It's a player driven market and messing with the marked directly is most often a bad thing.
We just need some EC sink. Outside of the exchange or other player to player transactions, what do players buy with EC? not much. On the flip side, how many ways is there to make EC? Lots. The farm vs spend ratio is way on the farm side leading to some inflation.
EC has lost value for several reasons, most of them due to exploits. I won't tell you what they are for obvious reasons but one in particular allows you to make literally billions of EC in a matter of days.
It only works under specific circumstances thankfully but it's seriously damaging the economy since it became possible after the Delta Recruit event. It has yet to be patched at last notice. These exploits are the most damaging thing to the economy right now.
P.S. There aren't enough 'whales' to control the economy in its current state so all you conspiracy theorists are quite wrong. It's a stupid argument any way you look at it.
EC has lost value for several reasons, most of them due to exploits. I won't tell you what they are for obvious reasons but one in particular allows you to make literally billions of EC in a matter of days.
It only works under specific circumstances thankfully but it's seriously damaging the economy since it became possible after the Delta Recruit event. It has yet to be patched at last notice. These exploits are the most damaging thing to the economy right now.
P.S. There aren't enough 'whales' to control the economy in its current state so all you conspiracy theorists are quite wrong. It's a stupid argument any way you look at it.
Hey look another worthless post of someone bragging about bugs and not reporting them to Cryptic. This is why we can't have nice things because the community is so damn secretive because they care about their space shekels (Druk notwithstanding)
If you have an exploit to share, please share it to Cryptic so it gets fixed and we can move on with our lives. It's just a silly game, I can make over 10m a day doing some pretty trivial stuff and I have neither the time, nor the established amount of accounts as these players have. Obviously these things take a minute barrier of entry, which most players cannot even fathom, but the fatcats are too good for.
The exploits HAVE been reported and Cryptic has not fixed them. There are a number of reasons for this, one possibility being that they can't find a simple solution. That is why we 'fat cats' keep these under wraps until Cryptic can fix them. I could create a post right now that would give everyone the simple way to exploit and make billions but if I were to do that the entire game economy would crash in a matter of days...
We are in fact doing the community a service by keeping said information locked down until the problem is fixed by the DEV's. So I don't understand your hatred except that it's the latest trend in today's world to hate rich people.
do you have a poster of yourself on your bedroom ceiling flashing a thumbs up and a wink?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Edit: I do like the idea of the devs trolling the exchange with a "classic gear" lock box. KLW manuals, Plasmonic Leech, the expensive doffs, 50 million EC traits, etc.
They would make a killing with this. Throw in the "event" ships and items, too. I have been without my exocomp for years (sent it on a colonization mission years ago before the red letters warning you about losing doffs) with no way to reclaim it.
It's a player driven market and messing with the marked directly is most often a bad thing.
We just need some EC sink. Outside of the exchange or other player to player transactions, what do players buy with EC? not much. On the flip side, how many ways is there to make EC? Lots. The farm vs spend ratio is way on the farm side leading to some inflation.
OK, in all reality you have the best idea here. As much as I want Cryptic to make it easier to get the expensive shinies that have been lost to time, doing so might not be the smartest thing for the economy. The next lockbox re-run will add some supply and push down prices a bit.
Until then, I am hoping a new Tac BOFF power gets released to make KLW less desired and a new EC sink is added. I can't remember the last time I spent EC at a vendor. The best items come from the exchange, lockboxes, lobi, rep, or fleet stores.
I say we do an economy wipe, delete everyone's EC, save 100k for basic expenses.
You never figured space rich people have hoards of items?
So? everyone will have 100k EC, they'll have a lot of "expensive" items and no-one to sell them to.
So everyone would go on a giant vender trash spree?
It's even worse than that. You don't need to go on a vendor trash spree. People will probably simply nots ell the really big ticket items (like Lockbox ships), but they can sell cheaper items, like lockbox weapons or traits. Maybe at a grossly reduced price compared to what we have now - just enough that the 100k EC people without anything can star buying it. But at that point, the guys that own something are making profit, and have an advantage over the rest.
The current state of things did start with everyone being on equal grounds. Everyone started at Level 1 with no Energy Credit to his or her name. And yet, fast forward 5 years later, we have the have-nots and the space-rich.
What will happen if you don't even start on equal grounds?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I say we do an economy wipe, delete everyone's EC, save 100k for basic expenses.
You never figured space rich people have hoards of items?
So? everyone will have 100k EC, they'll have a lot of "expensive" items and no-one to sell them to.
So everyone would go on a giant vender trash spree?
