If I wanted to play a game dedicated to harvesting crafting materials I would play Guild Wars 2. As a matter of fact I used to love that game but the developers shifted it more towards craft and even more towards temporary content to the point that the only reason someone played Guild Wars 2 was the hope of getting a legendary weapon. And I now happily play STO daily and deleted any trace of GW2 from my PC.
I do not want to login into STO and find out the only purpose is to grind materials so I can someday have a really nice covariant shield, no way, not happening, goodbye STO if you ever do something so stupid.
With regards to the economy, more people are playing STO, and there are lots of people like myself who've played this game for at least a couple of years. Since the beginning of STO a lot has changed a lot new items have become available and new players find themselves in an environment with more choices. For us seasoned players we only care about reputation items.
With respect to the proposed "EC" sinkholes, they already exist, they are called fleet holdings. And unless your fortunate enough to be in a tier 5 fleet that has everything you know what it's like to get a new project that cost 10K terraforming systems which translates into the need for a fleet to spend at least 10mil EC on one part of a fleet project. There are lots and lots of places to burn EC and the redisgned reputation system is another example of it. It's mroe convenient to spend EC on gear then it is to go to a merchant and buy communication arrays. Now cryptic can raise the cost of these projects as much as they want to help regulate the virtual economy. It wasn't that long ago with the amount of dilitihium required to complete reputation projects really shot up as it the cost of marks.
Ultimately, folks, specifically to the person who started this thread; chill out. Are some items expensive, yes, but supply and demand helps; big time. You can post an item for 500mil EC on the exchange and it's never going to sell because no one is going to buy it so you are going to continually lower the price until someone finally buys it from you.
It costs 1.8m worth of contraband, turned to dil turned to zen, to buy a key yourself, less if you're buying the 10 packs. If you're paying more than that, then you're an idiot that can't do basic math and just do the work yourself.
Or you're in a hurry.
People will always pay for the convenience of not having to do the work for themselves.
Like just because I can crawl under my car and change my oil myself doesn't mean I won't pay my mechanic fifty bucks to do it for me, and rotate the tires and check the spark plugs while he's at it. Time saved and the convenience of not having to buy the oil and do the dirty work is worth $50.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
This. It isn't exactly hard to make massive EC, just time intensive.
Also, an EC tax will raise EC prices, not lower them - As I cant be bothered to repeat myself, I'll link my post from the last time it came up. My bit is half way down.
Bottom line is, an EC tax is useless for taking EC out of the economy, there needs to be something at Cryptics end buyable with EC that is worth buying. Crafting materials would be a start.
Just read your other post and your logic is, faulty.
At the current state of the game because of the EC inflation your 10 million EC today is worth less a week from now. Your buying power decreases every time more EC is created via various means (loot drops, doff mission rewards, tour the galaxy, etc etc). If we measure your EC value to that of a Zen using keys as a reference this is already clear. Even if nothing is done a year from now all lockbox ships may become worth more than the maximum limit on the exchange.
The current sinks are fixed, once a fleet completes it's holding, or a reputation has been completed, they are no longer removing EC from the economy. A small tax, even as low as 1% on all exchange sales, will always remove EC from the game based upon the value of the EC to begin with and is the best way to slow down the inflation. It will not end it, but it will slow it down.
The fact is that most things are actually dropping in price on the exchange. The only things that aren't are:
1. Things that cost someone real money (zen store and lock box stuff)
2. Things that are needed to get fleet credits (doffs, mainly)
Everything else is dropping in price. Data samples, for example, took a huge dive when kits were taken out of crafting.
And really, only the zen store stuff has gone up a lot recently. The keys went up because people stopped buying them, choosing instead to buy the rom survivor packs for the bug. It's stayed up because first the lockbox rerun, then the undine box being really popular. The other zstore things are just tacked to key prices, because who would be dumb enough to not get the most ec for zen? And so people buy less modules, so the supply is down, etc.
I just recently bought my first lockbox ship. Ever. A Nicor. And I was able to do this because of selling keys.
