Guys, come on, you paid $1.25 for every Master Key you put on the exchange, we're talking actual money spent for in game currency. Why would you degrade the worth of money you most likely worked your butt off for, for a measly 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 1.6 mil EC?
The fact some of you even sell for less than 800k is insane, why spend so much money to sell something for so little, and have such a small return on your investment?
1.8 million should be the very least you should ever sell a lock box key for. you paid money for it, why throw it in the crapper?
I work six days a week and really dont have time to grind or run missions all day long to get things i need or want. When i do have time to play and see something i need i buy zen to convert to dilithium or keys for EC. I undercut for speed sometime and other times to be nice. I drop my excess from opening drop boxes into fleet banks or give them away. I want to play star trek not Shylock the moneylender or Gordon Geckko in STO tycoon, ill leave the gouging to players in touch with their inner ferengi.
This game does a pretty good job of keeping out the gold farmers which in the past have plagued other games. Players with more time than money can grind and sell to those of us with more money than time...
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
That never works. What ever value you put on an object, somebody else will put a lesser one. There will always be somebody else who values the quick sale over your personal profit.
It certainly doesn't work in a system with infinite supply...
I once again match my character. Behold the power of PINK!
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
About a week ago, I sold 15 keys at 1.5 mil a piece, all got all my e-mails they were bought, it was the EXACT same user everytime. I went on the exchange to take a look at keys, there wasn't a single key on the exchange for any less than 1.8 million. Players just buying cheaper keys, and reselling them at higher prices.
Look at the cheapest keys right now, compare that with 6 hours from now.
That kind of market speculation can bite you on the TRIBBLE. If enough keys are hitting the market that the price of 1.5 mil a piece is justified then the speculator will end up with his EC's tied up at trying to move keys that will always be undercut.
Actually killing the Ferengi market would boost the game a lot
It would cut Cryptic's income a lot, I don't see that as being good for the game.
People who don't buy Zen aren't going to magically start just because these items are no longer on the Exchange. EC is the ultimate in casual player currency, its the best way for them to stay in the game.
Players that have a lot of time to build DIL or a lot of resources to buy Zen have an opportunity to convert that into the massive amounts of EC needed to ensure you get that Lockbox item you really want. They defer the risk to other players by selling keys or packs, and they use all that profit to ensure they can just purchase what they want at the end.
Cutting off the first groups access to C-Store items removes a market to incentivize the second group to buy things to resell, and the C-Store makes less money, and they fire devs, and the game goes back to Atari pre-sale limbo again.
It would cut Cryptic's income a lot, I don't see that as being good for the game.
Actually it would increase income dramatically
no internal market for keys means people buy them directly and this kills the "Ec for sale" market as well
People who don't buy Zen aren't going to magically start just because these items are no longer on the Exchange. EC is the ultimate in casual player currency, its the best way for them to stay in the game.
Yes actually they are
or they will buy it with Dilith and the price will stabilise
Players that have a lot of time to build DIL or a lot of resources to buy Zen have an opportunity to convert that into the massive amounts of EC needed to ensure you get that Lockbox item you really want. They defer the risk to other players by selling keys or packs, and they use all that profit to ensure they can just purchase what they want at the end.
But the lock boxes Won't be tradeable
no more ferengi deals
Cutting off the first groups access to C-Store items removes a market to incentivize the second group to buy things to resell, and the C-Store makes less money, and they fire devs, and the game goes back to Atari pre-sale limbo again.
It would cut Cryptic's income a lot, I don't see that as being good for the game.
People who don't buy Zen aren't going to magically start just because these items are no longer on the Exchange. EC is the ultimate in casual player currency, its the best way for them to stay in the game.
Players that have a lot of time to build DIL or a lot of resources to buy Zen have an opportunity to convert that into the massive amounts of EC needed to ensure you get that Lockbox item you really want. They defer the risk to other players by selling keys or packs, and they use all that profit to ensure they can just purchase what they want at the end.
Cutting off the first groups access to C-Store items removes a market to incentivize the second group to buy things to resell, and the C-Store makes less money, and they fire devs, and the game goes back to Atari pre-sale limbo again.
Actually it would increase income dramatically
no internal market for keys means people buy them directly and this kills the "Ec for sale" market as well
Yes actually they are
or they will buy it with Dilith and the price will stabilise
But the lock boxes Won't be tradeable
no more ferengi deals
the C store makes MORE money
Reximuz, do yourself a favor and stop feeding the troll that is sollvax.
If he doesn't understand it now, he never will - you can't make a stupid person understand how stupid he is, and the same applies to trolls. Both will refuse to accept the facts and keep saying what they want to say.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Reximuz, do yourself a favor and stop feeding the troll that is sollvax.
If he doesn't understand it now, he never will - you can't make a stupid person understand how stupid he is, and the same applies to trolls. Both will refuse to accept the facts and keep saying what they want to say.
Indeed. It seems the basic concepts of F2P and economy are lost on them.
Let's just count our blessings that he's not in charge.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Put simply (for the people who think I am a mythical Norse creature)
There is a profit for cryptic only when a NEW key is sold
The Speculation is the same keys being bought and resold which makes no money for cryptic
if ALL keys in circulation became account bound NOW it would kill speculation and make cryptic more money
the same as putting the lock box items directly into the store
No. If ALL keys in circulation became account bound, than Cryptic would never sell another key to someone who buys them just to turn them into EC's. That would mean less keys sold and less money made.
See this is called "Market enforcement"
With a little bit of a clamp down we could remove the speculators entirely and then maybe we could get a decent economy going.
or sell keys directly from a vendor and make them untradable at ten days notice
Here are some pointers/mistakes that some make when buying/selling keys. If you have 10 keys to sell and look up the lowest price then undercut the lowest price by a little to get your keys sold first, it will work if you only list one key at a time. If you list all 10 at the same price someone will just undercut your price and your keys will sit there unsold. I have seen players so in a hurry to sell keys fast that they will keep lowering the price undercutting each other back and forth that in a few min the price goes from 1.5 to 900k.
The only time you should list multiple keys at once for the same price is if you want to drive the price down. Go ahead and test for yourself, List 10 keys for 1000 less than current price. Do this during peak server time. Wait a few seconds and someone will undercut your price. Then pull your keys off and re-list them for 1 ec less than the person that undercut you. He will get mad and pull his keys off and undercut you again. Keep doing this untill this person or others get frustrated and start listing extremely cheap keys just to spite you for continuing to undercut his prices. Then you can buy all his cheap Keys up and resell them in a few hours for profit when the prices climb back up.
The point that is being explained to you is flying well over your head. We know this because the responses you make to the point are completely unrelated to the point itself. Let me see if I can explain to you more thoroughly.
People buy keys just to sell them for Energy Credits. In your terminology these are "fresh keys" and would be a sale for Cryptic. Your proposal would stop people from doing this and thus would lead to a decrease in key sales.
Other people spend EC's on keys to try their hand at lock box gambling. For your proposal to increase sales by the amount it decreases sales, in essence, for your proposal to allow Cryptic to break even, every person who ever bought a key for EC's with the intention of using them, would have to instead buy them from the C-Store. This won't happen.
And I'm not sure how you think this would increase sales at all.
See this is called "Market enforcement"
With a little bit of a clamp down we could remove the speculators entirely and then maybe we could get a decent economy going.
or sell keys directly from a vendor and make them untradable at ten days notice
And why would you want to remove speculators entirely? For one, you've changed the definition of "speculator" that you are using to encompass people who buy keys for real money and then sell them for fake money. Speculators are good for the game. Speculators allow people to buy keys for in-game obtainable currencies like Energy Credits. Speculators, as I've already explained, increase the number of key sales, and thus, Cryptics revenue.