It's even worse than that. You don't need to go on a vendor trash spree. People will probably simply nots ell the really big ticket items (like Lockbox ships), but they can sell cheaper items, like lockbox weapons or traits. Maybe at a grossly reduced price compared to what we have now - just enough that the 100k EC people without anything can star buying it. But at that point, the guys that own something are making profit, and have an advantage over the rest.
The current state of things did start with everyone being on equal grounds. Everyone started at Level 1 with no Energy Credit to his or her name. And yet, fast forward 5 years later, we have the have-nots and the space-rich.
What will happen if you don't even start on equal grounds?
It would still take several years to reach this level of economy inflation.
Yeah I paid 140m for the lieutenant level for my efficient saurian BOff.
Then I paid 145m for another lieutenant level for my pirate fed nausicaan.
They will probably add another tactical BOff with good space abilities and I will buy another one for them too.
You and Me, need to talk. I could have and maybe still can save you a ton of ECs. I have 5 characters at max level and max reputation. 4 of those characters are Fed and 1 is Klingon. So that means I'm able to get 4 Klingon boffs for the fed side and 1 Fed boff for the Klingon side. TBH, I'd forgot all about being able to claim those boffs until I read your post. If your interested in getting a few more feds with pirate, give me a whisper ingame. I promise they will be alot cheaper than 140 mil.
I hear you man, I find EC easier to grind than FC so I bought most of my BOFF's before the change. But I want more, guess I'll just have to bite the bullet.
Aside from the fact that it is morally wrong to take people's money arbitrarily, 100k ec is laughable. You can't even blow your nose in 100k ec.
The better solution is to adjust the silver ec cap to 50mil approximately matching inflation, and raise the gold cap to 10bil. As more gold is mined, players are given more space to put their gold.
The real travesty is that the ec cap is the same as it has been for years, even as the economy has inflated.
You're never going to get space rich selling TRIBBLE to vendors. If it matters to you which vendor you sell garbage to, you're doing something terribly wrong.
You can only get space rich by selling things to other players.
You walloped it right out of the park.
Especially in todays market.
I say we do an economy wipe, delete everyone's EC, save 100k for basic expenses.
You never figured space rich people have hoards of items?
So? everyone will have 100k EC, they'll have a lot of "expensive" items and no-one to sell them to.
Well as a "rich" dude... I can tell you if they did that most of us would likely just leave. However more likely in my case I would just go play another MMO for a month or two. When I get back, you will all be flush with EC again and way I go same as it was. You don't seem to understand. When I say I have somewhere in and around 10-15ish billion or so the majority of it is in items. Sure I have a few toons with a nice big fat EC stack... but most of my stuff is in lockbox ships/traits/doff packs oh and my 20 or so 999 stacks of lobi (I logged into a neglected toon the other day and realized I had another 10 stacks of lobi there, first world problems). I know people that have 2x what I have. Thing is ALL of our own toons are pretty pimped, I could just you know play the game for a month with no real need to make EC anyway.
Oh also if all of a sudden there was no EC in anyones hands... it wouldn't force people to dump things worth 100s of millions for pennies... it would simply make the trade channel more popular, until the EC repopulated.
Ok this post is going to be just slightly off topic. It is clear there are a few people posting in this thread who like the OP are a bit space poor.
So would like to give you a few basic things to think about when you are playing... that will help you not be space poor. Perhaps alone you won't make yourself space rich with these tips, but perhaps space middle class at least.
1) You do NOT get rich hording... Ride the waves. (yes holding on to things for months is something you do when you have nothing left to invest in.. consider it when you make your 4th or 5th billion). Until then buy low sell high.
2) You do NOT become rich trying to corner expensive markets. (If you think the best way to get rich is to buy up 10 copies of X or Y trait or Ship because there are only 10 on the market at 10mil each and I can resell for 15 mil and make a killing... think again your going to loose your wad... trust me someone like me is sitting there with 100 of those in the bank and we WILL notice when the price spikes 50% and WE will profit not you... although people that think they can buy up my stuff one a time that I post in the inbetween spaces for hours on end are good for me... don't be that guy, that buys 200 million of my X at a 30% profit to me cause your going to "corner the market" lol)
3) VOLUME VOLUME VOLUME. In the real world who would you rather be... the company that builds 10 cars a year and sells them for 250k each with a cost of 100k per car. OR would you rather be the company that sells 1,000 cars a year at 25k each at a cost of 10k each ? I know I know your saying right now ya but that is the same amount of profit. You would be right... accept the company making the high volume product is going to be constantly turning things over and not have to invest near as much to get going. (trust me in STO or in any MMO you will make 10x as much moving small things... cause 1 they move more 2 you can generally get more profit % out of them and 3 you can jump in with little to no risk)
4) The STO economy doesn't revolve around lockboxes, or EC, or Dilithium... it revolves around crafting materials. (See if you go this far you just learned the truth of STO)
I'll leave it there that should be enough advice to get almost anyone going of they think about what I just said. If it still hasn't sunk in what I am saying here is a better plan for someone with ZERO captial and who wants to make 10-20 million in an hour or so and not just sit at the exchange.
