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Dilithium Price Wars! - Buyer Beware
lordatrocities
Member Posts: 462 Arc User
Scary title to be sure but one that sums up the new dilithium system pretty much to a point.
Cryptic / PW have moved toward a new system that forces players to buy processed Dylithium through the Zen store that far out paces past efforts. They have reduced the amount of Dilithium that is paid out for missions, removed it from PvE pretty much completely, and have driven the cost of everything that uses Dilithium up considerably. All this to cause a dilithium raw resource drought which forces players to use more and more of the refined Dilithium.
The whole point to the new system is to force players to turn to the Exchange to spend REAL WORLD MONEY to buy dilithium. Dilithium prices that THEY CONTROL THE COST OF. By limiting, or rather throttling raw dilithium and capping the amount you can process per day to 8 to 9 thousand depending upon if you are a LTS or not, they have all but deliberately caused a dilithium drought.
Factor in the absolute hell a player must go thru in order to get raw dilithum these days, go to the Ferengi mine, mine 5 times, or use a rare Rich Dilithium ticket, which are virtually impossible to get short of spending real world money on zen key's, and then hoping for the best when unlocking scam er lock boxes, or for LTS travel to Earth, Romulas, Or Kronos to access the 1000 . 2 day - DOFF mission. Be in a fleet and travel to the fleet mine to get 500 more plus mine mine mine to get more raw.
They have increased the change rate on the mining as to make it harder to hit 700 each time and they have nerfed the DOFF missions that pay out dilithium as to fail more often than they used too.
Couple in the massive cost of Upgrading, and the increased cost of ships, reputation missions, fleet projects, etc and you begin to see the scam.
If you want to get anywhere you have to invest Real World Money into Zen then hit the ezchange to buy processed Dilithium. Then use that Dilithium for whatever you need, but realize that all the costs have gone up thus that dilithium doesn't go as far as it used too. Now understand that the prices on the exchange are subject to change at the whim of Cryptic and you begin to see the lie of the entire system.
The game is now more or less directly focused on getting you to burn thru your raw dilithium, make it harder to get, burn through your processed dilithium, which is even harder to get, all for the purpose of making you spend real world money on zen and it is only going to get worse. At some point many players are just going to say enough and move onto other games. Which means higher costs for the those who stay behind has crytpic trys to comp for the lost revenue.
Either way, we have crossed the Rubicon and there is no going back. STO's days are numbered and I find that very sad.
Bidding for my stuff starts at 10 quintillion gold pressed latinum. No less for an opening bid.
Cryptic / PW have moved toward a new system that forces players to buy processed Dylithium through the Zen store that far out paces past efforts. They have reduced the amount of Dilithium that is paid out for missions, removed it from PvE pretty much completely, and have driven the cost of everything that uses Dilithium up considerably. All this to cause a dilithium raw resource drought which forces players to use more and more of the refined Dilithium.
The whole point to the new system is to force players to turn to the Exchange to spend REAL WORLD MONEY to buy dilithium. Dilithium prices that THEY CONTROL THE COST OF. By limiting, or rather throttling raw dilithium and capping the amount you can process per day to 8 to 9 thousand depending upon if you are a LTS or not, they have all but deliberately caused a dilithium drought.
Factor in the absolute hell a player must go thru in order to get raw dilithum these days, go to the Ferengi mine, mine 5 times, or use a rare Rich Dilithium ticket, which are virtually impossible to get short of spending real world money on zen key's, and then hoping for the best when unlocking scam er lock boxes, or for LTS travel to Earth, Romulas, Or Kronos to access the 1000 . 2 day - DOFF mission. Be in a fleet and travel to the fleet mine to get 500 more plus mine mine mine to get more raw.
They have increased the change rate on the mining as to make it harder to hit 700 each time and they have nerfed the DOFF missions that pay out dilithium as to fail more often than they used too.
Couple in the massive cost of Upgrading, and the increased cost of ships, reputation missions, fleet projects, etc and you begin to see the scam.
