Its hard enough when it comes to crafting. When crafting items, ground weapons etc, theres that awful time gate unless you use dilithium.
I don't see the need for this time gate here. Why is it here in crafting, and is it really necessary?
Cryptic make enough money by other means, so surely with dedicated hard work, we could be let off the time gate? Cryptic please scrap it. Make crafting more fun.
The moment all the components are there, then the chosen item to be crafted should be instantly available.
Aside from making quick money Cryptics only other dominating magnitude they seem to take care a lot about is to see that you log in regularly. Preferably daily if u take all those many, many, many 20 hour CDs timers you find in game into account. How incredibly valuable this is for them can even be measured in $$$ when you do the reverse math on 20k Dil.
I know this time gate is a pain. My work around was to make use of alts. I never invested Dil but thx to them I managed lvl 15 in every school within 3 months and will hit 20 in very school in the next few days. Well not on every toon but account wide which is more than enough in this case.
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I believe they need a time gate... with out it crafting mats would be worthless. Just like they where before the revamp. It would simply be to easy to sit there for 4 hours and bang out everything you ever wanted.... making crafting mats worthless to you... and before long the market would be filled with junk crafting mats again.
However the finish now button is an abomination, blatant cash grab... and one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen in any western MMO I have played.
The time gate should stay, the Finnish now button destroyed burned with fire and the moron that came up with the idea sacked or shipped to PWE China where they belong. Then the timers should all be divided by 4... 20hr projects made 5hr, ect.
However the finish now button is an abomination, blatant cash grab... and one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen in any western MMO I have played.
Agreed on that. There isnt even a are you sure verification attached to the finish now button for daily XP projects making best use of the UI lag this system suffers from.
For me this introduction was the turning point from thinking fp2 is cool and I gladly pay a bit if it helps the game I love going to what a sad business model in which I dont participate out of principle, sorry.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I take more issue with the RNG system within the R&D Crafting. There seems to be no point in leveling anything up besides unlocking something else that is more or less imposed on by the RNG system.
In other MMOs with Crafting leveling up provides the Player the ability to craft better items and refine the mats they do have more efficiently. Crafters with time obtain the ability to craft specific items with specific modifiers. Time put into the system nets gains. Where as the Crafting system in STO is meant to frustrate you and push you to spend more dilithium. The timegate wouldnt be as much of an issue if the item you were forced to wait on wasnt completely susceptible to the RNG system spitting out a completely useless and unwanted modifier on an item.
Theres also the fact that any other Crafting System worth its salt provides the Crafter the ability to deconstruct an item for a lesser return on mats but experience gained. This is also something the STO Crafting system is missing.
Both the RNG system and a lack of a deconstruct ability are a tell tale sign that the Crafting system isnt truely a crafting system but a lottery system in disguise. Providing players the ability to choose the modifiers going into the item and giving them the capacity to gain mats outside of specific methods, namely Queues and Research Boxes for the very rare mats, would undermine their lottery system. They of course provide the lesser mats such as commons, uncommons and rares to be farmed through the minigame or DOffing as an afront so that players are more tempted into utilizing the crafting system.
Only if your impatient and got to have it now. I almost got all schools up to lv15 on my main character. Had no issues with the time gate. And it hadn't cost me a single Dil yet.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
honestly the first time i played this game before the crafting revamp i was shocked that crafting took mere seconds when every other MMO i ever played it took a very long time with the time increasing with the level/difficulty of the item... this "Time Gate" is nothing out of the ordinary, as a matter of fact it's the norm, and all Cryptic did was put it on the same level as the other games out there... honestly i really was shocked that crafting was near instant, now it's the same as almost everywhere else, with the added "Finish Now" button to feed off of the impatient that got used to insta-crafting...
the RNG is a bad idea though and we do need a way to reverse engineer things we create...
it seems to me from a lot of the post i read on the crafting system that people complaining about "Time Gates" would prefer a Trading Shop where you exchange a selected group of useless items for 1 usable item instantly (think the Ioka Trading Hut in Chrono Trigger) to a crafting system, which traditionally in MMORPGs takes time to craft...
here's the real kicker, with the old crafting system "Unreplicatable Materials" cost Dilithium and were mandatory to craft, now the Dilithium cost has been moved to the "Finish Now" button and has made spending Dil. completely optional...
