seems conveniently designed by someone who is Keynsian or perhaps someone without an economic background because it matches up with forum posts I and others have made in the past but the analysis stops where our posts stopped and there is a more detailed picture here.
4) I think this whole thing is being done to pave the way for the return of PvP in a big way. And to that, I say: "Really. Stop and look at yourselves."
dude, step back from your computer and say these words... "Its only a game"
some real world economic theory can be used on a MMO economy, but at the end of the day it is a "no loss" system, if my Extange investments don't pan out like i want an i go bust, i have lost nothing. Unlike in a real investment market
know what magical thing will happen then the Dil to Zen ratio is no longer worth it....Wait for it
The "Free Market" happens, the we will see the pendulum swing the otherway
And this is it, in a nutshell.
I think what's happening is that Cryptic is viewing things in terms of a centrally planned economy with a desire to mitigate P2W and they're looking at things through a Keynsian or even socialist lens. (Ie. they mitigate P2W by making ZEN easier to amass for non-payers. It is a PvP directed change.)
Instead, what they should be looking at is the free market, albeit the kind described by Arthur Pigou. I could describe the kind of economy they should be looking at but it's work and work I'd need their numbers to properly wade through. I think they may see the alternatives as, basically, Keynes and Chicago school whereas what they need is a theory which skews towards the latter but which takes into account externalities and which borrows from scarcity free (I prefer the term "unlimited abundance" or "time scarce") models of economics.
Right now, this is a "Robin Hood" model of game balance and that won't fly as well as they think it will. Is the sky falling? Eh. Kindof. But very slowly. Not at the same rate as dilithium is declining but if this IS driven by game balance, it will result in Cryptic running up a budget deficit in their attempts to manage the game economy, which will force correction on their part. Possibly an unpleasant one for the operation of the game and the amount of capital they have access to.
I just want to say I love the idea of a F2P market speculator. The whole idea makes me smile. It's just awesome that such a thing can exist. You can't convert Zen to Cash, so there can be no true value lose, if one drops the other rises. So start playing, and stop watching the market. lol
So many people know so little about economics here, wow.
Zen value never really drops with the exception of zen sales. Its value is in real dollars.
Dilithium value changes, it becomes more valuable every day as ore reserves deplete. The demand has gone up, but the supply has diminished, it is a potential disaster if those aren't properly balanced. Luckily this isn't the real world so these things are controllable.
The exchange won't crash, it will stabilize at some point. Each point the conversion ratio drops in the favour of dilithium's value excludes more players buying dilithium and includes more players buying zen. Cryptic's goal is to reach the optimal ratio which moves the most zen.
There will be no swinging the other way, this is a mass market gradual change, eventually the market will settle at a number, people aren't going to push it back to a higher value to any significant amount.
Personally, I see the market dropping a lot further. There is no extra dilithium now, between the fleet and personal projects, as well as gear, even the dilithium grinders have little choice but to use their own resources for weeks.. months... to get stuff, taking huge amounts of out of the market's availability. Selfishness is a huge factor in the economy, especially a game economy.
There will always be some people willing to pay for stuff, but as the price rises they will shrink in numbers faster and faster.
This may sound ignorant, but I would think that a low Zen/Dilithium ratio would be bad for Zen sales. If the ratio is low, people will be able to grind Zen like nothing.
I myself ground over 400 Zen worth of Dilithium this weekend.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
dude, step back from your computer and say these words... "Its only a game"
some real world economic theory can be used on a MMO economy, but at the end of the day it is a "no loss" system, if my Extange investments don't pan out like i want an i go bust, i have lost nothing. Unlike in a real investment market
Uhm. Huh?
No. Like I say. I'm hoarding dilithium and find it easier and more enjoyable to get in S7. I think you misunderstand me if you think I'm upset for my sake over the changes.
I'm CONCERNED over the theory behind the changes.
I personally stand to benefit more from the changes.
This isn't about me or me being upset, which I'm not. This is about theory, which is what I'm interested in discussing the pitfalls of.
And I'm not keen on saying that ANYTHING is JUST an anything.
