Dilithium is not obtained freely. Stop saying that nonsense.
It must be earned which takes time. It must be refined which takes time. It is a limited resource subject to scarcity like any other and that is why it has value. If it were free, it would have value of exactly zero.
I meant freely in the sense that you can collect it whenever you want, in whichever way you want.
Which isn't the case with earning a salary that has to pay for the Zen.
You're also nitpicking and trying to turn this into a semantic debate by using a different definition than what is commonly meant with 'free'.
Yes, purple rocks may have value because they're not obtained without effort. But that wasn't the point and I never said they don't have a value. I explained why real money is more valuable and hence, why you need more purple rocks to buy it or currencies that are bought with it.
No, you're using the word wrong. Free does not mean easily gotten. Unskilled labor, like paying the neighbor kid to mow your lawn or rake your leaves is easily gotten but not free, even if you do it yourself. Collecting government entitlements isn't free stuff, someone else already paid for it via taxes.
And neither can you collect Dil whenever you want. You want 480? Run an STF. You want 48000? Run a lot more and wait 6 days to refine it all. You have to do things to earn it. No they aren't difficult, and may even be fun, but they take up your time which you can then not spend anywhere else, like say playing with outfit ideas at the tailor or roleplaying or engaging in zone chat, or earning $20 to spend on zen to buy dilithium by mowing someone's lawn.
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.
Dilithium is not obtained freely. Stop saying that nonsense.
It must be earned which takes time. It must be refined which takes time. It is a limited resource subject to scarcity like any other and that is why it has value. If it were free, it would have value of exactly zero.
I meant freely in the sense that you can collect it whenever you want, in whichever way you want.
Which isn't the case with earning a salary that has to pay for the Zen.
You're also nitpicking and trying to turn this into a semantic debate by using a different definition than what is commonly meant with 'free'.
Yes, purple rocks may have value because they're not obtained without effort. But that wasn't the point and I never said they don't have a value. I explained why real money is more valuable and hence, why you need more purple rocks to buy it or currencies that are bought with it.
No, you're using the word wrong. Free does not mean easily gotten. Unskilled labor, like paying the neighbor kid to mow your lawn or rake your leaves is easily gotten but not free, even if you do it yourself. Collecting government entitlements isn't free stuff, someone else already paid for it via taxes.
And neither can you collect Dil whenever you want. You want 480? Run an STF. You want 48000? Run a lot more and wait 6 days to refine it all. You have to do things to earn it. No they aren't difficult, and may even be fun, but they take up your time which you can then not spend anywhere else, like say playing with outfit ideas at the tailor or roleplaying or engaging in zone chat, or earning $20 to spend on zen to buy dilithium by mowing someone's lawn.
You mean you use the word wrong. Free, in the commonly used sense, means that there is no price attached to something.
"And neither can you collect Dil whenever you want." Of course you can. You can always start assignments, play a mission or whatever. Yes, it takes time but so does going to work. That's still no argument why the exchange rate would be wrong and the time needed to collect purple rocks to get to a certain amount of Zen is too high (because that's basically what the discussion is about then, if time is made the new unit of concern instead of dilithium).
The same logic as in my last comment applies to time: if you want to suggest that your time is too valuable to collect purple rocks, spend it by earning money and buy the Zen yourself. But one shouldn't expect others to do it for them and then expect or complain that they should sell it cheaper to them than the market suggest it's worth.
Back in the day people made Zen the old-fashioned way. They earned it.
'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.'
As it is now IIRC Cryptic doesn't have any control over the Exchange apart from setting a cap or if they do they're not using it. That said the Exchange does serve a purpose in the economy that some people seem to have forgotten that is its purpose is to give F2P players an option to get Zen-items without using funds they might not have either due to literally not having the cash for it or due to not having the cash to spare (adults have thing like bills to pay and might not have steady and well paying job to have loads of money to spare).
Thank you for making that point.
I remember reading from one of the original blogs on the switch to F2P that the devs at that time had the idea that they would not be involved with the regulation of the exchange and that it would be up to the players to determine what would be a fair exchange rate would be.
Plus as I already stated, the original goal of the dilithium exchange was to allow players that were f2p to have the ability to get stuff from the C-store if they wanted to spend the time to gather the dilithium and trade it for at the time was Cryptic Points (now of course we use Zen). That particular blog stated that the prices should reflect the laws of supply and demand, where prices would go up or down based on the need for dilithium. Let's take a look back at when the fleet system first came out. The Fleet starbases needed dilithium, so as a result, the dilithium was easier to come by since there were people willing to exchange it for those who needed it, so the price dipped down since the demand was so high for it. Once there wasn't a need to really spend dilithium in game anymore, the price spiked since we now had an abundance of dilithium to spend, but nothing really to spend it on.