Market seems fine to me. You can push the price down by selling keys lower than 2.6. Do it enough and it will push the price down. You can push the price back up by buying those keys and reselling for more than 2.6.
It swings both ways.
Just realize that there are quite a few people doing this. And some of them are very good at it. And it's part of the gameplay for them.
My advice? Try not to take anything in the game all that seriously. The beat goes on and really having fun playing "star trek" with people should trump all the other details.
Just read your other post and your logic is, faulty.
At the current state of the game because of the EC inflation your 10 million EC today is worth less a week from now. Your buying power decreases every time more EC is created via various means (loot drops, doff mission rewards, tour the galaxy, etc etc). If we measure your EC value to that of a Zen using keys as a reference this is already clear. Even if nothing is done a year from now all lockbox ships may become worth more than the maximum limit on the exchange.
The current sinks are fixed, once a fleet completes it's holding, or a reputation has been completed, they are no longer removing EC from the economy. A small tax, even as low as 1% on all exchange sales, will always remove EC from the game based upon the value of the EC to begin with and is the best way to slow down the inflation. It will not end it, but it will slow it down.
Removing more EC's from people's hands does very little, in fact when they nerfed the tour it created a rippling inflation that has not stopped yet, even though it can be done at your leisure now.
Inflation is simple greed, there is no limit to EC's, unlike real money EC's are infinite, and therefore if we go based on this logic, than everything in game should cost 10mill EC's, even a hypo.
People just push the inflation up, so as to profit until they can no longer keep the profit margin skyrocketing, than only than do they bring the prices way down.
Heck look at the recent sales in keys, zen, did it help drive the cost down on keys on the exchange?
No of course not, all it did was allow those who sell them to make even more profit.
No it didn't. I made more EC on the keys I sold during the sale (2.5 mil each) than I usually make between sales (1.8 mil each)
You should be more careful about when you put your keys up for sale. Like not selling your keys while 2 or more people are in an underbidding war trying to sell their keys the fastest.
TY, you clearly proved my point, and congrats on your sales by the way, I mean this.
I stopped buying keys from the exchange long ago, when I kept a watchful eye as the prices kept creeping past the 1.5mill mark.
Greed is part of human nature, the want for bigger and better things, but it also shows at times the worst in humanity.
People want something in game, and the best way to do so is by selling things, and earning EC's.
But people also want it quickly, and will sell those things at ever increasing prices to get there faster, I mean after all there is a cap on EC's per character, and even a cap on the exchange to sell things.
So that 400mill ship they have been after, well if they aren't greedy than simply selling keys for 1.25mill, it would take them longer than say selling for 2.5mill, but they would still get there with some work in earning EC's the old fashioned way.
Do you really mean to suggest that people should sell things for far below the exchange price? And that giving money away to other people in this fashion would be 'earning money the old fashioned way?'
The old fashioned way to earn money is to buy low and sell high. "Sell low" isn't part of it.
...
Keys were down in the 2.3-2.4 level during the key sale.
The many keys i purchased with dil during the key sale I held until after the sale, and got more for them than I would have during the sale.
The simplest kind of economics, supply/demand.
The old fashion way is to earn it thru playing the game.
And selling things below the over inflated listings on the exchange, only means someone has a big heart, and doesn't care to over profit.
Keys now as opposed to say a year & 1/2 ago, have risen by a factor of 100%.
for the last two years we have seen a set pattern. even when a desireable lockbox hits the market, keys never really went above 2 mil.. I used to sell them a lot, and even in a prime time for keys, never really was able to get more than 1.8 mil for mine. now that keys are nearing 3 mil, I see one of a couple things happening.
less players playing the key exchange: (this is the more likely culprit of the increase) the reason keys always stayed under 2 mil, is that there was always a healthy amount of people competeing to sell said keys. I know id put my keys up, and within seconds, I would be undercut. I put a few keys up the other day, and when I checked almost an hour later, I was still the lowest price.
couple that with the fact that the game feels barren lately, this is probably what is going down. even random mk12 purple loot is increasing, as there is less competition, thus the price goes up.
