I honestly don't understand how dilithium traders WORK. The amount of play required, even when the cost of Zen was low, to earn a high-tier ship was incredibly high - and everything in the game wants dilithium. That's time not spent buying rep or fleet gear, upgrading items, or doing fleet projects.
I don't see much difference between 300d/Z and 450d/Z - they're both a huge amount of gameplay to get something I can afford from working two hours of overtime. And I'm a low-wage worker.
As a player who isn't really rich in Dilithium, my opinion is that there are already enough Dilithium sinks in the game. The existing sinks need to be more attractive.
I really think that a huge chunk of the problem with Dilithium surplus is how Refined Dilithium can easily be passed between characters. Really, a lot of the folks who are now complaining about the over-abundance of Dilithium probably farm Dilithium through multiple alts. My proposal:
Lock Dilithium to characters. Make the exchange Dilithium balances unique to each character. Zen should be the only thing shared between characters. If you want to transfer Dilithium, then you must successfully buy Zen from the exchange first. You can then resell that Zen for Dilithium with the character you want to move Dilithium to.
The objective is to make Dilithium transfers not risk free and to keep the circulation of Zeb/Dilithium flowing.
Another option would be to make the Dilithium refinement cap account-wide. Put a daily cap of 30000 Dilithium per account so that players cannot easily farm it. To prevent small fleets from dying, in addition to raising the Dilithium to Fleet Credit exchange rate (make it x4), allow unrefined Dilithium to be used for fleet projects at half the FC (x2) reward.
Make unrefined Dilithium useful too. Maybe make marks purchasable with unrefined Dilithium or add unrefined Dilithium to certain future craftable items.
Lower upgrade costs. Upgrading is so costly and so random with minimal rewards that unless they were min-maxxing, it's better to just forgo it.
I really think the solution to this lies on limiting the ability of players to farm Dilithium through alts and not adding newer sinks. Limiting what can be farmed will help equalize the playerbase rather than make it more difficult for poor players or casual players to keep up.
It'll also solve the incessant whining during events from players that call a 5-10 minute daily mission a grind" because they are running it with 10 or more alts for the Dilithium.
I'm hardly a free market purist, but honestly. This is a game. Why is it morally superior for the game to favor dilithium traders over Zen sellers? Or the opposite?
I think talk about "free market" are a bit overrated in a computer game indeed.
Question: What does it mean to say that the market is "free" in a world where God actively intervenes to change the ease of obtaining natural resources, their possible uses, and the very laws of physics themselves? To put it another way, how free is the market when Cryptic changes the world on a weekly basis? Sure, you can say that Cryptic does not directly set the price of Zen, but when Cryptic decides to charge 3000 Zen for a ship instead of 4500 Zen or make a fleet project cost 200000 dilithium instead of 300000, those are active decisions that have a definite effect on the market.
Fleet holdings have been the one thing in STO that really sinks dil. The starbase is what originally brought the exchange rate down in 2012 and the secondary holdings successfully kept it stable for years. The system's only failure is in not releasing another primary holding after the starbases were finished.
Here's an idea... How about a token that costs 2800 Dilithium that lets you auto-refine Dilithium for one week?
I'd pay that. (That's 5% of a week's worth of refined dilithium.) Or some other reasonable amount.
Like people are saying, an ongoing expense that provides value instead of being a form of tax would be the best option. Any kind of service will do.
The target demographic for such a feature would be rather limited, seeing as players who regularly don't log in for a week, probably don't have that much ore stockpiled. Also, 5% is peanuts.
And/Or add dilithium bets to the Dabo tables, to indirectly convert dilithium to latinum.
Latinum is even more useless than dilithium.
I like the idea of resetting transwarp/slipstream cooldowns, too, or just letting people pay dilithium to transwarp to any transwarp destination they want.
The game already sells consumable transwarps for dilithium. I don't know if anyone buys them.
Theoretically, anything with a timer could have a "finish now" button. Doesn't necessarily mean people would use them.
Or, pay an exorbitant amount of dilithium to change a single modifier on R&D crafted gear. People would be screaming for dilithium if that was an option.