But where the game is concerned, well... It's like a bacon and egg breakfast. The hen is involved but the pig is committed. Players are the hens here. The devs are the ones who are committed and I'm sincerely more worried about them having the theory that works in their own best interests... and I actually worry when they don't.
I think that kind of position is a hard one to track for some people (even some devs) and it's easier to project some kind of "Leviathan99 is insincere and is being a whiny forum poster, defending his interests." I care more about these folks doing well and generating goodwill with players than I care about the game itself. And while it may seem paternalistic or condescending, I'm concerned about their ability to do so sometimes. I do care a lot about a game that I've spent a healthy amount of money on, yes, but I'm really more concerned that the quality of the design theories in place.
And it's not a strict case of me saying, "Cryptic designers are idiots who don't know their own best interests" or "Players are idiots who don't know their own best interests." And I think people sometimes walk away thinking that's my message. It's typically a case of me saying, "Oh! For Pete's sake! You're going to burn yourself! Put some cold water on that. Let me help you."
Right now, this is a "Robin Hood" model of game balance and that won't fly as well as they think it will. Is the sky falling? Eh. Kindof. But very slowly. Not at the same rate as dilithium is declining but if this IS driven by game balance, it will result in Cryptic running up a budget deficit in their attempts to manage the game economy, which will force correction on their part. Possibly an unpleasant one for the operation of the game and the amount of capital they have access to.
This.
They would also be wise to think carefully about various studies of MMO economics. A list was recently published by Edward Castronova at Terra Nova blog.
MMO economies impact gameplay. They can render professions obsolete and overvalued. The best example is how the season seven economic changes basically cut minimum wage for tens of thousands of characters by 75% by removing the Foundry Daily, and yet the game didn't compensate for that economic loss.
Also noteworthy that exploration is no longer a viable profession in Star Trek under the new economic model. That's pretty funny from an IP perspective.
All the data shows is how unplanned and unprepared Cryptic has been. On Tribble you paid dilithium for reputation XP, as of Thursday the reputation system will reward dilithium for XP. That's not exactly data supporting well planned economic rulesets or objectives.
This may sound ignorant, but I would think that a low Zen/Dilithium ratio would be bad for Zen sales. If the ratio is low, people will be able to grind Zen like nothing.
I myself ground over 400 Zen worth of Dilithium this weekend.
I have 22k worth of zen and have nothing to do with it.
I have nothing and will have nothing to spend it on because I play kdf and cryptic doesn't want my zen.
It is worthless to everyone.
Keep your dilithium.
They would also be wise to think carefully about various studies of MMO economics. A list was recently published by Edward Castronova at Terra Nova blog.
MMO economies impact gameplay. They can render professions obsolete and overvalued. The best example is how the season seven economic changes basically cut minimum wage for tens of thousands of characters by 75% by removing the Foundry Daily, and yet the game didn't compensate for that economic loss.
Also noteworthy that exploration is no longer a viable profession in Star Trek under the new economic model. That's pretty funny from an IP perspective.
All the data shows is how unplanned and unprepared Cryptic has been. On Tribble you paid dilithium for reputation XP, as of Thursday the reputation system will reward dilithium for XP. That's not exactly data supporting well planned economic rulesets or objectives.
It actually didn't cut minimum wage. It raised minimum wage while setting a lower wage ceiling. Minimum wages are generally targeted at unskilled workers. In game terms, this is players who don't have alts and who weren't refining much or any dilithium, because they hadn't worked out the best ways to do so or because they chose not to participate in the ways that did so.
Someone who didn't refine dilithium at all before is almost certainly getting more in S7. What S7 did was impact high performers.
The whole thing smacks of a surplus transfer. The problem is that I question the TYPE of surplus transfer they employed. I think Cryptic is treating income inequality as an externality rather than treating income inequality as a situation which produces externalities. So they attack high performance rather than the negative effects of high performance. *sigh*
They would also be wise to think carefully about various studies of MMO economics. A list was recently published by Edward Castronova at Terra Nova blog.