As someone who crafts a lot and makes a ton of EC on crafting you would think I'd agree with the OP, but....
That timer is the only thing keeping a profit on crafting, otherwise I'd just crank out everything I could in a day and flood the market, and so would a lot of other players.
Also too, realism. It takes time to make things. I haven't seen an mmo where crafting can be done instantly, even mmos that aren't ftp and have no "finish now" button.
Its hard enough when it comes to crafting. When crafting items, ground weapons etc, theres that awful time gate unless you use dilithium.
I don't see the need for this time gate here. Why is it here in crafting, and is it really necessary?
Cryptic make enough money by other means, so surely with dedicated hard work, we could be let off the time gate? Cryptic please scrap it. Make crafting more fun.
The moment all the components are there, then the chosen item to be crafted should be instantly available.
No such thing as too much money. Having enough money is more fantasy than warp drive.
Time gates on the R&D assignments are no different than time gates on the DOFF assignments
FINISH NOW is the real problem--typical Cryptic cashgrab above gameplay
I wish "FINISH NOW" would at least be a differently colored button from "COLLECT RESULTS" so when you did stuff that would get the timers out of sync it's less likely you'll just click down the page and burn Dil unnecessarily.
A confirmation window, in this specific case, would be lovely.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Its hard enough when it comes to crafting. When crafting items, ground weapons etc, theres that awful time gate unless you use dilithium.
I don't see the need for this time gate here. Why is it here in crafting, and is it really necessary?
If the time gate wasn't there, the economy would crater. As for "finish now," I like that, too. It's one of the things keeping the dilithium economy afloat. (You don't need gold mk 14 gear for PvE, and for PvP, I believe that there's vanilla PvP.)
Just had to quote that... here's the mental imagine for everyone. Denise Crosby dressed up in a Princess Leia slavegirl outfit. Go about your day.
Flip a coin for me on the time-gating. I'm still at level 13 for the first school on my main. I do it when I think of it, but it's not a massive issue... even if it was a four hour cool down I probably still wouldn't be very high. Getting all my female Mirror Universe Boffs on my bridge is a bigger concern to me.
The time gate doesn't bother me with levelling the schools. Just click and let it run its course. What bothers me is if ii need mk ii gear for a toon and want to kit it out in mk ii purples being time gated is a pain and other than Cryptic wanting you to buy zen to use the finsih button there's no reason for it.
Also the randomness of mods. FFS its a crafting system the idea is to craft the item you want asking to craft a AP beam ii'd akin to submitting the blueprint, What you get afterwards is just well Cryptic,
Let me craft the mods i want, I played you're game to earn the materials, ground them out, don't make me have to craft in access of 100-200 beam arrays to get a single CRITD X3 on the most extreme cases
Agreed on that. There isnt even a are you sure verification attached to the finish now button for daily XP projects making best use of the UI lag this system suffers from.
For me this introduction was the turning point from thinking fp2 is cool and I gladly pay a bit if it helps the game I love going to what a sad business model in which I dont participate out of principle, sorry.
That made me laugh. Its so true, There is no "are you sure" final check...
Ive been too quick with the mouse clicks several times, and "paid the price". At 18k, per finish now, it quickly becomes a costly mistake if you're inattentive.
I've lost say, 80-100k since its release.
> The moment all the components are there, then the chosen item to be crafted should be instantly available.
But crafting the components is near instant already... The UI is slower than and more click feast than actual crafting times.
> I believe they need a time gate... with out it crafting mats would be worthless. Just like they where before the
> revamp. It would simply be to easy to sit there for 4 hours and bang out everything you ever wanted.... making
> crafting mats worthless to you... and before long the market would be filled with junk crafting mats again.
This doesnt make much sense. If gathering mats would take significant time but using them is instant the prices would go up (at first at least).
> Then the timers should all be divided by 4... 20hr projects made 5hr, ect.