1) Play the game... do as hard a content as you can... earn some R&D Crafting materials.
2) Sell those materials
3) Take the 1-2 million you have made over 30min or so... and start investing in MORE crafting materials.
4) Think about what I have said so far and consider this scenario.... You see 555 Beta Particles on the exchange at 4,500 EC each so 2,497,500... in between you see another 100 or so spread out over 20 listings between 4500 and 6000... BUY them all up to that point ... and list your 655 (in 2-3 posts) 4,257,500. Give or take you just made a million EC and it will turn over within an hour pretty much any time of day.
5) Start Crafting holes... tech is easy of course... but people DO buy crafted components... just pay close attention to the costs.
Now I will head out... remember if your selling things that only cost 1-2k each... if you are selling them in stacks of 999 and you can buy them for just 1k less then they sell, you made a million ec.
Stop worrying about X or Y rich guy hording this or that trait, or this ship or that book. I admit I have stock on all those things because hey I have been playing 5 years and I ain't a moron sure I grab when its low. Truth is I rarely ever resell that stuff I keep it for me... but I can tell you the Crafting market makes me millions every day... If I want something I make the EC to buy it cause you don't get rich spending your stash all the time. If I decide I need 300 million today for something stupid, I make that in a few hours... and my biggest mover on that will almost always be crafting related.
I say we do an economy wipe, delete everyone's EC, save 100k for basic expenses.
You never figured space rich people have hoards of items?
Good point, let's also wipe all items not currently equipped on the active ship or player character, including all boxed ships and all unused manuals.
Why?
I don't get the motivation to harm/rob others.
Envy... someone forgot to tell them its a game.
Its not like real life, the developers hand out EC for free... and items which can be traded for EC. People seem to forget that nothing in the game is in fact real. Its all pretend and its all obtainable if you are willing to log in which is what Cryptic wants.
Lucky for me my ship has limited tac seating so I've no room for kemocite. And now that pvp is so pointless there's really no need for me to have the best of the best to stay competitive.
The exploits HAVE been reported and Cryptic has not fixed them. There are a number of reasons for this, one possibility being that they can't find a simple solution. That is why we 'fat cats' keep these under wraps until Cryptic can fix them. I could create a post right now that would give everyone the simple way to exploit and make billions but if I were to do that the entire game economy would crash in a matter of days...
We are in fact doing the community a service by keeping said information locked down until the problem is fixed by the DEV's. So I don't understand your hatred except that it's the latest trend in today's world to hate rich people.
Edited: Was off-topic near the end
Sorry you could not be more wrong. With these actions you just protect the ones using the exploit.
If you really had an interest in fixing them you would have posted the exploit on reddit and here and forced a fix.
It is a sad history but the past has shown that stuff only gets fixed once it goes cataclysmic *looks at japori*
And you know what happens now? I'm seeing more and better loot drop much more often. I'm trying harder content with bigger rewards because higher difficulty settings are trivial in terms of added time/challenge/cost. I went from getting 50-100k EC a day to getting 500k to 1M or more, with the prospect of more very attainable. Just from killing faster and being choosy about vendors.
People area always missing the obvious ways to make money playing as well... they worry about loot drops. Yet never seem to consider how much they make from the Crafting drops.
One blue crafting box; = (at least)
10 Whites (2-20k)
10 Greens (2-20k)
7 Blue (70-280k)
3 Purple (10-150k) (these are not random so easy to plan for
1 Salvage Tech = 380k
Bottom line is even a bad Blue crafting box is worth 400k to you... and a good one can be worth over a million. (when the greens upgrade to blue and you pull 17 Z or Rub particles)
These don't take very long to earn... and you can easily earn 3-4 of them a night. Play 2 or 3 toons though 2-3 missions each and you can easily make 7-10 million ec just selling the salvage tech and particles.