If the rate that @evilmark444 felt was fair to him was in place, with the exchange rate of 500 dil to 1 zen, 1 character's daily refinement for a player without liftetime sub and without a fleet (in this case, 8,000) would equal around 16 zen. If the refinement for the dilithum mine is in play, this is bumped to 500 more, so around 17 zen. That means for 1 character, getting a single C-store ship would be 3000 zen or 1,500,000 dilithium, which would take a little over 6 months to accumulate. The more characters though, the less they have to take the time to acquire.
How much time one has to play though is a big factor. Someone who has a job & a family will have little time to play a game that they don't want to spend money on, especially if they have bills to pay. So while some could justify that their hard extra income deserves the exchange at the cap, they honestly don't see the bigger picture.
I totally agree with you, i'm LTS now, but back in the day (4 or 5 years ago) used the time cards to the subscription, with very little money, then went F2P until i got enough money for LTS, but it took me some time, as i have to pay a lot of bills and have very little time to play. Still, agree there is not too much dill sinks, i spend most of mine increasing levels in my personal fleet, so i do get it..
155 - 230 is an insulting amount considering Zen is purchased with real, hard-earned cash. Imo the exchange rate should be permanently locked at 500.
First of all Dilithium Exchange was at the rate between 155 and 230 for along time until Greed took over or actually when PS4 and Xbox was interduce. So it is not so Insulting.
FYI I am hope STO does something to change the rate as they have in the Past March time frame. Hint Hint.
155 - 230 is an insulting amount considering Zen is purchased with real, hard-earned cash. Imo the exchange rate should be permanently locked at 500.
First of all Dilithium Exchange was at the rate between 155 and 230 for along time until Greed took over or actually when PS4 and Xbox was interduce. So it is not so Insulting.
FYI I am hope STO does something to change the rate as they have in the Past March time frame. Hint Hint.
You and others keep talking about greed.
Tell me what's more greedy: people expecting to get the most fun (through obtaining enough in-game resources that they can then use) out of hard-earned money which required them to do non-fun things for a boss who told them what to do, how to do it and when...
Or playing a computer game whenever and however it suits you for free and then expect to obtain everything cheaply because you just let other people pay for it?
You may want to drop the 'greed' 'argument'. It's foolish, nothing else.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,596Community Moderator
No it wasn't. Not on PC. There is no cross platform play here. PC, XBox, and PS4 are all seperate from each other, with their own economies.
PC's economy has been around the longest, and the only time its dipped below 300 was years ago when fleet holdings were still a thing.
As for the greed issue... here's the thing. You introduce some new shiny people want in the C-Store, that drives the exchange rate up. Used to also see that happen when you had events that flooded the market with Dilithium. You see a drop in the Exchange prices when Dilithium is more in demand for something. That's why the fleet holdings had an impact on the Exchange rates. People wanted refined Dilithium for Fleet Projects.
What will help the Exchange is a demand for refined Dilithium.
155 - 230 is an insulting amount considering Zen is purchased with real, hard-earned cash. Imo the exchange rate should be permanently locked at 500.
First of all Dilithium Exchange was at the rate between 155 and 230 for along time until Greed took over or actually when PS4 and Xbox was interduce. So it is not so Insulting.
FYI I am hope STO does something to change the rate as they have in the Past March time frame. Hint Hint.
Nope. What changed is that it became easier to farm large amounts of dil, so much dil that in-game sinks like fleet holdings and upgrading did not use enough of it.
The fix would be to reduce supply by either limiting creation, limiting refinement, or adding more ways that players want to spend dil in game ("dil sinks").
Cryptic has made some changes to limit creation by multi-character farmers, for example by removing the farm plot of running a 14-day event on 10 characters to get 10 x the dil payoff at the end. Farmers complained loudly. "Nerf!"
Crypic has made the Phoenix boxes available all of the time to add a dil sink.
The next steps could be to limit total refinement (an account-wide cap) or to try coming up with new dil sinks.
STO is free to play. It takes time to complete a story episode but not cash monies.
Earning dil is free. It costs you time but not cash monies.
"But I work hard for my dil!" / "but my precious time is worth monies!" -- no, you play a computer game. Get a real job, ya bum!
When I read a book or watch TV I don't claim to be "working" for my fun then either.
Well said.
This whole 'I'm working when I'm playing the game' thing is beyond ridiculous.
And besides what I've stated before about people paying for their own Zen if they believe the money isn't that valuable (in terms of purple rocks), one might also wonder why these people are not simply in the office if they truly believe that instead of playing the game, they might as well be working.
No it wasn't. Not on PC. There is no cross platform play here. PC, XBox, and PS4 are all seperate from each other, with their own economies.
PC's economy has been around the longest, and the only time its dipped below 300 was years ago when fleet holdings were still a thing.
