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The problem with the Dilithium Grind. [Aimed at PWE/Cryptic]
kitsune1977
Member Posts: 77 Arc User
Ok so many people have gone through the process of trying to upgrade their items and have run into this problem. Thing is that I don't think that anyone at Cryptic/PWE ever did the math on how much Dilithium it actually takes to get something (especially a set item like Kinetic Cutting Beam) from MK 12 VR to MK 14 E. Right now the items are managing to get a quality proc at an average of 25%. Some proc sooner and others don't hit until they are as high as 40%. Now I have been watching the Dilithium costs on these and right now for the primary items that people use (this specifically does not include consoles) it takes 1,500,000 Dilithium on average.
Now lets look at the math on this. Keep in mind that this game is by the devs own words "aimed at the casual player"
1,500,000 Dil
You can get a max of 8000 dil a day.
Playing every single day (by the way this makes you a hardcore player) you will reach that in 188 days or to knock that to months that's over 6 months.
I don't know about you but that is by no means catering to the casual player. It shouldn't take an average of 6 months to fully upgrade ONE item out of 10 to 12. (again doesn't include consoles as those are much easier to upgrade.)
This means that just to fully upgrade 1 ship with one build you would have to GRIND Dilithium for 6 YEARS 3 MONTHS without taking a day off ever. Edit this as per following info due to my own error.
Ok This was pointed out by "ghyudt" that my math was off. Here are the actual numbers behind this.
First this isn't including the complete now costs. This is only the 1075 dili per Superior Tech Upgrade application and the fact that wor weapons it takes 25 of them to fill the bar once. Getting to MK 14 is easy. Getting from VR to UR and then to E is the insanely expensive part.
You get about 2% quality chance upgrade per time you fill the bar. Now if you are going to take a truly mathematical average of 50% chance needed (you would have as many peices needing to get to 100% as those that quality proc on the first try) then the price would be far higher. But that chance goes down because you get to roll each time you fill the bar. Right now we are seeing an average of 25% to 30% and a friend of mine just told me one of his peices got to 60% before it finally proced. So Yes I am willing to redo the math and I will revise my Original Post with the correct numbers. Don't forget you have to Proc it twice. Once from VR to UR and then again from UR to E.
Right now it stands that it takes on average just over 25% chance to get it to proc. This is the same is filling it to 50% once where the dili costs are concerned.
50 / 2 = 25 (the 2 is from the usual 2% you get per filling the bar.)
It take 25 Superior tech upgrades to fill a bar.
25 x 1075 = 26,875
Take that and times it by the average number of times you have to fill the bar.
26,875 x 25 = 671,875 dili per piece.
This means that it would take 84 days for someone to upgrade one piece or almost 3 months. Not the 6 months I stated before. I left it up there so that people would see that I was in slight error but this amount of time does not detract from my statement. It would still take 3 years to fully upgrade just the weapons, engines, warp core, deflector dish and shields.
If you take a casual player that plays once or twice a week and gets 8000, to 16000 dili a week then you can take that 3 years and expand it out to (3 years X 3.5 = 10.5) 10 and a half years for a casual player to make ONE BUILD full Epic.
Yes some people get lucky. Others don't. This is taking the average that myself and many people that I know (ALL of whom have put money in the game to upgrade stuff.) have experienced.
No offense PWE/Cryptic but this is really (expletive here) people off.
There is no reason to make this game literally the grindiest game ever to exist (worse even than EVE or any Asian MMO) But that is EXACTLY what PWE/Cryptic has done.
Please uphold to your words PWE/Cryptic and ACTUALLY set the numbers to levels that coincide with what casual player means.
Edit.
I am adding this to it. There are 2 solutions to this. First lower the cost of upgrading items. (it should be closer 150,000 dili in my opinion) OR (and this is the preferred method) Increase the daily cap to about 100,000. This would make dili to zen better too. It wouldn't take as much cash (right now literally hundreds of dollars) to upgrade stuff quickly if you wanted. Would probably drive the dili to zen price to around 650 or so Dili per zen.
