the infinity thing was out for a while before they upped the EC limits - that was not what did it
from what i can find out, infinity promotion choice packs started up on december 8th of 2016, and the EC limits were upped june 1st, 2017...after which, promo ship prices started dropping as they started showing up on the exchange again instead of the gray market
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Trust me I am super rich in many MMOs. Perhaps its sad but I spend more time working markets then playing most games.
All exchange fees are to me is a minor annoyance... that keep me from playing around with pettty little things that are profitable for new players... games with major fees I just past them on. Its like taxing businesses of course you tax them but every time the tax rate goes up the price of their products go up 2x the tax rate. Taxes go up 2% then bump your sell price 4%.
Exchange fees would have the exact opposite effect Bort is looking for. Sell price on the exchange would just go up to cover the fees. Those us sitting on BILLIONS of EC, and billions more of items that can be dropped on the market at anytime are not going to sweat 2% or 10% fees. They will be passed on and our piles of EC will remain... waiting for the day when we are bored and decide to manipulate something for fun.
Whatever sink they come up with... it has to be attractive enough to attract people like me to burn a few hundred million at least... and not punish the new player or weekend player that thinks 10 or 20 million ec is a fortune.
I still say the best way to go is to give EC barons a chance to gamble it away... in fact that Gold Ferengi ship the devs like to bestow at random on big spenders. Offer directly EC vendor gamble boxes with a chance to drop it ... or add it to the dabo wheel as a drop on massive EC bets. Making them events... like say "Big Spender Dabo weekend" an event that lasts one weekend every 3 or 4 months where a min 1 million per dot bet gives you a small chance to win those golden skin I'm a whale ships. They can drop a new Gold skinned ship every few months between Phoenix boxes and imo that would give the barons a reason to go into their bank and pull out 10 or 20 of the 1000 space traits there holding and sell them, or a few of the T6 ships or training books... perhaps someone like me gets tempted to pull out and drop a handful of my 100 quark holo doffs. Make it a timed event and for a few weeks at least after the market will be depressed. Just like Dil goes down for awhile after phoenix.
I don’t buy it.
Perhaps it’s due to the fact that every time peeps come up with ideas for “needed” recourse sinks they have a habit of suggesting exactly those that do not happen to hurt them (you know like those who never contribute a poo to a fleet and still want new holdings - lol). Then when a potent sink has been identified they do everything they can to discuss the relevance away from it.
You throw in stuff like Billions of EC, reare items and whatever to underline how rich you are. So are a lot of players. So am I. Yet here you are “threatening” to raise the prices for low end items to hurt new players or troll the market out of boredom. Guess what. The exchange works on both directions and any price increase you make others pay *you* have to pay for your next purchase as well. A flat out increase of 2% there is nothing compared to the 2% that get erased from game every single time a transaction takes place.
Also, your suggestion for a Richie rich gambling system for EC is nothing but decoy as well. Core rule of every gambling is a system where everybody can play in, not only certain levels of wealth. You only bring it up cuz you are an exchange ferengi and you yourself do not have the slightest interest in gambling.
Sure, you would love to have that golden ferengie ship don’t you? I buy that part out of your post as it is the one single item in game you can’t get. Reason is that cryptic hands it only out for players who support STO with RL money and you obviously do not.
I have the golden ferengi ship by the way. It loses its appeal fast the moment you have it. Really, trust me on that one!
In any case. An exchange tax will hurt you out of all people the most. Much more than you can hurt others with it. That much is clear after reading your post on topic so I thank you for it.
Its an honest look at what fees do. If you think a 2% or 10% fee on transation won't simply be passed on your dreaming. If they add a 10% fee tomorrow. Ships listed for 1 billion today will be listed for 1.1 billion. Why wouldn't people pass it on. Games with fees still have inflation... unless the developer is manipulating things. Games like GW2 still has tons of inflation... only real difference is they have a economist on staff and every few months they clearly manipulate things.
As far as money I spend 10-20 bucks a month as I always have since launch. Yes I support this game... and yes 99% of my game wealth has come from the exchange. Its part of the game... working the exchange is fun and with out the exchange Cryptic would go broke. All the keys I buy every day with EC (I open anywhere from 20-100 boxes a day most days anyway) is money in Cryptics pocket. Sure someone else bought the key... but if I wasn't giving them EC for them they wouldn't have.
I guess I'm saying EC is a fine line. EC needs to hold value if Cryptic is going to continue making real money. They also have to keep inflation in check enough so that a new player can see their 20-30 bucks worth of keys will sell for enough EC to buy what they really want. Frankly Cryptic should have been worrying more about inflation before now. My guess is they have been worrying about it but somehow though adding a bunch of new EC sources like daily e box rewards was going to fix things.
As far as the golden snitch ship na I don't really care if I have it or not... my toon is parked in front of a bank 99% of the time what do I care. It was just an idea. Really I think a unique ship would make more sense. Make it a one off dabo win ship.... the catch is it HAS TO BE account bound. Clearly it would be pointless if it wasn't. Other prizes could also work... boosters holo doffs whatever but it all has to be account bound stuff. I mentioned the golden snitch ferengi ship because ideally it would have to be something attractive enough to get people LIKE US with lots of EC to burn it. I am not spending billions to get a bunch of account bound boosters or something, those are fine for bobby prizes, but to burn billions there needs to be some reward so cool that people are willing to do that. When they re run the event 3 or 4 months later there needs to be a new grand prize with the same perceived value to entice the same people to do it again. Cause like it or not... there are a lot of "rich" players in the game, but probably only 20 or 30 that are insanely rich. I'm not sure I would qualify as insanely rich myself. I could clean out my banks in a week or two and probably have 15-20 billion but I don't think that puts me in the top 10% let alone 1%.
Fees just punish everyone equally.... and that isn't what is required. We need the 1% and the 10% 20% even to burn up some of the stockpiled EC and Banked items. That only happens if they volunteer it.
LOTROs Posting Fee, as I said was very small and was not tied into the price of the item.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
LOTROs Posting Fee, as I said was very small and was not tied into the price of the item.
Not the game they want to emulate. Their auction house is beyond messed up... and its a game where people sit around spamming looking to buy msgs cause you can mail each other store bought bound items for a charge.
A fluke perhaps but Cryptic is on to the right idea having never included fees. Fees and posting charges do get passed on by the seller.
Cryptic has a good mechanic with the phoenix boxes. They had the same problem with inflation on Dill. The problem of course is they have to keep adding stuff in the boxes for people to keep paying the promo... or keep increasing gear levels or preleasing > gear all the time to keep people buying phoenix upgrades.
Still its a mechanic that would work for EC as well... fees will not remove enough EC fast enough as after 9 years the majority of it is sitting with the super rich. It would be like the Gov adding a 2% sales tax... hows is that going to free billions sitting in a bank, it won't it will effect the masses constantly spending money.
