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Dilithium Grind Fest! Is this game worth playing anymore?
zztoppers
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Things cost to much dilithium. Is this game still worth playing? I was not having a problem with this until a moment ago. I went to Starfleet Academy. I tried to reassign Uncommon duty officers. They wanted 2500 dilithium.
Since when does it cost dilithium to upgrade officers?
All of my friends constantly complaining the dilithium rewards are way to small. And everything costs to much. I am beginning to understand why all my friends have either stopped playing or are almost never online anymore.
Stuff that used to be basic and easy has suddenly become hard.
I understand the Play for Free model. I really do. But this goes beyond the norm.
Cryptic and Perfect world--Do you have to charge for everything?
Since when does it cost dilithium to upgrade officers?
All of my friends constantly complaining the dilithium rewards are way to small. And everything costs to much. I am beginning to understand why all my friends have either stopped playing or are almost never online anymore.
Stuff that used to be basic and easy has suddenly become hard.
I understand the Play for Free model. I really do. But this goes beyond the norm.
Cryptic and Perfect world--Do you have to charge for everything?
Post edited by zztoppers on
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Best option is to farm energy credits and buy what you need from other players.
I don't like dilithium mining aswell.
bloodpact.net
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."
-Michelangelo
Yes, indeed.
One of the most appealing features about STO is that it's free to play. You are not losing on sub. money, and all your stuff will be there (until the servers go down). MMOs often have this trend of userbase coming and going as people take breaks.
Perhaps, if you are frustrated, a quick break is in order. I was utterly bored with the game some months ago, and now everything is OOOH SHINY again. I am sure this cycle will repeat.
Most of what you say makes sense. But my main point is. Why does it have to cost Dilithium for everything we do in the game. DOFF upgrades. I mean really. That's just plain petty!!
I have ample "capacity to comprehend" that it's a line of thought that's just plain ridiculous. Yes, MMOs use progress bars and level ticks and such as a psychological trick to keep people playing... but really, if you like the core of the game then what do the rewards actually matter? I play the game because I like the fundamentals of the space combat model. The equipment meta-game on top of that is just icing.
For you...you sound like you need a break, man. Go play other mmos or games, may youll find a grind you can enjoy.
Interested in Role Playing? Join the 12th Fleet Science division!
Doesn't matter to 99.9% of MMORPG players.
The MMORPG format is inherently about progress. Your goal is to climb to the top and compete and cooperate at the highest level of play.
If you, during play, encounter barriers that make the goal look impossible, that is a dealbreaker to many. More relevant to STO's case though, if you encounter vague limitations that make your plans to reach said milestone fuzzy and indistinct, mustering the willpower to go on regardless of content quality is going to be more difficult as time goes on, and you create a player leak.
If they wanted to make a game that is purely about enjoyment, they would not have chosen the MMORPG format.
bloodpact.net
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."
-Michelangelo
There are all kinds of things you can do in game that do not cost dilithium and do not require dilithium, fleet or whatever gear to be successful at.
I hear what you're saying but I'm not sure I totally agree with you, at least not in the long run.
IMHO I see the weapons/ships/consoles/doffs/rep passives/etc. all as a way to slightly improve a player's performance in space (and some ground) combat. If you don't participate in this power creep grind (which requires a ridiculous amount of dilith) you will eventually get to the point where you are not on par with the many other players who have. Thus your sense of enjoyment will diminish since you will probably feel inconsequential compared to the performance of those others.
Don't know when this divergence of capability will manifest itself in an obvious manner, but make no mistake about it, Cryptic/PW is/are pushing ppl to grind and eventually buy dilith. It is, after all, a business and this seems to be their current business model.
If you don't do PvP, this shouldn't be a factor in your play-style.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
I think the DOff upgrade costs they added back in November are too high and that there should be a free option that takes time. (Ie. the slow option takes 48 hours or you can pay for convenience.)
Second, though:
Without grind, people run out of things to play. The whole point of grind is to provide a value to playing and a (light) penalty for not playing. And for every person who quits over it, it probably keeps ten people from quitting.