Further I think this video should explain VERY WELL what the problem is here and I honestly feel should be required watching for anyone looking to make stuff in a game insanely expensive.
Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players Away from F2P Games
Now lets look at the math on this. Keep in mind that this game is by the devs own words "aimed at the casual player"
1,500,000 Dil
You can get a max of 8000 dil a day.
Playing every single day (by the way this makes you a hardcore player) you will reach that in 188 days or to knock that to months that's over 6 months.
I don't know about you but that is by no means catering to the casual player. It shouldn't take an average of 6 months to fully upgrade ONE item out of 10 to 12. (again doesn't include consoles as those are much easier to upgrade.)
This means that just to fully upgrade 1 ship with one build you would have to GRIND Dilithium for 6 YEARS 3 MONTHS without taking a day off ever. Edit this as per following info due to my own error.
Ok This was pointed out by "ghyudt" that my math was off. Here are the actual numbers behind this.
First this isn't including the complete now costs. This is only the 1075 dili per Superior Tech Upgrade application and the fact that wor weapons it takes 25 of them to fill the bar once. Getting to MK 14 is easy. Getting from VR to UR and then to E is the insanely expensive part.
You get about 2% quality chance upgrade per time you fill the bar. Now if you are going to take a truly mathematical average of 50% chance needed (you would have as many peices needing to get to 100% as those that quality proc on the first try) then the price would be far higher. But that chance goes down because you get to roll each time you fill the bar. Right now we are seeing an average of 25% to 30% and a friend of mine just told me one of his peices got to 60% before it finally proced. So Yes I am willing to redo the math and I will revise my Original Post with the correct numbers. Don't forget you have to Proc it twice. Once from VR to UR and then again from UR to E.
Right now it stands that it takes on average just over 25% chance to get it to proc. This is the same is filling it to 50% once where the dili costs are concerned.
50 / 2 = 25 (the 2 is from the usual 2% you get per filling the bar.)
It take 25 Superior tech upgrades to fill a bar.
25 x 1075 = 26,875
Take that and times it by the average number of times you have to fill the bar.
26,875 x 25 = 671,875 dili per piece.
This means that it would take 84 days for someone to upgrade one piece or almost 3 months. Not the 6 months I stated before. I left it up there so that people would see that I was in slight error but this amount of time does not detract from my statement. It would still take 3 years to fully upgrade just the weapons, engines, warp core, deflector dish and shields.
If you take a casual player that plays once or twice a week and gets 8000, to 16000 dili a week then you can take that 3 years and expand it out to (3 years X 3.5 = 10.5) 10 and a half years for a casual player to make ONE BUILD full Epic.
Yes some people get lucky. Others don't. This is taking the average that myself and many people that I know (ALL of whom have put money in the game to upgrade stuff.) have experienced.
No offense PWE/Cryptic but this is really (expletive here) people off.
There is no reason to make this game literally the grindiest game ever to exist (worse even than EVE or any Asian MMO) But that is EXACTLY what PWE/Cryptic has done.
Please uphold to your words PWE/Cryptic and ACTUALLY set the numbers to levels that coincide with what casual player means.
Edit.
I am adding this to it. There are 2 solutions to this. First lower the cost of upgrading items. (it should be closer 150,000 dili in my opinion) OR (and this is the preferred method) Increase the daily cap to about 100,000. This would make dili to zen better too. It wouldn't take as much cash (right now literally hundreds of dollars) to upgrade stuff quickly if you wanted. Would probably drive the dili to zen price to around 650 or so Dili per zen.
Further I think this video should explain VERY WELL what the problem is here and I honestly feel should be required watching for anyone looking to make stuff in a game insanely expensive.
Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players Away from F2P Games
Delta Rising: The fall of PvP.
Post edited by kitsune1977 on
0
Comments
I remember watching this video that I have edited into my previous post that really well explains the problem.