BTW, LOTRO took away the ability to mail Account Bound Items for Mithril Coins last year. Not saying about emulating anything, but indicating that Posting fees don't have to be a % of sale price but something and that something was small.
That may also have a side effect of curtailing people's use of the Exchange as additional storage.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
BTW, LOTRO took away the ability to mail Account Bound Items for Mithril Coins last year. Not saying about emulating anything, but indicating that Posting fees don't have to be a % of sale price but something and that something was small.
That may also have a side effect of curtailing people's use of the Exchange as additional storage.
Good point. I just hope they don't think putting a posting fee or a 2% tax on the exchange will magically solve anything. There are just too many people sitting on stockpiles of value already. It really is like adding a sales tax and expecting that to fix the gap between rich and poor. It won't. And clearly we can't do estate taxes in a game.... or a yearly income tax. Ya lotro I haven't played in awhile.... they have tried a bunch of things, including a income tax type sink when they added player housing and charged upkeep. Cryptics fleet base was very much the same idea... but they have both removed EC sinks there and a large portion of the player base has completed all the upgrades (or as many as they will be doing).
Fees could help I just don't see them solving anything alone... or evening out the distribution of wealth, which would also be good for Crytpic.
BTW, LOTRO took away the ability to mail Account Bound Items for Mithril Coins last year. Not saying about emulating anything, but indicating that Posting fees don't have to be a % of sale price but something and that something was small.
That may also have a side effect of curtailing people's use of the Exchange as additional storage.
Now, see, that's a good point. People DO use the exchange as supplemental storage and a lot of the prices that are obviously ridiculous tend to be those people...adding a listing fee based on the value of an item listed is problematic because it would hurt the poor exponentially more. So, the only way a listing fee would work universally would be to make it NOT be EC but in dilithium. A universal 1000 refined dilithium for every listing. Even the EC rich would pause before they listed 100 items or tried to corner the market. The poor would be able to afford to list their items through their daily refinement of dilithium but wouldn't be held prisoner by their own poverty when they wanted to list their luckily won T6 ship for half a billion but couldn't afford the 50mil listing fee.
Only idiots would post anything on the exchange for that.
the infinity thing was out for a while before they upped the EC limits - that was not what did it
from what i can find out, infinity promotion choice packs started up on december 8th of 2016, and the EC limits were upped june 1st, 2017...after which, promo ship prices started dropping as they started showing up on the exchange again instead of the gray market
When the infinity regular box first came out and all ships became much more common, all EC costs for ships dropped across the board. Some ships like the Acheros and vonph dropped all the way down to 70 mil because of how damn common they were. It wasn't until around the launch of discovery that lockbox ship prices start inflating tremendously which happened for a number of reasons. If they really want to solve this inflation all they need to do is increase the chances of the prize ships, just making them like a 2.5% drop rate would make it extremely more desireable for people to try their hands at winning one and make them more common reducing prices. If borticus wants to reduce the prices on promo ships 5% would be a good amount and have a similar effect.
The price of the ships will vary hugely based on how popular the ship is or how good the trait looks just as it does for how well the boxes go down. Remember that it was the very lukewarm reception to the so'na array ship thing that brought about a very quick introduction of the choice list to the r&d gamblebox.
The exchange price is also what someone hopes they'll get for it, doesn't mean it actually sells for that much.
A listing fee wouldn't be a bad thing based on time its posted for rather than the asking price should reduce the greedier gougers trying to offset the perceived loss caused by a "sales tax".
Unless they're willing to curtail the ec flowing in from sources like endeavour boxes then they'd be better making several small sinks that are worthwhile to players such as the ability to pay some ec to swap specializations about during the first few minutes of a random tfo.
Reinstating the transwarp to mission cost would come across as admitting it wasn't a great idea so may not happen which in some ways isn't bad since not having the fee really speeds up some of the lower level content that requires ludicrous amounts of back and forth in sector space at glacial speeds. Travelling which would be all the more tedious for a lowbie running the arcs like the iconian war which dumps you out of one mission and making you go all the way back across the quadrant for the next.
The price of the ships will vary hugely based on how popular the ship is or how good the trait looks just as it does for how well the boxes go down. Remember that it was the very lukewarm reception to the so'na array ship thing that brought about a very quick introduction of the choice list to the r&d gamblebox.
The exchange price is also what someone hopes they'll get for it, doesn't mean it actually sells for that much.
A listing fee wouldn't be a bad thing based on time its posted for rather than the asking price should reduce the greedier gougers trying to offset the perceived loss caused by a "sales tax".
Unless they're willing to curtail the ec flowing in from sources like endeavour boxes then they'd be better making several small sinks that are worthwhile to players such as the ability to pay some ec to swap specializations about during the first few minutes of a random tfo.
Reinstating the transwarp to mission cost would come across as admitting it wasn't a great idea so may not happen which in some ways isn't bad since not having the fee really speeds up some of the lower level content that requires ludicrous amounts of back and forth in sector space at glacial speeds. Travelling which would be all the more tedious for a lowbie running the arcs like the iconian war which dumps you out of one mission and making you go all the way back across the quadrant for the next.
Just have to say cause I have seen a few people say now, "just because you see it listed at X doesn't mean it sells for that". With t6 ships if you see it listed there it sells there 99% of the time. The inexpensive ones are lobi ships and are common. Anything that comes from an actual box win sells in a range with the lowest being around 400 mil right now. This week alone I have sold 3 disco T6 boxes for 470-490 million... and one TOS dread for I think it was 470 might have been a bit lower. I also purchased for myself a 23rd century ship cause I wanted another T'liss paid someone 1.2 billion for it.... So yes they do sell and if you post them around the low end of where those ships are they sell same day 9 times out of 10.
Also the problem is not endeavour boxes. At most people are making a million a day there which is peanuts when Lobi ships start at 200 million. 3/4 of a year of endeavour every day for one lobi ship.... ya that IS not the problem. Lets be honest give everyone that plays one hour a day a 20 million gift... and the poor will still be poor and the rich will still be rich.
The problem right now is not inflation... its concentration of wealth. A few players most of us that have been around 9 years have stockpiled not only the EC... but the lockbox items and other bits that have value. We can do stupid thing like post 100s of a specific item at half its value... and buy up twice as many under the new low before removing our pricing block. People do that for days because there isn't much to do with your wealth but make more.
I would expect more then half and perhaps as many as 90% of the T6 lockbox ships on the exchange are sold by the same small handful of people... the rest are the honest random wins from non market players. I mean as I say I sold 4 so far this week and its Thursday.
