On the other hand, Cryptic seems to be bent on a third option, remove the EC market as much as possible in favor of dilithium or zen items.
Whilst I do agree with the above statement cyptic have in recent months taken steps to nerf the amount of dilithium you can earn. The B'Tran exploration mission comes to mind and more recently the Alhena refueling station mission that recently got nerf'd. Not to mention the 8k per day refining cap. And I know that veterans can refine additional dilithium but this only equates to an additional 500 per day which is relatively useless given the cost of dilithium requirements for most items. But why did they 1) feel the need to put the cool down timer on it in the first place? and 2) why they did it as a stealth nerf and only put it in the patch notes after people complained? But I for one will not be running the tour again! So since most of us that ran the trunkated version will find other ways of making money my question to cryptic is this. What other methods are you planning on introducing to reduce the amount of ec/dilithium we are capable of earning?
You know, it just hit me that there isn't really a bit fat way to destroy EC in the game, as far as i know. You only give it to exchangers when you buy stuff from them, so, considering all the EC just keeps increasing and moving around, just what exactly do the people who make all that EC do with it?
You know, it just hit me that there isn't really a bit fat way to destroy EC in the game, as far as i know. You only give it to exchangers when you buy stuff from them, so, considering all the EC just keeps increasing and moving around, just what exactly do the people who make all that EC do with it?
Fleet holdings are a pretty substantial EC sink, also Reputation. But still, I think even after the Tour change the overall environment is still inflationary.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
You know, it just hit me that there isn't really a bit fat way to destroy EC in the game, as far as i know. You only give it to exchangers when you buy stuff from them, so, considering all the EC just keeps increasing and moving around, just what exactly do the people who make all that EC do with it?
EXACTLY.
I wish this would dawn on a few more people, I tried posting about it but it got lost in the "crytpic are evil and dont want us making money"
Inflation has been getting out of control for a long time now, and it's at a peak high. We have two giant ways of increasing new EC into the economy (Tour and Vendors) and no real sinks. The only EC sink is the reputation system, and given how easy it is to earn enough EC from selling vendor junk to cover the costs of reputation, the influx hugely outweighs the sinks leading to huge amounts of inflation. The other sinks are just so tiny (batteries, hypos, components etc) that they're negligible on the economy.
They need to do this, and they also need to add more EC sinks.
Fleet holdings are a pretty substantial EC sink, also Reputation. But still, I think even after the Tour change the overall environment is still inflationary.
Not really as big as you might think. Marks/dill/doffs aren't sinks as they're generated in-game with no EC cost. The only actual EC sinks in the starbases are the commodities, and they're not very large costs
Personally I think everyone is missing the bigger picture here.
How exactly was players running 4 sectors instead of the whole tour an actual exploit? It wasn't, it was simply imploring a different strategy that happened to be more profitable. Personally I used to do the full tour, not because I enjoyed it, there were plenty of times 2nd run or so I'd start dozing off from boredom, but the trade off was I was filling my doff missions along the way. That was my choice.
Is there actually anything positive about the change to Tour? Nope, for the people that were relying on the extra EC to help offset the enormous costs of the Fleet and Rep system, this won't effect exchange prices so it'll just make it all the harder to do.
Let's be clear here, this isn't an Economy correction, it's simply removing new EC generation on a larger scale, or is it? Now instead of running Tour on one character and raking up the EC, players will simply run it on multiple alts, and depending on the number of alts, still earn just as much EC as they were before.
The bigger picture isn't that this will make EC earning harder, because for those determined enough this will have little effect, it's the way it was done and the accumulative effect.
When I first started playing, there was still dev interaction, player ideas, suggestions, and feedback was still taken seriously. However, with the announcement of Fleet Bases and Season 6 there was a very fundamental shift, and not for the better. The interaction with the devs was severely decreased and for a time there was almost a complete blackout which in large still exists today. Overwhelming player feedback has become ignored and in many cases feedback sources have been removed (IE Ask Cryptic).
Cryptic is no longer focused on long term player survivability and instead has focused to a short term profit "burst" strategy via new players. Even so far to the point that Dan Stahl has stated in podcast interviews that they understand players will come and go, some merely because of the lull in content between seasons and others simply leave the game. Player support VIA PWE is nearly non-existent. Eventually the pool of new players will run out, and the extent of a "bad taste" left with former and existing players will prevent many from staying with the game or returning. The "Star Trek" name will only carry them so far, and unfortunately this realization hasn't sunk in yet, so things will continue to get worse, and by the time they realize it, it will be too late.
I'm not ready to give up on the game yet, but I'm giving up on caring about censoring my opinions, my feedback because if enough of us continue to champion against everything we see going wrong, perhaps we can finally open their eyes. It worked with Bioware and the Mass Effect 3 ending, and we all know the stance Bioware normally takes on player feedback.
There are new games on the horizon, quite a few of them being in the space sim/ space combat arena and many of them much more focused on the casual player (like STO) over the "hardcore gamers" like games such as Eve cater to. Perhaps this coming competition along with our championing will eventually break the deep freeze and Cryptic will revert back to the way things used to be, when players mattered.
Personally I think everyone is missing the bigger picture here.
How exactly was players running 4 sectors instead of the whole tour an actual exploit? It wasn't, it was simply imploring a different strategy that happened to be more profitable.
That was the problem!!!!! you were never supposed to do that or make that much in the first place the amount of time it went on is irrelevant they fixed it now . Anything you do that results in a gain that is more than was intended is an exploit.
In case you missed this here is part of my reply last time someone said this .