Tycoons: like in other games, there are people who are so resource rich, and can stay that way, that they can buy out all the competition as it hits the exchange, and resell it at their price. this is common in other games, but less common in sto from what I have seen and heard.
in most games, as time goes on, common resources get cheaper, ships will fluxuate less than keys or say modules. its like a mount in other games.. they are much rarer, thus worth more.. keys are common, they can be bought with very little thought, and slapped on the exchange. normally an item like this decreases in value as time goes on.
now don't get me wrong, it is possible that this hike is due to the lockbox. stuff usually gets crazy before and during a new release. but it felt like the prices on keys and modules went up way before they should have.
if you take the time to look, youll notice less people in game. (less full instances at esd, quonos, longer waite times for pugs, your own friends lists and fleet lists.) im starting to notice im running into the same people (that I don't know) more often. ive been noticing less veriety in people for pugs, ive run pugs with a lot of the same people over and over again (not teamed, but randomly) more and more as time goes on. this has never happened to me (well that I was able to notice)_ in 3 years. even these forums are seeing less people, the list of people making posts and commenting on posts are shrinking, which is why I think we are all getting personal with eachother lately lol..
in essence, I personally think the economy getting wacky is due to less people playing the game.. less people means less competition, means less undercutting, means higher prices.. the game has an almost 2 year established pattern to key sales, and it was pretty solid, and didn't really faulter all that much, and now it is.
you want to see EC running in the economy drop A LOT? make a new fleet holding or two, that instead of requiring absurd amounts of dilthium, it requires absurd amounts of EC, you'll drastically lower the inflation.
also add a high EC cost(like 100k at least to fleet/rep gear, and a cost of like at least 1 Million EC to fleet ships), EC running in the economy will also go down, its that simple, there is nothing to spend EC on, so EC just goes up and up and up, force people to spend EC, focusing especially on those who are richer/can spend more(such as large fleets) and you'll drastically improve the situation and make things easier for the new player.
The lockbox key market has been moved by this. At any given time, if you do an 'all search' for "master key", the cheapest keys you see are about 100k more than the ones you'd see if you specified the item type "Master Key."
People have been listing keys are above-market prices because they know unsophisticated buyers will use the 'all search' and purchase them, thinking they are the cheapest.
This same situation applies to anything which people were accustomed to using 'all search' to browse.
Wait. Hold on. There is NO way that this can be true.
I bought keys in the past mainly to stay below the 10 million EC cap. I bought 'em for 1.9 million EC to 2.0 million EC each. Currently have 14 keys just sitting in my inventory. I stopped collecting keys after I decided to buy the EC Cap Remover.
I have not put them back on the market yet. I guess I am really not in a dire need of ECs. I would say the Keys represents about 60% of my net worth.
Maybe I will sell 'em when they are worth 50 million each.
The inflation in GW2 since launch is rather nice, as it's rendered the cost of waypoints negligible. I remember back at launch nobody would WP because it was way too expensive.
What Cryptic needs to do is give us something to do with EC.
Does anyone buy the Borg consumables, which require Dilithium? If those cost EC, then I would certainly use them. They're not worth Dilithium though.
Perhaps new consumables? We already can pick up a "pet" ship in the Undine space battlezone, how about consumable pet items we can pick up with EC? Like those consumable pet fighters from that one mission (though that might lead to lots of lag).
How about a way to bypass mission cooldowns? Pay ever increasing costs to skip cooldowns, which reset when you actually let it cooldown. That would essentially let you spend EC to increase your Dilithium ore count.
Heck, about letting people spend EC to increase the amount of Dilithium they could refine that day?
Right now the supply of EC keeps increasing, and there's almost nothing to spend EC on aside from the Exchange. Of course we're going to get inflation! (The EC costs on projects are nice, but can't be increased without significant negative impact on the poor - we need optional things to spend EC on which don't unduly unbalance the game.)
You can push the price down by selling keys lower than 2.6. Do it enough and it will push the price down. You can push the price back up by buying those keys and reselling for more than 2.6.
It swings both ways.
Just realize that there are quite a few people doing this. And some of them are very good at it.