And what would that change for most ppl? They login once a day, so everything >4h is effectively =20h. Feeding the no-lifers wont help the mostly casual audience.
The UI needs some more work and maybe the components should be really instant as 5-15s is just an annoyance but not a time gate. A ground up revamp we wont see in the near future.
That timer is the only thing keeping a profit on crafting, otherwise I'd just crank out everything I could in a day and flood the market, and so would a lot of other players.
Glad I read through before I posted. This is my thought on it as well. The timegate prevents a market flood. It's more about supply control than some kind of malicious player control.
Theres also the fact that any other Crafting System worth its salt provides the Crafter the ability to deconstruct an item for a lesser return on mats but experience gained. This is also something the STO Crafting system is missing.
They're working on that, according to what I've read / heard from the devs. The crafting system now is version 2.0, released immediately because the system as-is is way better than the old version. But version 2.1 of crafting, with some type of deconstruct ability, is in the works. Last I heard the devs were still working on the design.
However the finish now button is an abomination, blatant cash grab... and one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen in any western MMO I have played.
Just want to point out that dilithium is FREE. I'd cry foul if the Finish Now button was a ZEN cost, but it isn't - it's a cost of a free in-game currency. It's up to you to make the leap into paid territory, by spending ZEN on it but... hey, that's entirely your choice if you want to find ways to throw money into the game.
Like many other things in the game, it's pay-to-speed-up. That's a choice, and not one that's being forced on you.
A "blatant cash grab" would be something along the lines of having to pay ZEN just to access the crafting system, or having to pay ZEN when actually crafting items. On option of payment is not the same as a forced requirement to pay.
Dilithium is not free, no matter how much you pretend. Dilithium in this game is a refined level of grinding that has had many years to make it take longer and be more annoying.
It takes your TIME and effort. Neither of which is free. And if you consider that free, you nee to re-prioritize your life choices IRL.
that's funny considering your free time is just that, free... if it's a period of time where you are not being paid to work, that is free time, free time you can use to freely mine & collect free Dilithium... however you choose to spend this free time is entirely up to the individual though...
that's funny considering your free time is just that, free... if it's a period of time where you are not being paid to work, that is free time, free time you can use to freely mine & collect free Dilithium... however you choose to spend this free time is entirely up to the individual though...
Yep. Especially with the new rewards they've added, any time I'm playing in STO I'm getting some dil as a reward.
And even when I'm not playing, I have my doffs doing their work to get me more dil. I can sleep and make dil at the same time. I can, quite literally, make dil with my eyes closed
that's funny considering your free time is just that, free... if it's a period of time where you are not being paid to work, that is free time, free time you can use to freely mine & collect free Dilithium... however you choose to spend this free time is entirely up to the individual though...
Yes, your free time is free, I suppose, but only in the same sense that your spending money is "free." You choose where to put it, but you're still paying and once it's gone it's gone.
Just want to point out that dilithium is FREE. I'd cry foul if the Finish Now button was a ZEN cost, but it isn't - it's a cost of a free in-game currency. It's up to you to make the leap into paid territory, by spending ZEN on it but... hey, that's entirely your choice if you want to find ways to throw money into the game.
If you believe Dilihtum is free and doesn't have a zen value.... there in lies the problem with the collection of suckers that tend to play this game.
Dilihitum has a very real Zen value... it doesn't matter how many times a money launderer moves around dirty money its still dirty money. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying buying zen is dirty. What I am saying is Dilihitum has a conversion value directly to zen. The D->Z and Z->D exchanges ensure this.. Some people want more D then they have and they buy it from other players with real $... there for D has a $ value. The less D in the game the more $ Cryptic makes its that simple. You don't have to be the one spending Zen, in this case to be making Cryptic money.
EVERYONE who plays this game for more then a few min... has at some point either Bought D... or Sold it. With actual real life $. Unless you are going to claim to have never bought D with Zen or to have never traded your own pink rocks for more Zen. (I doubt highly many people have never traded one way or the other)
If you believe Dilihtum is free and doesn't have a zen value.... there in lies the problem with the collection of suckers that tend to play this game.