If you want to get anywhere you have to invest Real World Money into Zen then hit the ezchange to buy processed Dilithium. Then use that Dilithium for whatever you need, but realize that all the costs have gone up thus that dilithium doesn't go as far as it used too. Now understand that the prices on the exchange are subject to change at the whim of Cryptic and you begin to see the lie of the entire system.
The game is now more or less directly focused on getting you to burn thru your raw dilithium, make it harder to get, burn through your processed dilithium, which is even harder to get, all for the purpose of making you spend real world money on zen and it is only going to get worse. At some point many players are just going to say enough and move onto other games. Which means higher costs for the those who stay behind has crytpic trys to comp for the lost revenue.
Either way, we have crossed the Rubicon and there is no going back. STO's days are numbered and I find that very sad.
Bidding for my stuff starts at 10 quintillion gold pressed latinum. No less for an opening bid.
What happened to those unique forum ranks I paid for?
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True, but if you are capped at say 8k a day and most projects cost 32k to do, not to the mention the cost of upgrading these days, then you can grind day in and day out and never get ahead. Ergo, you turn to the exchange and buy zen with real world coin in order to buy that processed dilithium you need to finish those projects.
Also now that you mention the ground missions, you can bet they too will be nerfed to pay out less just like the PvE's and STF's were.
Also, At some point for most, grinding become boring. Boredom leads to less playing. Less playing leads to no playing. No playing leads to less players. Less players leads to higher costs. Higher costs leads to less players. Eventually this cycle drives away all if not most of the players.
Again sad but inevitable.
I hope cryptic / PW see this and make changes to prevent it from happening. But given past efforts I sincerely doubt they will.
this isn't about dilithium made per day. it's about time gates. they want you to take 4 days to earn the item. they don't want everyone with maximum stuff in less then a month. if they let you refine 50k per day they'd just up the projects to 200k; because they want them to take 4 days. they want it to take a couple of months to get your crafting reps done. they want it to take a couple of more months to upgrade all your gear. they want you to invest 6 months of time to get all the items you want. otherwise you'd have it all in a month and be just as bored as you were with the game before delta rising.
what the game needs is more mission content so it seems less boring, but you're really not going to see much change on the time gate.
Perhaps this is a combination of both their metrics and wanting to keep players from consuming content too fast?
I would prefer it weapons and other consoles had XP meters. As you gain XP they would gain XP also. As they gain XP they would continuously but slowly improve. It would still take you 4 days or more to get the next tier or whatever when the color changes and they gain a new ability but you would always feel like you are constantly progressing.
This would also mean that they could just simply keep increasing the max level of various things and you could keep going. Maybe they stop gaining damage and instead start gaining other abilities. Maybe every level you could choose if you want to reduce energy cost, increase proc rate etc.
Heck make it so that you choose all your mods etc so you would choose a Crtd only once and as the weapon leveled up that would grow more powerful.
I guess it didn't occure to you while you were insulting me that perhaps most people don't like to wait four days to do some things.
This was their model with the massive fleet grind they introduced. When reps came around they also cut down significantly on dil earned via STFs and the dil exchange, which had been over 320 for about a year, dropped suddenly to bargain basement levels. When you have ONE project in a fleet starbase that requires ONE MILLION DILITHIUM -- and that's just a low-level project mind you -- and a single item from the rep store suddenly cost 32,000 dil or more, but oh lookit that you can still get it all instantly via the exchange....
Well let's just say that was the beginning of the downward spiral. It's become ridiculously absurd with DR and the upgrade grind and the crafting nonsense, and other dil cuts, but it started a long way back.
STO Resources: <Ship Comparison - All Tiers + Small Craft + Hangar Pets> <Damage Resistance>
<R&D + Upgrade Costs> <Duty Officer Finder> <Suliban Doff Reqs> <Fleet Costs> <Rep Costs>
<Keybind Tour the Galaxy> <Fleet / Armada Management> <Currency Exchange> <Other STO Links>
And those people that can't bear to wait four days to earn their rewards are exactly the kinds of people Cryptic are expecting to go out and pay real money to speed things up.