This is what fees on the exchange would inhibit, adding a cost to attempted market manipulation. Cryptic's new MMO has it, GW2 has it, WoW has it. It won't prevent it, but it lessens the impact.
...little disconcerting for me, too...; as I'm a Free player for the foreseeable future, 2 million EC is a staggering amount for me...I don't really 'get' the grinding mindset, and my severe ADHD probably has something to do with it, as well....
...on the other hand, the last lockbox I opened using an EC-bought key -did- give me a purple DoFF worth something on the order of 60-65 million EC...and now that I have the EC Cap increase, I'd be a fool to NOT sell him...if only someone would actually -buy- him....
In 6 months on STO, I've never accumulated more than 3mio EC, mostly because it had been going into Rep projects and Fleet commodities. Now that Cryptic has eliminated commodities from the Rep grind, it is inevitable that more EC will pile up in the economy. I had no complaints about paying for Rep commodities (they actually made sense from a story/content perspective), and IMO removing them was a mistake.
It has always been true that some people have more money than sense, when it comes to assigning values to things, and some just can't be bothered to grind out dill stocks, so there will always be ridiulous prices for things. Let's face it: even at individual Zen retail (@141 dill/Zen) it's under 18k dill for a master key, which is less than one Aegis component in the craft shop!
The only exchange items I can be tempted to spend >1mio EC for are blue or purple DOff's and only when they have the traits I am looking for. It takes a lot of dill & recruiting effort to create purple Doff's with the desired traits, since there appears to be no set combination algorithm to predict a reassignment product. Lock boxes are another source of VR DOff's, and include the extra bonus of unpredictability.
Since Cryptic found it necessary to invent a 4th currency for the most interesting gear (Lobi), lock boxes are still a reasonable value as the only source of Lobi. I personally would have preferred the use of GPL to Lobi for those store items, since GPL is the forgotten stepchild of the STO economy in the current state. That said, I may finally reach 800 Lobi ( the cost of the top Lobi-store ships) before I reach the 9-month mark of my STO career, and then start over, to get all the shiny consoles & weaps!
BTW, it's kind of comical to see people complaining about having grown too rich to know what to do with their credits... :P
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...on the other hand, the last lockbox I opened using an EC-bought key -did- give me a purple DoFF worth something on the order of 60-65 million EC...and now that I have the EC Cap increase, I'd be a fool to NOT sell him...if only someone would actually -buy- him....
While you may see the same or similar Doff listed on the exchange for 60 - 65 million EC, that does not mean it is the going price. It is simply the price the player decided to list that Doff for.
In my opinion that is simply an insane amount of EC and no one in their right mind would pay that amount for it. Most purple Doffs I have seen on the Exchange typically list for around 1.5 million EC to 3.0 million EC. I never bought a purple Doff yet, and I probably never will... I have been getting a decent number of random purple Doffs from Asylum, and a few Defection missions. I also completed my 1st colony chain mission... something I have been procrastinating... and I received a purple Doff as a reward.
I received two purple security officers for my KDF toon in back to back Asylum missions. They are probably worth their weight in latinum.
Key price is driven by what people are selling them for and what people are buying them for. PWE/Cryptic is not the ones selling the keys on the Exchange, your fellow players are.
They can raise the prices all they want. I won't get them from the Exchange due to too pricey. I can see why they want to see them for that since you paying real $ for them. However I see it easier just to pay $ and get them from the store. Since I don't have that kind of amount of EC for them. I have yet had to add to the standard limit they give you. Since I hadn't capped it. The Rep projects keeps that in check.
The prices are player influenced. As long they sell for that they will be selling for that. Just like the Dil Exchange. That is player influenced as well.
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...little disconcerting for me, too...; as I'm a Free player for the foreseeable future, 2 million EC is a staggering amount for me...I don't really 'get' the grinding mindset, and my severe ADHD probably has something to do with it, as well....
If you're level 50, just doing the Undine space battlezone once a day (from all red zones to holding out against the Voth) should net around 250k in just vendor junk. That's ignoring anything you find that can be sold on the Exchange. 2 mil EC would be less than a week of that (plus you have to do something Undine 1/day to get the mark box anyway).
