How about just raising it to 10k a day which equates to a 14k a week rise not a game breaking increase.
Still not getting economics 101.....*SIGH*
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
First off I am not considered an "average" player because I have 10 captains on my account. Since I generally do not have enough time in the day to play all 10 captains to get 8,000 Dil per captain, I generally just queue up some Doff missions (including the Contraband mission), admiralty missions, do the Academy mid-term test and play one Advanced STF (typically CCA because it is quick).
Here's my simplistic breakdown of the amount of Dil I get. This assumes that I am only getting Dil from the Contraband Doff mission and no other Doff missions. Additionally, I would say that on average players can get 1,000 Dil from the admiralty missions on a daily basis. This probably takes around 15 minutes per captain; most of the time would be for selecting ships for Admiralty missions.
2,000 - Contraband Doff mission
1,000 - Admiralty *
480 - Academy Mid-Term
720 - One Advanced STF
4,200 - Total Dil
42,000 = 4,200 Dil * 10 captains
* This is based on the number of ships I have. Players with fewer ships would be limited as to how many missions they will be able to do at any single time and would also be limited how far they can progress into the Admiralty system. New players who do not purchase ships from the C-Store and do not have access to free ships that were obtainable from previous Anniversary / Summer / Winter events would be at a disadvantage. For example, a new player who started playing STO in June 2016 and did not purchase any ship from the C-Store would only have 7 ships available to do the Admiralty system. That includes the T1 through T5 ships, the T6 Xyphius Heavy Escort from the 2016 Risa Summer Event, and lastly the free T3 ship (???) from the Temporal Ambassador mission.
Having a daily account refinement cap of 24k Dil would limit my ability to refine Dil something I need in order to upgrade gear. I probably used up around 300k Dil this week to upgrade gear. With a refinement cap of 24k on the account it would take me 12.5 days to refine the amount of Dil I consumed for upgrades. Assuming I had no raw Dil stockpiled, it would take only 7.14 days to refine the amount of Dil I consumed for upgrades based on accumulating 4,200 Dil per captain with the 8,000 refinement limit per captain.
Why so many captain? Diversity... playing different captain classes in different factions. Limiting myself to just one faction / one class type would be boring. Also, I do not solely rely on the Dil Exchange to get Zen. I purchase Zen during the course of year during the Bonus Zen sales to get the best bang for the buck. I no problems supporting the game and I don't have any real desire to purchase Dil from the Dil Exchange.
For someone like me to get the most out of Dil refinement based on how much I can get playing casually on each captain I would need to basically have 3 accounts assuming a 24k cap on the account. Basically it would work out to 1 account per faction that I play. This would be very bad because:
#1 - Paying the $15 monthly sub even for just 1 month unlocks a lot of useful things on the account such as the Account Bank, personal inventory slots and bank inventory slots. If I wanted all those perks for all my captains across 3 accounts, then I would need to spend $45 to sub each account for 1 month.
#2 - LTS... If I wanted the LTS to apply to all my captains across 3 accounts, then I need to purchase the LTS specifically for each account. That works out to $900 or $600 when the LTS is on sale. That is something I am definitely not going to do.
#3 - Cross faction ship bundles. Well you can forget about this because there is no point in purchasing a cross faction bundle if each account is only setup for one faction. If I wanted the T6 battlecruiser on one account I can simply purchase the T6 battlecrusier bundle for $60 or $48 when on sale. However, if each faction has their own account, then I would need to purchase each ship individually for $90 or $72 when on sale. It would be even or worse if I wanted the 31St Century ships for all my captains. The ship bundle costs $60 or $48 when on sale and since they are cross faction ships all my captains will be able to use them on a single account. However, if my captains were split into 3 accounts, then I would need to spend $180 / $144 to get those ships for all my captains.
Limiting the refinement cap to 24k per account greatly diminishes the value of having multiple captains on one account. That in effect limits the potential sale of ships as well since fewer captains on an account generally means less diversity and less of a need to purchase ships to fuel that diversity. As for the LTS, yeah I am definitely not going to purchase it 3 times for 3 accounts, but there are people who would likely buy it regardless of how many or how few captains on are one account. Though I am sure they would shy away from purchasing the LTS for multiple accounts.
Overall, assuming players would like to maximize the amount of Dil they can refine per day, a 24k refinement cap limit will likely have a negative impact on revenues for Cryptic mostly based on fewer ship sales. And it could prove to a disincentive to pay for a subscription / purchase the LTS.
Cryptic's given us the key to this whole flap, they just haven't advertised it... So I will...
Back when they were "adjusting" the Dil payouts from STFs, one of our upper esteemed Dev team (thinking Borticus but maybe Geko) posted that they "intend" for players to need 3.5 to 4 hours of play to "reach" the dilithium cap on their character - "in normal circumstances"...
As such, let's base a hypothetical account cap on this number. But, for sake of argument - and to give the "hardcore intelligent Dil grinders" a benefit to their grinding, let's base the account cap off of needing 3 hours to reach a character's cap.
8 "3 hour character sessions" in a 24 hour day. 8*8k=64k.
Account dilithium refining limit (normal circumstances, daily) = 64k. Maybe doubled for Dil weekends, as dil earnings are "doubled" for a lot of stuff on dil weekend...
There you go. Simple, clean, and quite in line with what they did with the Admiralty Cap... Gives a clear "upper limit", is within the "reasonable" players earning rates, gives the "hardcore" something to strive for, but locks out the "exploiters" who are just farming dil with as little effort as possible...
Well 64k seems high still. I am sure the 3 hours of play to equal cap is long before all dilithium was adjusted. Does it still take 3 hours to reach 8k?
To tie this in with the "contraband" issues, it never really took (In the old pre-nerf days) 3 hours to max out a character with enough contraband available, it took 4 (maybe) 5 minute visits each spaced 4 hours apart. This kind of player, if he can chain 12 alts through one hour of play, was "earning" 96k dil for his 4 hours in a day's worth of "effort".
Now, I don't know what the current goals are, Cryptic being cryptic as usual on matters such as this, so for sake of example and explanation I roll with what I know, if this is going to be adopted the Devs can, obviously, insert the numbers they desire and seek into the equation(s).
But the logic is sound - set an account-wide cap to the maximum desired amounts of dilithium that the dev team expects to see introduced into the economy from one player on a regular basis, and going a little higher on this number (ie, while as of last check the Devs want 3.5 hours of play to equal a cap-out, I based the number for how many accounts can be capped in a day on 3 hours of play so the "hardcore/elite" can strive to be "better than desired" and still turn a profit for being so).
Cause here's a bit of how I look at it: If the cap's a somewhat astronomical number, it's existence isn't going to phase me because I'm never going to hit it. The "hardcore / elite" may grouse, but with some "padding" built in they'll hopefully only brush the cap when they're playing full 24 hour days. The farmer will be nearly shut down because the profit of doing nothing but farming (remember, above math shows a farmer could farm 96k in 4 hours of play) for the sake of farming is crushed into the ground, since that one account has been "gimped" on the order of 32k+/day...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Refinement caps, Contraband nerfs, none of that will have any effect on the root of the issue.
The hardcore dil farmers may start off with a set amount of (what may be a large amount of) dilithium. They then parlay that into buying Zen. Once they have the beginning chunk of dilithium and/or Zen, they play the Zen/dilithium market, buying larger and larger quantities of dilithium when the Zen price goes up, and selling the Zen when the dilithium price goes up.
If you watch the dil exchange for 10 minutes, you can see the artificial inflation going on, as they make small "buy Zen" bids rising incrementally, driving the "sell Zen" tab's numbers up.
The meat of the "problem" isn't with the farming of dilithium, per se- it's with the gaming of the exchange. People are making boatloads of free Zen with a one-time dilithium investment, which has been gradually making prices for those who only buy Zen with dil to throw up their hands in defeat, stating that it isn't worth it. And the closer it gets to the cap, the less Zen needs to be bought for someone's dilithium needs with real money.
A hard cap on the amount of Zen one can buy via the exchange (5000z per day?) with dilithium per account would not only limit the gaming/botting of the exchange, but it would dis-incentivize dilithium hoarding (for the purpose of buying Zen), and setting up a ridiculous amount of alts just to farm dilithium. Nerfing Contraband is kind of silly, if it was meant to be any kind of "farming Zen deterrent." The ones most successful at that won't lose a thing.
^ setting dil exchange limits on buying and selling is a good idea to ADD TO capping dil income from farming. Perhaps the devs will add that next.
I was careful not to suggest a restriction on how much Zen one could sell, because otherwise it's an incentive to only buy up to [x] amount per day with real money. That's cutting of Zen sale $.
And buying 5k Zen a day with dil was being extremely generous, as I would suggest a max of 1k per day, per account to be more reasonable. Even at 300dil per Zen, that's still 300,000 dilithium per day, which no one should really be able to produce.
every time i cnat log in for a day or so to refine dill pises me off cuase every single thing late game requires Dill and i can not play so many alts for dill cause i would totaly burn out on this game which im struggling not to already
every time i cnat log in for a day or so to refine dill pises me off cuase every single thing late game requires Dill and i can not play so many alts for dill cause i would totaly burn out on this game which im struggling not to already
Relax. Upgrading a beam from XIII to XIV a day later won't make any real difference in your life.
Except during upgrade week(end)s of course. Do it today, or pay double tomorrow.
Well putting a cap on Zen orders that can be placed in a day from one account would also be a interesting idea. So people treat the market like a real stock market and try manipulating the price to 'earn' dilithium by buying and selling. With the price this high, I am sure people are making lots of free dilithium just in the bid and ask spread which is now averaging more than 5 dilithium. So someone could sell at 410 and buy at 405. It's getting pretty ridiculous lately.
Well putting a cap on Zen orders that can be placed in a day from one account would also be a interesting idea. So people treat the market like a real stock market and try manipulating the price to 'earn' dilithium by buying and selling. With the price this high, I am sure people are making lots of free dilithium just in the bid and ask spread which is now averaging more than 5 dilithium. So someone could sell at 410 and buy at 405. It's getting pretty ridiculous lately.
Of course, if they are doing so, those who are playing the exchange within a 5-dil spread are actually TRIBBLE each other- rather than their intended focus, which would be Dil sellers trying to get free Zen. I find this amusing.
I also agree with the Zen exchange cap idea. For LTS/Subs perhaps it should be higher- but for free accounts make it so low that it would cripple any frequent exchange capability and it would also serve a dual purpose in incentivizing subs.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
you forgot the Option: raise only for lifetimers (and not by a lot)
I have 18 toons and I am a lifetimer - it's rare that I would Need to refine more on a single toon. But when I had to...the Veteran refiner DOff missions were just rubbish. On some toons I didn't have the required Duty officer and it takes far too Long. Plus you have to travel to accedemy. So in effect I used that Option maybe 20 times or so and I ahve been in the game for a few years now.
Now Argument: this game isn't pay to win -> then giving a bit of not even extra Dil, just the Option to refine more won't make much of a difference
this game is pay to win -> then lifetimers who HAVE paid should also get an Advantage
I wouldn'T raise it by much though - from 8k to 10k is absolutely enough imo.
Edit: Yes, but not account limited (there should have been an option in the poll for that). An account-wide refine cap would be a complete and total nerf to the amount of refined dil you can get. As it is, the more characters you have, the more refined dil you can get. As I've said before, having multiple characters just to farm dil is a necessity due to the high costs of fleet projects, repuation and fleet gear, and upgrading stuff. It would only work if costs were lowered to compensate.
You'd also probably be able to hit the account-wide refinement cap on a single character. Not only would it make all of your alts completely useless (unless you're a roleplayer, or just like having variety), but your alts would get stuck with unrefined dil you can never refine. You'd end up having choose which character today you want to refine dil on, if you have any alts with unrefined dil. Then after you refine all their dil you might as well just delete all your alts since there would be no point in having them anymore (well, you could use them to get energy credits from doff/admirality, but then you'd wind up having dil you can't refine).
My 23c character already has over 100k unrefined dil. In 4 days I'll have all reputations, except temporal, at T5.
T5 Omega rep gives a 9k dil reward. All others give 32k. So I'm gonna be sitting on a ton of unrefined dil for a while, while more is adding up from doff, admirality assigments, and just playing the game.
Soooo yeah. I have been doing the daily refine assignment at my fleet dilithium mine as well as the refine assignment from veteran rewards at the academy. But I just can't refine it fast enough. I might take a short break after I max my reps. Log in every few days for the auto refine to kick in until It's all refined. The thought of having to stop playing the game for a while simply because of this is unsettling (not like anyone would miss me anyway).
Of course, if they are doing so, those who are playing the exchange within a 5-dil spread are actually **** each other- rather than their intended focus, which would be Dil sellers trying to get free Zen. I find this amusing.
You have to remember, the people doing this so egregiously have a massive stockpile of Zen, as well as a massive stockpile of dilithium.
Whether it goes up too far, or down too low, they win either way, because it is only adding to one stockpile or the other. And having a huge stockpile, they simply buy when something hits x and sell when something hits y.
Having the "Sell Zen" tab go higher means that one can't see what the actual going rate is for people putting dilithium up. So, someone trying to buy Zen with dil sees a high number on both tabs, which gains this type of seller more dil per zen.
Example: If I want to have a +/- 5 (or more!) spread, I would put a 5000z sale at my "high price," buy 5000z at my "low" price, and have the rest of my slots with smaller sales in between to force the market to stay at this +/- rate. Every unit of dil I sell over my "buy Zen" price is pure profit, since It's driving the price point up for my "Sell Zen" price, which is higher. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Like I said, watch the exchange for a few minutes, and you'll see this very thing going on. It's especially obvious when you see jumps of 5 or so for no reason (making the spread larger). It's why the wisest thing to do when buying or selling is to pick a price and stick to it, instead of just buying/selling at whatever cost the market manipulators are creating.
Of course, if they are doing so, those who are playing the exchange within a 5-dil spread are actually **** each other- rather than their intended focus, which would be Dil sellers trying to get free Zen. I find this amusing.
You have to remember, the people doing this so egregiously have a massive stockpile of Zen, as well as a massive stockpile of dilithium.
Whether it goes up too far, or down too low, they win either way, because it is only adding to one stockpile or the other. And having a huge stockpile, they simply buy when something hits x and sell when something hits y.
Having the "Sell Zen" tab go higher means that one can't see what the actual going rate is for people putting dilithium up. So, someone trying to buy Zen with dil sees a high number on both tabs, which gains this type of seller more dil per zen.
Example: If I want to have a +/- 5 (or more!) spread, I would put a 5000z sale at my "high price," buy 5000z at my "low" price, and have the rest of my slots with smaller sales in between to force the market to stay at this +/- rate. Every unit of dil I sell over my "buy Zen" price is pure profit, since It's driving the price point up for my "Sell Zen" price, which is higher. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Like I said, watch the exchange for a few minutes, and you'll see this very thing going on. It's especially obvious when you see jumps of 5 or so for no reason (making the spread larger). It's why the wisest thing to do when buying or selling is to pick a price and stick to it, instead of just buying/selling at whatever cost the market manipulators are creating.
What you are forgetting however is that we don't care if someone is getting space rich and cannot possibly lose no matter where the prices go.
What's important is that it seems feasible to buy Zen for Dilithium, because otherwise the F2P system doesn't work and the F2Pers will not find the game much fun. Because that would ultimately lead to the death of the game, and then everyone loses.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
What you are forgetting however is that we don't care if someone is getting space rich and cannot possibly lose no matter where the prices go.
What's important is that it seems feasible to buy Zen for Dilithium, because otherwise the F2P system doesn't work and the F2Pers will not find the game much fun. Because that would ultimately lead to the death of the game, and then everyone loses.
There is, in fact, a second half of my post. One in which I talk about people artificially manipulating the exchange rate (and how they do it). So I kinda didn't forget about that. I just mentioned that it doesn't affect these people because he thought they were gashing each other (they're not). XD
Keep as is But Sell Tokens in CStore to increase 10mil cap on both Refined and mostly un-refined Dill
This is an idea I have in mind too: sell tokens that elevate the refinement cap, lets say to 16k a day, but make it character bound and put a cap on how much an account can have, for example 2 alts. Like that dil farmers, hard core players and the casual player are served.
No! And a Account Limit of.. what's a healthy value? 10 Characters? so ~80k per Account(or less)?
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
There is no "correct" exchange rate, and anyone who argues to the contrary is just valuing their own interests above everyone else's. NO to more arbitrary manipulations and limitations of the market. Let it go where supply and demand take it.
If the cap limit is increased, then the Dil to Zen exchange rate limit should also be increased as well. I would say the limit should be increased from 500:1 to 1000:1.
Ah, this old argument again. This has been around since the dawn of the currency reform. Honestly I wouldnt mind seeing a cap increase for refinement, something to the tune of an extra 2k possibly. As for the how much an account can refine....? Not so much. Once you find the dil/marks/ec farming groove you can farm up a decent amount of each in a couple of hours a day on multiple toons. The biggest thing to keep in mind with this game is, patience beats the system every time.
Well given the new prices of costumes in the dilithium store, I think it is a good idea. That said, they need to also cap how many orders for Zen a buyer can place. That will cut down on people with boat loads of dilithium manipulating the market.
Comments
You mean crude? I don't think oil is cruel.
original join date 2010
Member: Team Trekyards. Visit Trekyards today!
Still not getting economics 101.....*SIGH*
First off I am not considered an "average" player because I have 10 captains on my account. Since I generally do not have enough time in the day to play all 10 captains to get 8,000 Dil per captain, I generally just queue up some Doff missions (including the Contraband mission), admiralty missions, do the Academy mid-term test and play one Advanced STF (typically CCA because it is quick).
Here's my simplistic breakdown of the amount of Dil I get. This assumes that I am only getting Dil from the Contraband Doff mission and no other Doff missions. Additionally, I would say that on average players can get 1,000 Dil from the admiralty missions on a daily basis. This probably takes around 15 minutes per captain; most of the time would be for selecting ships for Admiralty missions.
2,000 - Contraband Doff mission
1,000 - Admiralty *
480 - Academy Mid-Term
720 - One Advanced STF
4,200 - Total Dil
42,000 = 4,200 Dil * 10 captains
* This is based on the number of ships I have. Players with fewer ships would be limited as to how many missions they will be able to do at any single time and would also be limited how far they can progress into the Admiralty system. New players who do not purchase ships from the C-Store and do not have access to free ships that were obtainable from previous Anniversary / Summer / Winter events would be at a disadvantage. For example, a new player who started playing STO in June 2016 and did not purchase any ship from the C-Store would only have 7 ships available to do the Admiralty system. That includes the T1 through T5 ships, the T6 Xyphius Heavy Escort from the 2016 Risa Summer Event, and lastly the free T3 ship (???) from the Temporal Ambassador mission.
Having a daily account refinement cap of 24k Dil would limit my ability to refine Dil something I need in order to upgrade gear. I probably used up around 300k Dil this week to upgrade gear. With a refinement cap of 24k on the account it would take me 12.5 days to refine the amount of Dil I consumed for upgrades. Assuming I had no raw Dil stockpiled, it would take only 7.14 days to refine the amount of Dil I consumed for upgrades based on accumulating 4,200 Dil per captain with the 8,000 refinement limit per captain.
Why so many captain? Diversity... playing different captain classes in different factions. Limiting myself to just one faction / one class type would be boring. Also, I do not solely rely on the Dil Exchange to get Zen. I purchase Zen during the course of year during the Bonus Zen sales to get the best bang for the buck. I no problems supporting the game and I don't have any real desire to purchase Dil from the Dil Exchange.
For someone like me to get the most out of Dil refinement based on how much I can get playing casually on each captain I would need to basically have 3 accounts assuming a 24k cap on the account. Basically it would work out to 1 account per faction that I play. This would be very bad because:
#1 - Paying the $15 monthly sub even for just 1 month unlocks a lot of useful things on the account such as the Account Bank, personal inventory slots and bank inventory slots. If I wanted all those perks for all my captains across 3 accounts, then I would need to spend $45 to sub each account for 1 month.
#2 - LTS... If I wanted the LTS to apply to all my captains across 3 accounts, then I need to purchase the LTS specifically for each account. That works out to $900 or $600 when the LTS is on sale. That is something I am definitely not going to do.
#3 - Cross faction ship bundles. Well you can forget about this because there is no point in purchasing a cross faction bundle if each account is only setup for one faction. If I wanted the T6 battlecruiser on one account I can simply purchase the T6 battlecrusier bundle for $60 or $48 when on sale. However, if each faction has their own account, then I would need to purchase each ship individually for $90 or $72 when on sale. It would be even or worse if I wanted the 31St Century ships for all my captains. The ship bundle costs $60 or $48 when on sale and since they are cross faction ships all my captains will be able to use them on a single account. However, if my captains were split into 3 accounts, then I would need to spend $180 / $144 to get those ships for all my captains.
Limiting the refinement cap to 24k per account greatly diminishes the value of having multiple captains on one account. That in effect limits the potential sale of ships as well since fewer captains on an account generally means less diversity and less of a need to purchase ships to fuel that diversity. As for the LTS, yeah I am definitely not going to purchase it 3 times for 3 accounts, but there are people who would likely buy it regardless of how many or how few captains on are one account. Though I am sure they would shy away from purchasing the LTS for multiple accounts.
Overall, assuming players would like to maximize the amount of Dil they can refine per day, a 24k refinement cap limit will likely have a negative impact on revenues for Cryptic mostly based on fewer ship sales. And it could prove to a disincentive to pay for a subscription / purchase the LTS.
To tie this in with the "contraband" issues, it never really took (In the old pre-nerf days) 3 hours to max out a character with enough contraband available, it took 4 (maybe) 5 minute visits each spaced 4 hours apart. This kind of player, if he can chain 12 alts through one hour of play, was "earning" 96k dil for his 4 hours in a day's worth of "effort".
Now, I don't know what the current goals are, Cryptic being cryptic as usual on matters such as this, so for sake of example and explanation I roll with what I know, if this is going to be adopted the Devs can, obviously, insert the numbers they desire and seek into the equation(s).
But the logic is sound - set an account-wide cap to the maximum desired amounts of dilithium that the dev team expects to see introduced into the economy from one player on a regular basis, and going a little higher on this number (ie, while as of last check the Devs want 3.5 hours of play to equal a cap-out, I based the number for how many accounts can be capped in a day on 3 hours of play so the "hardcore/elite" can strive to be "better than desired" and still turn a profit for being so).
Cause here's a bit of how I look at it: If the cap's a somewhat astronomical number, it's existence isn't going to phase me because I'm never going to hit it. The "hardcore / elite" may grouse, but with some "padding" built in they'll hopefully only brush the cap when they're playing full 24 hour days. The farmer will be nearly shut down because the profit of doing nothing but farming (remember, above math shows a farmer could farm 96k in 4 hours of play) for the sake of farming is crushed into the ground, since that one account has been "gimped" on the order of 32k+/day...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
The hardcore dil farmers may start off with a set amount of (what may be a large amount of) dilithium. They then parlay that into buying Zen. Once they have the beginning chunk of dilithium and/or Zen, they play the Zen/dilithium market, buying larger and larger quantities of dilithium when the Zen price goes up, and selling the Zen when the dilithium price goes up.
If you watch the dil exchange for 10 minutes, you can see the artificial inflation going on, as they make small "buy Zen" bids rising incrementally, driving the "sell Zen" tab's numbers up.
The meat of the "problem" isn't with the farming of dilithium, per se- it's with the gaming of the exchange. People are making boatloads of free Zen with a one-time dilithium investment, which has been gradually making prices for those who only buy Zen with dil to throw up their hands in defeat, stating that it isn't worth it. And the closer it gets to the cap, the less Zen needs to be bought for someone's dilithium needs with real money.
A hard cap on the amount of Zen one can buy via the exchange (5000z per day?) with dilithium per account would not only limit the gaming/botting of the exchange, but it would dis-incentivize dilithium hoarding (for the purpose of buying Zen), and setting up a ridiculous amount of alts just to farm dilithium. Nerfing Contraband is kind of silly, if it was meant to be any kind of "farming Zen deterrent." The ones most successful at that won't lose a thing.
I was careful not to suggest a restriction on how much Zen one could sell, because otherwise it's an incentive to only buy up to [x] amount per day with real money. That's cutting of Zen sale $.
And buying 5k Zen a day with dil was being extremely generous, as I would suggest a max of 1k per day, per account to be more reasonable. Even at 300dil per Zen, that's still 300,000 dilithium per day, which no one should really be able to produce.
Relax. Upgrading a beam from XIII to XIV a day later won't make any real difference in your life.
Except during upgrade week(end)s of course. Do it today, or pay double tomorrow.
Of course, if they are doing so, those who are playing the exchange within a 5-dil spread are actually TRIBBLE each other- rather than their intended focus, which would be Dil sellers trying to get free Zen. I find this amusing.
I also agree with the Zen exchange cap idea. For LTS/Subs perhaps it should be higher- but for free accounts make it so low that it would cripple any frequent exchange capability and it would also serve a dual purpose in incentivizing subs.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
I'm beginning to rethink my stance on the refining cap...
^took the words out of my mouth
Tal'Shiar/Reman Resistance/Romulan Nemesis uniform, pls.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7403/13262502435_5604548f2c_o.png
You'd also probably be able to hit the account-wide refinement cap on a single character. Not only would it make all of your alts completely useless (unless you're a roleplayer, or just like having variety), but your alts would get stuck with unrefined dil you can never refine. You'd end up having choose which character today you want to refine dil on, if you have any alts with unrefined dil. Then after you refine all their dil you might as well just delete all your alts since there would be no point in having them anymore (well, you could use them to get energy credits from doff/admirality, but then you'd wind up having dil you can't refine).
My 23c character already has over 100k unrefined dil. In 4 days I'll have all reputations, except temporal, at T5.
T5 Omega rep gives a 9k dil reward. All others give 32k. So I'm gonna be sitting on a ton of unrefined dil for a while, while more is adding up from doff, admirality assigments, and just playing the game.
Soooo yeah. I have been doing the daily refine assignment at my fleet dilithium mine as well as the refine assignment from veteran rewards at the academy. But I just can't refine it fast enough. I might take a short break after I max my reps. Log in every few days for the auto refine to kick in until It's all refined. The thought of having to stop playing the game for a while simply because of this is unsettling (not like anyone would miss me anyway).
You have to remember, the people doing this so egregiously have a massive stockpile of Zen, as well as a massive stockpile of dilithium.
Whether it goes up too far, or down too low, they win either way, because it is only adding to one stockpile or the other. And having a huge stockpile, they simply buy when something hits x and sell when something hits y.
Having the "Sell Zen" tab go higher means that one can't see what the actual going rate is for people putting dilithium up. So, someone trying to buy Zen with dil sees a high number on both tabs, which gains this type of seller more dil per zen.
Example: If I want to have a +/- 5 (or more!) spread, I would put a 5000z sale at my "high price," buy 5000z at my "low" price, and have the rest of my slots with smaller sales in between to force the market to stay at this +/- rate. Every unit of dil I sell over my "buy Zen" price is pure profit, since It's driving the price point up for my "Sell Zen" price, which is higher. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Like I said, watch the exchange for a few minutes, and you'll see this very thing going on. It's especially obvious when you see jumps of 5 or so for no reason (making the spread larger). It's why the wisest thing to do when buying or selling is to pick a price and stick to it, instead of just buying/selling at whatever cost the market manipulators are creating.
What's important is that it seems feasible to buy Zen for Dilithium, because otherwise the F2P system doesn't work and the F2Pers will not find the game much fun. Because that would ultimately lead to the death of the game, and then everyone loses.
There is, in fact, a second half of my post. One in which I talk about people artificially manipulating the exchange rate (and how they do it). So I kinda didn't forget about that. I just mentioned that it doesn't affect these people because he thought they were gashing each other (they're not). XD
This is an idea I have in mind too: sell tokens that elevate the refinement cap, lets say to 16k a day, but make it character bound and put a cap on how much an account can have, for example 2 alts. Like that dil farmers, hard core players and the casual player are served.