Huh? You can still get EC from earning it in game. You just can't get it AS FAST. There is a difference. It is now in line with other means of earning EC.
Seriously, quitting over this? To each his own I guess.
If people don't like how hard cryptic /pwe is making play the game for "free" as the above poster pointed out they have a choice to make.
Previous comment
I even read that people QQ refuse the tour now because they don't feel they make enough... i made this point earlier in this thread as well.
[sarcasm] ok guys we have herd you and we are not only going to revert it but the reward is going to be 100 mil a sector now.
or better yet we are announcing that once a day when you log on you will be granted the max amount of EC as a login bonus [/sarcasm]
shakes head . Yes it will take you longer but you were not supposed to make that much on the tour or as i just stated they would have had higher rewards in the first place.
So it yes you may have to play more and it may take you longer
When you consider what percentage of patches, out of the 50 a year, that Cryptic puts into place which have problems, why would it be surprising that things accidentally get left out of Patch Notes too?
The part of my post you quoted which said "Missing the odd thing here and there is understandable" means I don't consider it surprising, in fact it's not abnormal. But three things from just one patch starts me questioning the team as a whole in keeping track of what they are changing. It's either intentionally ignoring these items or sheer incompetence.
The cooldown is there because most people didn't run the entire event. They'd run a few advantageous sectors to collect EC, then cancel the rest of the event and then retake it - doing that several times within the hour. So rather then running thirty sectors they'd run 4 or 5 four sector events. The cooldown means you can only take it once per hour - not stopping and restarting.
The point he was making is that a 4 hour cool down is excessive since the event is only 1 hour long and only runs once every 14 hours or so. A 1 hour cool down would have been sufficient for what they wanted to achieve.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
From the get-go, was this a mission they only wanted you to do just once? If so, they shoulda made the cooldown at the introduction. To do so now is foolish.
Have we received any explanation as to why they cant simply force you to complete it in its' entirety before handing?
When I first started playing, there was still dev interaction, player ideas, suggestions, and feedback was still taken seriously. However, with the announcement of Fleet Bases and Season 6 there was a very fundamental shift, and not for the better. The interaction with the devs was severely decreased and for a time there was almost a complete blackout which in large still exists today. Overwhelming player feedback has become ignored and in many cases feedback sources have been removed (IE Ask Cryptic).
I was just getting ready to ask a question on this point, being a relative newcomer to the forum. How often, if ever, do the devs or someone with authority to speak for the company come here and *explain* the reasoning behind a change that causes discord among the players?
It seems to me that much of the angst and anger expressed in these posts arise not so much from being denied access to TTG as it was formerly played, but rather from the complete radio silence from the "powers that be" on what informed the decision. Players have been bantering back and forth (not that there's anything wrong with banter!) for almost 80 pages now, speculating about the whys and wherefores of the change and whether it's justified, without anyone having a SOLID explanation grounded in first-hand knowledge.
If it was a business decision, fine! If it was to fix the in-game economy, fine! If it was simply an effort to change incentives to entice us to play more often, fine! I can handle any of that, or any other reasoning for that matter, even if I don't necessarily agree. What's troubling is that we aren't given an explanation, and it leads many to question whether the lack of response demonstrates a lack of respect for the customers.
I certainly don't think lack of respect is what's intended, but in marketing and public relations, perception holds equal weight. One has to manage all stakeholders and keep them informed, relative to their interest in the topic and their influence.
I was just getting ready to ask a question on this point, being a relative newcomer to the forum. How often, if ever, do the devs or someone with authority to speak for the company come here and *explain* the reasoning behind a change that causes discord among the players?
It seems to me that much of the angst and anger expressed in these posts arise not so much from being denied access to TTG as it was formerly played, but rather from the complete radio silence from the "powers that be" on what informed the decision. Players have been bantering back and forth (not that there's anything wrong with banter!) for almost 80 pages now, speculating about the whys and wherefores of the change and whether it's justified, without anyone having a SOLID explanation grounded in first-hand knowledge.
If it was a business decision, fine! If it was to fix the in-game economy, fine! If it was simply an effort to change incentives to entice us to play more often, fine! I can handle any of that, or any other reasoning for that matter, even if I don't necessarily agree. What's troubling is that we aren't given an explanation, and it leads many to question whether the lack of response demonstrates a lack of respect for the customers.
I certainly don't think lack of respect is what's intended, but in marketing and public relations, perception holds equal weight. One has to manage all stakeholders and keep them informed, relative to their interest in the topic and their influence.
For the most part Cryptic has learned over the years that those who want to rant will rant, so they let them until a rule has been broken. In the past Dstahl used to be in the threads quite often trying to explain the reasoning behind a decision but 1 against 50 or 100 tends to be a losing battle and so it just stopped.
Trekkies are a very passionate bunch. We'll make hundreds of posts arguing about how much Voyager sucked, or Enterprise sucked, or JJ-verse sucks, or whatever. Very few Trekkies actually embrace IDIC.
The community manager made his statement: they thought it was being exploited as an easy way to earn ECs. That's really all there is to say.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
An update -- the change was unfortunately missing from Tribble and Holodeck patch notes. I've added it to yesterday's Holodeck patch notes now. We apologize that it was missing.
Please keep feedback constructive in this thread so that I may pass it along for consideration.
EDIT: It was changed to close an exploit, but we will still consider your constructive feedback.
I had read Brandon's original quote. It was indeed a statement, but not an explanation or a *dialog*. I totally get that a conversation of 1 against 50-100 ticked-off players is probably not a fun exercise and certainly not required, especially since so many folks insist on responding with much emotion and often little logic.