...on the other hand, the last lockbox I opened using an EC-bought key -did- give me a purple DoFF worth something on the order of 60-65 million EC...and now that I have the EC Cap increase, I'd be a fool to NOT sell him...if only someone would actually -buy- him....
And they have risen because... the money supply has gone up!
The definition of inflation! Imagine that!
The 18th rule of acquisition states " A ferengi without profit is no ferengi at all."
The demented course of action you are proposing, to give profit to others instead of taking it for yourself, by giving away money by selling things for less than their value, is not just wrong, it's a sin.
The money supply was always there, EC's are and will always be an infinite source unlike real world currency.
So it still boils down to inflation due to ever increasing greed.
Comments
I do not want to login into STO and find out the only purpose is to grind materials so I can someday have a really nice covariant shield, no way, not happening, goodbye STO if you ever do something so stupid.
With regards to the economy, more people are playing STO, and there are lots of people like myself who've played this game for at least a couple of years. Since the beginning of STO a lot has changed a lot new items have become available and new players find themselves in an environment with more choices. For us seasoned players we only care about reputation items.
With respect to the proposed "EC" sinkholes, they already exist, they are called fleet holdings. And unless your fortunate enough to be in a tier 5 fleet that has everything you know what it's like to get a new project that cost 10K terraforming systems which translates into the need for a fleet to spend at least 10mil EC on one part of a fleet project. There are lots and lots of places to burn EC and the redisgned reputation system is another example of it. It's mroe convenient to spend EC on gear then it is to go to a merchant and buy communication arrays. Now cryptic can raise the cost of these projects as much as they want to help regulate the virtual economy. It wasn't that long ago with the amount of dilitihium required to complete reputation projects really shot up as it the cost of marks.
Ultimately, folks, specifically to the person who started this thread; chill out. Are some items expensive, yes, but supply and demand helps; big time. You can post an item for 500mil EC on the exchange and it's never going to sell because no one is going to buy it so you are going to continually lower the price until someone finally buys it from you.
Or you're in a hurry.
People will always pay for the convenience of not having to do the work for themselves.
Like just because I can crawl under my car and change my oil myself doesn't mean I won't pay my mechanic fifty bucks to do it for me, and rotate the tires and check the spark plugs while he's at it. Time saved and the convenience of not having to buy the oil and do the dirty work is worth $50.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Just read your other post and your logic is, faulty.
At the current state of the game because of the EC inflation your 10 million EC today is worth less a week from now. Your buying power decreases every time more EC is created via various means (loot drops, doff mission rewards, tour the galaxy, etc etc). If we measure your EC value to that of a Zen using keys as a reference this is already clear. Even if nothing is done a year from now all lockbox ships may become worth more than the maximum limit on the exchange.
The current sinks are fixed, once a fleet completes it's holding, or a reputation has been completed, they are no longer removing EC from the economy. A small tax, even as low as 1% on all exchange sales, will always remove EC from the game based upon the value of the EC to begin with and is the best way to slow down the inflation. It will not end it, but it will slow it down.
1. Things that cost someone real money (zen store and lock box stuff)
2. Things that are needed to get fleet credits (doffs, mainly)
Everything else is dropping in price. Data samples, for example, took a huge dive when kits were taken out of crafting.
And really, only the zen store stuff has gone up a lot recently. The keys went up because people stopped buying them, choosing instead to buy the rom survivor packs for the bug. It's stayed up because first the lockbox rerun, then the undine box being really popular. The other zstore things are just tacked to key prices, because who would be dumb enough to not get the most ec for zen? And so people buy less modules, so the supply is down, etc.
Market seems fine to me. You can push the price down by selling keys lower than 2.6. Do it enough and it will push the price down. You can push the price back up by buying those keys and reselling for more than 2.6.
It swings both ways.
Just realize that there are quite a few people doing this. And some of them are very good at it. And it's part of the gameplay for them.
My advice? Try not to take anything in the game all that seriously. The beat goes on and really having fun playing "star trek" with people should trump all the other details.