See this is called "Market enforcement"
With a little bit of a clamp down we could remove the speculators entirely and then maybe we could get a decent economy going.
Not true. If I was not able to buy keys and sell them on exchange then I would not buy keys. I have spent hundreds on keys and would not have if I had been unable to convert them to EC. So many like myself that refuse to gamble on getting lockbox ships. People that just sell the keys for EC then buy the ships/Items we want, would never purchase keys and Cryptic would loose income.
Suppose you could buy a "pack" of EC for 125 Zen a nice fixed cash sum with no delays and no speculation
I am saying we need fixed markets without rampant market rigging
That would fix a minimum price for things like keys, doff packs, and so on, but would do nothing to set a maximum price. It would also do far more to fix the market than any single players attempt to price gouge on the cost of keys.
Say you sell 2 million EC's for 125 Zen. Then you'd never see another key sold for less than 2 million EC's, which would be unfortunate, but keys could still be sold for more. Sell 1 million EC's for 125 Zen and the effective cost of keys would not be affected plus Cryptic would only move packs to the few people silly enough to pay more for EC's immediately instead of selling a key for the higher value.
This "market rigging" you speak of is just smart players taking advantage of impatience players.
Sure I have made enough EC to control and change the market prices on keys to make a profit.
And the player controlled market is one of the funnest parts of the game.
The way it is now is best for cryptic and the players that know how to use it. The only people that dont like it are the one's that are broke and want something for nothing.
I am approaching a billion EC on my main toon and the bulk of it is from buying cheap keys from impatience players and reselling them for profit.
Its not cheating or greifing to see 100 keys listed for under 1.2 million, buying all of them and reselling them the next day for 1.4/1.5 mil.
Or to take 100 keys and list them for cheap to make other players undercut your prices to sell thiers first, then buy them all up and resell for the orginal price. Thats simple math and economics. I do this everyday and always try to keep the cheap keys off the market and to keep the price fixed at around 1.4 to 1.5 mil per Key. Like the OP suggested keys need to be at a certian price to hold there value.
I'm just waiting for the next lockbox's to come out. Whenever there is a new one I am sure to bring in several hundred mil in the first few days. Players are always asking how to make lots of EC and the EC is out there for the taking if you know how to do it.
Please, everyone knows the market rigging is smarter players taking advantage of greedy players.
someone greedy will list high and just wait and see if someone buys his overpriced item. The impatience players will list cheap and often just so they dont have to wait for the item to sell. And then you have the stupid that list equipment drop's for less than a vendor will give you for it. You can buy Purple Shields/Eng/Deflectors on the exchange for 25/30k and then sell to a vendor for 50k.
Slightly off topic, but recently I had someone get annoyed with me and tried to guilt me into selling a Jem'Hadar Dreadnought for 10 million EC and 5 Mirror Ships! Apparently, people want everything for nothing in this day and age. I agree with the OP, for those of us who do use money to purchase keys, etc... its nuts to go below value.
"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." - Rocky Balboa (2006)
Is that still true? I thought that with the removal of the Bug promo, those packs would be junk again, being that they contain nothing but common-grade Starbase Food.
Starbase food has a really good resale value still.
someone greedy will list high and just wait and see if someone buys his overpriced item. The impatience players will list cheap and often just so they dont have to wait for the item to sell. And then you have the stupid that list equipment drop's for less than a vendor will give you for it. You can buy Purple Shields/Eng/Deflectors on the exchange for 25/30k and then sell to a vendor for 50k.
The joke there is that it's a mutually beneficial arrangement. By pricing an object to move I am buying extra time and convenience. Sure, I could price my keys higher and they will move eventually, but I don't want that headache. Where as you are spending time in order to make more money. Maybe it's because you want the headache from price tracking and speculating, or maybe it's because it's not a headache to you.
No matter the reason, if you want to scrape out an extra .4 million energy credits per key, I'm happy to let you do it in exchange for getting my EC's right now.
in my opinion, you should not spend more than 12.00 on sto a month, i mean really, its a game. Lock box keysa re only useful in this game.