Cosmic1 is right that few Trekkies actually embrace IDIC. Then again, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few! All I'm saying is that a minimal effort in the way of a follow-up would go a long way to maintaining good relations.
For the most part Cryptic has learned over the years that those who want to rant will rant, so they let them until a rule has been broken. In the past Dstahl used to be in the threads quite often trying to explain the reasoning behind a decision but 1 against 50 or 100 tends to be a losing battle and so it just stopped.
You are right ... I completely forgot :eek:
Where is Dstahl's post asking us to dance for him again after a mega stealth nerf?
Those were the good old days ... now we don't even get that
I had read Brandon's original quote. It was indeed a statement, but not an explanation or a *dialog*. I totally get that a conversation of 1 against 50-100 ticked-off players is probably not a fun exercise and certainly not required, especially since so many folks insist on responding with much emotion and often little logic.
Cosmic1 is right that few Trekkies actually embrace IDIC. Then again, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few! All I'm saying is that a minimal effort in the way of a follow-up would go a long way to maintaining good relations.
thats were the main problem there is no need for a dialogue It was a exploit it was removed how much more of an explanation do you need?
The time that it took to remove it is irrelevant. it is the same with people raging of "stealth updates.". If something is over powered or they don't like the way something is working they fix it they don't need to "ask for permission" or "give notice"
Personally I think everyone is missing the bigger picture here.
How exactly was players running 4 sectors instead of the whole tour an actual exploit? It wasn't, it was simply imploring a different strategy that happened to be more profitable.
That was the problem!!!!! you were never supposed to do that or make that much in the first place the amount of time it went on is irrelevant they fixed it now . Anything you do that results in a gain that is more than was intended is an exploit.
In case you missed this here is part of my reply last time someone said this .
If people don't like how hard cryptic /pwe is making play the game for "free" as the above poster pointed out they have a choice to make.
Previous comment
I even read that people QQ refuse the tour now because they don't feel they make enough... i made this point earlier in this thread as well.
[sarcasm] ok guys we have herd you and we are not only going to revert it but the reward is going to be 100 mil a sector now.
or better yet we are announcing that once a day when you log on you will be granted the max amount of EC as a login bonus [/sarcasm]
shakes head . Yes it will take you longer but you were not supposed to make that much on the tour or as i just stated they would have had higher rewards in the first place.
So it yes you may have to play more and it may take you longer
Well, i'm sure we all respect your feelings, sir. But respectfully, if you don't want to demand anything, as you say we're doing, that's your fine business, as it is to sit there and rule how we should be spending our time speaking our minds within the rules of this forum. I'm sure you can report me to the moderators, if you truly feel this is anathema to the behavior you're entitled to expect from us.
As to doing anything in this game as how you feel i'm meant to, i have the better idea that i shall instead proceed to do whatever i feel like doing in this fine game which, honestly, is the kind of thing without which the purpose of playing a game is kinda defeated to begin with.
The Dilithium nerf i'm referring to is the Dilithium nerf everyone else is referring to. Kindly ask them, as i'm not your mother.
Have a nice day.
There is a dilithium nerf? I hit the cap every day.
There is a dilithium nerf? I hit the cap every day.
Closing exploits =/= nerfs.
Prior to the nerf I could easily hit 30-40k in a few hours - I know players who used to go 80-100k per day. Levi3 funded a solo Starbase past T3 doing 80-100k per day. Now I'm usually around 15-20k in around 3 hours of playing. Some could still say it's not nerfed enough.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Cosmic can say all he wants; however, that doesn't mean we have to change our opinion. Do you understand the difference between written rules (don't remember a rule being written down about Tour anyways) and established practice? Even if officially it was considered an exploit, in practice it wasn't because Cryptic took a year and a half to fix it. Furthermore, I don't ever recall a Dev officially saying "the way people are doing fast runs with Tour is an exploit." That means either they didn't consider it a high priority, and/or they didn't consider it an exploit, and/or they were too lazy to fix it. What matters is that it was in the game for a long period of time, and the devs knew about it for a long period of time. What's also important to note here is that anybody could benefit from it and that it wasn't an exploit that people used to flagrantly abuse the system and greatly irritate others like leechers afk griefing in STF's-the griefers knew most people would rather finish the mission than quit and get the leaver penalty.
Semantic aside, let's talk about EC's or lack thereof. After the prior Dilithium daily mission was scrapped and more dilithium/EC sinks were introduced in season 7 and post-season 7 with the embassy and the dilithium mine, people are more strapped for EC than ever. The introduction of the 4 hour cool down to Tour is specifically meant to limit the means by which F2P players can quickly make EC. You simply cannot afford to progress through such a wide variety of sinks without making a huge time investment in this game. And considering how far along some veterans are in the wealth they have acquired and how much hoarding they are doing, newer players will be even more turned off at how steep the climb as become.
No offense to Cosmic, but anything he says, to me, lacks perspective and objectivity. He is among the elite veterans that have literally tens of thousands of c-store points stock piled up, many lock box ships (many of which are hoarded and then sold at exorbitant rates on the exchange), and EC maxed out on quite a few of their characters. You cannot possibly relate to new players and casual gamers like myself because these sorts of irrational decisions Cryptic makes have no effect on you or your in-game assets. However for the rest of us who still have yet to acquire all of the goodies, such decisions have a serious impact because we now have to look for other, less lucrative, ways of making EC.
There are a few options still left for making decent EC but not many. You could do the full tour, but that isn't going to earn you that much money. You could do partial tours on many different characters to achieve the same result as before, but that would require many fully maxed characters. You could also continue to do dilithium grinding in STF's and use that dilithium to purchase keys which would then be sold on the exchange. Alternatively, you could grind fleet actions and use those marks to purchase fleet doffs which would then be sold on the exchange.