Removing more EC's from people's hands does very little, in fact when they nerfed the tour it created a rippling inflation that has not stopped yet, even though it can be done at your leisure now.
Inflation is simple greed, there is no limit to EC's, unlike real money EC's are infinite, and therefore if we go based on this logic, than everything in game should cost 10mill EC's, even a hypo.
People just push the inflation up, so as to profit until they can no longer keep the profit margin skyrocketing, than only than do they bring the prices way down.
Heck look at the recent sales in keys, zen, did it help drive the cost down on keys on the exchange?
No of course not, all it did was allow those who sell them to make even more profit.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
TY, you clearly proved my point, and congrats on your sales by the way, I mean this.
I stopped buying keys from the exchange long ago, when I kept a watchful eye as the prices kept creeping past the 1.5mill mark.
Greed is part of human nature, the want for bigger and better things, but it also shows at times the worst in humanity.
People want something in game, and the best way to do so is by selling things, and earning EC's.
But people also want it quickly, and will sell those things at ever increasing prices to get there faster, I mean after all there is a cap on EC's per character, and even a cap on the exchange to sell things.
So that 400mill ship they have been after, well if they aren't greedy than simply selling keys for 1.25mill, it would take them longer than say selling for 2.5mill, but they would still get there with some work in earning EC's the old fashioned way.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
The old fashion way is to earn it thru playing the game.
And selling things below the over inflated listings on the exchange, only means someone has a big heart, and doesn't care to over profit.
Keys now as opposed to say a year & 1/2 ago, have risen by a factor of 100%.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
less players playing the key exchange: (this is the more likely culprit of the increase) the reason keys always stayed under 2 mil, is that there was always a healthy amount of people competeing to sell said keys. I know id put my keys up, and within seconds, I would be undercut. I put a few keys up the other day, and when I checked almost an hour later, I was still the lowest price.
couple that with the fact that the game feels barren lately, this is probably what is going down. even random mk12 purple loot is increasing, as there is less competition, thus the price goes up.
Tycoons: like in other games, there are people who are so resource rich, and can stay that way, that they can buy out all the competition as it hits the exchange, and resell it at their price. this is common in other games, but less common in sto from what I have seen and heard.
in most games, as time goes on, common resources get cheaper, ships will fluxuate less than keys or say modules. its like a mount in other games.. they are much rarer, thus worth more.. keys are common, they can be bought with very little thought, and slapped on the exchange. normally an item like this decreases in value as time goes on.
now don't get me wrong, it is possible that this hike is due to the lockbox. stuff usually gets crazy before and during a new release. but it felt like the prices on keys and modules went up way before they should have.
if you take the time to look, youll notice less people in game. (less full instances at esd, quonos, longer waite times for pugs, your own friends lists and fleet lists.) im starting to notice im running into the same people (that I don't know) more often. ive been noticing less veriety in people for pugs, ive run pugs with a lot of the same people over and over again (not teamed, but randomly) more and more as time goes on. this has never happened to me (well that I was able to notice)_ in 3 years. even these forums are seeing less people, the list of people making posts and commenting on posts are shrinking, which is why I think we are all getting personal with eachother lately lol..
in essence, I personally think the economy getting wacky is due to less people playing the game.. less people means less competition, means less undercutting, means higher prices.. the game has an almost 2 year established pattern to key sales, and it was pretty solid, and didn't really faulter all that much, and now it is.
also add a high EC cost(like 100k at least to fleet/rep gear, and a cost of like at least 1 Million EC to fleet ships), EC running in the economy will also go down, its that simple, there is nothing to spend EC on, so EC just goes up and up and up, force people to spend EC, focusing especially on those who are richer/can spend more(such as large fleets) and you'll drastically improve the situation and make things easier for the new player.
Wait. Hold on. There is NO way that this can be true.
*logs into STO and looks*
*jaw hits floor*
How the !TRIBBLE&&*!@#$@!#$!TRIBBLE^ is the Exchange screwed up THAT BADLY?!?