Me, I've been playing four almost four years now. I got some nifty stuff and had fun times. Perhaps the problem isn't that Cryptic is making people spend time to earn things, but rather, the problem lays with the people who want EVERYTHING and want it NOW.
Patience is a virtue my friend. Perhaps if people didn't burn through content so mercilessly, then perhaps they wouldn't be getting bored so quickly. Stop and smell the roses, I say. Or phaser a borg in the face. Same thing.
so how are your gold sellers going here?
are they in plague proportions like in NW, where they have instituted the same sort of changes?
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Developers are IT workers paid by the money you put into the game.
You ought to and would be able to dictate terms, if it weren't for whales and developer apologists selling us all out.
But in terms of what the costumer wants for his money the gaming industry is one of the few unregulated industries in where if you are dumb enough to pay for something that's fundamentally broken, that's just your problem.
It doesn't however make it right and it's up to all the sell-outs to smarten up and stop ruining their own product with their stupidity
We aren't embarking on a 50 year odyssey together, after which we will all emerge as better people. Do other MMOs have grinding? Yes. Has anyone - apart from a game developer - ever said "I think this game needs more timegates and grinding"? No.
It's supposed to be a computer game. Fun is supposed to be the primary goal of it. The grind is supposed to be almost invisible. There are games that make you grind in obvious boring ways - kill 500 rats to make 1 penny, use 100 pennies to buy one hat - but they are BORING. Players who are bored do not spend money unless they are mentally unbalanced.
Free Tibet!
a year ago some say the dilithium was stockpiling and had no means to spend it fast enough, now cryptic took that negative feedback and created a new system for it. it works as intended now..
you know i could keep up with these bad puns forever on the issue but to be sure, you got what you wanted, now you can live with it. next time be more careful how much you throw into cryptics back yard, they are likely to lob a missile in return and make a crater in the process.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Heck, they even have a website with much more information on the game, than the STO website or wiki ever had. Every time I want some information on a specific doff, I search wiki/forum/website, and I don't find the infos. Then, I check google, find their website, and have the info I need.
But then, what do you expect from a game without any kind of GM or CS ?
In so the school of thought from day 1 has been you should be lucky there is a game at all rather than asking what is the actual quality of it.
Additionally if you have been here since the beginning you got to know the game prior to their vision of it.
And it has taken them last 2 years of constant nerfs to everything until we are finally reaching their idea of how the game should be like.
Not so much a case of lying or changing direction, rather it's taken this long to nerf everything that was rushed, with the mentality you should be thankful.
Of course the players flaming them for it only serves to rationalize them being complacent.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
This. Plus Foundry and there is no dilithium "shortage". Now if I wanted to get every single rep item and every single ship and upgrade every one of those rep items and craft all of the top notch gear then yeah, I could see your point that there isn't enough dilithium.
But then again I don't chase shinies...in life or in a video game.
Just have fun.
it's not cryptic TRIBBLE with you. it's you TRIBBLE with yourself.
Psst - that's what Alts are for.:eek: And come on there's nothing 'new' about the Dilithium system - it hasn't changed much since it was first introduced. It may surprise you to realize this but as anyone can make an account and download and install the game for free- PWE has to make money somewhere; and they do that by making certain things cost Zen/Dil (and you can even procure Zen with Dil via the Dil exchange and actually play 100% free but still get C-Store items.)
The tradeoff? If you want something faster then the refinement caps allow, you need to shell out real cash (and again this is how PWE makes any money to keep the servers up, the game development continuing, and make a profit.) there DO seem to be many players unwilling to wait (or grind to the degree you need to to play 100% free); and they're the ones PWE/Cryptic loves and really wants to cater to as they pay the bills and provide whatever profit STO is seeing.
PWE/Cryptic isn't going to change the upgrade system to bypass Dil as again THAT'S WHERE THEY MAKE THEIR MONEY.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
And the Dilithium payouts from the various Battle Zones and the Romulan Zone were doubled.
Indirectly, the fact that all reputations now grant daily bonus marks also means that you can earn a lot of marks for little effort, and can turn this back into Dilithium. Before the revamp, that was only possible with the Dyson Zone (there was a project to turn the daily token into Dilithium, IIRC.)
---
The real problem I see is that the success rates of the queues is low since the difficulty revamp. Especially most of the new queues are not doing so well, since people are inexperienced, undergeared, and the enemies and requirements are tougher.
That means less Dilithium, less Marks and less Ancient Power Cells (and all th other special reputation mark), as people fail, get only the failure reward, and still have to wait for the mission to become available again.
There are, however, lots of other PVE Dilithium sources. But people also used to like running the queued content, and it's not as rewarding as it used to be because of the failure rates (both emotionally and "game-currency"-wise), which lowers population counts, which means longer wait times, which is also unsatisfactory.
You can't counter my point so you spew this mess onto the screen instead?
Nice going.
Free Tibet!
Hey that's lotro - only it's turbine points not a penny.
Again, for those that think dilithium grind is bad - try earning turbine points to buy mission content. That's loads of fun. Oh and btw those rats you have to kill only spawn very slowly in one location. Enjoy! P.s. you can buy a deed accelerator for only 500 turbine points.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
What he said.
If people want to spend years progressing, that's fine. I have no issue with it. It's up to you what you do.
I don't want to spend that long doing it. I should have a choice.
Oh, and by the way, I would never suggest that the way I want to play should be the only way. I would never suggest that people who want to play the game differently to the way I play it should leave the game. That's not rational.
Please stop imposing the long, slow way you want to play the game onto everyone else.
Free Tibet!
Singapore is taking notice, particularly of PWE and they're looking at enacting laws to control the lockbox phenomenon.
The other thing that's going on is long-term social engineering, the "apologists" really aren't intentionally supporting PWE's social engineering, they've been social engineered already. It's almost like joining a cult, they allow the company to do the thinking for them and shut off their own ability to think critically. I saw all of this coming when Cryptic/Atari put out the C-Store to begin with and it's even worse than I thought it would be when I saw the thin end of the wedge coming my way.
Well, we're getting to the thick end of the wedge, people don't like it, but because a very vocal minority (vocal with their wallets mostly) are cheering PWE and Cryptic on, those of us still capable of seeing the situation and still capable of critical thinking are getting boned.
If the FTC ever cottons on to what PWE and Cryptic are doing and if Europe does the same, they'll have no option other than to either shut the doors or change their business model, this will never happen as long as the governments are oblivious to the scam.
Everything Cryptic has done, from having five different inconvertable currencies (or convertable with circuitious methods that would make a drug money launderer weep with envy), to restricting dilithium, to manipulating the market periodically with "special events" like the current R&D pack. All of this is done to social engineer us into thinking that this is normal and we're to ignore the man behind the curtain.
Ahh, Now our science officers are being replaced with wizards and engineering officers with hobbits?
The real point / problem is STO makes content to make $$$, expecting people to buy zen. people crank Dilithium and convert to zen for content. STO makes NOTHING. Obviously the system to burn dilithium out of the system is a response to the real problem.
perhaps the game should have never gone FTP.
open up your eyes and understand that it's not cryptic changing the game that's making you act like an a-hole on the forum. it's you being unable to walk away that's causing all your pain. if you keep playing a game you state you hate, run by a company you state you hate, then that's all on you. no one is forcing you to be here except you and you inability to escape your addiction.
so keep bashing cryptic for not making the game you want; and doing it under a second account so no one knows who you really are. but you still come off like a spoiled angry child in each post. and everyone knows the reason for all your hate is just your inability to man-up and walk away.