MMO economies impact gameplay. They can render professions obsolete and overvalued. The best example is how the season seven economic changes basically cut minimum wage for tens of thousands of characters by 75% by removing the Foundry Daily, and yet the game didn't compensate for that economic loss.
Also noteworthy that exploration is no longer a viable profession in Star Trek under the new economic model. That's pretty funny from an IP perspective.
All the data shows is how unplanned and unprepared Cryptic has been. On Tribble you paid dilithium for reputation XP, as of Thursday the reputation system will reward dilithium for XP. That's not exactly data supporting well planned economic rulesets or objectives.
Or you could say, they closed a known exploited and shockingly require players to actually play the game. A terrible tragedy I know, whatever will those people with 12 alts do every day?
It actually didn't cut minimum wage. It raised minimum wage while setting a lower wage ceiling. Minimum wages are generally targeted at unskilled workers. In game terms, this is players who don't have alts and who weren't refining much or any dilithium, because they hadn't worked out the best ways to do so or because they chose not to participate in the ways that did so.
Someone who didn't refine dilithium at all before is almost certainly getting more in S7. What S7 did was impact high performers.
The whole thing smacks of a surplus transfer. The problem is that I question the TYPE of service transfer they employed. I think Cryptic is treating income inequality as an externality rather than treating income inequality as a situation which produces externalities. So they attack high performance rather than the negative effects of high performance. *sigh*
In an MMO, minimum wage is universally described as a players "daily," not to be confused with the "Daily" as a system function in STO. That first hour you log in and perform a routine that accumulates Dilithium, DOFFs, Marks, etc... is in MMO economic design considered minimum wage.
Confusing that with minimum wage in real world economies would be a mistake. It is one of the big differences between MMO economics and real world economics, but in the end the economic impacts can be described similarly.
The Foundry daily "quickie" mission absolutely represented the biggest portion of minimum wage in STO for a vast number of players. It defined how wealth was previously accumulated on a per character basis. It represented an enormous bubble in the economy that no longer exists, not just for dilithium but fleet marks too. It hit my fleet, Jupiter Force, for around 3.5 million dilithium a week. It likely hit the economy as a whole for well over 3-4 hundred million a week.
The bubble has existed for a long time, and is part of all the economic data that they used to develop their season seven economic model. Absent a way (like DOFFs) that allows them to add hundreds of millions of Dilithium back into the economy via the minimum wage function of STO (the players daily), the economy will remain downsized... and at some point a system wide price adjustment will be required to address the new normal.
Comments
It also benefits Cryptic that more Zen needs to be bought to get the same amount of Dilithium as before... this increases their passive revenue stream, which of course is augmented by active sales every month or so.
Not sure why the would want to fix something that will increase their revenue.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
They're killing this game by trying to wringe out every penny they can get now ... :eek:
Who cares anyways ... I got the stench of TOR on me boy
Btw, anyone noticing the deflationary impacts on the EC exchange? ZEN is slowly losing purchasing power across the entire ingame economy. That is very bad news for a free to play game, and it is hard to believe Zen is selling well right now when it is worth less than at anytime in the history of the game.
We will know for sure soon, all of this will be able to be seen on PWEs filings. If Cryptic is taking a huge financial loss with Season 7 - and all indications suggest they are, PWE Corporate is going to start asking tough questions like "why the hell Daniel Stahl killed the buzz around Season Seven with this enormous economic miscalculation?"
There is no good answer for the tough questions hanging out there.
Rules of Acquisition at Priority One
I'm pretty sure they knew this was going to happen and that PW/PWE actually wanted this change because it fits more in line with their development model. That is to force people to grind a lot to get anywhere or in frustration buy Zen to reduce the grinding. I think if they are testing the water to see if the Western market will accept this change or revolt... early indications seem to report dissatisfaction amongst the playerbase that voice their concerns here but that is not the entire demographic... so who knows how this will turn out.
But I see what they are trying to do, that is increase revenue by frustrating players into buying Zen.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
There is no evidence anywhere suggesting that is working for them. The dilithium exchange has less product, both Zen and Dilithium, for trade than at any time in memory. Do the math, it's only a few thousand dollars on the exchange right now.