"Exorbitant" by definition means unreasonably high. So no they wouldn't. If it was a reasonable price, minmaxers would do it and the rest would conclude that such an expense is just as unnecessary as the upgrade system. If it was cheap enough to be worth doing just because, then it wouldn't sink anything.
Anything with gameplay value has some price point beyond which it stops being worth buying. The only things you can charge truly exorbitant prices for is cosmetic items. Things that exist for no purpose other than to show off you can afford them.
Lock Dilithium to characters. Make the exchange Dilithium balances unique to each character. Zen should be the only thing shared between characters. If you want to transfer Dilithium, then you must successfully buy Zen from the exchange first. You can then resell that Zen for Dilithium with the character you want to move Dilithium to.
This statement alone makes it very clear you don't understand how dilithium moves within the economy.
Lock Dilithium to characters. Make the exchange Dilithium balances unique to each character. Zen should be the only thing shared between characters. If you want to transfer Dilithium, then you must successfully buy Zen from the exchange first. You can then resell that Zen for Dilithium with the character you want to move Dilithium to.
So... to shuffle DL around your account you need to buy Zen and sell it to yourself? You're basically asking them to charge you for something that you already have.
Another option would be to make the Dilithium refinement cap account-wide. Put a daily cap of 30000 Dilithium per account so that players cannot easily farm it. To prevent small fleets from dying, in addition to raising the Dilithium to Fleet Credit exchange rate (make it x4), allow unrefined Dilithium to be used for fleet projects at half the FC (x2) reward.
Not feasable. There are people on the forums who say they have enough Unrefined to last a lifetime of refining even at 8k a day. Putting an account refine cap won't make any difference, and will just anger people.
Make unrefined Dilithium useful too. Maybe make marks purchasable with unrefined Dilithium or add unrefined Dilithium to certain future craftable items.
Might be worth something, especially for the people with so much unrefined they will NEVER refine it all.
Lower upgrade costs. Upgrading is so costly and so random with minimal rewards that unless they were min-maxxing, it's better to just forgo it.
Don't really know what to say about this one. You can already get about 6-7 superior tech upgrades on an item a day at the current price vs 8k refine limit. I could be off on my math though. It has been a while.
It'll also solve the incessant whining during events from players that call a 5-10 minute daily mission a grind" because they are running it with 10 or more alts for the Dilithium.
There is no whining with the Crystaline event. Its done in a couple minutes. Its Mirror and Breach that take 20+ minutes per character that brings the whine. Give me an hour and I can run 8 characters through Crystaline no problem. But try that on Mirror... burnout after 3. Only reason I spam Crystaline on alts is for working towards C-Store projects I set for myself. As a F2P with no disposable income, the Dilithium Exchange is my only real option. And that is true for many people as well. By working what we got, we have just as much of a shot at c-store ships as everyone else. At current prices... us F2P players are getting priced OUT of those items that make us comparable to people who can buy Zen.
Look at the Exchange there is very few Zen offers to purchase Dilitium. If Dilithium not in demand, no one will spend real money to got it. It has nothing to do with Exchange cap. Amount of Zen offered is minimal. Cryptic not making money. Do not call it Dilithium Sink call it Dilitium incentives.
We don't need any more dil sinks. And that idea doesn't sound very feasible anyway.
The exchange will fall, eventually. When people finally say enough is enough and stop buying zen at those ridiculous prices.
Tbh we do need another dil sink , there has to be a way of taking the sheer amount of dil thats on the market down a bit, however the OPs idea is well to quote a couple words "hair brained" at best.
Maybe a new fleet holding , but as it is with the high amounts of dil hitting the exchange the prices will remain high, if you start reducing the dil the prices drop accordingly.
But i dont see a new dil sink coming anytime soon, tbh i think cryptic enjoys the higher prices on the exchange as it does promote buying zen with money.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,583Community Moderator
A new sink I actually would like, would be the ability to claim lock box stuff you've unlocked on additional characters for a dilithium fee
That might actually be worthwhile. I know I'd love to send over some cruisers and maybe the Temporal Science ship over to my KDF and Romulan. They're rather... Tac heavy so Admiralty can be more of a challenge. A decent DL fee for unlocking lockbox stuff on an alt would be nice.