It's like a tourniquet.
They can't keep up with content demands. With five times the budget, they can't keep up with content demands.
Yes, that tourniquet sure feels tight on the arm and sometimes you may lose feeling in your fingers but it's on there to constrict bloodflow and keep you from losing the whole arm.
Mmm, I think that could be said about any game
*MY* goal is to compete against the game itself and ... have fun. I do this every time I log on. So it's not at the highest level nor does it need to be, it happened on day one and happens every day.
So am I a part of the 0.1% ?
That all depends on if you care about comparing yourself to others. I do not.
I don't care about having the best gear and I don't care about min-maxing. I just play. Obviously not everyone feels that way but my main point is no one is FORCED to grind. You make that choice and if it's not fun for you, don't do it. There's lots of this game available without grinding.
My character Tsin'xing
That's not the way the game was designed. They started charging for the upgrades after a couple of years of it being free!! I am used to doing a 5-1 upgrade from under performing duty officers to better performing ones. All the way to purple. I do buy some cadres and individual ones as well. I am talking about being able to upgrade all the way to a purple officer. And having to buy better officers like you say does not give me a chance at a random set of good characteristics. I mean really If I had to buy a purple doff with the best traits it would cost a fortune. The old way without the dilithium is much better. You can buy and sell with EC on the market all you want. To me its a colossal waste of time.
Also another main point us why do they have to charge so much? It does cost a lot of dilithium considering the fact that it used to be free!!!!!
ANd why do we have to pay dilithium for so many things that used to be free!!
This is supposed to be star trek. Not Ferengi Trek for profits. I mean really its not even close to the perfect society. Where there is no currency. There has to be a stopping point to charging for everything. What I am saying is not really that hard to understand!!
it doesnt.
you can get doffs for fleet credits at the starbase. you can still get the 2/3 man packs from the academy guy for nothing. you can still get it off the exchange which is even easier now that better loot is dropping more frequently and can be cashed in.
they gave away free ships and costumes at the winter event and you can guarantee there will be some free stuff at the anniversary event.
yes some of the packs have a dilithium cost attached, but the ease of earning dilithium has also gone up. coupled with the fact that starbases have forced the price of zen down. 1 zen costs about 88 dilithium at the moment. for a free to play game that requires people to buy zen, its stupidly easy to earn it.
Are we playing the same game???
Have you ever been to starfleet academy? Have you ever talked to the personel officer? Did you ever trade five under performing officers for a better quality officer?
And why should I have to get doffs off the exchange when it used to be free to upgrade them?
As I said before you can buy and sell all the doffs you want on the exchange. For me this a waste of time. The old way is better!!
Next you will be saying it should cost dilithium to play foundry missions or STFs etc. If you want to have to pay for everything in this game fine. I choose to limit the amount of currency for things that are now free. And should stay free!! Soon they will be charging for even more stuff. And even more of my friends will dissapear and I will have even less reason to buy any Zen or even play the game.
A business model is simple. It costs four times as much to gain a new customer as it does to keep a current customer happy!
1. There are more systems in place and more gear in the game now that require DIL than ever before in STO.
2. You can farm as much as you want for DIL, and there are also more ways to obtain DIL now than ever before, however you are still limited to refining 8,000 per day.
3. Everything worth having, save for the end game ships, cost DIL. Fleet gear/weapons, Reputation System(Omega, MACO, Borg, Romulan) gear/projects & weapons, Fleet projects, Embassy gear, etc.
Think of it like this; you have a larger demand for DIL, but you also have a larger supply. In theory, this should be ideal....however, in between this supply/demand there is a caveat, a 'funnel' if you will, that will only allow a certain amount of supply to meet that demand in any given period/day. As long as this remains unchecked, the newly enlarged supply will NEVER be able to quell the newly enlarged demand.