Not to mention that historically we have seen Zen sales at the highest levels when the exchange is at 170, and those like me who have millions of dilithium and thousands of Zen know this because we saw our money moving the most, not to mention it is reflected by prices on the EC exchange where items purchased with Zen would be priced very high and move in minutes, sometimes seconds. Right now the exchanges are moving at sluggish speeds and everything bought with Zen is getting cheaper.
There is no way Cryptic is making money right now. There is no evidence anywhere that Zen is being purchased to be traded in an economy where Zen is this worthless. The exchange shows no evidence to support what you are saying. Players aren't as dumb as you think.
Rules of Acquisition at Priority One
162 at season seven launch to 130 last night.
That's almost 15%.
The weekly dilithium earnings by the playerbase is down hundreds of millions. Thousands per lvl 50 character on average.
STF conversion of EDC, Salvage, and tech was a one time boost in the season seven economy. The economy has overperformed to date thanks to that initial spike early in the season.
We are nowhere near the floor, and the announced changes cannot add back enough dilithium to cover the bubble that burst.
We won't know what players will tolerate until we hit the floor, and we may be a few weeks yet from finding the floor. Still a long way to go before this issue goes away.
Rules of Acquisition at Priority One
Your forgetting that there is less dilithium about and people want more of it to progress it is in demand. Whatever the value of Zen is in relation to that is only important when considering what volume of players will stop at that point from trading... the Zen Sale over the weekend has shown that regardless of the drop, players were still putting a lot of Zen up for exchange. I saw over 80k zen being sold @ 130 on the weekend. Even now after the sale there is still 23k Zen on sale at 129.
Tell me what was the purpose of Season 7... you know the purpose was to increase the grind. That is what has happened. As I said before it's part of PW development model in Asia to do this, perhaps they thought they'd try it here... and perhaps it's not working, but I need to see where we are in January.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
We are seeing a good number of folks returning as a result of S7, and we are leading into the winter holiday, which is guaranteed to be key/lock box opening season, with whatever ship will be released. After that we have one off FE, and rerun period for all the FEs. All of which encourages folks to get their alts up. All of which is good for the economy.
Actually Star Base construction in my fleet has ground to a halt, as a lot of members have quit or moved to bigger fleets due to S7 changes.
The folks that have returned to the game so far have in my discussions with them a pretty low appreciation of Season 7, many of who logged in last week to look around and then left again not to return until Season 8.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
Yup.
And they can argue having dilithium buy more ZEN mitigates P2W by making the C-Store accessible.
There are a few points.
1) In the short run, they make the same profits with 25 dil per ZEN as they do with 159 dil per ZEN even if only 16% as many dilithium/ZEN trades occur. (There are some issues with this. One of which is that fewer trades will raise the price back unless Cryptic is pumping ZEN into the exchange to keep the price there.)
2) The problem is this: In the short run, at least one input is fixed. (Number of players being a key one here. Nobody quits when you're looking at a snapshot in time.) In the long run, no inputs are fixed. Producers tend to apply that to themselves but fail to recognize it's true for consumers too. So while they can get by with 16% of the transactions they had before in a bottomed out economy, the issue is the fallacy in thinking it won't drop further.
3) The whole thing seems conveniently designed by someone who is Keynsian or perhaps someone without an economic background because it matches up with forum posts I and others have made in the past but the analysis stops where our posts stopped and there is a more detailed picture here.
4) I think this whole thing is being done to pave the way for the return of PvP in a big way. And to that, I say: "Really. Stop and look at yourselves."
For people who actually spend time playing the game this is good.
STO Forum member since before February 2010.
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I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
The "Free Market" happens, the we will see the pendulum swing the otherway
You clearly are not speaking from the perspective of a player who has actively been engaged on the dilithium exchange for very long, or with enough currency to know what you are talking about.
The amount of currency being traded right now is tiny relative to any day in Season six. If you had any actual wealth in Zen or Dilithium you would know this.
I'm well known as Moneybags. One of the wealthiest players in Jupiter Force. Let me inform you sir, as a player who can burn through 900000 dilithium for breakfast like I did yesterday when I single handedly filled our Tier IV shipyard on our KDF starbase yesterday morning, the economy is in the dumpster and the only people getting rich are rich folks like me, and the poor in STO are getting poorer at breakneck speed.
This isn't an economy that will produce positive things for the STO community, and it's hard to imagine this economy can sustain revenue for Cryptic in any way better than the Season Six economy did- and count me among those who believed the season six economy was good for both Cryptic and the community.
Rules of Acquisition at Priority One
This is so very true, the amusing thing about the falling value of Zen is it means the value of Dil is actually rising, which is pretty funny when you consider it. Really it makes sense, put out enough things to use Dilithium on and natural demand causes its value to rise.
If you are really experienced in market trading then, you'd simply know the market will adjust. See if you can get Cryprtic to implement, Short Calls on zen lol
shhh don't tell them that, they want to belive this is all some Obama/Zombie-Nixon Keynesian plot to ruin there vast virtual holdings in an online game. OMG how are they going to feed here children if the bear market never recovers, it might take a week it do a star starbase upgrade
+1. lol
Hehe, the sad point being many that starbase upgrade for many fleets are frozen this week b/c of doff mission mess up. Its complicated but until the fix, we can only get the needed Doffs by failing a doff mission which has something like 3% failure rate. So the whole things is pretty funny.
dude, step back from your computer and say these words... "Its only a game"
some real world economic theory can be used on a MMO economy, but at the end of the day it is a "no loss" system, if my Extange investments don't pan out like i want an i go bust, i have lost nothing. Unlike in a real investment market
And this is it, in a nutshell.
I think what's happening is that Cryptic is viewing things in terms of a centrally planned economy with a desire to mitigate P2W and they're looking at things through a Keynsian or even socialist lens. (Ie. they mitigate P2W by making ZEN easier to amass for non-payers. It is a PvP directed change.)
Instead, what they should be looking at is the free market, albeit the kind described by Arthur Pigou. I could describe the kind of economy they should be looking at but it's work and work I'd need their numbers to properly wade through. I think they may see the alternatives as, basically, Keynes and Chicago school whereas what they need is a theory which skews towards the latter but which takes into account externalities and which borrows from scarcity free (I prefer the term "unlimited abundance" or "time scarce") models of economics.
Right now, this is a "Robin Hood" model of game balance and that won't fly as well as they think it will. Is the sky falling? Eh. Kindof. But very slowly. Not at the same rate as dilithium is declining but if this IS driven by game balance, it will result in Cryptic running up a budget deficit in their attempts to manage the game economy, which will force correction on their part. Possibly an unpleasant one for the operation of the game and the amount of capital they have access to.
Zen value never really drops with the exception of zen sales. Its value is in real dollars.
Dilithium value changes, it becomes more valuable every day as ore reserves deplete. The demand has gone up, but the supply has diminished, it is a potential disaster if those aren't properly balanced. Luckily this isn't the real world so these things are controllable.
The exchange won't crash, it will stabilize at some point. Each point the conversion ratio drops in the favour of dilithium's value excludes more players buying dilithium and includes more players buying zen. Cryptic's goal is to reach the optimal ratio which moves the most zen.
There will be no swinging the other way, this is a mass market gradual change, eventually the market will settle at a number, people aren't going to push it back to a higher value to any significant amount.
Personally, I see the market dropping a lot further. There is no extra dilithium now, between the fleet and personal projects, as well as gear, even the dilithium grinders have little choice but to use their own resources for weeks.. months... to get stuff, taking huge amounts of out of the market's availability. Selfishness is a huge factor in the economy, especially a game economy.
There will always be some people willing to pay for stuff, but as the price rises they will shrink in numbers faster and faster.
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I myself ground over 400 Zen worth of Dilithium this weekend.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
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Uhm. Huh?
No. Like I say. I'm hoarding dilithium and find it easier and more enjoyable to get in S7. I think you misunderstand me if you think I'm upset for my sake over the changes.
I'm CONCERNED over the theory behind the changes.
I personally stand to benefit more from the changes.