I think Cryptic would need to find something Dilithium-Costing every month, too - or failing that, create some Dilithium-based consumables.
Well, more consumables anyway. This actually meshes a bit with the idea that a lot of things currently in lockboxes have no business being there and should instead be in various reps' dilithium stores (a concept they actually have right with respect to TF Omega). Consider the web grenades and rad crystals... given that these are reverse-engineered from Tholian tech, it would be logical that they be manufactured by, and requisitionable from, the Nukara Strikeforce. Vaadwaur polaron weapons and the special grenades they like using? Delta Alliance. Herald armor? Iconian Resistance. Et cetera.
My idea would be to take something they have apparently already developed. To test the new spec on Tribble without giving access to the new ships, they introduced devices that hold those powers. Turn these devices into consumables and stackable and sell them for 200 Dilithium per Tier.
Actually, not a bad idea at all; it seems a reasonable extension from the Intel and Command kit modules.
A new sink I actually would like, would be the ability to claim lock box stuff you've unlocked on additional characters for a dilithium fee
That might actually be worthwhile. I know I'd love to send over some cruisers and maybe the Temporal Science ship over to my KDF and Romulan. They're rather... Tac heavy so Admiralty can be more of a challenge. A decent DL fee for unlocking lockbox stuff on an alt would be nice.
Would also increase my desire to obtain anything from a lockbox. With the current system, that desire measures in at less than zero.
No more dilithium sinks, please. Just because it's a bit easier to get dilithium in the game, doesn't mean it's 'easy'; especially for players who can't get into the game as often as others. Easier does not equal easy.
I agree that a long time ongoing dilithium sink is needed if the dilithium exchange rate is to go down but dil to reset the transwarp or slipstream cool downs or to replace the EC cost on transwarp to mission with a dil cost is not the answer as these expenditures can easily be avoided, likewise a dil cost to buy auto refine can also easily be avoided and you get this already anyway if you have subs or LTS, besides this is just a nickel and dime cost and not substantial enough to be considered a sink.
what you need is something that is very desirable and not able to be achieved in any other way but will cost a considerable amount of dilithium over a very long period for it to make any difference to the exchange.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
A new sink I actually would like, would be the ability to claim lock box stuff you've unlocked on additional characters for a dilithium fee
Again we need no more dilithium sinks in the game, we already have a "massive" dilithium sink in STO.
For those who haven't gotten it yet, its called the dilithium exchange.
People talk about it and it goes right over their heads.
And before anyone argues the point with me, im right, and couldn't care less.
a dilithium sink is something that takes dilithium out of the game like spending it on reputation weapons, upgrading weapons, donating it to fleet projects and such.
all the dilithium exchange does is transfer it from one player to another, the majority of players would not class this as a dilithium sink even if you do.
what players do with the dilithium they have purchased on the exchange might indeed be a dilithium sink but that does not make the exchange itself a dilithium sink.
and I will argue this as you might think you are right but you couldn't be more wrong even if you couldn't care less.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Lock Dilithium to characters. Make the exchange Dilithium balances unique to each character. Zen should be the only thing shared between characters. If you want to transfer Dilithium, then you must successfully buy Zen from the exchange first. You can then resell that Zen for Dilithium with the character you want to move Dilithium to.
This statement alone makes it very clear you don't understand how dilithium moves within the economy.
No I do understand. I am merely bringing forward options to make it more difficult (by adding a roadblock, an extra step) to transferring Dilithium between characters. The ease of farming Dilithium and ways to circumvent the current 8k daily refine limit is one of the reasons why there is too much Dilithium.
I also outlined additional ways to limit the future intake of Dilithium and ways to consume the reserves people are already sitting on.
Another option would be to make the Dilithium refinement cap account-wide. Put a daily cap of 30000 Dilithium per account so that players cannot easily farm it. To prevent small fleets from dying, in addition to raising the Dilithium to Fleet Credit exchange rate (make it x4), allow unrefined Dilithium to be used for fleet projects at half the FC (x2) reward.
Not feasable. There are people on the forums who say they have enough Unrefined to last a lifetime of refining even at 8k a day. Putting an account refine cap won't make any difference, and will just anger people.