I
and your opinion is great. but people also like supporting a game, especially those that want to see improvements. if people havent been spending a lot of money on this game, we wouldn't be getting a bunch of new content in may.
if someone has the spare cash to spend a lot of money on a game every month, more power to them.
Comments
I work six days a week and really dont have time to grind or run missions all day long to get things i need or want. When i do have time to play and see something i need i buy zen to convert to dilithium or keys for EC. I undercut for speed sometime and other times to be nice. I drop my excess from opening drop boxes into fleet banks or give them away. I want to play star trek not Shylock the moneylender or Gordon Geckko in STO tycoon, ill leave the gouging to players in touch with their inner ferengi.
This game does a pretty good job of keeping out the gold farmers which in the past have plagued other games. Players with more time than money can grind and sell to those of us with more money than time...
You might as well close the game right now.
That never works. What ever value you put on an object, somebody else will put a lesser one. There will always be somebody else who values the quick sale over your personal profit.
It certainly doesn't work in a system with infinite supply...
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
That kind of market speculation can bite you on the TRIBBLE. If enough keys are hitting the market that the price of 1.5 mil a piece is justified then the speculator will end up with his EC's tied up at trying to move keys that will always be undercut.
It would cut Cryptic's income a lot, I don't see that as being good for the game.
People who don't buy Zen aren't going to magically start just because these items are no longer on the Exchange. EC is the ultimate in casual player currency, its the best way for them to stay in the game.
Players that have a lot of time to build DIL or a lot of resources to buy Zen have an opportunity to convert that into the massive amounts of EC needed to ensure you get that Lockbox item you really want. They defer the risk to other players by selling keys or packs, and they use all that profit to ensure they can just purchase what they want at the end.
Cutting off the first groups access to C-Store items removes a market to incentivize the second group to buy things to resell, and the C-Store makes less money, and they fire devs, and the game goes back to Atari pre-sale limbo again.
Actually it would increase income dramatically
no internal market for keys means people buy them directly and this kills the "Ec for sale" market as well
Yes actually they are
or they will buy it with Dilith and the price will stabilise
But the lock boxes Won't be tradeable
no more ferengi deals
the C store makes MORE money
Reximuz, do yourself a favor and stop feeding the troll that is sollvax.
If he doesn't understand it now, he never will - you can't make a stupid person understand how stupid he is, and the same applies to trolls. Both will refuse to accept the facts and keep saying what they want to say.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Indeed. It seems the basic concepts of F2P and economy are lost on them.
Let's just count our blessings that he's not in charge.
There is a profit for cryptic only when a NEW key is sold
The Speculation is the same keys being bought and resold which makes no money for cryptic
if ALL keys in circulation became account bound NOW it would kill speculation and make cryptic more money
the same as putting the lock box items directly into the store
No. If ALL keys in circulation became account bound, than Cryptic would never sell another key to someone who buys them just to turn them into EC's. That would mean less keys sold and less money made.
But the sale of new fresh keys would increase
See this is called "Market enforcement"
With a little bit of a clamp down we could remove the speculators entirely and then maybe we could get a decent economy going.
or sell keys directly from a vendor and make them untradable at ten days notice
The only time you should list multiple keys at once for the same price is if you want to drive the price down. Go ahead and test for yourself, List 10 keys for 1000 less than current price. Do this during peak server time. Wait a few seconds and someone will undercut your price. Then pull your keys off and re-list them for 1 ec less than the person that undercut you. He will get mad and pull his keys off and undercut you again. Keep doing this untill this person or others get frustrated and start listing extremely cheap keys just to spite you for continuing to undercut his prices. Then you can buy all his cheap Keys up and resell them in a few hours for profit when the prices climb back up.
Well, at least he has a sense of humor... mythical Norse creature, indeed
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
The point that is being explained to you is flying well over your head. We know this because the responses you make to the point are completely unrelated to the point itself. Let me see if I can explain to you more thoroughly.