As for the greed issue... here's the thing. You introduce some new shiny people want in the C-Store, that drives the exchange rate up. Used to also see that happen when you had events that flooded the market with Dilithium. You see a drop in the Exchange prices when Dilithium is more in demand for something. That's why the fleet holdings had an impact on the Exchange rates. People wanted refined Dilithium for Fleet Projects.
What will help the Exchange is a demand for refined Dilithium.
True, but as I've stated before: that will just mean that everyone will feel tempted to start doing boring tasks to get dilithium. Aka, grinding.
I don't really see how that's a solution. Unless this new dilithium grind were something truly amazing - but let's be honest: given the amount of complaints about grinding whenever a new fleet holding or highly expensive uniforms are released, I doubt we've seen such a thing.
Apart from the original release of fleets perhaps (I didn't really frequent the forum yet back then so I wouldn't be sure of that).
[..]
Don't get me wrong, brainstorming ideas is great and it is a way to get a conversation started. You just also have to consider other factors, like what existed in the past, as well as how it might impact Cryptic, and in turn us the players.
I'm open to discussing ideas, and I'm willing to point out possible pitfalls of ideas as well. But I'm not trying to argue. I'm interested in discussion and willing to have some back and forth on refining ideas as well. As someone who's been playing since about a month before F2P I've seen some stuff. I'm drawing from what I remember to help spot what I feel might be issues, like with the extra procs on weapons for example.
If they decided to try and make owned Lockbox/Lobi ships available through Dilithium, that might have a dramatic impact on the exchange rates. However there's a fine line between viable and not. Too low and full account unlock would make everyone happy, but might only be a temporary solution to the Economy balance. Too high and not account unlock would be seen as too unfair to those who can't afford it. Honestly I might not mind if it was "Pay X amount of DL to spawn another copy of a lockbox/lobi ship account bound" because I might not want every ship for every character. BUT... and this is a big BUT, the price would have to be fair. Not 2 mil a pop like the Ent MACO per character. 500-600k per might be more reasonable for a ship.
The main factor that has to be considered is the player. We have players who are so space rich that they can get the Ent MACO for all characters no sweat. On the other hand we have players who struggle to get a decent amount of DL because of time constraints or even fatigue from grinding. You need to find a balance between the two extremes that makes it fair for all.
Also how would they handle things like the Prototype Dreadnought Cruiser that has faction equivelents? Would this theoretical account bound box only be the Fed one or would it open up into a faction appropriate ship if sent to a KDF or Romulan?
No worries trying to think of good sinks without worry about key and box sales as the primary consideration because frankly I dislike the gamblebox F2P mechanic completely and would rather direct dilith payouts for guarantee items as an alternative.
Anyway you thinking is along the same lines as mine for the box/lobi ships as an alternative dilithium sink system.
A large factor in my opinion on this matter is my absolute hatred for the F2P concept, my despising of the people who first came up with it, my anger at the many development teams that have implemented F2P models into their games, and my extreme bitterness towards players who pushed devs to attempt it and who have made the concept a success, not just here but in the entire gaming industry.
If it were up to me F2P wouldn't exist at all and every ship would be available to everyone for nothing more than a simple $15 subscription, so imo six months for one ship is a pretty good deal.
Me too... I spend over 1k a year on STO and I'm tired of wasting my money gambling. I have no problem paying a $100 a month sub fee for a game or even $200 frankly speaking if it is developed properly and not around the next new shiny to sucker people into trying to beat stupidly low odds but maybe I'm foolish...
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
Former Alpha & Beta Tester Original Cryptic Forum Name:Spartan (member #124) The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,596Community Moderator
It has to be something that is not only viable, but a long term viable as well.
Something that players would be willing to use, and something that players in the future would be willing to use.
The stupidly priced character unlock uniforms had like a 2 point drop or something on the Exchange rates before that was instantly counted by something that shot the rates up. And honestly the DL uniforms should really be in the GPL store. Give us something to spend all that stuff on.
Even Cryptic has said that the current going rate is too high! The fact we haven't seen anything to help bring the exchange prices down, at least to me, says that even they are having a hard time coming up with an actual, viable solution.
I've seen some interesting suggestions here on the forums, and I've seen some downright stupid ones that make absolutely no sense or just punish people for not opening their wallets even if they can't afford to.
I'll call out those I feel are stupid, and I'll talk about ones I feel might work. Discussion is a lot better than arguments and declarations that "IT MUST BE SO BECAUSE I SAY IT IS", like that person who insisted anything other than 500/1 is an insult.
Its not. The value is, and will always be, what the players feel is right via the Dilithium Exchange rate. At the end of the day we have a living economy that fluctuates based on various things, such as sales and new things. For a while now it has been creeping up because of constant new shiny in the C-Store. We need a way to spark demand in the other direction, and to bring the Economy into balance so it is far to ALL. Not just the space rich with millions of purple rocks.
IMO, account caps and messing with character caps is not the solution. A VIABLE sink will be, as we have seen in the past. But it needs to be one that will stick around for a while and not basically disappear the minute the big fleets are finished with it.