Dilihitum has a very real Zen value... it doesn't matter how many times a money launderer moves around dirty money its still dirty money. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying buying zen is dirty. What I am saying is Dilihitum has a conversion value directly to zen. The D->Z and Z->D exchanges ensure this.. Some people want more D then they have and they buy it from other players with real $... there for D has a $ value. The less D in the game the more $ Cryptic makes its that simple. You don't have to be the one spending Zen, in this case to be making Cryptic money.
EVERYONE who plays this game for more then a few min... has at some point either Bought D... or Sold it. With actual real life $. Unless you are going to claim to have never bought D with Zen or to have never traded your own pink rocks for more Zen. (I doubt highly many people have never traded one way or the other)
Up until 6 months ago I had never exchanged zen for dil or dil for zen. Only recently has my stipend not kept up with my demands.
Up until 6 months ago I had never exchanged zen for dil or dil for zen. Only recently has my stipend not kept up with my demands.
Exactly the "finish now" button has done exactly what Cryptic has intended.
By removing large amounts of D in the game... they get people participating in there laundry scheme.
The only people that can use the "I play but don't give this company money anymore" BS card... are those that left before R&D. Selling your labour in the form of Pink rocks, just makes you a laundry mechanic.
Exactly the "finish now" button has done exactly what Cryptic has intended.
By removing large amounts of D in the game... they get people participating in there laundry scheme.
The only people that can use the "I play but don't give this company money anymore" BS card... are those that left before R&D. Selling your labour in the form of Pink rocks, just makes you a laundry mechanic.
Actually, I don't touch the "Finish Now" button. I so I have converted some dil to zen to pay for slots. If I don't have enough dil for something, I just keep playing till I get enough. I'm patient like that.
Actually, I don't touch the "Finish Now" button. I so I have converted some dil to zen to pay for slots. If I don't have enough dil for something, I just keep playing till I get enough. I'm patient like that.
You do understand that the zen you are buying with game time was bought with real $ though right.
You haven't not paid Cryptic, you have simply helped drive a game economy that encouraged someone else TO spend $.
That is the point... someone somewhere in the game felt they needed more purple rocks then they had... so they spend $$$ to convert to more purple rocks... which you provided in return for Zen. Zen only enters the system when Cryptic sells it.
just because dilithium has an associated zen value doesn't mean its not free, it only means that zen acquired by that method is also free by extention
By that logic NOTHING you own in real life has any value at all accept the bills in your pocket. That is as silly as Saying Playstations are free cause you can work and earn the bills to buy them.
By extension cars are also free... so I'm going to start jacking them, they afterall have no real value.
I have to say though the above 2 posts are exactly why Cryptic has such an easy time making money of this game. Sometimes I wish I could get more Trek fans to take me on as there personal financial advisor. Seems they would be easy marks.
Comments
Aside from making quick money Cryptics only other dominating magnitude they seem to take care a lot about is to see that you log in regularly. Preferably daily if u take all those many, many, many 20 hour CDs timers you find in game into account. How incredibly valuable this is for them can even be measured in $$$ when you do the reverse math on 20k Dil.
I know this time gate is a pain. My work around was to make use of alts. I never invested Dil but thx to them I managed lvl 15 in every school within 3 months and will hit 20 in very school in the next few days. Well not on every toon but account wide which is more than enough in this case.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
If the time gate existed for any other reason, the "Finish Now" button would not be there.
Free Tibet!
However the finish now button is an abomination, blatant cash grab... and one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen in any western MMO I have played.
The time gate should stay, the Finnish now button destroyed burned with fire and the moron that came up with the idea sacked or shipped to PWE China where they belong. Then the timers should all be divided by 4... 20hr projects made 5hr, ect.
Agreed on that. There isnt even a are you sure verification attached to the finish now button for daily XP projects making best use of the UI lag this system suffers from.