The problem with just adding sinks is that it does not solve the problem of additional Dilithium being generated by multiple alts. So what if it angers people? Not everyone runs multiple alts to farm and refine Dilithium. Putting an account-wide cap limits future dilithium. The people that sit on a mountain of dil aren't that many. The current sinks will eventually whittle down the current surplus but you'll have to limit the incoming Dilithium.
Make unrefined Dilithium useful too. Maybe make marks purchasable with unrefined Dilithium or add unrefined Dilithium to certain future craftable items.
Might be worth something, especially for the people with so much unrefined they will NEVER refine it all.
Lower upgrade costs. Upgrading is so costly and so random with minimal rewards that unless they were min-maxxing, it's better to just forgo it.
Don't really know what to say about this one. You can already get about 6-7 superior tech upgrades on an item a day at the current price vs 8k refine limit. I could be off on my math though. It has been a while.
That is true, but a lot of people still find that much. How many times have we read in the forums about people not bothering going past VR or even to Mk XIV again? I certainly did not go past UR in one of my alts.
Upgrading was one of the major dil sinks of the game but currently apart from the min-maxing crowd, it isn't attractive enough. I reckon it's one of the reasons why Cryptic added "Upgrade Weekends" because their metrics are telling them that people aren't upgrading enough. Now, many people only upgrade during these weekends. I myself used to upgrade whenever I had the Dilithium but now I only upgrade during these weekends.
It'll also solve the incessant whining during events from players that call a 5-10 minute daily mission a grind" because they are running it with 10 or more alts for the Dilithium.
There is no whining with the Crystaline event. Its done in a couple minutes. Its Mirror and Breach that take 20+ minutes per character that brings the whine. Give me an hour and I can run 8 characters through Crystaline no problem. But try that on Mirror... burnout after 3. Only reason I spam Crystaline on alts is for working towards C-Store projects I set for myself. As a F2P with no disposable income, the Dilithium Exchange is my only real option. And that is true for many people as well. By working what we got, we have just as much of a shot at c-store ships as everyone else. At current prices... us F2P players are getting priced OUT of those items that make us comparable to people who can buy Zen.
That's the thing though... Anyone refining Dilithium over multiple alts and using that Dilithium to purchase Zen is contributing to the problem of devaluing Dilithium vs Zen. They created an oversupply of Dilithium.
The problem is not a lack of sinks. It's the ease of farming Dilithium through multiple alts. The current sinks do need work to make them more attractive to players. But the current influx of Dilithium needs to be lowered so that the exchange can eventually be stabilized.
For the sake of transparency, I am mostly a Zen seller. I am not rich in Dilithium (my total refined Dilithium across toons is just a little over 500k) but I do sell some of my Zen once in a while to fund my upgrades when I need to. Most of the time I just sit on my Zen for stuff I might want to buy in the C-Store. Once in a while I do buy Zen from the Exchange if I am a few Zen short of something I want to buy but often times I just whip out my credit card to support the game as well.
idea for a Dilithium sink: new ship skins/parts.. which i reckon would be a boon to some Klingon players as they're still a little light on that, but nacelle, saucer, etc alternatives would be nice, and if you can earn it via dilithium over zen (even on c-store ships) that might bring a more of a sense of "this is my ship" to the whole dealie.. i know there's like 3-4 alternatives on many c-store if you get them all, but what's the harm in having "A Variant" & "B Variant" on a few things, neh?
A new sink I actually would like, would be the ability to claim lock box stuff you've unlocked on additional characters for a dilithium fee
Again we need no more dilithium sinks in the game, we already have a "massive" dilithium sink in STO.
For those who haven't gotten it yet, its called the dilithium exchange.
People talk about it and it goes right over their heads.
And before anyone argues the point with me, im right, and couldn't care less.
a dilithium sink is something that takes dilithium out of the game like spending it on reputation weapons, upgrading weapons, donating it to fleet projects and such.
all the dilithium exchange does is transfer it from one player to another, the majority of players would not class this as a dilithium sink even if you do.
what players do with the dilithium they have purchased on the exchange might indeed be a dilithium sink but that does not make the exchange itself a dilithium sink.
and I will argue this as you might think you are right but you couldn't be more wrong even if you couldn't care less.