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I have not put them back on the market yet. I guess I am really not in a dire need of ECs. I would say the Keys represents about 60% of my net worth.
Maybe I will sell 'em when they are worth 50 million each.
What Cryptic needs to do is give us something to do with EC.
Does anyone buy the Borg consumables, which require Dilithium? If those cost EC, then I would certainly use them. They're not worth Dilithium though.
Perhaps new consumables? We already can pick up a "pet" ship in the Undine space battlezone, how about consumable pet items we can pick up with EC? Like those consumable pet fighters from that one mission (though that might lead to lots of lag).
How about a way to bypass mission cooldowns? Pay ever increasing costs to skip cooldowns, which reset when you actually let it cooldown. That would essentially let you spend EC to increase your Dilithium ore count.
Heck, about letting people spend EC to increase the amount of Dilithium they could refine that day?
Right now the supply of EC keeps increasing, and there's almost nothing to spend EC on aside from the Exchange. Of course we're going to get inflation! (The EC costs on projects are nice, but can't be increased without significant negative impact on the poor - we need optional things to spend EC on which don't unduly unbalance the game.)
This is what fees on the exchange would inhibit, adding a cost to attempted market manipulation. Cryptic's new MMO has it, GW2 has it, WoW has it. It won't prevent it, but it lessens the impact.
I like the way they reversed ascending and descending sort on 'search by price per unit'.
I mean... how does that... what is this, I don't even...
...on the other hand, the last lockbox I opened using an EC-bought key -did- give me a purple DoFF worth something on the order of 60-65 million EC...and now that I have the EC Cap increase, I'd be a fool to NOT sell him...if only someone would actually -buy- him....
It has always been true that some people have more money than sense, when it comes to assigning values to things, and some just can't be bothered to grind out dill stocks, so there will always be ridiulous prices for things. Let's face it: even at individual Zen retail (@141 dill/Zen) it's under 18k dill for a master key, which is less than one Aegis component in the craft shop!
The only exchange items I can be tempted to spend >1mio EC for are blue or purple DOff's and only when they have the traits I am looking for. It takes a lot of dill & recruiting effort to create purple Doff's with the desired traits, since there appears to be no set combination algorithm to predict a reassignment product. Lock boxes are another source of VR DOff's, and include the extra bonus of unpredictability.
Since Cryptic found it necessary to invent a 4th currency for the most interesting gear (Lobi), lock boxes are still a reasonable value as the only source of Lobi. I personally would have preferred the use of GPL to Lobi for those store items, since GPL is the forgotten stepchild of the STO economy in the current state. That said, I may finally reach 800 Lobi ( the cost of the top Lobi-store ships) before I reach the 9-month mark of my STO career, and then start over, to get all the shiny consoles & weaps!
BTW, it's kind of comical to see people complaining about having grown too rich to know what to do with their credits... :P
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While you may see the same or similar Doff listed on the exchange for 60 - 65 million EC, that does not mean it is the going price. It is simply the price the player decided to list that Doff for.
In my opinion that is simply an insane amount of EC and no one in their right mind would pay that amount for it. Most purple Doffs I have seen on the Exchange typically list for around 1.5 million EC to 3.0 million EC. I never bought a purple Doff yet, and I probably never will... I have been getting a decent number of random purple Doffs from Asylum, and a few Defection missions. I also completed my 1st colony chain mission... something I have been procrastinating... and I received a purple Doff as a reward.
I received two purple security officers for my KDF toon in back to back Asylum missions. They are probably worth their weight in latinum.
The prices are player influenced. As long they sell for that they will be selling for that. Just like the Dil Exchange. That is player influenced as well.
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If you're level 50, just doing the Undine space battlezone once a day (from all red zones to holding out against the Voth) should net around 250k in just vendor junk. That's ignoring anything you find that can be sold on the Exchange. 2 mil EC would be less than a week of that (plus you have to do something Undine 1/day to get the mark box anyway).
Which DOff is that? Marion?
The money supply was always there, EC's are and will always be an infinite source unlike real world currency.
So it still boils down to inflation due to ever increasing greed.
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