It has to be something that is not only viable, but a long term viable as well.
Something that players would be willing to use, and something that players in the future would be willing to use.
The stupidly priced character unlock uniforms had like a 2 point drop or something on the Exchange rates before that was instantly counted by something that shot the rates up. And honestly the DL uniforms should really be in the GPL store. Give us something to spend all that stuff on.
Even Cryptic has said that the current going rate is too high! The fact we haven't seen anything to help bring the exchange prices down, at least to me, says that even they are having a hard time coming up with an actual, viable solution.
I've seen some interesting suggestions here on the forums, and I've seen some downright stupid ones that make absolutely no sense or just punish people for not opening their wallets even if they can't afford to.
I'll call out those I feel are stupid, and I'll talk about ones I feel might work. Discussion is a lot better than arguments and declarations that "IT MUST BE SO BECAUSE I SAY IT IS", like that person who insisted anything other than 500/1 is an insult.
Its not. The value is, and will always be, what the players feel is right via the Dilithium Exchange rate. At the end of the day we have a living economy that fluctuates based on various things, such as sales and new things. For a while now it has been creeping up because of constant new shiny in the C-Store. We need a way to spark demand in the other direction, and to bring the Economy into balance so it is far to ALL. Not just the space rich with millions of purple rocks.
IMO, account caps and messing with character caps is not the solution. A VIABLE sink will be, as we have seen in the past. But it needs to be one that will stick around for a while and not basically disappear the minute the big fleets are finished with it.
"I've seen some interesting suggestions here on the forums, and I've seen some downright stupid ones that make absolutely no sense or just punish people for not opening their wallets even if they can't afford to."
No one is suggesting that punishment is a good thing. The actual argument raised is that those who spend hard earned money on the game - and thereby make stuff available to those who can't or don't want to pay real money for it - deserve to get the most out of it and certainly the price that was determined by the market to be the right one.
And that's something everyone implicitly agrees on. Because, again, if they didn't and they truly believed that their purple rocks are more valuable / that real money is less valuable, they would have no trouble spending real money.
As for sinks: let's hope they can find something. Because except for the Legendary ship pack, which I've decided I will buy with 1/3 earned Zen and 2/3 bought Zen, I usually don't have a purpose for my dilithium.
No one is suggesting that punishment is a good thing. The actual argument raised is that those who spend hard earned money on the game - and thereby make stuff available to those who can't or don't want to pay real money for it - deserve to get the most out of it and certainly the price that was determined by the market to be the right one.
And that's something everyone implicitly agrees on. Because, again, if they didn't and they truly believed that their purple rocks are more valuable / that real money is less valuable, they would have no trouble spending real money.
As for sinks: let's hope they can find something. Because except for the Legendary ship pack, which I've decided I will buy with 1/3 earned Zen and 2/3 bought Zen, I usually don't have a purpose for my dilithium.
Yes, making Phoenix permanent got me to use a few hundred Ks of dil but now I'm sitting on around 100 upgrade tokens while I'm also grinding omega upgrades. We need something else added to get people to spend dil, since not enough are giving dil to fleets (or they're in maxed fleets).
When I mention adding account refinement caps it's not because I want them, it's because they would work to lower the dil supply and might be the least bad idea that Cryptic can come up with. It would hurt multi-character farmers, but not the majority of players with only 1-3 characters. (An anniversary infographic a year or two ago showed the majority do not have 4+.)
If the rate that evilmark444 felt was fair to him was in place, with the exchange rate of 500 dil to 1 zen, 1 character's daily refinement for a player without liftetime sub and without a fleet (in this case, 8,000) would equal around 16 zen. If the refinement for the dilithum mine is in play, this is bumped to 500 more, so around 17 zen. That means for 1 character, getting a single C-store ship would be 3000 zen or 1,500,000 dilithium, which would take a little over 6 months to accumulate.
A large factor in my opinion on this matter is my absolute hatred for the F2P concept, my despising of the people who first came up with it, my anger at the many development teams that have implemented F2P models into their games, and my extreme bitterness towards players who pushed devs to attempt it and who have made the concept a success, not just here but in the entire gaming industry.
If it were up to me F2P wouldn't exist at all and every ship would be available to everyone for nothing more than a simple $15 subscription, so imo six months for one ship is a pretty good deal.
Whether you like it or not, the reason F2P exists is largely because sub models do not work for every game, including this one. Creative people found a different way to monetize that works. Thankfully the early adopters didn't get screwed by the change to F2P here and have seen their gamble pay off.
Back in the day when I was playing real hard this game was not F2P.
No one is suggesting that punishment is a good thing. The actual argument raised is that those who spend hard earned money on the game - and thereby make stuff available to those who can't or don't want to pay real money for it - deserve to get the most out of it and certainly the price that was determined by the market to be the right one.