Its works both ways, argue with yourself all you want, it is still a massive sink, its the players who utilize it.
One guys sink is anothers windfall, i dont care what anyone else considers the dilithium sink exchange as.
Folks buy ZEN with money or get zen by having a subscription that also costs money
That is what cryptic collects to stay in business.
Dil is (grind) currency...you grind out missions and such to get it.
The exchange is where folks with more money than time pay you some of thier
ZEN for the dil you had to grind to get.
Often to enlarge their fleet projects, do upgrades and other stuff you can not
use ZEN to do directly.
Rich people buy ZEN
Poor people mine dil for rich paople
Rich people pay poor people for the Dil
got it?
good
Not entirely true. I'm not rich, but I don't have the time to mine dil either. That's why a 500 exchange rate makes me happy, I actually get an amount that my real money is worth.
A new sink I actually would like, would be the ability to claim lock box stuff you've unlocked on additional characters for a dilithium fee
That might actually be worthwhile. I know I'd love to send over some cruisers and maybe the Temporal Science ship over to my KDF and Romulan. They're rather... Tac heavy so Admiralty can be more of a challenge. A decent DL fee for unlocking lockbox stuff on an alt would be nice.
That would work, no doubt. It would also be a problem for Cryptic.
Over the long term it would likely reduce lockbox sales. People will wait for stuff to make it into Infinity boxes and flood the market with it. Once someone opened a box, they would be able to claim it on all of their alts without paying for master keys to get it again.
Generating a demand for dilithium can't hurt sales in the process, so I think this is unlikely to happen.
What's possessing people to sell their dilithium at these extreme rates anyway? I'm hoarding literally all of mine until it drops to normal levels again, even if it takes a year or two.
Says a dude that obviously gouges us at the exchange...470+ dil is wrong...why don't you post something helpful, add to the discussion instead of just trolling to be a troll
As someone who buys some Zen to convert to Dill for the upcoming Upgrade weekend, I would say a high Dill to Zen rate is perfect...
Why would I want to buy Zen and convert to dill for a paltry 200+ Dill ?
Seems only the free to play players are bemoaning about the high Dill cost so they can get zen without buying it to support the game.
In my opinion, at this point the most efficent way to get ZEN is to close the game and go do your IRL job to get some money. It only will take a couple of weeks tops to get enough money for anything you want in ZEN store. At this dil exchange rate it would be a waste of time to grind dil for ZEN which makes dil exchange itself kinda pointless. Personally I'll never spend dil for ZEN for above reasons and I'll never spend ZEN for dil because: first, its not hard to get enough dil for any purpose other than dil trading and second, there isn't enough use for dil in-game for me to start buying it from other players.
Comments
I don't see much difference between 300d/Z and 450d/Z - they're both a huge amount of gameplay to get something I can afford from working two hours of overtime. And I'm a low-wage worker.
I really think that a huge chunk of the problem with Dilithium surplus is how Refined Dilithium can easily be passed between characters. Really, a lot of the folks who are now complaining about the over-abundance of Dilithium probably farm Dilithium through multiple alts. My proposal:
Lock Dilithium to characters. Make the exchange Dilithium balances unique to each character. Zen should be the only thing shared between characters. If you want to transfer Dilithium, then you must successfully buy Zen from the exchange first. You can then resell that Zen for Dilithium with the character you want to move Dilithium to.
The objective is to make Dilithium transfers not risk free and to keep the circulation of Zeb/Dilithium flowing.
Another option would be to make the Dilithium refinement cap account-wide. Put a daily cap of 30000 Dilithium per account so that players cannot easily farm it. To prevent small fleets from dying, in addition to raising the Dilithium to Fleet Credit exchange rate (make it x4), allow unrefined Dilithium to be used for fleet projects at half the FC (x2) reward.
Make unrefined Dilithium useful too. Maybe make marks purchasable with unrefined Dilithium or add unrefined Dilithium to certain future craftable items.
Lower upgrade costs. Upgrading is so costly and so random with minimal rewards that unless they were min-maxxing, it's better to just forgo it.