The problem with the current alternatives to the original tour are that they lack variety. At least the tour gave us something distinctive to do which didn't involve the same mind numbing fleet actions and STF's we've been playing over and over for months. They also net us less money, but I guess Cryptic could care less about that. Adapt or die is their new motto. Sound familiar?
#1, as I said above, they knew they were going to TRIBBLE some people off. An extra few hours of it not being in the Patch Notes is meaningless. Whether they TRIBBLE people off at 8 at night or 11 the next morning is meaningless to Cryptic.
#2, The Tour came with FTP, which is only 1.5 years old, not over 2 years. I'd also point out that they changed Dilithium rewards a few months back. How long something is ignored due to other issues doesn't mean it's not being taken advantage of by someone or not working as envisioned and so won't get fixed eventually.
#3, The Devs don't need alt accounts to talk on the forum. There are plenty of people who understand business decisions that aren't Devs. The players aren't all stereo types of living in our parents' basements and eating cereal all day. Some of us are doctors, some lawyers, some of us have MBAs and have run multi-million dollar corporations.
#4, No matter how big this thread gets, it still only represents a fraction of the fan-base. If you get 1,000 different people to agree with you, and there's 100,000 playing the game you've only manged to get 1% of the player-base to agree with you. 1% is never a majority of anything.
If Cryptic doesn't care about the ranting, what is the point of Brandon's job? Is just a facade meant to fool us into believing Cryptic actually cares about the community (no offense to Brandon either)? If that's true, then why did Dan placate the angry forum masses a while ago? Remember how Cryptic was going to lower the elite STF's dilithium rewards to 480 and then Dan and company brought it back up to 900ish? Guess Cryptic doesn't care about forum ranting, right?
Lastly, your comments above about understanding business decisions come off as particularly patronizing. We are consumers, not MBA's. Even if you are an MBA and think you understand their decisions from a business perspective, it is consumers who ultimately determine if a business is successful or not. Why don't you ever focus on the perspective of the average STO consumer? Is it too difficult to put yourself in their shoes? Must every decision be analyzed using a cost-benefit analysis?
Lastly, your comments above about understanding business decisions come off as particularly patronizing. We are consumers, not MBA's. Even if you are an MBA and think you understand their decisions from a business perspective, it is consumers who ultimately determine if a business is successful or not. Why don't you ever focus on the perspective of the average STO consumer? Is it too difficult to put yourself in their shoes? Must every decision be analyzed using a cost-benefit analysis?
Dude, a couple of days ago you said I should be a Moderator because I'm rational and level-head. Now I'm the biggest jerk in the world who doesn't understand the little man? Does that make one of us bipolar?
Show me any other mission in the game where you can earn over 1 million EC in an hour - an actual mission, not a Foundry mission designed to exploit the system? You can't have mission parity when 1 particular mission is so completely out of whack with other mission/event rewards.
And there's no one who's played the game for the last 18 months - since FTP - who hasn't seen the massive Exchange inflation. This is greatly due to the massive influx of ECs by hundreds and thousands of players doing the Tour. As with any economy, when you keep printing money you only inflate the price of everything - which means that people who don't do the tour are constantly falling further and further behind on the EC scale and the items in the Exchange are getting further and further beyond their reach.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Dude, a couple of days ago you said I should be a Moderator because I'm rational and level-head. Now I'm the biggest jerk in the world who doesn't understand the little man? Does that make one of us bipolar?
Show me any other mission in the game where you can earn over 1 million EC in an hour - an actual mission, not a Foundry mission designed to exploit the system? You can't have mission parity when 1 particular mission is so completely out of whack with other mission/event rewards.
And there's no one who's played the game for the last 18 months - since FTP - who hasn't seen the massive Exchange inflation. This is greatly due to the massive influx of ECs by hundreds and thousands of players doing the Tour. As with any economy, when you keep printing money you only inflate the price of everything - which means that people who don't do the tour are constantly falling further and further behind on the EC scale and the items in the Exchange are getting further and further beyond their reach.
Actually yes, I could still advocate for you to be a moderator on the basis that you are calm and level-headed; that being said, you clearly aren't neutral on any of the contentious issues talked about on the forums so I'm not sure about you being the best choice for a new moderator.
Ok, I do agree with you that there was massive inflation, but what now? The people that are so far ahead will continue to remain far ahead; nothing will change. Do you think prices will fall on the exchange? If anything, the hottest items like lock box ships should go up in price because people have less EC on average to purchase them.
Ok, I do agree with you that there was massive inflation, but what now? The people that are so far ahead will continue to remain far ahead; nothing will change. Do you think prices will fall on the exchange? If anything, the hottest items like lock box ships should go up in price because people have less EC on average to purchase them.
In general prices will decrease.
When the billionaires, like me, don't have a steady stream to replenish the 200+ million EC we paid for a Lockbox ship we will be unable to buy a a series of them. 3 months from now when I've spent 600 million EC on 2 new Lockbox ships and I've only been able to replenish 50 million EC I'm not going to be buying that third Lockbox ship as quickly, and that's going to drive the prices down.
And it's not just Lockbox ships. It's everything currently on the Exchange being sold for a million EC or more because people know it's only an hours work to earn those EC.