So, it takes 2 superior tech upgrades to go from Mk xii to XIII. Each upgrade costs 1075 dilithium. 1075x2= 2150. No accelerators, and no complete now cost. I believe the cost goes up when upgrading from Mk XIII to xiv, but I haven't done it yet. Let's assume it does, and say it doubles. Soz upgrading an item from XIII to xiv would cost 4300 dilithium. So, first, the maximum number of upgradeable items, on my ship at least, is 22. If each item costs 2150 from xii to xiiiz that means 2150x22=47300. Then, I have the cost of going from XIII to xiv. We doubled the previous cost just to account for higher prices for item going from XIII to xiv (greatly exaggerated, I'm sure). So, the cost for one item was 4300. 4300x22=94600. 47300 for 22 items mk xii to XIII, and 94600 for items from XIII to xiv. 94600+47300=141900. 141,900 dilithium to upgrade 22 items from Mk xii to Mk xiv.
Someone correct me if I made a mistake here, but I'm pretty sure the cost of upgrading is not quite as high as you think. Actually, it's quite reasonable. Now, if my math above it correct, then we can find the number of days it actually takes to fully upgrade a T5-U ship. 141,900 dilithium for a complete upgrade. 8,000 refinable dilithium each day. 141900
I could imagine that this rarity stuff was meant for some long term goal for a player to achieve within moths or years. Unfortunately, for me at least, Cryptic heavily removed the fun on PvE endgame lately which means that most means to gather recourses are a painful grind and not a joyful experience where one could have wasted his Dil without feeling the need to do any math.
The entire concept of the upgrades in comparison to the changes at endgame make the whole thing a sad joke. Tinkering out an efficient starship build remains much more important than any upgrades in the world. The latter just seems to distract people from the requirements of Delta Rising which you can encounter with mkXII just fine when you know how.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The game may be aimed at the casual player, but not every single feature in the game is.
Epic Mark XIV and Elite missions are not aimed at casuals at all. They are for the hardcore people. Getting 8,000 Dilithium per Day is already unrealistic for casuals. I play practically daily and never reach that limit on a single character, it requires a week-end and focused play or special rewards to bring me over the refinement cap.
A quite reachable goal is however getting Mark XIV gear on a single character. That requires a lot less Dilithium and Energy Credits, especially if you can craft superior upgrades yourself.
"Casuals" are not actually the people that have grinded out all the reputations and are equipped with Very Rare Mark XII gear in every item slot, complete with their favorite item set.
First, I think you need to reevaluate your definition of what exactly a casual player is...
Second, I think you should read some of the threads where folks have done a far better job of the analysis of the overall costs involved in upgrading...
Third, I think you should have a nice day.
An excellent example of NOT CASUAL. 8 characters already brought to Mark XIV gear, not just space, but also ground? A month after Delta Rising's release?
And now you're practically done with your characters. There is not actually anything left that you need to spend Dilithium on, you have the top tier gear already.
They get a lot of complying to put things for the short term players so.
They may have handle it a bit batter but that is what i we got.
I have like 9 Characters and found it a bit hard to get the epic just for my main.
I`me sory but that is point of the Elite ques there not for the casual player there for thews of use who put a lot of time ore money in the game.
There normal and advanced can play in to.
Might I point out that upgrading the Very rare mk 14 to epic level is exactly the same as adding 3 more mark levels and keeping the same rarity. Epic gets twice the numeric value increase as going from VR to UR.
dont go for eppor epic it is a waste of resources.
If you do go for epic then use experimental upgrades with accelerators.
...#LLAP...
For others I will point out that Those costs and the time line of 3 years is for just ONE BUILD on ONE CHARACTER.
Now if you are a real hard core player you have 20 toons that you go and rake in tons of dili with. The point is that this game is aimed as the casual player and the casual players will quit playing if they feel that it is impossible to accomplish a goal.
If you take a casual player that plays once or twice a week and gets 8000, to 16000 dili a week then you can take that 3 years and expand it out to (3 years X 3.5 = 10.5) 10 and a half years for a casual player to make ONE BUILD full Epic.
It's going to depend on the item in question, not all items have the same upgrade cost - there is no universal TP requirement, and even different flavors of the same gear type are going to have varying costs.