For me this introduction was the turning point from thinking fp2 is cool and I gladly pay a bit if it helps the game I love going to what a sad business model in which I dont participate out of principle, sorry.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
In other MMOs with Crafting leveling up provides the Player the ability to craft better items and refine the mats they do have more efficiently. Crafters with time obtain the ability to craft specific items with specific modifiers. Time put into the system nets gains. Where as the Crafting system in STO is meant to frustrate you and push you to spend more dilithium. The timegate wouldnt be as much of an issue if the item you were forced to wait on wasnt completely susceptible to the RNG system spitting out a completely useless and unwanted modifier on an item.
Theres also the fact that any other Crafting System worth its salt provides the Crafter the ability to deconstruct an item for a lesser return on mats but experience gained. This is also something the STO Crafting system is missing.
Both the RNG system and a lack of a deconstruct ability are a tell tale sign that the Crafting system isnt truely a crafting system but a lottery system in disguise. Providing players the ability to choose the modifiers going into the item and giving them the capacity to gain mats outside of specific methods, namely Queues and Research Boxes for the very rare mats, would undermine their lottery system. They of course provide the lesser mats such as commons, uncommons and rares to be farmed through the minigame or DOffing as an afront so that players are more tempted into utilizing the crafting system.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Agreed. It won't happen though. If certain people at Cryptic had their way it would cost 1000 dil to log into the game.
Free Tibet!
the RNG is a bad idea though and we do need a way to reverse engineer things we create...
it seems to me from a lot of the post i read on the crafting system that people complaining about "Time Gates" would prefer a Trading Shop where you exchange a selected group of useless items for 1 usable item instantly (think the Ioka Trading Hut in Chrono Trigger) to a crafting system, which traditionally in MMORPGs takes time to craft...
here's the real kicker, with the old crafting system "Unreplicatable Materials" cost Dilithium and were mandatory to craft, now the Dilithium cost has been moved to the "Finish Now" button and has made spending Dil. completely optional...
That timer is the only thing keeping a profit on crafting, otherwise I'd just crank out everything I could in a day and flood the market, and so would a lot of other players.
Also too, realism. It takes time to make things. I haven't seen an mmo where crafting can be done instantly, even mmos that aren't ftp and have no "finish now" button.
No such thing as too much money. Having enough money is more fantasy than warp drive.
FINISH NOW is the real problem--typical Cryptic cashgrab above gameplay
I wish "FINISH NOW" would at least be a differently colored button from "COLLECT RESULTS" so when you did stuff that would get the timers out of sync it's less likely you'll just click down the page and burn Dil unnecessarily.
A confirmation window, in this specific case, would be lovely.
If the time gate wasn't there, the economy would crater. As for "finish now," I like that, too. It's one of the things keeping the dilithium economy afloat. (You don't need gold mk 14 gear for PvE, and for PvP, I believe that there's vanilla PvP.)
Just had to quote that... here's the mental imagine for everyone. Denise Crosby dressed up in a Princess Leia slavegirl outfit. Go about your day.
Flip a coin for me on the time-gating. I'm still at level 13 for the first school on my main. I do it when I think of it, but it's not a massive issue... even if it was a four hour cool down I probably still wouldn't be very high. Getting all my female Mirror Universe Boffs on my bridge is a bigger concern to me.
Also the randomness of mods. FFS its a crafting system the idea is to craft the item you want asking to craft a AP beam ii'd akin to submitting the blueprint, What you get afterwards is just well Cryptic,
Let me craft the mods i want, I played you're game to earn the materials, ground them out, don't make me have to craft in access of 100-200 beam arrays to get a single CRITD X3 on the most extreme cases
That made me laugh. Its so true, There is no "are you sure" final check...
Ive been too quick with the mouse clicks several times, and "paid the price". At 18k, per finish now, it quickly becomes a costly mistake if you're inattentive.
I've lost say, 80-100k since its release.
I'd say its working as intended.
But crafting the components is near instant already... The UI is slower than and more click feast than actual crafting times.
> I believe they need a time gate... with out it crafting mats would be worthless. Just like they where before the
> revamp. It would simply be to easy to sit there for 4 hours and bang out everything you ever wanted.... making
> crafting mats worthless to you... and before long the market would be filled with junk crafting mats again.
This doesnt make much sense. If gathering mats would take significant time but using them is instant the prices would go up (at first at least).
> Then the timers should all be divided by 4... 20hr projects made 5hr, ect.
And what would that change for most ppl? They login once a day, so everything >4h is effectively =20h. Feeding the no-lifers wont help the mostly casual audience.
The UI needs some more work and maybe the components should be really instant as 5-15s is just an annoyance but not a time gate. A ground up revamp we wont see in the near future.
Glad I read through before I posted. This is my thought on it as well. The timegate prevents a market flood. It's more about supply control than some kind of malicious player control.
They're working on that, according to what I've read / heard from the devs. The crafting system now is version 2.0, released immediately because the system as-is is way better than the old version. But version 2.1 of crafting, with some type of deconstruct ability, is in the works. Last I heard the devs were still working on the design.
Just want to point out that dilithium is FREE. I'd cry foul if the Finish Now button was a ZEN cost, but it isn't - it's a cost of a free in-game currency. It's up to you to make the leap into paid territory, by spending ZEN on it but... hey, that's entirely your choice if you want to find ways to throw money into the game.
Like many other things in the game, it's pay-to-speed-up. That's a choice, and not one that's being forced on you.
A "blatant cash grab" would be something along the lines of having to pay ZEN just to access the crafting system, or having to pay ZEN when actually crafting items. On option of payment is not the same as a forced requirement to pay.
Donatra - pre-Borg assimilated, of course
It takes your TIME and effort. Neither of which is free. And if you consider that free, you nee to re-prioritize your life choices IRL.
Yep. Especially with the new rewards they've added, any time I'm playing in STO I'm getting some dil as a reward.
And even when I'm not playing, I have my doffs doing their work to get me more dil. I can sleep and make dil at the same time. I can, quite literally, make dil with my eyes closed
Yes, your free time is free, I suppose, but only in the same sense that your spending money is "free." You choose where to put it, but you're still paying and once it's gone it's gone.
If you believe Dilihtum is free and doesn't have a zen value.... there in lies the problem with the collection of suckers that tend to play this game.
Dilihitum has a very real Zen value... it doesn't matter how many times a money launderer moves around dirty money its still dirty money. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying buying zen is dirty. What I am saying is Dilihitum has a conversion value directly to zen. The D->Z and Z->D exchanges ensure this.. Some people want more D then they have and they buy it from other players with real $... there for D has a $ value. The less D in the game the more $ Cryptic makes its that simple. You don't have to be the one spending Zen, in this case to be making Cryptic money.
EVERYONE who plays this game for more then a few min... has at some point either Bought D... or Sold it. With actual real life $. Unless you are going to claim to have never bought D with Zen or to have never traded your own pink rocks for more Zen. (I doubt highly many people have never traded one way or the other)
Up until 6 months ago I had never exchanged zen for dil or dil for zen. Only recently has my stipend not kept up with my demands.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
Exactly the "finish now" button has done exactly what Cryptic has intended.
By removing large amounts of D in the game... they get people participating in there laundry scheme.
The only people that can use the "I play but don't give this company money anymore" BS card... are those that left before R&D. Selling your labour in the form of Pink rocks, just makes you a laundry mechanic.
Actually, I don't touch the "Finish Now" button. I so I have converted some dil to zen to pay for slots. If I don't have enough dil for something, I just keep playing till I get enough. I'm patient like that.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
You do understand that the zen you are buying with game time was bought with real $ though right.
You haven't not paid Cryptic, you have simply helped drive a game economy that encouraged someone else TO spend $.
That is the point... someone somewhere in the game felt they needed more purple rocks then they had... so they spend $$$ to convert to more purple rocks... which you provided in return for Zen. Zen only enters the system when Cryptic sells it.
By that logic NOTHING you own in real life has any value at all accept the bills in your pocket. That is as silly as Saying Playstations are free cause you can work and earn the bills to buy them.
By extension cars are also free... so I'm going to start jacking them, they afterall have no real value.
I have to say though the above 2 posts are exactly why Cryptic has such an easy time making money of this game. Sometimes I wish I could get more Trek fans to take me on as there personal financial advisor. Seems they would be easy marks.