I really think the solution to this lies on limiting the ability of players to farm Dilithium through alts and not adding newer sinks. Limiting what can be farmed will help equalize the playerbase rather than make it more difficult for poor players or casual players to keep up.
It'll also solve the incessant whining during events from players that call a 5-10 minute daily mission a grind" because they are running it with 10 or more alts for the Dilithium.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Question: What does it mean to say that the market is "free" in a world where God actively intervenes to change the ease of obtaining natural resources, their possible uses, and the very laws of physics themselves? To put it another way, how free is the market when Cryptic changes the world on a weekly basis? Sure, you can say that Cryptic does not directly set the price of Zen, but when Cryptic decides to charge 3000 Zen for a ship instead of 4500 Zen or make a fleet project cost 200000 dilithium instead of 300000, those are active decisions that have a definite effect on the market.
The target demographic for such a feature would be rather limited, seeing as players who regularly don't log in for a week, probably don't have that much ore stockpiled. Also, 5% is peanuts. Latinum is even more useless than dilithium.
The game already sells consumable transwarps for dilithium. I don't know if anyone buys them.
Theoretically, anything with a timer could have a "finish now" button. Doesn't necessarily mean people would use them. "Exorbitant" by definition means unreasonably high. So no they wouldn't. If it was a reasonable price, minmaxers would do it and the rest would conclude that such an expense is just as unnecessary as the upgrade system. If it was cheap enough to be worth doing just because, then it wouldn't sink anything.
Anything with gameplay value has some price point beyond which it stops being worth buying. The only things you can charge truly exorbitant prices for is cosmetic items. Things that exist for no purpose other than to show off you can afford them.
This statement alone makes it very clear you don't understand how dilithium moves within the economy.
So... to shuffle DL around your account you need to buy Zen and sell it to yourself? You're basically asking them to charge you for something that you already have.
Not feasable. There are people on the forums who say they have enough Unrefined to last a lifetime of refining even at 8k a day. Putting an account refine cap won't make any difference, and will just anger people.
Might be worth something, especially for the people with so much unrefined they will NEVER refine it all.
Don't really know what to say about this one. You can already get about 6-7 superior tech upgrades on an item a day at the current price vs 8k refine limit. I could be off on my math though. It has been a while.
There is no whining with the Crystaline event. Its done in a couple minutes. Its Mirror and Breach that take 20+ minutes per character that brings the whine. Give me an hour and I can run 8 characters through Crystaline no problem. But try that on Mirror... burnout after 3. Only reason I spam Crystaline on alts is for working towards C-Store projects I set for myself. As a F2P with no disposable income, the Dilithium Exchange is my only real option. And that is true for many people as well. By working what we got, we have just as much of a shot at c-store ships as everyone else. At current prices... us F2P players are getting priced OUT of those items that make us comparable to people who can buy Zen.
Tbh we do need another dil sink , there has to be a way of taking the sheer amount of dil thats on the market down a bit, however the OPs idea is well to quote a couple words "hair brained" at best.
Maybe a new fleet holding , but as it is with the high amounts of dil hitting the exchange the prices will remain high, if you start reducing the dil the prices drop accordingly.
But i dont see a new dil sink coming anytime soon, tbh i think cryptic enjoys the higher prices on the exchange as it does promote buying zen with money.
That might actually be worthwhile. I know I'd love to send over some cruisers and maybe the Temporal Science ship over to my KDF and Romulan. They're rather... Tac heavy so Admiralty can be more of a challenge. A decent DL fee for unlocking lockbox stuff on an alt would be nice.
Actually, not a bad idea at all; it seems a reasonable extension from the Intel and Command kit modules.
Would also increase my desire to obtain anything from a lockbox. With the current system, that desire measures in at less than zero.
what you need is something that is very desirable and not able to be achieved in any other way but will cost a considerable amount of dilithium over a very long period for it to make any difference to the exchange.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
And it's not.
Again we need no more dilithium sinks in the game, we already have a "massive" dilithium sink in STO.
For those who haven't gotten it yet, its called the dilithium exchange.
People talk about it and it goes right over their heads.
And before anyone argues the point with me, im right, and couldn't care less.