This isn't about me or me being upset, which I'm not. This is about theory, which is what I'm interested in discussing the pitfalls of.
And I'm not keen on saying that ANYTHING is JUST an anything.
But where the game is concerned, well... It's like a bacon and egg breakfast. The hen is involved but the pig is committed. Players are the hens here. The devs are the ones who are committed and I'm sincerely more worried about them having the theory that works in their own best interests... and I actually worry when they don't.
I think that kind of position is a hard one to track for some people (even some devs) and it's easier to project some kind of "Leviathan99 is insincere and is being a whiny forum poster, defending his interests." I care more about these folks doing well and generating goodwill with players than I care about the game itself. And while it may seem paternalistic or condescending, I'm concerned about their ability to do so sometimes. I do care a lot about a game that I've spent a healthy amount of money on, yes, but I'm really more concerned that the quality of the design theories in place.
And it's not a strict case of me saying, "Cryptic designers are idiots who don't know their own best interests" or "Players are idiots who don't know their own best interests." And I think people sometimes walk away thinking that's my message. It's typically a case of me saying, "Oh! For Pete's sake! You're going to burn yourself! Put some cold water on that. Let me help you."
This.
They would also be wise to think carefully about various studies of MMO economics. A list was recently published by Edward Castronova at Terra Nova blog.
MMO economies impact gameplay. They can render professions obsolete and overvalued. The best example is how the season seven economic changes basically cut minimum wage for tens of thousands of characters by 75% by removing the Foundry Daily, and yet the game didn't compensate for that economic loss.
Also noteworthy that exploration is no longer a viable profession in Star Trek under the new economic model. That's pretty funny from an IP perspective.
All the data shows is how unplanned and unprepared Cryptic has been. On Tribble you paid dilithium for reputation XP, as of Thursday the reputation system will reward dilithium for XP. That's not exactly data supporting well planned economic rulesets or objectives.
Rules of Acquisition at Priority One
I have 22k worth of zen and have nothing to do with it.
I have nothing and will have nothing to spend it on because I play kdf and cryptic doesn't want my zen.
It is worthless to everyone.
Keep your dilithium.
It actually didn't cut minimum wage. It raised minimum wage while setting a lower wage ceiling. Minimum wages are generally targeted at unskilled workers. In game terms, this is players who don't have alts and who weren't refining much or any dilithium, because they hadn't worked out the best ways to do so or because they chose not to participate in the ways that did so.
Someone who didn't refine dilithium at all before is almost certainly getting more in S7. What S7 did was impact high performers.
The whole thing smacks of a surplus transfer. The problem is that I question the TYPE of surplus transfer they employed. I think Cryptic is treating income inequality as an externality rather than treating income inequality as a situation which produces externalities. So they attack high performance rather than the negative effects of high performance. *sigh*
Or you could say, they closed a known exploited and shockingly require players to actually play the game. A terrible tragedy I know, whatever will those people with 12 alts do every day?
In an MMO, minimum wage is universally described as a players "daily," not to be confused with the "Daily" as a system function in STO. That first hour you log in and perform a routine that accumulates Dilithium, DOFFs, Marks, etc... is in MMO economic design considered minimum wage.
Confusing that with minimum wage in real world economies would be a mistake. It is one of the big differences between MMO economics and real world economics, but in the end the economic impacts can be described similarly.
The Foundry daily "quickie" mission absolutely represented the biggest portion of minimum wage in STO for a vast number of players. It defined how wealth was previously accumulated on a per character basis. It represented an enormous bubble in the economy that no longer exists, not just for dilithium but fleet marks too. It hit my fleet, Jupiter Force, for around 3.5 million dilithium a week. It likely hit the economy as a whole for well over 3-4 hundred million a week.
The bubble has existed for a long time, and is part of all the economic data that they used to develop their season seven economic model. Absent a way (like DOFFs) that allows them to add hundreds of millions of Dilithium back into the economy via the minimum wage function of STO (the players daily), the economy will remain downsized... and at some point a system wide price adjustment will be required to address the new normal.
Rules of Acquisition at Priority One
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