Another way; there is a Dam with millions of gallons of water held behind it. There is a town not to far away that is drying up and need copious amounts of water regularly to satiate it's inhabitants. There is more than enough water for these people, however there is a opening in the Dam which only allows 1 gallon per day to be obtained from the huge water source. Obviously, this is not enough for even a small community to live on consistently despite there being more than enough at their disposal, they are limited by things beyond their control.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The o3 - Killed you good
The compactor is a new development that was a crutch abused by players who were lazy. So the cost got adjusted to something meaningful.
My character Tsin'xing
"Better" is relative.
And I've done the DOff exchange at the Academy. That entire process is silly to me, not because of the Dilithium cost ... but because the upgrade is *random*. To me, that makes upgrading worthless.
So buying a DOff from the exchange is actually "better" because I get to choose the DOff I want (granted, if it's offered) AND it won't cost Dilithium, just EC - which is rediculously easy to make in STO.
Cryptic wants you to play the game and that's it. If that means you have to travel from the Academy to the mines, then to a mission or ten and an STF in order for you to get the Dilithium to trade 5 Blue for 1 Purple DOff ... then they have achieved their goal.
If you can't (or won't) accept that new reality, then you have other choices to make: participate in their plan or find an alternative. The alternatives are the Exchange (power of choice), drops (random and luck), trading with another player, or none of the above (which gets you nothing).
Yes I have done all of those things. Yes I know they cost dilithium now. I did not say that they did not.
The old way if different. there are advantages to the old way and there are advantages to the new way. you are free to like which ever way you wish however the argument you have been making is that everything costs dilthium when it does not, and you fail to take into consideration that there are new ways to earn doffs, and its easier to get dilithium to compensate for the changes. this is a free game. you can play it for nothing. there is going to be tradeoffs, and as its an MMO these trade offs will change, and evolve over time.
why should you have to get doffs off the exchange now? because they changed it. so you can either complain about the changes or look and see how the changes can now benefit you. there are plenty of ways to get some decent doffs from the starclusters the the exchange to the fleet system. you dont even need them.
And that's just a partial list. If you don't want to do the dilithium upgrades, just go back to the older way before they implemented the upgrade and do the asylum missions. I've been using those and I'm quite enjoying it. Plus you can do more than 1/day if you can find them so it's even faster.
Deep space 9 is a good spot to find the prisoner exchange missions, and it has trill, bajoran and bolian asylum missions pretty often.
Actually, in MMO's the reverse is true. Most of them work by attracting new players and keeping just a small number of old ones who will stay forever nomatter what.
Yay random numbers pulled out of someone's bunghole!
I choose MMOs because they're social. I know a ton of other people who do as well.
Hang out in Drozana Station or the winter wonderland. Pretty much no one is there to get uber-l337 gear. Or all the people who have their one-man fleets. And that's more than .1% of the population.
Also, your attitude is not about progress it is about speed. All of us are making progress. You just aren't progressing fast enough for your own taste. Either learn to enjoy the ride, or adapt your playstyle, or take a break. The problem is not the game design, the problem is you are in a rush. There are solutions for that which don't require altering game balance.
That said, I do agree the costs for the upgrades are too high. And the general recruitment pack too. My best guess at a more appropriate level is 500 for the pack (half), 150 for the green upgrade (1/3), 1000 for the blue upgrade (just under half), and 2500 for the purple (almost 1/3).
This would mean that the pack is the equivalent of the daily lore mission or daily satellite repair, the blue upgrade is the equivalent of one foundry repeatable or an explore with change, and the purple you need to do a couple things to afford or save up. To me, that makes sense. Obviously not to cryptic. but fortunately I have a dozen other ways to get doffs that I don't need to worry about it.
Makes perfect sense to me!!
You have to be really careful and read each and every DOFF Recruitment mission that you come across in game because now even the Recruitment missions that you find in sector space has a cost of 1000 Dilithium :eek:
I saw no valid reason for Cryptic to start adding Dilithium costs to DOFF Missions that had been free from the start.
About #6: I think so, I may have seen it happen once. I'm not sure. It doesn't happen often, that much is certain.
anyways, resistance to change is futile. Adapt or die.
My character Tsin'xing