The deflation isn't going to happen over night, but then the inflation didn't happen over night either. But it's clear that steps do need to be taken. The longer it's delayed the greater the inflation gets and the longer it's going to take to recover. Steps have now been taken.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
When the billionaires, like me, don't have a steady stream to replenish the 200+ million EC we paid for a Lockbox ship we will be unable to buy a a series of them. 3 months from now when I've spent 600 million EC on 2 new Lockbox ships and I've only been able to replenish 50 million EC I'm not going to be buying that third Lockbox ship as quickly, and that's going to drive the prices down.
And it's not just Lockbox ships. It's everything currently on the Exchange being sold for a million EC or more because people know it's only an hours work to earn those EC.
The deflation isn't going to happen over night, but then the inflation didn't happen over night either. But it's clear that steps do need to be taken. The longer it's delayed the greater the inflation gets and the longer it's going to take to recover. Steps have now been taken.
However, the average income of casual gamer should go down, though, so doesn't that somewhat offset the effect of deflation on exchange prices?
Ok, I do agree with you that there was massive inflation, but what now? The people that are so far ahead will continue to remain far ahead; nothing will change. Do you think prices will fall on the exchange? If anything, the hottest items like lock box ships should go up in price because people have less EC on average to purchase them.
That's not how economics work. The cause of inflation is the ever increasing supply of EC in the system. It may seem like you have to farm more EC to keep up with the inflation, but in actuality, it's the other way around. It is the farming that is causing the inflation. The dictionary definition of inflation is an increase in the supply of money.
To illustrate, let's look at a simplified fictitious example of an auction. Let's say you are there, and have $200 to bid on one of the items. Now, what happens if I come and increase the supply of money in the room. I walk around and give out $100 to everyone in the room, including you. What do you think will happen to the sale price of the item? You, surely would then bid $300 for the item if necessary. Increase in money supply leads to price inflation.
Now this change to the tour may not necessarily decrease prices on the exchange. Why not? Because it does not actually decrease the supply of EC. It merely slows the increase. To actually see prices decrease on the exchange, the EC 'sinks' would have to be greater than the EC generators. Since I am not a dev, I am not privy to that sort of game data. It is possible that the sinks may now be greater than the EC generators now, but only the devs would know.
However, the average income of casual gamer should go down, though, so doesn't that somewhat offset the effect of deflation on exchange prices?
If I have less EC income, I cannot afford to pay the same price for something as I did before my income dropped. If all of us had less income, all of us would be less able to afford the high prices on the exchange. Thus, a seller will have to lower the asking price if he wants it to sell.
_____________________
Come join the 44th Fleet.
startrek.44thfleet.com[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
In theory, if you are looking at the in-game economy:
Exchange prices will eventually balance out with EC availability, which means that the total value of our EC's will remain comparable when purchasing from the Exchange. Tour doffers will still see a major reduction in their ability to generate EC's; Exchange sellers will see a lesser decrease as their buyers will have less EC's to give them. "Farmers" will retain their income stream, and therefore have increased relative buying power on the Exchange, though only to the extent that they are selling "vendor trash" rather than posting at the newer Exchange rates.
-and-
Vendor prices remain the same for Commodities and Consumables. With a reduction in available EC's from Tour, and by extension the Exchange, the relative cost for purchasing from vendors will increase. Since vendors will be consuming an increased proportion of your total income, this will increase the cost of Reputation and Fleet projects.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
In theory, if you are looking at the in-game economy:
Exchange prices will eventually balance out with EC availability, which means that the total value of our EC's will remain comparable when purchasing from the Exchange. Tour doffers will still see a major reduction in their ability to generate EC's; Exchange sellers will see a lesser decrease as their buyers will have less EC's to give them. "Farmers" will retain their income stream, and therefore have increased relative buying power on the Exchange, though only to the extent that they are selling "vendor trash" rather than posting at the newer Exchange rates.
-and-
Vendor prices remain the same for Commodities and Consumables. With a reduction in available EC's from Tour, and by extension the Exchange, the relative cost for purchasing from vendors will increase. Since vendors will be consuming an increased proportion of your total income, this will increase the cost of Reputation and Fleet projects.
if someone never did tour, how would it affect them?
if someone never did tour, how would it affect them?
Did that someone never sell an item on the Exchange to someone that had done Tour? As I mentioned above, if folks that were doing Tour no longer have access to EC's at the same rate, then folks selling to them will not get those EC's earned by doing Tour.
In the broader sense:
Exchange prices should decrease in proportion to the decrease in available EC's in the economy; Reputation and Fleet projects fueled by vendors will see a comparative increase in cost as EC-sinks due to static pricing.
More specifically:
a) The relative buying power of someone that makes EC's primarily off of the Exchange will remain comparable, though relative cost of vendor items will increase by comparison.
b) The relative buying power of someone that makes EC's primarily off of Tour will see their buying power dramatically decrease. Exchange prices will decrease to a lesser degree than the decreased EC flow as there are other buyers using "farming" to generate EC's, and vendor prices will not drop at all.
c) The relative buying power of "farmers" that use selling "vendor trash" as their primary source of EC's will increase, as Exchange prices will decrease while vendor prices remain identical. Of course, this is until "farming" becomes flagged as an "exploit".
In any case, the main issue here is that the devs fixed the "exploit" of a short Tour by killing the event instead. Sort of like saying that using Beam Overload after punching through shields with Rapid Fire was an "exploit" and then adding a 2 minute cooldown to Beam Overload any time you used a Tactical Bridge Officer ability.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
They need to do this, and they also need to add more EC sinks.
Too late. Any feasible ec sink would either be negligible to rich players or unachievable to new players. Theres no easy way to fix inflation without giving the average players the really short end of the stick.
EDIT: Any new ec sink. The ones in place already help.
Comments
Whilst I do agree with the above statement cyptic have in recent months taken steps to nerf the amount of dilithium you can earn. The B'Tran exploration mission comes to mind and more recently the Alhena refueling station mission that recently got nerf'd. Not to mention the 8k per day refining cap. And I know that veterans can refine additional dilithium but this only equates to an additional 500 per day which is relatively useless given the cost of dilithium requirements for most items. But why did they 1) feel the need to put the cool down timer on it in the first place? and 2) why they did it as a stealth nerf and only put it in the patch notes after people complained? But I for one will not be running the tour again! So since most of us that ran the trunkated version will find other ways of making money my question to cryptic is this. What other methods are you planning on introducing to reduce the amount of ec/dilithium we are capable of earning?
Fleet holdings are a pretty substantial EC sink, also Reputation. But still, I think even after the Tour change the overall environment is still inflationary.
EXACTLY.
I wish this would dawn on a few more people, I tried posting about it but it got lost in the "crytpic are evil and dont want us making money"
Inflation has been getting out of control for a long time now, and it's at a peak high. We have two giant ways of increasing new EC into the economy (Tour and Vendors) and no real sinks. The only EC sink is the reputation system, and given how easy it is to earn enough EC from selling vendor junk to cover the costs of reputation, the influx hugely outweighs the sinks leading to huge amounts of inflation. The other sinks are just so tiny (batteries, hypos, components etc) that they're negligible on the economy.
They need to do this, and they also need to add more EC sinks.
Kirk's Protege.
Not really as big as you might think. Marks/dill/doffs aren't sinks as they're generated in-game with no EC cost. The only actual EC sinks in the starbases are the commodities, and they're not very large costs
Kirk's Protege.
How exactly was players running 4 sectors instead of the whole tour an actual exploit? It wasn't, it was simply imploring a different strategy that happened to be more profitable. Personally I used to do the full tour, not because I enjoyed it, there were plenty of times 2nd run or so I'd start dozing off from boredom, but the trade off was I was filling my doff missions along the way. That was my choice.
Is there actually anything positive about the change to Tour? Nope, for the people that were relying on the extra EC to help offset the enormous costs of the Fleet and Rep system, this won't effect exchange prices so it'll just make it all the harder to do.
Let's be clear here, this isn't an Economy correction, it's simply removing new EC generation on a larger scale, or is it? Now instead of running Tour on one character and raking up the EC, players will simply run it on multiple alts, and depending on the number of alts, still earn just as much EC as they were before.
The bigger picture isn't that this will make EC earning harder, because for those determined enough this will have little effect, it's the way it was done and the accumulative effect.
When I first started playing, there was still dev interaction, player ideas, suggestions, and feedback was still taken seriously. However, with the announcement of Fleet Bases and Season 6 there was a very fundamental shift, and not for the better. The interaction with the devs was severely decreased and for a time there was almost a complete blackout which in large still exists today. Overwhelming player feedback has become ignored and in many cases feedback sources have been removed (IE Ask Cryptic).
Cryptic is no longer focused on long term player survivability and instead has focused to a short term profit "burst" strategy via new players. Even so far to the point that Dan Stahl has stated in podcast interviews that they understand players will come and go, some merely because of the lull in content between seasons and others simply leave the game. Player support VIA PWE is nearly non-existent. Eventually the pool of new players will run out, and the extent of a "bad taste" left with former and existing players will prevent many from staying with the game or returning. The "Star Trek" name will only carry them so far, and unfortunately this realization hasn't sunk in yet, so things will continue to get worse, and by the time they realize it, it will be too late.
I'm not ready to give up on the game yet, but I'm giving up on caring about censoring my opinions, my feedback because if enough of us continue to champion against everything we see going wrong, perhaps we can finally open their eyes. It worked with Bioware and the Mass Effect 3 ending, and we all know the stance Bioware normally takes on player feedback.
There are new games on the horizon, quite a few of them being in the space sim/ space combat arena and many of them much more focused on the casual player (like STO) over the "hardcore gamers" like games such as Eve cater to. Perhaps this coming competition along with our championing will eventually break the deep freeze and Cryptic will revert back to the way things used to be, when players mattered.
That was the problem!!!!! you were never supposed to do that or make that much in the first place the amount of time it went on is irrelevant they fixed it now . Anything you do that results in a gain that is more than was intended is an exploit.
In case you missed this here is part of my reply last time someone said this .
If people don't like how hard cryptic /pwe is making play the game for "free" as the above poster pointed out they have a choice to make.
Previous comment
I even read that people QQ refuse the tour now because they don't feel they make enough... i made this point earlier in this thread as well.
[sarcasm] ok guys we have herd you and we are not only going to revert it but the reward is going to be 100 mil a sector now.
or better yet we are announcing that once a day when you log on you will be granted the max amount of EC as a login bonus [/sarcasm]
shakes head . Yes it will take you longer but you were not supposed to make that much on the tour or as i just stated they would have had higher rewards in the first place.
So it yes you may have to play more and it may take you longer
The part of my post you quoted which said "Missing the odd thing here and there is understandable" means I don't consider it surprising, in fact it's not abnormal. But three things from just one patch starts me questioning the team as a whole in keeping track of what they are changing. It's either intentionally ignoring these items or sheer incompetence.
The point he was making is that a 4 hour cool down is excessive since the event is only 1 hour long and only runs once every 14 hours or so. A 1 hour cool down would have been sufficient for what they wanted to achieve.
Have we received any explanation as to why they cant simply force you to complete it in its' entirety before handing?
"Coding is hard!!!" lol
I was just getting ready to ask a question on this point, being a relative newcomer to the forum. How often, if ever, do the devs or someone with authority to speak for the company come here and *explain* the reasoning behind a change that causes discord among the players?
It seems to me that much of the angst and anger expressed in these posts arise not so much from being denied access to TTG as it was formerly played, but rather from the complete radio silence from the "powers that be" on what informed the decision. Players have been bantering back and forth (not that there's anything wrong with banter!) for almost 80 pages now, speculating about the whys and wherefores of the change and whether it's justified, without anyone having a SOLID explanation grounded in first-hand knowledge.
If it was a business decision, fine! If it was to fix the in-game economy, fine! If it was simply an effort to change incentives to entice us to play more often, fine! I can handle any of that, or any other reasoning for that matter, even if I don't necessarily agree. What's troubling is that we aren't given an explanation, and it leads many to question whether the lack of response demonstrates a lack of respect for the customers.
I certainly don't think lack of respect is what's intended, but in marketing and public relations, perception holds equal weight. One has to manage all stakeholders and keep them informed, relative to their interest in the topic and their influence.
Trekkies are a very passionate bunch. We'll make hundreds of posts arguing about how much Voyager sucked, or Enterprise sucked, or JJ-verse sucks, or whatever. Very few Trekkies actually embrace IDIC.
The community manager made his statement: they thought it was being exploited as an easy way to earn ECs. That's really all there is to say.
Cosmic1 is correct here is the actual quote
Come join the 44th Fleet.
startrek.44thfleet.com[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I had read Brandon's original quote. It was indeed a statement, but not an explanation or a *dialog*. I totally get that a conversation of 1 against 50-100 ticked-off players is probably not a fun exercise and certainly not required, especially since so many folks insist on responding with much emotion and often little logic.
Cosmic1 is right that few Trekkies actually embrace IDIC. Then again, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few!
You are right ... I completely forgot :eek:
Where is Dstahl's post asking us to dance for him again after a mega stealth nerf?
Those were the good old days ... now we don't even get that
thats were the main problem there is no need for a dialogue It was a exploit it was removed how much more of an explanation do you need?
The time that it took to remove it is irrelevant. it is the same with people raging of "stealth updates.". If something is over powered or they don't like the way something is working they fix it they don't need to "ask for permission" or "give notice"
There is a dilithium nerf? I hit the cap every day.
Closing exploits =/= nerfs.
Cosmic can say all he wants; however, that doesn't mean we have to change our opinion. Do you understand the difference between written rules (don't remember a rule being written down about Tour anyways) and established practice? Even if officially it was considered an exploit, in practice it wasn't because Cryptic took a year and a half to fix it. Furthermore, I don't ever recall a Dev officially saying "the way people are doing fast runs with Tour is an exploit." That means either they didn't consider it a high priority, and/or they didn't consider it an exploit, and/or they were too lazy to fix it. What matters is that it was in the game for a long period of time, and the devs knew about it for a long period of time. What's also important to note here is that anybody could benefit from it and that it wasn't an exploit that people used to flagrantly abuse the system and greatly irritate others like leechers afk griefing in STF's-the griefers knew most people would rather finish the mission than quit and get the leaver penalty.
Semantic aside, let's talk about EC's or lack thereof. After the prior Dilithium daily mission was scrapped and more dilithium/EC sinks were introduced in season 7 and post-season 7 with the embassy and the dilithium mine, people are more strapped for EC than ever. The introduction of the 4 hour cool down to Tour is specifically meant to limit the means by which F2P players can quickly make EC. You simply cannot afford to progress through such a wide variety of sinks without making a huge time investment in this game. And considering how far along some veterans are in the wealth they have acquired and how much hoarding they are doing, newer players will be even more turned off at how steep the climb as become.
No offense to Cosmic, but anything he says, to me, lacks perspective and objectivity. He is among the elite veterans that have literally tens of thousands of c-store points stock piled up, many lock box ships (many of which are hoarded and then sold at exorbitant rates on the exchange), and EC maxed out on quite a few of their characters. You cannot possibly relate to new players and casual gamers like myself because these sorts of irrational decisions Cryptic makes have no effect on you or your in-game assets. However for the rest of us who still have yet to acquire all of the goodies, such decisions have a serious impact because we now have to look for other, less lucrative, ways of making EC.
There are a few options still left for making decent EC but not many. You could do the full tour, but that isn't going to earn you that much money. You could do partial tours on many different characters to achieve the same result as before, but that would require many fully maxed characters. You could also continue to do dilithium grinding in STF's and use that dilithium to purchase keys which would then be sold on the exchange. Alternatively, you could grind fleet actions and use those marks to purchase fleet doffs which would then be sold on the exchange.
The problem with the current alternatives to the original tour are that they lack variety. At least the tour gave us something distinctive to do which didn't involve the same mind numbing fleet actions and STF's we've been playing over and over for months. They also net us less money, but I guess Cryptic could care less about that. Adapt or die is their new motto. Sound familiar?
If Cryptic doesn't care about the ranting, what is the point of Brandon's job? Is just a facade meant to fool us into believing Cryptic actually cares about the community (no offense to Brandon either)? If that's true, then why did Dan placate the angry forum masses a while ago? Remember how Cryptic was going to lower the elite STF's dilithium rewards to 480 and then Dan and company brought it back up to 900ish? Guess Cryptic doesn't care about forum ranting, right?
Lastly, your comments above about understanding business decisions come off as particularly patronizing. We are consumers, not MBA's. Even if you are an MBA and think you understand their decisions from a business perspective, it is consumers who ultimately determine if a business is successful or not. Why don't you ever focus on the perspective of the average STO consumer? Is it too difficult to put yourself in their shoes? Must every decision be analyzed using a cost-benefit analysis?
Show me any other mission in the game where you can earn over 1 million EC in an hour - an actual mission, not a Foundry mission designed to exploit the system? You can't have mission parity when 1 particular mission is so completely out of whack with other mission/event rewards.
And there's no one who's played the game for the last 18 months - since FTP - who hasn't seen the massive Exchange inflation. This is greatly due to the massive influx of ECs by hundreds and thousands of players doing the Tour. As with any economy, when you keep printing money you only inflate the price of everything - which means that people who don't do the tour are constantly falling further and further behind on the EC scale and the items in the Exchange are getting further and further beyond their reach.
Actually yes, I could still advocate for you to be a moderator on the basis that you are calm and level-headed; that being said, you clearly aren't neutral on any of the contentious issues talked about on the forums so I'm not sure about you being the best choice for a new moderator.
Ok, I do agree with you that there was massive inflation, but what now? The people that are so far ahead will continue to remain far ahead; nothing will change. Do you think prices will fall on the exchange? If anything, the hottest items like lock box ships should go up in price because people have less EC on average to purchase them.
When the billionaires, like me, don't have a steady stream to replenish the 200+ million EC we paid for a Lockbox ship we will be unable to buy a a series of them. 3 months from now when I've spent 600 million EC on 2 new Lockbox ships and I've only been able to replenish 50 million EC I'm not going to be buying that third Lockbox ship as quickly, and that's going to drive the prices down.
And it's not just Lockbox ships. It's everything currently on the Exchange being sold for a million EC or more because people know it's only an hours work to earn those EC.
The deflation isn't going to happen over night, but then the inflation didn't happen over night either. But it's clear that steps do need to be taken. The longer it's delayed the greater the inflation gets and the longer it's going to take to recover. Steps have now been taken.
However, the average income of casual gamer should go down, though, so doesn't that somewhat offset the effect of deflation on exchange prices?
not every player did the tour in the first place.
That's not how economics work. The cause of inflation is the ever increasing supply of EC in the system. It may seem like you have to farm more EC to keep up with the inflation, but in actuality, it's the other way around. It is the farming that is causing the inflation. The dictionary definition of inflation is an increase in the supply of money.
To illustrate, let's look at a simplified fictitious example of an auction. Let's say you are there, and have $200 to bid on one of the items. Now, what happens if I come and increase the supply of money in the room. I walk around and give out $100 to everyone in the room, including you. What do you think will happen to the sale price of the item? You, surely would then bid $300 for the item if necessary. Increase in money supply leads to price inflation.
Now this change to the tour may not necessarily decrease prices on the exchange. Why not? Because it does not actually decrease the supply of EC. It merely slows the increase. To actually see prices decrease on the exchange, the EC 'sinks' would have to be greater than the EC generators. Since I am not a dev, I am not privy to that sort of game data. It is possible that the sinks may now be greater than the EC generators now, but only the devs would know.
If I have less EC income, I cannot afford to pay the same price for something as I did before my income dropped. If all of us had less income, all of us would be less able to afford the high prices on the exchange. Thus, a seller will have to lower the asking price if he wants it to sell.
Come join the 44th Fleet.
startrek.44thfleet.com[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
In theory, if you are looking at the in-game economy:
Exchange prices will eventually balance out with EC availability, which means that the total value of our EC's will remain comparable when purchasing from the Exchange. Tour doffers will still see a major reduction in their ability to generate EC's; Exchange sellers will see a lesser decrease as their buyers will have less EC's to give them. "Farmers" will retain their income stream, and therefore have increased relative buying power on the Exchange, though only to the extent that they are selling "vendor trash" rather than posting at the newer Exchange rates.
-and-
Vendor prices remain the same for Commodities and Consumables. With a reduction in available EC's from Tour, and by extension the Exchange, the relative cost for purchasing from vendors will increase. Since vendors will be consuming an increased proportion of your total income, this will increase the cost of Reputation and Fleet projects.
if someone never did tour, how would it affect them?
Did that someone never sell an item on the Exchange to someone that had done Tour? As I mentioned above, if folks that were doing Tour no longer have access to EC's at the same rate, then folks selling to them will not get those EC's earned by doing Tour.
In the broader sense:
Exchange prices should decrease in proportion to the decrease in available EC's in the economy; Reputation and Fleet projects fueled by vendors will see a comparative increase in cost as EC-sinks due to static pricing.
More specifically:
a) The relative buying power of someone that makes EC's primarily off of the Exchange will remain comparable, though relative cost of vendor items will increase by comparison.
b) The relative buying power of someone that makes EC's primarily off of Tour will see their buying power dramatically decrease. Exchange prices will decrease to a lesser degree than the decreased EC flow as there are other buyers using "farming" to generate EC's, and vendor prices will not drop at all.
c) The relative buying power of "farmers" that use selling "vendor trash" as their primary source of EC's will increase, as Exchange prices will decrease while vendor prices remain identical. Of course, this is until "farming" becomes flagged as an "exploit".
In any case, the main issue here is that the devs fixed the "exploit" of a short Tour by killing the event instead. Sort of like saying that using Beam Overload after punching through shields with Rapid Fire was an "exploit" and then adding a 2 minute cooldown to Beam Overload any time you used a Tactical Bridge Officer ability.
Too late. Any feasible ec sink would either be negligible to rich players or unachievable to new players. Theres no easy way to fix inflation without giving the average players the really short end of the stick.
EDIT: Any new ec sink. The ones in place already help.