The dil exchange is how I get my dil, I'm suggesting something that would make me purchase more of it.
a dilithium sink is something that takes dilithium out of the game like spending it on reputation weapons, upgrading weapons, donating it to fleet projects and such.
all the dilithium exchange does is transfer it from one player to another, the majority of players would not class this as a dilithium sink even if you do.
what players do with the dilithium they have purchased on the exchange might indeed be a dilithium sink but that does not make the exchange itself a dilithium sink.
and I will argue this as you might think you are right but you couldn't be more wrong even if you couldn't care less.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
No I do understand. I am merely bringing forward options to make it more difficult (by adding a roadblock, an extra step) to transferring Dilithium between characters. The ease of farming Dilithium and ways to circumvent the current 8k daily refine limit is one of the reasons why there is too much Dilithium.
I also outlined additional ways to limit the future intake of Dilithium and ways to consume the reserves people are already sitting on.
The problem with just adding sinks is that it does not solve the problem of additional Dilithium being generated by multiple alts. So what if it angers people? Not everyone runs multiple alts to farm and refine Dilithium. Putting an account-wide cap limits future dilithium. The people that sit on a mountain of dil aren't that many. The current sinks will eventually whittle down the current surplus but you'll have to limit the incoming Dilithium.
Might be worth something, especially for the people with so much unrefined they will NEVER refine it all.
That is true, but a lot of people still find that much. How many times have we read in the forums about people not bothering going past VR or even to Mk XIV again? I certainly did not go past UR in one of my alts.
Upgrading was one of the major dil sinks of the game but currently apart from the min-maxing crowd, it isn't attractive enough. I reckon it's one of the reasons why Cryptic added "Upgrade Weekends" because their metrics are telling them that people aren't upgrading enough. Now, many people only upgrade during these weekends. I myself used to upgrade whenever I had the Dilithium but now I only upgrade during these weekends.
That's the thing though... Anyone refining Dilithium over multiple alts and using that Dilithium to purchase Zen is contributing to the problem of devaluing Dilithium vs Zen. They created an oversupply of Dilithium.
The problem is not a lack of sinks. It's the ease of farming Dilithium through multiple alts. The current sinks do need work to make them more attractive to players. But the current influx of Dilithium needs to be lowered so that the exchange can eventually be stabilized.
For the sake of transparency, I am mostly a Zen seller. I am not rich in Dilithium (my total refined Dilithium across toons is just a little over 500k) but I do sell some of my Zen once in a while to fund my upgrades when I need to. Most of the time I just sit on my Zen for stuff I might want to buy in the C-Store. Once in a while I do buy Zen from the Exchange if I am a few Zen short of something I want to buy but often times I just whip out my credit card to support the game as well.
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Folks buy ZEN with money or get zen by having a subscription that also costs money
That is what cryptic collects to stay in business.
Dil is (grind) currency...you grind out missions and such to get it.
The exchange is where folks with more money than time pay you some of thier
ZEN for the dil you had to grind to get.
Often to enlarge their fleet projects, do upgrades and other stuff you can not
use ZEN to do directly.
Rich people buy ZEN
Poor people mine dil for rich paople
Rich people pay poor people for the Dil
got it?
good
Its works both ways, argue with yourself all you want, it is still a massive sink, its the players who utilize it.
One guys sink is anothers windfall, i dont care what anyone else considers the dilithium sink exchange as.
Oh look, im right again.
Not entirely true. I'm not rich, but I don't have the time to mine dil either. That's why a 500 exchange rate makes me happy, I actually get an amount that my real money is worth.
That would work, no doubt. It would also be a problem for Cryptic.
Over the long term it would likely reduce lockbox sales. People will wait for stuff to make it into Infinity boxes and flood the market with it. Once someone opened a box, they would be able to claim it on all of their alts without paying for master keys to get it again.
Generating a demand for dilithium can't hurt sales in the process, so I think this is unlikely to happen.
475+ per zen? Are you nuts?
As someone who buys some Zen to convert to Dill for the upcoming Upgrade weekend, I would say a high Dill to Zen rate is perfect...
Why would I want to buy Zen and convert to dill for a paltry 200+ Dill ?
Seems only the free to play players are bemoaning about the high Dill cost so they can get zen without buying it to support the game.