And that's something everyone implicitly agrees on. Because, again, if they didn't and they truly believed that their purple rocks are more valuable / that real money is less valuable, they would have no trouble spending real money.
As for sinks: let's hope they can find something. Because except for the Legendary ship pack, which I've decided I will buy with 1/3 earned Zen and 2/3 bought Zen, I usually don't have a purpose for my dilithium.
Yes, making Phoenix permanent got me to use a few hundred Ks of dil but now I'm sitting on around 100 upgrade tokens while I'm also grinding omega upgrades. We need something else added to get people to spend dil, since not enough are giving dil to fleets (or they're in maxed fleets).
When I mention adding account refinement caps it's not because I want them, it's because they would work to lower the dil supply and might be the least bad idea that Cryptic can come up with. It would hurt multi-character farmers, but not the majority of players with only 1-3 characters. (An anniversary infographic a year or two ago showed the majority do not have 4+.)
To be honest and now that I'm thinking about it, it would be rather pointless to add a sink I think.
They made the Phoenix packs permanently available, but they also made it easier to obtain large amounts of dilithium through Admiralty, by doing the event after getting the big prize and they also added the most expensive pack ever to the C-store.
I think you're right about refinement caps. It would be the least bad solution, if a solution were needed (personally I don't think there is a problem, but there appears to be disagreement on that from many people ).
Person A: why is the dilex so high!
Person B: why can't I refine more dil so I can add to the inflation and make the dilex go higher!? Also, why is the dilex so high?
Person C: why did you nerf marks turn in and rep completion during dil bonus weekends? Also, why is the dilex so high?
It's so high because of supply and demand. Cryptic has been very generous about handing out dil.
Players complain when Cryptic cuts off dil farming sources like running events on 10 characters at once. Then players complain about the dilex being too high.
Person I wish that would add to the Zen Store a Dilithium Unrefined Cap Increase. so some can enjoy Dill weekend Again LOL
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,596Community Moderator
No one is suggesting that punishment is a good thing. The actual argument raised is that those who spend hard earned money on the game - and thereby make stuff available to those who can't or don't want to pay real money for it - deserve to get the most out of it and certainly the price that was determined by the market to be the right one.
And that's something everyone implicitly agrees on. Because, again, if they didn't and they truly believed that their purple rocks are more valuable / that real money is less valuable, they would have no trouble spending real money.
As for sinks: let's hope they can find something. Because except for the Legendary ship pack, which I've decided I will buy with 1/3 earned Zen and 2/3 bought Zen, I usually don't have a purpose for my dilithium.
I've actually seen people advocate for a hard ACCOUNT wide cap of 10k, which would affect EVERYONE and punish people who actually do put effort into alts. I've also seen people ask for a raise in the refine cap, which would only make the supply problem worse.
As for the Legendary ship pack... I may have to wait for individual release. I may have to grind out some bank slots for my main soon as I'm a bit of a pack rat for weapons and pets (NEED PET TAB!), and despite the fact I have ground out large expansion bundles in the past... $300 worth of Zen is a pretty big stretch even for my grinding ability and the current daily income of around 100 Zen a day, give or take based on exchange rates and how friendly Admiralty is each day. And that's with the LTS stipend helping. I may try, but odds are its gonna be a while before I see it, and I'm actually wanting to get a Mirror Engle for my Discovery character since I was able to nab a Disco Connie for her after my Birthday. Want that trait now.
I really wish they would update and redo the replicator and upgrade path to be more useful and a better Dil sink. Relying on boxes and tokens for upgrades when we should be able to just do it ourselves with the replicators is inefficient.
No one uses the current replicator upgrades because it takes so many and so long. The new Phoenix boxes help this but I think that is just a bandage on a wound that needs stitches.
I really wish they would update and redo the replicator and upgrade path to be more useful and a better Dil sink. Relying on boxes and tokens for upgrades when we should be able to just do it ourselves with the replicators is inefficient.
No one uses the current replicator upgrades because it takes so many and so long. The new Phoenix boxes help this but I think that is just a bandage on a wound that needs stitches.
I'd forgotten you could get tech upgrades from the replicator. That should be removed since they are a terrible deal compared to Phoenix upgrades. If anything is in the replicator it should be Phoenix upgrades with the existing 4500? & 40,000 dil costs.
Dilithium Exchange is to High at 453 it really needs to go back down to 155-230 range LOL why did you all get it so high again?
Cryptic decided to allow Phoenix upgrades 24/7 which massively cuts down the amount of dilithium needed to upgraded gear and upgrading gear was one off, if not the main way of removing dilithium from the game.
The problem is Cryptic keep reducing how much dilithium we need to use in game while at the same time massively increasing our incoming dilithium.