People buy keys just to sell them for Energy Credits. In your terminology these are "fresh keys" and would be a sale for Cryptic. Your proposal would stop people from doing this and thus would lead to a decrease in key sales.
Other people spend EC's on keys to try their hand at lock box gambling. For your proposal to increase sales by the amount it decreases sales, in essence, for your proposal to allow Cryptic to break even, every person who ever bought a key for EC's with the intention of using them, would have to instead buy them from the C-Store. This won't happen.
And I'm not sure how you think this would increase sales at all.
And why would you want to remove speculators entirely? For one, you've changed the definition of "speculator" that you are using to encompass people who buy keys for real money and then sell them for fake money. Speculators are good for the game. Speculators allow people to buy keys for in-game obtainable currencies like Energy Credits. Speculators, as I've already explained, increase the number of key sales, and thus, Cryptics revenue.
I am saying we need fixed markets without rampant market rigging
That would fix a minimum price for things like keys, doff packs, and so on, but would do nothing to set a maximum price. It would also do far more to fix the market than any single players attempt to price gouge on the cost of keys.
Say you sell 2 million EC's for 125 Zen. Then you'd never see another key sold for less than 2 million EC's, which would be unfortunate, but keys could still be sold for more. Sell 1 million EC's for 125 Zen and the effective cost of keys would not be affected plus Cryptic would only move packs to the few people silly enough to pay more for EC's immediately instead of selling a key for the higher value.
Sure I have made enough EC to control and change the market prices on keys to make a profit.
And the player controlled market is one of the funnest parts of the game.
The way it is now is best for cryptic and the players that know how to use it. The only people that dont like it are the one's that are broke and want something for nothing.
I am approaching a billion EC on my main toon and the bulk of it is from buying cheap keys from impatience players and reselling them for profit.
Its not cheating or greifing to see 100 keys listed for under 1.2 million, buying all of them and reselling them the next day for 1.4/1.5 mil.
Or to take 100 keys and list them for cheap to make other players undercut your prices to sell thiers first, then buy them all up and resell for the orginal price. Thats simple math and economics. I do this everyday and always try to keep the cheap keys off the market and to keep the price fixed at around 1.4 to 1.5 mil per Key. Like the OP suggested keys need to be at a certian price to hold there value.
I'm just waiting for the next lockbox's to come out. Whenever there is a new one I am sure to bring in several hundred mil in the first few days. Players are always asking how to make lots of EC and the EC is out there for the taking if you know how to do it.
Please, everyone knows the market rigging is smarter players taking advantage of greedy players.
someone greedy will list high and just wait and see if someone buys his overpriced item. The impatience players will list cheap and often just so they dont have to wait for the item to sell. And then you have the stupid that list equipment drop's for less than a vendor will give you for it. You can buy Purple Shields/Eng/Deflectors on the exchange for 25/30k and then sell to a vendor for 50k.
Starbase food has a really good resale value still.
I
How can you refine 15-20K a day, there is a 8K daily cap + 1k every two day from the Veteran DOff assignment.
Are you talking across all of your toons, if not I'd like to know how you're refining soo much Dilithium per day?
The joke there is that it's a mutually beneficial arrangement. By pricing an object to move I am buying extra time and convenience. Sure, I could price my keys higher and they will move eventually, but I don't want that headache. Where as you are spending time in order to make more money. Maybe it's because you want the headache from price tracking and speculating, or maybe it's because it's not a headache to you.
No matter the reason, if you want to scrape out an extra .4 million energy credits per key, I'm happy to let you do it in exchange for getting my EC's right now.
I can still move.
I can still fight.
I will never give up!
and your opinion is great. but people also like supporting a game, especially those that want to see improvements. if people havent been spending a lot of money on this game, we wouldn't be getting a bunch of new content in may.
if someone has the spare cash to spend a lot of money on a game every month, more power to them.