Again all taxing the exchange will do is punish the new player or new market worker who is trading R&D mats or crafted upgrades or playing the doff break down game to make a few million on white doffs. That stuff is possible for new players cause its tedious and people with billions already don't waste an hour of their day to make 4 or 5 million. Put a 10% fee or worse a posting fee on those small transactions and that all stops. Then everyone will be complaining about how white engineering doffs that used to go for 30k each all day long are now 150k.
Plenty of good sink ideas that burn the EC but entice people to spend. The ones I like that aren't silly fees that make it hard for new players to become exchange Ferengi...
1- Gambling is the easiest way, as most people with the wealth are known gamblers. So I would say a high roller dabo event or EC phoenix type box. Time limited, account bound rewards.
2 - they could add more EC required by fleet projects. This could work well with a new holding... heck just create a new Ferengi holding that burns tons of EC and GPL instead of a ton of Dil as the colony did.
3 - They could add an alternate payment method for Rep Gear, perhaps when we unlock the rep discount also unlock a secondary EC pay instead of using Dil.... the option to spend 2 million ec or something instead of the dil might be attractive enough to burn at least some ec.
4 - Add a new tier of items at the GPL store... a new tier of actually attractive items that cost both GPL and EC.
5 - Add an EC store with quality of life unlocks. Perhaps say 20 million EC for an extra 5 exchange sales slots per toon. To say a max of 50 or 60 slots. Could be other stuff. Only down side its a pay once and done so it won't help long term... and it does eat into real $ sales if its stuff that could go on the zen store instead.
6 - A save the poor bajoran fund... not really joking. Could be a daily event where you collect padds for the bajoran school kids, or food, or whatever... and the easiest way to collect them would be to pay the ferengi traders on the corner some cold hard EC. Could the standard run for 14 days and collect X or Y widget. This may or may not reduce EC depending how hard to they make it to just collect the bits without paying the ferengis.
7 - Lifetime sub players have an option to refine a little extra Dil each day. Perhaps offering an option for anyone to refine a bit extra for a EC fee could help kill some EC. Getting the pricing right on that one would be key... to high and people just roll more alts and forget the EC option. Contraband shows that there is a market for easy to get Dil... a direct from Cryptic EC -> Dil sink could be a good long term sink. Right now contraband will set you back what 125-150k for 2000 dil.... perhaps a ferengi vendor could sell "Ferengi Contraband" with a description that reads "The River will provide" of course for 50k each or so, which after an 8 hour mission will provide 1k dil. That makes contraband still better but offers a way to destroy EC that would be attractive to many with access EC.
This thread is quite entertaining, keep it up guys.
I still stand by my 2% tax on every completed exchange sale suggestion.
One remark for mister 'cryptic is taking away MY MONEY' though:
- That is the whole point of this thread. Taking away ALL the money and not just the money of OTHERS.
snip
Some other slightly more disrupting ideas:
1) Make 'all' the non-combat pets available as bind to character on pickup versions in the GPL store. Preferable finally add a high-stakes dabo weekend event to go along with that.
2) Give the scaling T6 ships a few more months to generate some 'metrics' then take an honest look at the non-cstore t1-t5 ships currently available for dilithium (and the occasional level-up token). Then consider switching those back to energy credit purchases.
3) There are other noob-traps that might deserve a look too, like the 3 for 1 doff rarity upgrades for example.
The price of the ships will vary hugely based on how popular the ship is or how good the trait looks just as it does for how well the boxes go down. Remember that it was the very lukewarm reception to the so'na array ship thing that brought about a very quick introduction of the choice list to the r&d gamblebox.
The exchange price is also what someone hopes they'll get for it, doesn't mean it actually sells for that much.
A listing fee wouldn't be a bad thing based on time its posted for rather than the asking price should reduce the greedier gougers trying to offset the perceived loss caused by a "sales tax".
Unless they're willing to curtail the ec flowing in from sources like endeavour boxes then they'd be better making several small sinks that are worthwhile to players such as the ability to pay some ec to swap specializations about during the first few minutes of a random tfo.
Reinstating the transwarp to mission cost would come across as admitting it wasn't a great idea so may not happen which in some ways isn't bad since not having the fee really speeds up some of the lower level content that requires ludicrous amounts of back and forth in sector space at glacial speeds. Travelling which would be all the more tedious for a lowbie running the arcs like the iconian war which dumps you out of one mission and making you go all the way back across the quadrant for the next.
Just have to say cause I have seen a few people say now, "just because you see it listed at X doesn't mean it sells for that". With t6 ships if you see it listed there it sells there 99% of the time. The inexpensive ones are lobi ships and are common. Anything that comes from an actual box win sells in a range with the lowest being around 400 mil right now. This week alone I have sold 3 disco T6 boxes for 470-490 million... and one TOS dread for I think it was 470 might have been a bit lower. I also purchased for myself a 23rd century ship cause I wanted another T'liss paid someone 1.2 billion for it.... So yes they do sell and if you post them around the low end of where those ships are they sell same day 9 times out of 10.
Also the problem is not endeavour boxes. At most people are making a million a day there which is peanuts when Lobi ships start at 200 million. 3/4 of a year of endeavour every day for one lobi ship.... ya that IS not the problem. Lets be honest give everyone that plays one hour a day a 20 million gift... and the poor will still be poor and the rich will still be rich.
The problem right now is not inflation... its concentration of wealth. A few players most of us that have been around 9 years have stockpiled not only the EC... but the lockbox items and other bits that have value. We can do stupid thing like post 100s of a specific item at half its value... and buy up twice as many under the new low before removing our pricing block. People do that for days because there isn't much to do with your wealth but make more.
I would expect more then half and perhaps as many as 90% of the T6 lockbox ships on the exchange are sold by the same small handful of people... the rest are the honest random wins from non market players. I mean as I say I sold 4 so far this week and its Thursday.
Again all taxing the exchange will do is punish the new player or new market worker who is trading R&D mats or crafted upgrades or playing the doff break down game to make a few million on white doffs. That stuff is possible for new players cause its tedious and people with billions already don't waste an hour of their day to make 4 or 5 million. Put a 10% fee or worse a posting fee on those small transactions and that all stops. Then everyone will be complaining about how white engineering doffs that used to go for 30k each all day long are now 150k.
Plenty of good sink ideas that burn the EC but entice people to spend. The ones I like that aren't silly fees that make it hard for new players to become exchange Ferengi...
1- Gambling is the easiest way, as most people with the wealth are known gamblers. So I would say a high roller dabo event or EC phoenix type box. Time limited, account bound rewards.
2 - they could add more EC required by fleet projects. This could work well with a new holding... heck just create a new Ferengi holding that burns tons of EC and GPL instead of a ton of Dil as the colony did.
3 - They could add an alternate payment method for Rep Gear, perhaps when we unlock the rep discount also unlock a secondary EC pay instead of using Dil.... the option to spend 2 million ec or something instead of the dil might be attractive enough to burn at least some ec.