The exchange was higher before they did that. Permanent Phoenix packs actually lowered the rate and have kept it pretty stable in the two months or so since they became permanent. That suggests that most people were not using standard upgrades anymore, even prior to that change. The near-constant upward pressure on value of Zen through Mudd's Market, Lockboxes, special packs and Promotional events is what's keeping things higher. The Phoenix Prize Pack can only do so much.
i'd like to know what part of the world you live in where you can earn 20$ mowing ONE lawn - because i want to move there
$20 would be underpaying around here. The standard plot is roughly five acres, though, so you're going to be mowing a while, and you'll pretty much have to have a riding mower of some sort or you'll never get done.
This is an MMO, not a Star Trek episode simulator. That would make for a terrible game.
gee, imagine that - people DON'T like having to keep paying for something they ALREADY paid for just to be able to use it
TRIBBLE selfish prick
^^^
For single player games you run on your own PC (or your own local network) sure.
But MMOs (at least successful ones) require a company have Servers, the bandwidth to handle the players who log in, continuted development of content and features, AND (this is important) make a good profit.
They ONLY reason the subscription model was in the Western market for sooo long was Western Devs were not sure Western players would go for the F2P paradigm that was garnering LARGE profits in the Asian markets. You can all blame Dungeons and Dragons Online as it was doing so poorly via the Sub paradigm, instead of sunsetting -m they rolled the dice, bankrolled the F2P conversion - and as a result, the game went from a near failure to a moderate success.
^^^
So, once Westerm MMO developers saw that "Hey, it looks like Western MMO players WILL accept and use F2P RMT and it turned a dying game into a success - maybe WE should do it too.
It's never been taht yiou can't make money with a Sub paradigm; it's just a proven fact that overall, if you do it right, you can make an order of magnitude more with F2P - so that's why it's now the norm and not the outlier for new MMOs
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
155 - 230 is an insulting amount considering Zen is purchased with real, hard-earned cash. Imo the exchange rate should be permanently locked at 500.
I have to agree! Locking the exchange rate would give Dilithium a stable value. The lower the Dilithium Exchange goes, the less people sell ZEN. The higher it goes, the less people that buy ZEN with Dilithium. Locking the rate would show buyers and sellers of ZEN that it has a static value.
155 - 230 is an insulting amount considering Zen is purchased with real, hard-earned cash. Imo the exchange rate should be permanently locked at 500.
I have to agree! Locking the exchange rate would give Dilithium a stable value. The lower the Dilithium Exchange goes, the less people sell ZEN. The higher it goes, the less people that buy ZEN with Dilithium. Locking the rate would show buyers and sellers of ZEN that it has a static value.
That just leads to black market sales, which for a MMO means gold farmers.
The current value changes because of supply and demand, which is as it should be. The price is what buyers and sellers agree is fair for the current supplies of dil and zen.
Comments
No, you're using the word wrong. Free does not mean easily gotten. Unskilled labor, like paying the neighbor kid to mow your lawn or rake your leaves is easily gotten but not free, even if you do it yourself. Collecting government entitlements isn't free stuff, someone else already paid for it via taxes.
And neither can you collect Dil whenever you want. You want 480? Run an STF. You want 48000? Run a lot more and wait 6 days to refine it all. You have to do things to earn it. No they aren't difficult, and may even be fun, but they take up your time which you can then not spend anywhere else, like say playing with outfit ideas at the tailor or roleplaying or engaging in zone chat, or earning $20 to spend on zen to buy dilithium by mowing someone's lawn.
#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!"
You mean you use the word wrong. Free, in the commonly used sense, means that there is no price attached to something.
"And neither can you collect Dil whenever you want." Of course you can. You can always start assignments, play a mission or whatever. Yes, it takes time but so does going to work. That's still no argument why the exchange rate would be wrong and the time needed to collect purple rocks to get to a certain amount of Zen is too high (because that's basically what the discussion is about then, if time is made the new unit of concern instead of dilithium).
The same logic as in my last comment applies to time: if you want to suggest that your time is too valuable to collect purple rocks, spend it by earning money and buy the Zen yourself. But one shouldn't expect others to do it for them and then expect or complain that they should sell it cheaper to them than the market suggest it's worth.
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.'
Earning dil is free. It costs you time but not cash monies.
"But I work hard for my dil!" / "but my precious time is worth monies!" -- no, you play a computer game. Get a real job, ya bum!
When I read a book or watch TV I don't claim to be "working" for my fun then either.
I totally agree with you, i'm LTS now, but back in the day (4 or 5 years ago) used the time cards to the subscription, with very little money, then went F2P until i got enough money for LTS, but it took me some time, as i have to pay a lot of bills and have very little time to play. Still, agree there is not too much dill sinks, i spend most of mine increasing levels in my personal fleet, so i do get it..
First of all Dilithium Exchange was at the rate between 155 and 230 for along time until Greed took over or actually when PS4 and Xbox was interduce. So it is not so Insulting.