So how ANYONE can complain about ec in this game is beyond me honestly. Yes there are lots of things to spend it on... and if you want something really nice you may need to drop 100+ million... but if you just play casual 3-4 nights a week if your doing harder content you should be able to make that much EC in a month. (not working the market... start doing that just a little and you can easily double that number)
Not everyone can do a elite? Not everyone can do a advanced even
Did a advanced pug the other day and well...had 2 people doing under 5k dps...heck one of them didn't even break 2k dps. I don't have the kind of friends who pull huge numbers and my fleet has recently had problems so doing a planned elite is like impossible for me...and with the luck I've been having pugging Advanced runs...I can't imagine Elite to be anything but a huge nightmare and constant failures.
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
Comments
We just need some EC sink. Outside of the exchange or other player to player transactions, what do players buy with EC? not much. On the flip side, how many ways is there to make EC? Lots. The farm vs spend ratio is way on the farm side leading to some inflation.
It only works under specific circumstances thankfully but it's seriously damaging the economy since it became possible after the Delta Recruit event. It has yet to be patched at last notice. These exploits are the most damaging thing to the economy right now.
P.S. There aren't enough 'whales' to control the economy in its current state so all you conspiracy theorists are quite wrong. It's a stupid argument any way you look at it.
Hey look another worthless post of someone bragging about bugs and not reporting them to Cryptic. This is why we can't have nice things because the community is so damn secretive because they care about their space shekels (Druk notwithstanding)
If you have an exploit to share, please share it to Cryptic so it gets fixed and we can move on with our lives. It's just a silly game, I can make over 10m a day doing some pretty trivial stuff and I have neither the time, nor the established amount of accounts as these players have. Obviously these things take a minute barrier of entry, which most players cannot even fathom, but the fatcats are too good for.
We are in fact doing the community a service by keeping said information locked down until the problem is fixed by the DEV's. So I don't understand your hatred except that it's the latest trend in today's world to hate rich people.
Edited: Was off-topic near the end
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
They would make a killing with this. Throw in the "event" ships and items, too. I have been without my exocomp for years (sent it on a colonization mission years ago before the red letters warning you about losing doffs) with no way to reclaim it.
OK, in all reality you have the best idea here. As much as I want Cryptic to make it easier to get the expensive shinies that have been lost to time, doing so might not be the smartest thing for the economy. The next lockbox re-run will add some supply and push down prices a bit.
Until then, I am hoping a new Tac BOFF power gets released to make KLW less desired and a new EC sink is added. I can't remember the last time I spent EC at a vendor. The best items come from the exchange, lockboxes, lobi, rep, or fleet stores.
So? everyone will have 100k EC, they'll have a lot of "expensive" items and no-one to sell them to.
So everyone would go on a giant vender trash spree?
The current state of things did start with everyone being on equal grounds. Everyone started at Level 1 with no Energy Credit to his or her name. And yet, fast forward 5 years later, we have the have-nots and the space-rich.
What will happen if you don't even start on equal grounds?
It would still take several years to reach this level of economy inflation.
You and Me, need to talk. I could have and maybe still can save you a ton of ECs. I have 5 characters at max level and max reputation. 4 of those characters are Fed and 1 is Klingon. So that means I'm able to get 4 Klingon boffs for the fed side and 1 Fed boff for the Klingon side. TBH, I'd forgot all about being able to claim those boffs until I read your post. If your interested in getting a few more feds with pirate, give me a whisper ingame. I promise they will be alot cheaper than 140 mil.
Groot@hyefather Federation
Paitheon@hyefather Federation
Bloodbeard@hyefather Federation
Stryker@hyefather Reman/Fed
Gilgamesh@hyefather Klingon
P.S. Don't forget.
BOFF trading was patched out of the game a few months ago, sorry. It really does suck.
When I get FU#K?D, I get FU#K?D at all ends. Figures.
The better solution is to adjust the silver ec cap to 50mil approximately matching inflation, and raise the gold cap to 10bil. As more gold is mined, players are given more space to put their gold.
The real travesty is that the ec cap is the same as it has been for years, even as the economy has inflated.
You walloped it right out of the park.
Especially in todays market.
Good point, let's also wipe all items not currently equipped on the active ship or player character, including all boxed ships and all unused manuals.
Well as a "rich" dude... I can tell you if they did that most of us would likely just leave. However more likely in my case I would just go play another MMO for a month or two. When I get back, you will all be flush with EC again and way I go same as it was. You don't seem to understand. When I say I have somewhere in and around 10-15ish billion or so the majority of it is in items. Sure I have a few toons with a nice big fat EC stack... but most of my stuff is in lockbox ships/traits/doff packs oh and my 20 or so 999 stacks of lobi (I logged into a neglected toon the other day and realized I had another 10 stacks of lobi there, first world problems). I know people that have 2x what I have. Thing is ALL of our own toons are pretty pimped, I could just you know play the game for a month with no real need to make EC anyway.