4 - Add a new tier of items at the GPL store... a new tier of actually attractive items that cost both GPL and EC.
5 - Add an EC store with quality of life unlocks. Perhaps say 20 million EC for an extra 5 exchange sales slots per toon. To say a max of 50 or 60 slots. Could be other stuff. Only down side its a pay once and done so it won't help long term... and it does eat into real $ sales if its stuff that could go on the zen store instead.
6 - A save the poor bajoran fund... not really joking. Could be a daily event where you collect padds for the bajoran school kids, or food, or whatever... and the easiest way to collect them would be to pay the ferengi traders on the corner some cold hard EC. Could the standard run for 14 days and collect X or Y widget. This may or may not reduce EC depending how hard to they make it to just collect the bits without paying the ferengis.
7 - Lifetime sub players have an option to refine a little extra Dil each day. Perhaps offering an option for anyone to refine a bit extra for a EC fee could help kill some EC. Getting the pricing right on that one would be key... to high and people just roll more alts and forget the EC option. Contraband shows that there is a market for easy to get Dil... a direct from Cryptic EC -> Dil sink could be a good long term sink. Right now contraband will set you back what 125-150k for 2000 dil.... perhaps a ferengi vendor could sell "Ferengi Contraband" with a description that reads "The River will provide" of course for 50k each or so, which after an 8 hour mission will provide 1k dil. That makes contraband still better but offers a way to destroy EC that would be attractive to many with access EC.
The more you write the less I’m buying it I’m afraid...
(Un)fortunately I’m too lazy to even discuss as to why.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Its an honest look at what fees do. If you think a 2% or 10% fee on transation won't simply be passed on your dreaming. If they add a 10% fee tomorrow. Ships listed for 1 billion today will be listed for 1.1 billion.
This bears repeating. It's the absolute truth- if fees and taxes are introduced, the prices will go up, too. That's how real world economics work.
People who sell goods pass on their costs to the customers else they'll quit making a profit for the products they sell. If governments introduce higher taxes, the businesses raise their prices, if the governments raise minimum wages for employees, they raise their prices. They're not just going to up and decide one day to lower all their prices because you want them to- they need to see a return on their investment.
The EC "problem" is something Cryptic is going to have to solve because they're the ones who introduced the products being sold and at what quantities they're available. People set prices of the products based on how those products were introduced. EC has saturated the game because it's widely available to both free to play customers (those which rarely if ever spend a cent of real world money) and those which spend money on Zen regularly or subscribe to the game. Products that are rare either in quantity or availability will always fetch higher premiums (which is why those bought using real world cash will be expensive, because hey, who doesn't want everything for free, right?) and those which are widely available will be almost worthless by comparison.
This discussion can go on for decades and it's not going to change any of that. EC doesn't have value in the game for as long as it's "free" to obtain.
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.
This thread demonstrates once again why the devs prefer other communications channels than the forum. At least people on Twitter could read the question being asked.
This thread demonstrates once again why the devs prefer other communications channels than the forum. At least people on Twitter could read the question being asked.
We have read the question its just that the question make no sense because there is no inflation and there is no need to reduce inflation further because it doesn't exist.
We had inflation years ago but the past few years have all been deflation by the index trackers I use. The changes over the past few years solved inflation. There is no way to reduce inflation when the game is not having a problem with inflation.
This thread demonstrates once again why the devs prefer other communications channels than the forum. At least people on Twitter could read the question being asked.
We have read the question its just that the question make no sense because there is no inflation and there is no need to reduce inflation further because it doesn't exist.
We had inflation years ago but the past few years have all been deflation by the index trackers I use. The changes over the past few years solved inflation. There is no way to reduce inflation when the game is not having a problem with inflation.
I would be interested in seeing the data supporting that assertion...if you have any?
This thread demonstrates once again why the devs prefer other communications channels than the forum. At least people on Twitter could read the question being asked.
We have read the question its just that the question make no sense because there is no inflation and there is no need to reduce inflation further because it doesn't exist.
We had inflation years ago but the past few years have all been deflation by the index trackers I use. The changes over the past few years solved inflation. There is no way to reduce inflation when the game is not having a problem with inflation.
I would be interested in seeing the data supporting that assertion...if you have any?
I agree with him... and it goes to the real problem Concentration of wealth.
In demand high ticket items with low supply have gone up. Small items have gone way way down.
The super rich don't focus on doffs... or R&D mats... or the other common commodities that trade in high volume all day. Look at something like say a Z particle. They are key as they are used in basically every R&D everything. Right now 7-8k each with the odd push down or up. But a year ago they would have been 12k each and a year before 16k and when R&D launched as high as 30 each.
So things like T6 ships get more expensive... promo ships keep creeping toward the posting cap. While things like rare doffs that used to sell for 50 million now sell for 8 or 9. Crafting mats loose most of their value ect. Of course you can say these things are less in demand today which is true... but concentration is also an issue.
R&D mats could easily be fixed with new crafting items. Perhaps a push from crafting level 20 to 21-25 with new traits on offer at the end, or yet more unique crafted gear. (which would also require more upgrades for people to level) Perhaps its time to offer some new crafted set items, Ageis 2.0 or something which would require level 20 in multiple schools. That would drive the value of R&D mats back up... which actually might help with the inflation on top end items.
This thread demonstrates once again why the devs prefer other communications channels than the forum. At least people on Twitter could read the question being asked.
We have read the question its just that the question make no sense because there is no inflation and there is no need to reduce inflation further because it doesn't exist.
We had inflation years ago but the past few years have all been deflation by the index trackers I use. The changes over the past few years solved inflation. There is no way to reduce inflation when the game is not having a problem with inflation.
I would be interested in seeing the data supporting that assertion...if you have any?
All 5 types of experiential Tech upgrades used to sell for over 7million for 10 units. Today its 3million and dropping. Salvage at the time of writing has plummeted to stacks of 999 units at 160k per unit, crafting mats all down by a massive amount. A steady decline.
Pretty much every single very rare/Ultra rare+ tactical, Sci, Eng console, every Deflector, Warp core, Engine, Shield on the market all gone down massively over the prices we had mid 2017 and earlier. Even the top end stuff like DMGx3 all down. Very rare tactical consoles are pretty much at an all time low massively lower than 2017 prices. Hunting down perfect weapons with the perfect mods is no longer a problem on the whole due to the massive price decrease. Related to this all the unique player crafting items also down in price over peak. An Particle Emissions torpedo for example is now under 1million. Crafted Omni beams now 1million.
Since the market Cap was raised even the top end ships that sold for 1billion+ have had a small price decrease.
Even the recent lockbox items plummeted at a fast speed. Threat Assessment Algorithms was 10million last week, now 900k. Unconventional Systems 5.8million last week now 1 million.