FYI I am hope STO does something to change the rate as they have in the Past March time frame. Hint Hint.
You and others keep talking about greed.
Tell me what's more greedy: people expecting to get the most fun (through obtaining enough in-game resources that they can then use) out of hard-earned money which required them to do non-fun things for a boss who told them what to do, how to do it and when...
Or playing a computer game whenever and however it suits you for free and then expect to obtain everything cheaply because you just let other people pay for it?
You may want to drop the 'greed' 'argument'. It's foolish, nothing else.
PC's economy has been around the longest, and the only time its dipped below 300 was years ago when fleet holdings were still a thing.
As for the greed issue... here's the thing. You introduce some new shiny people want in the C-Store, that drives the exchange rate up. Used to also see that happen when you had events that flooded the market with Dilithium. You see a drop in the Exchange prices when Dilithium is more in demand for something. That's why the fleet holdings had an impact on the Exchange rates. People wanted refined Dilithium for Fleet Projects.
What will help the Exchange is a demand for refined Dilithium.
Nope. What changed is that it became easier to farm large amounts of dil, so much dil that in-game sinks like fleet holdings and upgrading did not use enough of it.
The fix would be to reduce supply by either limiting creation, limiting refinement, or adding more ways that players want to spend dil in game ("dil sinks").
Cryptic has made some changes to limit creation by multi-character farmers, for example by removing the farm plot of running a 14-day event on 10 characters to get 10 x the dil payoff at the end. Farmers complained loudly. "Nerf!"
Crypic has made the Phoenix boxes available all of the time to add a dil sink.
The next steps could be to limit total refinement (an account-wide cap) or to try coming up with new dil sinks.
Well said.
This whole 'I'm working when I'm playing the game' thing is beyond ridiculous.
And besides what I've stated before about people paying for their own Zen if they believe the money isn't that valuable (in terms of purple rocks), one might also wonder why these people are not simply in the office if they truly believe that instead of playing the game, they might as well be working.
True, but as I've stated before: that will just mean that everyone will feel tempted to start doing boring tasks to get dilithium. Aka, grinding.
I don't really see how that's a solution. Unless this new dilithium grind were something truly amazing - but let's be honest: given the amount of complaints about grinding whenever a new fleet holding or highly expensive uniforms are released, I doubt we've seen such a thing.
Apart from the original release of fleets perhaps (I didn't really frequent the forum yet back then so I wouldn't be sure of that).
No worries trying to think of good sinks without worry about key and box sales as the primary consideration because frankly I dislike the gamblebox F2P mechanic completely and would rather direct dilith payouts for guarantee items as an alternative.
Anyway you thinking is along the same lines as mine for the box/lobi ships as an alternative dilithium sink system.
Me too... I spend over 1k a year on STO and I'm tired of wasting my money gambling. I have no problem paying a $100 a month sub fee for a game or even $200 frankly speaking if it is developed properly and not around the next new shiny to sucker people into trying to beat stupidly low odds but maybe I'm foolish...
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
Something that players would be willing to use, and something that players in the future would be willing to use.
The stupidly priced character unlock uniforms had like a 2 point drop or something on the Exchange rates before that was instantly counted by something that shot the rates up. And honestly the DL uniforms should really be in the GPL store. Give us something to spend all that stuff on.
Even Cryptic has said that the current going rate is too high! The fact we haven't seen anything to help bring the exchange prices down, at least to me, says that even they are having a hard time coming up with an actual, viable solution.
I've seen some interesting suggestions here on the forums, and I've seen some downright stupid ones that make absolutely no sense or just punish people for not opening their wallets even if they can't afford to.
I'll call out those I feel are stupid, and I'll talk about ones I feel might work. Discussion is a lot better than arguments and declarations that "IT MUST BE SO BECAUSE I SAY IT IS", like that person who insisted anything other than 500/1 is an insult.
Its not. The value is, and will always be, what the players feel is right via the Dilithium Exchange rate. At the end of the day we have a living economy that fluctuates based on various things, such as sales and new things. For a while now it has been creeping up because of constant new shiny in the C-Store. We need a way to spark demand in the other direction, and to bring the Economy into balance so it is far to ALL. Not just the space rich with millions of purple rocks.
IMO, account caps and messing with character caps is not the solution. A VIABLE sink will be, as we have seen in the past. But it needs to be one that will stick around for a while and not basically disappear the minute the big fleets are finished with it.
"I've seen some interesting suggestions here on the forums, and I've seen some downright stupid ones that make absolutely no sense or just punish people for not opening their wallets even if they can't afford to."
No one is suggesting that punishment is a good thing. The actual argument raised is that those who spend hard earned money on the game - and thereby make stuff available to those who can't or don't want to pay real money for it - deserve to get the most out of it and certainly the price that was determined by the market to be the right one.
And that's something everyone implicitly agrees on. Because, again, if they didn't and they truly believed that their purple rocks are more valuable / that real money is less valuable, they would have no trouble spending real money.
As for sinks: let's hope they can find something. Because except for the Legendary ship pack, which I've decided I will buy with 1/3 earned Zen and 2/3 bought Zen, I usually don't have a purpose for my dilithium.
Yes, making Phoenix permanent got me to use a few hundred Ks of dil but now I'm sitting on around 100 upgrade tokens while I'm also grinding omega upgrades. We need something else added to get people to spend dil, since not enough are giving dil to fleets (or they're in maxed fleets).
When I mention adding account refinement caps it's not because I want them, it's because they would work to lower the dil supply and might be the least bad idea that Cryptic can come up with. It would hurt multi-character farmers, but not the majority of players with only 1-3 characters. (An anniversary infographic a year or two ago showed the majority do not have 4+.)
Back in the day when I was playing real hard this game was not F2P.
And the real true Market price is 100 Dill 1 1 Zen don't for get that fact.
To be honest and now that I'm thinking about it, it would be rather pointless to add a sink I think.
They made the Phoenix packs permanently available, but they also made it easier to obtain large amounts of dilithium through Admiralty, by doing the event after getting the big prize and they also added the most expensive pack ever to the C-store.
I think you're right about refinement caps. It would be the least bad solution, if a solution were needed (personally I don't think there is a problem, but there appears to be disagreement on that from many people
Person
I've actually seen people advocate for a hard ACCOUNT wide cap of 10k, which would affect EVERYONE and punish people who actually do put effort into alts. I've also seen people ask for a raise in the refine cap, which would only make the supply problem worse.
As for the Legendary ship pack... I may have to wait for individual release. I may have to grind out some bank slots for my main soon as I'm a bit of a pack rat for weapons and pets (NEED PET TAB!), and despite the fact I have ground out large expansion bundles in the past... $300 worth of Zen is a pretty big stretch even for my grinding ability and the current daily income of around 100 Zen a day, give or take based on exchange rates and how friendly Admiralty is each day. And that's with the LTS stipend helping. I may try, but odds are its gonna be a while before I see it, and I'm actually wanting to get a Mirror Engle for my Discovery character since I was able to nab a Disco Connie for her after my Birthday. Want that trait now.
No one uses the current replicator upgrades because it takes so many and so long. The new Phoenix boxes help this but I think that is just a bandage on a wound that needs stitches.
I'd forgotten you could get tech upgrades from the replicator. That should be removed since they are a terrible deal compared to Phoenix upgrades. If anything is in the replicator it should be Phoenix upgrades with the existing 4500? & 40,000 dil costs.
Replicator upgrades? Are we talking about the R&D ones? As I've never seen upgrade tech in the repplicator.
The exchange was higher before they did that. Permanent Phoenix packs actually lowered the rate and have kept it pretty stable in the two months or so since they became permanent. That suggests that most people were not using standard upgrades anymore, even prior to that change. The near-constant upward pressure on value of Zen through Mudd's Market, Lockboxes, special packs and Promotional events is what's keeping things higher. The Phoenix Prize Pack can only do so much.
$20 would be underpaying around here. The standard plot is roughly five acres, though, so you're going to be mowing a while, and you'll pretty much have to have a riding mower of some sort or you'll never get done.
For single player games you run on your own PC (or your own local network) sure.
But MMOs (at least successful ones) require a company have Servers, the bandwidth to handle the players who log in, continuted development of content and features, AND (this is important) make a good profit.
They ONLY reason the subscription model was in the Western market for sooo long was Western Devs were not sure Western players would go for the F2P paradigm that was garnering LARGE profits in the Asian markets. You can all blame Dungeons and Dragons Online as it was doing so poorly via the Sub paradigm, instead of sunsetting -m they rolled the dice, bankrolled the F2P conversion - and as a result, the game went from a near failure to a moderate success.
^^^
So, once Westerm MMO developers saw that "Hey, it looks like Western MMO players WILL accept and use F2P RMT and it turned a dying game into a success - maybe WE should do it too.
It's never been taht yiou can't make money with a Sub paradigm; it's just a proven fact that overall, if you do it right, you can make an order of magnitude more with F2P - so that's why it's now the norm and not the outlier for new MMOs
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
I have to agree! Locking the exchange rate would give Dilithium a stable value. The lower the Dilithium Exchange goes, the less people sell ZEN. The higher it goes, the less people that buy ZEN with Dilithium. Locking the rate would show buyers and sellers of ZEN that it has a static value.
That just leads to black market sales, which for a MMO means gold farmers.
The current value changes because of supply and demand, which is as it should be. The price is what buyers and sellers agree is fair for the current supplies of dil and zen.
You need to take time away from the argument and go learn the difference between 'fact' and 'opinion.'
It's absolutely shocking how little you understand about this topic.
There is no point debating you, you are simply incapable of understanding.. anything.