Oh also if all of a sudden there was no EC in anyones hands... it wouldn't force people to dump things worth 100s of millions for pennies... it would simply make the trade channel more popular, until the EC repopulated.
So would like to give you a few basic things to think about when you are playing... that will help you not be space poor. Perhaps alone you won't make yourself space rich with these tips, but perhaps space middle class at least.
1) You do NOT get rich hording... Ride the waves. (yes holding on to things for months is something you do when you have nothing left to invest in.. consider it when you make your 4th or 5th billion). Until then buy low sell high.
2) You do NOT become rich trying to corner expensive markets. (If you think the best way to get rich is to buy up 10 copies of X or Y trait or Ship because there are only 10 on the market at 10mil each and I can resell for 15 mil and make a killing... think again your going to loose your wad... trust me someone like me is sitting there with 100 of those in the bank and we WILL notice when the price spikes 50% and WE will profit not you... although people that think they can buy up my stuff one a time that I post in the inbetween spaces for hours on end are good for me... don't be that guy, that buys 200 million of my X at a 30% profit to me cause your going to "corner the market" lol)
3) VOLUME VOLUME VOLUME. In the real world who would you rather be... the company that builds 10 cars a year and sells them for 250k each with a cost of 100k per car. OR would you rather be the company that sells 1,000 cars a year at 25k each at a cost of 10k each ? I know I know your saying right now ya but that is the same amount of profit. You would be right... accept the company making the high volume product is going to be constantly turning things over and not have to invest near as much to get going. (trust me in STO or in any MMO you will make 10x as much moving small things... cause 1 they move more 2 you can generally get more profit % out of them and 3 you can jump in with little to no risk)
4) The STO economy doesn't revolve around lockboxes, or EC, or Dilithium... it revolves around crafting materials. (See if you go this far you just learned the truth of STO)
I'll leave it there that should be enough advice to get almost anyone going of they think about what I just said. If it still hasn't sunk in what I am saying here is a better plan for someone with ZERO captial and who wants to make 10-20 million in an hour or so and not just sit at the exchange.
1) Play the game... do as hard a content as you can... earn some R&D Crafting materials.
2) Sell those materials
3) Take the 1-2 million you have made over 30min or so... and start investing in MORE crafting materials.
4) Think about what I have said so far and consider this scenario.... You see 555 Beta Particles on the exchange at 4,500 EC each so 2,497,500... in between you see another 100 or so spread out over 20 listings between 4500 and 6000... BUY them all up to that point ... and list your 655 (in 2-3 posts) 4,257,500. Give or take you just made a million EC and it will turn over within an hour pretty much any time of day.
5) Start Crafting holes... tech is easy of course... but people DO buy crafted components... just pay close attention to the costs.
Now I will head out... remember if your selling things that only cost 1-2k each... if you are selling them in stacks of 999 and you can buy them for just 1k less then they sell, you made a million ec.
Stop worrying about X or Y rich guy hording this or that trait, or this ship or that book. I admit I have stock on all those things because hey I have been playing 5 years and I ain't a moron sure I grab when its low. Truth is I rarely ever resell that stuff I keep it for me... but I can tell you the Crafting market makes me millions every day... If I want something I make the EC to buy it cause you don't get rich spending your stash all the time. If I decide I need 300 million today for something stupid, I make that in a few hours... and my biggest mover on that will almost always be crafting related.
Envy... someone forgot to tell them its a game.
Its not like real life, the developers hand out EC for free... and items which can be traded for EC. People seem to forget that nothing in the game is in fact real. Its all pretend and its all obtainable if you are willing to log in which is what Cryptic wants.
It's not like you need tens of billions of EC. Ever. You're just being miserly.
Sorry you could not be more wrong. With these actions you just protect the ones using the exploit.
If you really had an interest in fixing them you would have posted the exploit on reddit and here and forced a fix.
It is a sad history but the past has shown that stuff only gets fixed once it goes cataclysmic *looks at japori*
Not everyone can do a elite? Not everyone can do a advanced even
Did a advanced pug the other day and well...had 2 people doing under 5k dps...heck one of them didn't even break 2k dps. I don't have the kind of friends who pull huge numbers and my fleet has recently had problems so doing a planned elite is like impossible for me...and with the luck I've been having pugging Advanced runs...I can't imagine Elite to be anything but a huge nightmare and constant failures.