Omega Fragment, slivers, shards and the rest have all been on a steady decline year on year. This cycle I brought them at an all time low. Slivers during the event where 53k per unit. Even now way outside the event the price has only gone up to 67k per unit. Again this is a deflation trend, no signs of inflation. The prices are now cheaper outside the event then what we had during the event years ago.
Even if I go back to older lock boxs, No Retreat, No Mercy was 1.5million now 450k.
Lockbox Keys jump around a lot and while not as low as 2014 are at the time of writing cheaper then peak prices in what we had in 2015 and later years. There has been no real inflation in keys in 4 years in in fact since peak deflation.
There are a few items that have gone up due to low supply but that is not EC inflation related. On the whole we are in a deflation market with prices either going down or stabilised near a low point.
There could be an area I missed but from what I am seeing STO has been in a deflation market for over a year now with none of the market symptoms you get when there is a problem with EC inflation. As I asked before where is the evidence of a problem with inflation? Why are we looking for solutions when there doesn't appear to be any EC inflation?
EDIT: I trade and check the market just about every single day in the morning and after work. I keep track of trends and of the items I deal in and all the items I deal in are stable or on a downwards trend.
This thread demonstrates once again why the devs prefer other communications channels than the forum. At least people on Twitter could read the question being asked.
We have read the question its just that the question make no sense because there is no inflation and there is no need to reduce inflation further because it doesn't exist.
We had inflation years ago but the past few years have all been deflation by the index trackers I use. The changes over the past few years solved inflation. There is no way to reduce inflation when the game is not having a problem with inflation.
I would be interested in seeing the data supporting that assertion...if you have any?
I agree with him... and it goes to the real problem Concentration of wealth.
In demand high ticket items with low supply have gone up. Small items have gone way way down.
The super rich don't focus on doffs... or R&D mats... or the other common commodities that trade in high volume all day. Look at something like say a Z particle. They are key as they are used in basically every R&D everything. Right now 7-8k each with the odd push down or up. But a year ago they would have been 12k each and a year before 16k and when R&D launched as high as 30 each.
So things like T6 ships get more expensive... promo ships keep creeping toward the posting cap. While things like rare doffs that used to sell for 50 million now sell for 8 or 9. Crafting mats loose most of their value ect. Of course you can say these things are less in demand today which is true... but concentration is also an issue.
R&D mats could easily be fixed with new crafting items. Perhaps a push from crafting level 20 to 21-25 with new traits on offer at the end, or yet more unique crafted gear. (which would also require more upgrades for people to level) Perhaps its time to offer some new crafted set items, Ageis 2.0 or something which would require level 20 in multiple schools. That would drive the value of R&D mats back up... which actually might help with the inflation on top end items.
The supply of (non-white) doffs and R&D mats are indeed extremely oversaturated. Doffs because nothing consumes them and R&D mats because Admiralty throws them out like candy.
But not relevant to EC inflation, that. That's caused simply by there not being anything to spend it on.
So things like T6 ships get more expensive... promo ships keep creeping toward the posting cap. While things like rare doffs that used to sell for 50 million now sell for 8 or 9. Crafting mats loose most of their value ect. Of course you can say these things are less in demand today which is true... but concentration is also an issue.
If I was to try to explain how this happens, I'd say that at least part is due to "flipping". This is the practice of buying something just so you can re-sell it for more. People do this IRL daily.
Two of the most commonly flipped things IRL are houses and cars. But, people who do this IRL usually do more than re-list the item. (then there's stock trading, but that's closer to the DilEx, than masterkeys.) They need to improve it to get enough return on the investment for it to be a career. Cars will get a quick tune-up and some spit and polish. Houses will get repainted and fixed up a bit. It's usually not major work, but stuff that a pro can do in a few hours or days and a homeowner might need weeks or months to get done. It makes the item more valuable, so that when they re-sell people have good reason to want to pay more for it.
The exchange in STO has no fee for use whatsoever. In fact the only risk is if you try to liquidate an asset and the going rate is lower than when you bought. It's not like buying a used car and hoping the knock in the engine is minor and easy to fix.
A thing that seems to be missed when you say: "A sales tax will have to be paid for by the buyer" is that it still destroys currency. After the transaction, some EC in the world is lost. That means there will be less money in the pool for the next purchase. And that is the goal of reducing inflation - there needs to be less money around.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
A thing that seems to be missed when you say: "A sales tax will have to be paid for by the buyer" is that it still destroys currency. After the transaction, some EC in the world is lost. That means there will be less money in the pool for the next purchase. And that is the goal of reducing inflation - there needs to be less money around.
Would a "tax" destroy currency faster than the game is introducing it into the economy? Imagine I'm getting 1,000,000 EC every day from completing endeavors...imagine 1,000,000 EC every day from every player. I don't think we're allowed to speculate about the number of players, but let's imagine billions of EC every day entering the economy... How will a tax impact that?
The thing is it won't. At this current point in the game's life, it is physically impossible to create any kind of ec sink that will impact the rich without completely ruining the game for the poor. The rich will get richer and the poor will be trapped by a tax or similar sink. The only way to combat this "inflation" is to combat it from a different perspective from items themselves.
Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,673Community Moderator
The thing is it won't. At this current point in the game's life, it is physically impossible to create any kind of ec sink that will impact the rich without completely ruining the game for the poor. The rich will get richer and the poor will be trapped by a tax or similar sink. The only way to combat this "inflation" is to combat it from a different perspective from items themselves.
Something like increasing supply of desirable items?
As Exchange prices do fluctuate based on Supply and Demand.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
The thing is it won't. At this current point in the game's life, it is physically impossible to create any kind of ec sink that will impact the rich without completely ruining the game for the poor. The rich will get richer and the poor will be trapped by a tax or similar sink. The only way to combat this "inflation" is to combat it from a different perspective from items themselves.
Something like increasing supply of desirable items?
As Exchange prices do fluctuate based on Supply and Demand.
Exactly. I've been mentioning it before the only realistic way to lower the price of items on the exchange is to make them more common. Do something like increase the drop rates of Lockbox ships to 2.5% and Promo ships to 5%. You'd get tons more people opening them by actually paying for keys themselves and tons more people selling the ships and driving them way down. I don't know if you remember the time when the acheros and vonph were in the infinity box but they were as low as 70 mil despite being elite lockbox ships because of how common they were.
An alternative method would be to make the infinity prize boxes themselves tradeable but I think that would have a much smaller impact.
The thing is it won't. At this current point in the game's life, it is physically impossible to create any kind of ec sink that will impact the rich without completely ruining the game for the poor. The rich will get richer and the poor will be trapped by a tax or similar sink. The only way to combat this "inflation" is to combat it from a different perspective from items themselves.
Something like increasing supply of desirable items?
As Exchange prices do fluctuate based on Supply and Demand.
Exactly. I've been mentioning it before the only realistic way to lower the price of items on the exchange is to make them more common. Do something like increase the drop rates of Lockbox ships to 2.5% and Promo ships to 5%. You'd get tons more people opening them by actually paying for keys themselves and tons more people selling the ships and driving them way down. I don't know if you remember the time when the acheros and vonph were in the infinity box but they were as low as 70 mil despite being elite lockbox ships because of how common they were.
An alternative method would be to make the infinity prize boxes themselves tradeable but I think that would have a much smaller impact.
The main issue with just making more things... is there is actually a very fine line between hard to get, and so easy that no one bothers. Exchange "workers" the games Ferengi may get a bad rap but the bottom line is without that mechanic of people playing the market the game would die. Cryptic NEEDS exchange Ferengi keeping promo ships over a billion EC and Lobi ships at 200m and lockbox at 400-500m... and the good space traits at 8m+ ect ect. Because if all that stuff was suddenly worthless or devalued greatly. No one would have any incentive at all to drop $20 bucks on Zen to buy keys to sell. Or stay logged in for 3 or 4 hours a night farming Dill like a pakled.
What phoenix did at least the first few runs... was deplete stockpiles. Which brought prices down nicely, and no one was upset cause they got value for what they burned. A tax adds no value its just a burn... which might be good might be bad hard to say this game doesn't exactly have as large a market as some other MMO examples. What they need to come up with is something that gives people a reason to spend their stockpiles. Valuable stuff in STO is horded. Think of all the people holding stacks of event items, infinity trait boxes, ect ect. There isn't a shortage of anything in the game really. Sure you might look at the exchange and only see 5 or 6 of something listed but there are 100s and perhaps 1000s in banks. If a EC sink is treated as an event like phoenix where its timed and burning your EC on the event is worth wile... all that stored wealth will flood the market. Granted between events its possible everything goes up as those still holding will be in an even better position to price fix.
I don't know the more I think about it the more I think Cryptic may have waited to long to try and have any sort of direct EC control mechanism. Perhaps something as simple as a new fleet holding that burns tons of EC is the better way to go. The colony holding did eat a lot of spare Dil... phoenix wasn't alone in keeping dil from skyrocketing. What we need is a Ferengi cameo on Star Trek Discovery so Cryptic can get the ok to bring a Ferengi fleet holding in. lol
Comments
from what i can find out, infinity promotion choice packs started up on december 8th of 2016, and the EC limits were upped june 1st, 2017...after which, promo ship prices started dropping as they started showing up on the exchange again instead of the gray market
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Its an honest look at what fees do. If you think a 2% or 10% fee on transation won't simply be passed on your dreaming. If they add a 10% fee tomorrow. Ships listed for 1 billion today will be listed for 1.1 billion. Why wouldn't people pass it on. Games with fees still have inflation... unless the developer is manipulating things. Games like GW2 still has tons of inflation... only real difference is they have a economist on staff and every few months they clearly manipulate things.
As far as money I spend 10-20 bucks a month as I always have since launch. Yes I support this game... and yes 99% of my game wealth has come from the exchange. Its part of the game... working the exchange is fun and with out the exchange Cryptic would go broke. All the keys I buy every day with EC (I open anywhere from 20-100 boxes a day most days anyway) is money in Cryptics pocket. Sure someone else bought the key... but if I wasn't giving them EC for them they wouldn't have.
I guess I'm saying EC is a fine line. EC needs to hold value if Cryptic is going to continue making real money. They also have to keep inflation in check enough so that a new player can see their 20-30 bucks worth of keys will sell for enough EC to buy what they really want. Frankly Cryptic should have been worrying more about inflation before now. My guess is they have been worrying about it but somehow though adding a bunch of new EC sources like daily e box rewards was going to fix things.
As far as the golden snitch ship na I don't really care if I have it or not... my toon is parked in front of a bank 99% of the time what do I care. It was just an idea. Really I think a unique ship would make more sense. Make it a one off dabo win ship.... the catch is it HAS TO BE account bound. Clearly it would be pointless if it wasn't. Other prizes could also work... boosters holo doffs whatever but it all has to be account bound stuff. I mentioned the golden snitch ferengi ship because ideally it would have to be something attractive enough to get people LIKE US with lots of EC to burn it. I am not spending billions to get a bunch of account bound boosters or something, those are fine for bobby prizes, but to burn billions there needs to be some reward so cool that people are willing to do that. When they re run the event 3 or 4 months later there needs to be a new grand prize with the same perceived value to entice the same people to do it again. Cause like it or not... there are a lot of "rich" players in the game, but probably only 20 or 30 that are insanely rich. I'm not sure I would qualify as insanely rich myself. I could clean out my banks in a week or two and probably have 15-20 billion but I don't think that puts me in the top 10% let alone 1%.
Fees just punish everyone equally.... and that isn't what is required. We need the 1% and the 10% 20% even to burn up some of the stockpiled EC and Banked items. That only happens if they volunteer it.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Not the game they want to emulate. Their auction house is beyond messed up... and its a game where people sit around spamming looking to buy msgs cause you can mail each other store bought bound items for a charge.
A fluke perhaps but Cryptic is on to the right idea having never included fees. Fees and posting charges do get passed on by the seller.
Cryptic has a good mechanic with the phoenix boxes. They had the same problem with inflation on Dill. The problem of course is they have to keep adding stuff in the boxes for people to keep paying the promo... or keep increasing gear levels or preleasing > gear all the time to keep people buying phoenix upgrades.
Still its a mechanic that would work for EC as well... fees will not remove enough EC fast enough as after 9 years the majority of it is sitting with the super rich. It would be like the Gov adding a 2% sales tax... hows is that going to free billions sitting in a bank, it won't it will effect the masses constantly spending money.
That may also have a side effect of curtailing people's use of the Exchange as additional storage.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Good point. I just hope they don't think putting a posting fee or a 2% tax on the exchange will magically solve anything. There are just too many people sitting on stockpiles of value already. It really is like adding a sales tax and expecting that to fix the gap between rich and poor. It won't. And clearly we can't do estate taxes in a game.... or a yearly income tax. Ya lotro I haven't played in awhile.... they have tried a bunch of things, including a income tax type sink when they added player housing and charged upkeep. Cryptics fleet base was very much the same idea... but they have both removed EC sinks there and a large portion of the player base has completed all the upgrades (or as many as they will be doing).
Fees could help I just don't see them solving anything alone... or evening out the distribution of wealth, which would also be good for Crytpic.
When the infinity regular box first came out and all ships became much more common, all EC costs for ships dropped across the board. Some ships like the Acheros and vonph dropped all the way down to 70 mil because of how damn common they were. It wasn't until around the launch of discovery that lockbox ship prices start inflating tremendously which happened for a number of reasons. If they really want to solve this inflation all they need to do is increase the chances of the prize ships, just making them like a 2.5% drop rate would make it extremely more desireable for people to try their hands at winning one and make them more common reducing prices. If borticus wants to reduce the prices on promo ships 5% would be a good amount and have a similar effect.
The exchange price is also what someone hopes they'll get for it, doesn't mean it actually sells for that much.
A listing fee wouldn't be a bad thing based on time its posted for rather than the asking price should reduce the greedier gougers trying to offset the perceived loss caused by a "sales tax".
Unless they're willing to curtail the ec flowing in from sources like endeavour boxes then they'd be better making several small sinks that are worthwhile to players such as the ability to pay some ec to swap specializations about during the first few minutes of a random tfo.
Reinstating the transwarp to mission cost would come across as admitting it wasn't a great idea so may not happen which in some ways isn't bad since not having the fee really speeds up some of the lower level content that requires ludicrous amounts of back and forth in sector space at glacial speeds. Travelling which would be all the more tedious for a lowbie running the arcs like the iconian war which dumps you out of one mission and making you go all the way back across the quadrant for the next.
Just have to say cause I have seen a few people say now, "just because you see it listed at X doesn't mean it sells for that". With t6 ships if you see it listed there it sells there 99% of the time. The inexpensive ones are lobi ships and are common. Anything that comes from an actual box win sells in a range with the lowest being around 400 mil right now. This week alone I have sold 3 disco T6 boxes for 470-490 million... and one TOS dread for I think it was 470 might have been a bit lower. I also purchased for myself a 23rd century ship cause I wanted another T'liss paid someone 1.2 billion for it.... So yes they do sell and if you post them around the low end of where those ships are they sell same day 9 times out of 10.
Also the problem is not endeavour boxes. At most people are making a million a day there which is peanuts when Lobi ships start at 200 million. 3/4 of a year of endeavour every day for one lobi ship.... ya that IS not the problem. Lets be honest give everyone that plays one hour a day a 20 million gift... and the poor will still be poor and the rich will still be rich.
The problem right now is not inflation... its concentration of wealth. A few players most of us that have been around 9 years have stockpiled not only the EC... but the lockbox items and other bits that have value. We can do stupid thing like post 100s of a specific item at half its value... and buy up twice as many under the new low before removing our pricing block. People do that for days because there isn't much to do with your wealth but make more.
I would expect more then half and perhaps as many as 90% of the T6 lockbox ships on the exchange are sold by the same small handful of people... the rest are the honest random wins from non market players. I mean as I say I sold 4 so far this week and its Thursday.
Again all taxing the exchange will do is punish the new player or new market worker who is trading R&D mats or crafted upgrades or playing the doff break down game to make a few million on white doffs. That stuff is possible for new players cause its tedious and people with billions already don't waste an hour of their day to make 4 or 5 million. Put a 10% fee or worse a posting fee on those small transactions and that all stops. Then everyone will be complaining about how white engineering doffs that used to go for 30k each all day long are now 150k.
Plenty of good sink ideas that burn the EC but entice people to spend. The ones I like that aren't silly fees that make it hard for new players to become exchange Ferengi...
1- Gambling is the easiest way, as most people with the wealth are known gamblers. So I would say a high roller dabo event or EC phoenix type box. Time limited, account bound rewards.
2 - they could add more EC required by fleet projects. This could work well with a new holding... heck just create a new Ferengi holding that burns tons of EC and GPL instead of a ton of Dil as the colony did.
3 - They could add an alternate payment method for Rep Gear, perhaps when we unlock the rep discount also unlock a secondary EC pay instead of using Dil.... the option to spend 2 million ec or something instead of the dil might be attractive enough to burn at least some ec.
4 - Add a new tier of items at the GPL store... a new tier of actually attractive items that cost both GPL and EC.
5 - Add an EC store with quality of life unlocks. Perhaps say 20 million EC for an extra 5 exchange sales slots per toon. To say a max of 50 or 60 slots. Could be other stuff. Only down side its a pay once and done so it won't help long term... and it does eat into real $ sales if its stuff that could go on the zen store instead.
6 - A save the poor bajoran fund... not really joking. Could be a daily event where you collect padds for the bajoran school kids, or food, or whatever... and the easiest way to collect them would be to pay the ferengi traders on the corner some cold hard EC. Could the standard run for 14 days and collect X or Y widget. This may or may not reduce EC depending how hard to they make it to just collect the bits without paying the ferengis.
7 - Lifetime sub players have an option to refine a little extra Dil each day. Perhaps offering an option for anyone to refine a bit extra for a EC fee could help kill some EC. Getting the pricing right on that one would be key... to high and people just roll more alts and forget the EC option. Contraband shows that there is a market for easy to get Dil... a direct from Cryptic EC -> Dil sink could be a good long term sink. Right now contraband will set you back what 125-150k for 2000 dil.... perhaps a ferengi vendor could sell "Ferengi Contraband" with a description that reads "The River will provide" of course for 50k each or so, which after an 8 hour mission will provide 1k dil. That makes contraband still better but offers a way to destroy EC that would be attractive to many with access EC.
I still stand by my 2% tax on every completed exchange sale suggestion.
One remark for mister 'cryptic is taking away MY MONEY' though:
- That is the whole point of this thread. Taking away ALL the money and not just the money of OTHERS.
snip
Some other slightly more disrupting ideas:
1) Make 'all' the non-combat pets available as bind to character on pickup versions in the GPL store. Preferable finally add a high-stakes dabo weekend event to go along with that.
2) Give the scaling T6 ships a few more months to generate some 'metrics' then take an honest look at the non-cstore t1-t5 ships currently available for dilithium (and the occasional level-up token). Then consider switching those back to energy credit purchases.
3) There are other noob-traps that might deserve a look too, like the 3 for 1 doff rarity upgrades for example.
The more you write the less I’m buying it I’m afraid...
(Un)fortunately I’m too lazy to even discuss as to why.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
This bears repeating. It's the absolute truth- if fees and taxes are introduced, the prices will go up, too. That's how real world economics work.
People who sell goods pass on their costs to the customers else they'll quit making a profit for the products they sell. If governments introduce higher taxes, the businesses raise their prices, if the governments raise minimum wages for employees, they raise their prices. They're not just going to up and decide one day to lower all their prices because you want them to- they need to see a return on their investment.
The EC "problem" is something Cryptic is going to have to solve because they're the ones who introduced the products being sold and at what quantities they're available. People set prices of the products based on how those products were introduced. EC has saturated the game because it's widely available to both free to play customers (those which rarely if ever spend a cent of real world money) and those which spend money on Zen regularly or subscribe to the game. Products that are rare either in quantity or availability will always fetch higher premiums (which is why those bought using real world cash will be expensive, because hey, who doesn't want everything for free, right?) and those which are widely available will be almost worthless by comparison.
This discussion can go on for decades and it's not going to change any of that. EC doesn't have value in the game for as long as it's "free" to obtain.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
We had inflation years ago but the past few years have all been deflation by the index trackers I use. The changes over the past few years solved inflation. There is no way to reduce inflation when the game is not having a problem with inflation.
I agree with him... and it goes to the real problem Concentration of wealth.
In demand high ticket items with low supply have gone up. Small items have gone way way down.
The super rich don't focus on doffs... or R&D mats... or the other common commodities that trade in high volume all day. Look at something like say a Z particle. They are key as they are used in basically every R&D everything. Right now 7-8k each with the odd push down or up. But a year ago they would have been 12k each and a year before 16k and when R&D launched as high as 30 each.
So things like T6 ships get more expensive... promo ships keep creeping toward the posting cap. While things like rare doffs that used to sell for 50 million now sell for 8 or 9. Crafting mats loose most of their value ect. Of course you can say these things are less in demand today which is true... but concentration is also an issue.
R&D mats could easily be fixed with new crafting items. Perhaps a push from crafting level 20 to 21-25 with new traits on offer at the end, or yet more unique crafted gear. (which would also require more upgrades for people to level) Perhaps its time to offer some new crafted set items, Ageis 2.0 or something which would require level 20 in multiple schools. That would drive the value of R&D mats back up... which actually might help with the inflation on top end items.
Pretty much every single very rare/Ultra rare+ tactical, Sci, Eng console, every Deflector, Warp core, Engine, Shield on the market all gone down massively over the prices we had mid 2017 and earlier. Even the top end stuff like DMGx3 all down. Very rare tactical consoles are pretty much at an all time low massively lower than 2017 prices. Hunting down perfect weapons with the perfect mods is no longer a problem on the whole due to the massive price decrease. Related to this all the unique player crafting items also down in price over peak. An Particle Emissions torpedo for example is now under 1million. Crafted Omni beams now 1million.
Since the market Cap was raised even the top end ships that sold for 1billion+ have had a small price decrease.
Even the recent lockbox items plummeted at a fast speed. Threat Assessment Algorithms was 10million last week, now 900k. Unconventional Systems 5.8million last week now 1 million.
Omega Fragment, slivers, shards and the rest have all been on a steady decline year on year. This cycle I brought them at an all time low. Slivers during the event where 53k per unit. Even now way outside the event the price has only gone up to 67k per unit. Again this is a deflation trend, no signs of inflation. The prices are now cheaper outside the event then what we had during the event years ago.
Even if I go back to older lock boxs, No Retreat, No Mercy was 1.5million now 450k.
Lockbox Keys jump around a lot and while not as low as 2014 are at the time of writing cheaper then peak prices in what we had in 2015 and later years. There has been no real inflation in keys in 4 years in in fact since peak deflation.
There are a few items that have gone up due to low supply but that is not EC inflation related. On the whole we are in a deflation market with prices either going down or stabilised near a low point.
There could be an area I missed but from what I am seeing STO has been in a deflation market for over a year now with none of the market symptoms you get when there is a problem with EC inflation. As I asked before where is the evidence of a problem with inflation? Why are we looking for solutions when there doesn't appear to be any EC inflation?
EDIT: I trade and check the market just about every single day in the morning and after work. I keep track of trends and of the items I deal in and all the items I deal in are stable or on a downwards trend.
But not relevant to EC inflation, that. That's caused simply by there not being anything to spend it on.
Two of the most commonly flipped things IRL are houses and cars. But, people who do this IRL usually do more than re-list the item. (then there's stock trading, but that's closer to the DilEx, than masterkeys.) They need to improve it to get enough return on the investment for it to be a career. Cars will get a quick tune-up and some spit and polish. Houses will get repainted and fixed up a bit. It's usually not major work, but stuff that a pro can do in a few hours or days and a homeowner might need weeks or months to get done. It makes the item more valuable, so that when they re-sell people have good reason to want to pay more for it.
The exchange in STO has no fee for use whatsoever. In fact the only risk is if you try to liquidate an asset and the going rate is lower than when you bought. It's not like buying a used car and hoping the knock in the engine is minor and easy to fix.
My character Tsin'xing
The thing is it won't. At this current point in the game's life, it is physically impossible to create any kind of ec sink that will impact the rich without completely ruining the game for the poor. The rich will get richer and the poor will be trapped by a tax or similar sink. The only way to combat this "inflation" is to combat it from a different perspective from items themselves.
Something like increasing supply of desirable items?
As Exchange prices do fluctuate based on Supply and Demand.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
Exactly. I've been mentioning it before the only realistic way to lower the price of items on the exchange is to make them more common. Do something like increase the drop rates of Lockbox ships to 2.5% and Promo ships to 5%. You'd get tons more people opening them by actually paying for keys themselves and tons more people selling the ships and driving them way down. I don't know if you remember the time when the acheros and vonph were in the infinity box but they were as low as 70 mil despite being elite lockbox ships because of how common they were.
An alternative method would be to make the infinity prize boxes themselves tradeable but I think that would have a much smaller impact.
The main issue with just making more things... is there is actually a very fine line between hard to get, and so easy that no one bothers. Exchange "workers" the games Ferengi may get a bad rap but the bottom line is without that mechanic of people playing the market the game would die. Cryptic NEEDS exchange Ferengi keeping promo ships over a billion EC and Lobi ships at 200m and lockbox at 400-500m... and the good space traits at 8m+ ect ect. Because if all that stuff was suddenly worthless or devalued greatly. No one would have any incentive at all to drop $20 bucks on Zen to buy keys to sell. Or stay logged in for 3 or 4 hours a night farming Dill like a pakled.
What phoenix did at least the first few runs... was deplete stockpiles. Which brought prices down nicely, and no one was upset cause they got value for what they burned. A tax adds no value its just a burn... which might be good might be bad hard to say this game doesn't exactly have as large a market as some other MMO examples. What they need to come up with is something that gives people a reason to spend their stockpiles. Valuable stuff in STO is horded. Think of all the people holding stacks of event items, infinity trait boxes, ect ect. There isn't a shortage of anything in the game really. Sure you might look at the exchange and only see 5 or 6 of something listed but there are 100s and perhaps 1000s in banks. If a EC sink is treated as an event like phoenix where its timed and burning your EC on the event is worth wile... all that stored wealth will flood the market. Granted between events its possible everything goes up as those still holding will be in an even better position to price fix.
I don't know the more I think about it the more I think Cryptic may have waited to long to try and have any sort of direct EC control mechanism. Perhaps something as simple as a new fleet holding that burns tons of EC is the better way to go. The colony holding did eat a lot of spare Dil... phoenix wasn't alone in keeping dil from skyrocketing. What we need is a Ferengi cameo on Star Trek Discovery so Cryptic can get the ok to bring a Ferengi fleet holding in. lol