Reputation Gear has a higher TP requirement than Fleet Gear. You've got Lobi Gear vs. Lock Box Gear. There's all sorts of things there. Upgrading some items to Gold-14 can be cheaper than upgrading to VR-14.
As for using accelerators, there are folks out there that have done all sorts of mystical mathematics with spreadsheets taking a look at both Dil and EC efficiency - whether to buy certain pieces or to craft them, whether to farm certain mats or to buy them, whether to sell X to be able to buy Y, etc, etc, etc...yeah, definitely not folks looking at it in a casual manner, lol.
But again, folks can look at their gear - right-click & upgrade - to see what the TP requirements are. They can go through and see that they could spend their resources to upgrade X or maybe ABC instead. They can also take a look at the stat increases they'll get for the particular upgrade and if it is worth it compared to something else. That's just simply looking - no need for any heinous formulas/macros in some spreadsheet.
First: The definition of casual players is the exact one that the Devs told me to my face (yes in person) at the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas last August.
Second: Just because they may have gone through this stuff doesn't mean they have their numbers right. I am going by my own (and friends) experiences that I have actual raw data for.
Third: I hope you have a good day as well.
A possible solution would be if they started to give out mk xiii and xiv items (common, rare, very rare) as drops in endgame queues. But seeing that the new shotgun reward for the Mirror event is a mk xi rare weapon they seem to go the other way demanding even more ressources to get the item to endgame quality, sadly.
Some of the stuff doesn't even give you a numeric increase. I managed to get my Adapted M.A.C.O. Shields MK 14 from VR to UR and the shield capacity didn't change at all. It is still sitting at 8,974.4 shield capacity and that is the same as it was at VR. No other numeric stats changed either. I did get an AP tag though so now I have 20% resist to plasma and antiproton. I can get 1 more I guess but I am not sure the benefit is going to be anywhere near worth the cost.
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
(edit) correction, BoA items ARE an exception to this rule, and if you go THIS path, them you have geared your whole account, yw for the tip...
Please Cryptic do something!
I don't know the definition of a casual player but I do know that a hardcore gamer smart enough with plenty of free time on his hands doesn't need to spend a single dime to get all of the dilithium and zen he needs across the 20-30 alts he's probably created for this purpose.
On the contrary, a veteran who doesn't play STO all of the time sometimes pours some dimes to make up for the time she can't spend there 'cause ... time is money ... and I am talking about someone I know personally who's written a complaint letter to Cryptic and who's told me she's not willing to spend any more dime if upgranding and grinding costs will going to keep being so massive.
Business-wise , it doesn't look like a wise idea to me.
So I think that kitsune is right : they probably haven't really gone through their numbers.
Cryptic may need to tweak things here and there, and it's an ongoing process...but honestly, kitsune's two potential solutions...
...any reply to that would violate the forum TOS. I mean, seriously.
Combine that with the fuzzy undefined casual player and the mythical anecdotal Dil cost..and well, no - it's not a constructive thread offering feedback.
At any time cryptic should find themselves able to add content with animations and models I will think about spending dil on it - depending if I am still insulted over the copy-pasted upgrading/crafting/t5u.
I also say no thanks to lockbox required doffs for crafting as a little "surprise scam" when you finally get to level 15 after 3 months of pointless timegates.
No thanks to missing mods and no thanks to any dil requirement of crafting/upgrading AT ALL
The way I can best describe it is, at this point it won't be enough to just simply stop all the dumb stuff, no at this point there has to be some kind of making up for it too
They had a year or so to "tweak" things .
They had a month to gather feedback .
Their solution was to do zero tweaks to crafting , zero tweaks to ships or gear upgrading .
They also downgraded the Advanced queue Dil awards from 960 to 720 -- while upping the awards at Geko's Lizard Land .
Things are clearly heading in the right direction ... .
... the new awards are even Priority 1 approved ... woohoo ...
all the game is actualy a "grinding on line" instead of "star trek online" and most of my fleet members have left or greatly reduced their time on sto because tired of grinding for everything, playing and replaying the same contents.
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves