Exploding Dil/Zen Exchange (We need stuff to buy for dili, ec, fleet credits)

skk1701j

In just 1 Day it went from 460 to 478.
Just about 3 weeks ago it was below 450 with 250k Zen at this rate.

This year a lot of items where sold for zen. (Legency Bundles, 3 Mudd's Choice Pack, Reputation Buyout, T6X Tokens)

What do we get to spend Dili/EC/Fleet Credits/Marks

Some Ideas:
Buyouts
EV Slot (Char/Doff)
Devise Slots (combat pet/device as boff ability)
Phoenix Reputation (Phoenix tokens as marks)

rattler2

I have to agree. We NEED something to balance the economy. I've had to put my plans to restock my lobi on hold because the exchange rates are just not good for buyers.
On the bright side I have been able to upgrade some of my KDF's gear with Phoenix Upgrades.

maniac20

Cryptic has tried over the past couple years to bring the dil exchange down to try and balance things and it works for a short time but then it crawls back up because of those who want it near cap or at cap.

rattler2

The problem has been that usually when they find something that balances the economy... we get a sale or some new shiny scheduled the next day. At least that's how it feels to me.

-Fleet holdings were a good sink for a while. But we're not likely to get another, and most of the BIG fleets won't need to buy DL to fill those inputs.
-Crafting isn't really a viable sink anymore since its not really used much.
-Phoenix Boxes were our best shot, but that was almost instantly countered.

Honestly right now the only thing I can see bringing the prices down other than potentially waiting out the current zen demand is probably a Housing system that uses DL as a currency. I'd rather they use GPL because its got almost no use at all... but it might be what we need to balance the economy.

nccmark

I believe the problem is more about zen demand than dil supply. Finding dil sinks won't help all that much.

So many reasons to spend zen lately, but it rarely goes on sale. And when it does, the 2020 bonus amounts are less than the 2019 and earlier bonus amounts.

Less zen to sell, but more demand for it.

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seaofsorrows

This is simply the result of their constant bundles.

They keep pushing these bundles for HUGE Zen, back to back and it's pushed the value of Zen through the roof. I don't know how much money Cryptic thinks is floating around out there, but can we get a month off between $200-$300 bundles you idiots? They're running these stupid Legendary packs like their silly events, as soon as one ends the next one starts immediately. And now everyone knows that Black Friday/Cyber Monday is coming.. and also with holiday sales in December, you should expect this rate for the remainder of the year.

The only way it will decrease is if Cryptic allows some time for the value of Zen to depreciate a little and they are obviously dead set against that happening.

peterconnorfirst

rattler2 wrote: »

-Fleet holdings were a good sink for a while. But we're not likely to get another, and most of the BIG fleets won't need to buy DL to fill those inputs.

No, fleet holdings were a terrible sink.

Only a fraction of players used their dil for it and they never asked for more. Those suggesting it up here in forums were/are all a bunch of hypocrites as they like to have better dil conditions for their zen trades but will certainly not contributing thier dil to any holding. Lol, what are you thinking…

Good part is that the coloy with its 50-80 mil Dil “sink” was all that was needed to kill that entire system once and for all sparing us this poo poo discussion if fleets holdings are suited. They are obviously not as nobody falls for them.

seaofsorrows

peterconnorfirst wrote: »

Only a fraction of players used their dil for it and they never asked for more. Those suggesting it up here in forums were/are all a bunch of hypocrites as they like to have better dil conditions for their zen trades but will certainly not contributing thier dil to any holding. Lol, what are you thinking…

Painfully accurate.

rattler2 wrote: »

Honestly right now the only thing I can see bringing the prices down other than potentially waiting out the current zen demand is probably a Housing system that uses DL as a currency.

Not a bad idea, that might actually make a difference. And it doesn't contribute to power creep, so I would be all for it.

skk1701j

peterconnorfirst wrote: »

rattler2 wrote: »

-Fleet holdings were a good sink for a while. But we're not likely to get another, and most of the BIG fleets won't need to buy DL to fill those inputs.

No, fleet holdings were a terrible sink.

Only a fraction of players used their dil for it and they never asked for more. Those suggesting it up here in forums were/are all a bunch of hypocrites as they like to have better dil conditions for their zen trades but will certainly not contributing thier dil to any holding. Lol, what are you thinking…

Good part is that the coloy with its 50-80 mil Dil “sink” was all that was needed to kill that entire system once and for all sparing us this poo poo discussion if fleets holdings are suited. They are obviously not as nobody falls for them.

The Problem is, what do do with the fleet credits. My toons have multipe million each. But nothing useful to buy for.

Edit: Pre Upgrade System everybody uses Fleet Weapons but this time is over.

avoozuul

One of the many reasons why I no longer login for anything other than doing endeavors these days.

lordmerc22

Its very tied to sales and releases of new items/packs/ships

we had T6X which is close to a perm need for many people now - at least those that want the most out of their ship
we had packs that sucked a lot of zen too so people are mass selling their dill cause they want zen, while those that have zen and not so much dill just prioritise buying new things and T6X tokens.

At the same time any sale (or expected sale, hint: Black Friday) makes people want to save zen for that and spend more zen than they usually do when these sales come

postagepaid

Could be worse.

About this time last it was capped out and reeling from being hammered by greedonomic based decisions with back to back high desire items being dumped into the game that drove the exchange through the roof. Their solution was to lift the timed nature of phoenix which was always going to be a quick fix without fresh stuff going into the phoenix box, the greedonomic addition of mugg's markup to the zen store all but nailed the coffin on phoenix as a long term solution.

With the legendary ships and t6x we're seeing a resurgence of pointless power creep to get money out of wallets and the exchange is reacting, the price is going up and those who are disgusted by the greed driven focus of the game are moving away from the cash shop side if they haven't simply dropped the game entirely due to the recent awful entries into the endless cycle of events.

Could be worse, but not by much.

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lordmerc22

Yes only if they raised the cap they could make it much worse and I am hopeful they will never do that

tribbulater

Since Cryptic is a business, it's reasonable for them to do whatever drives the most Zen sales. It might seem to Cryptic like a high DilEx drives sales (because a Zen is more desirable if it gives you 500 Dil than 350), but this is actually a false impression.

High Dil values per Zen don't mean Zen is valuable, it means Dil is worth very little. It's worth very little because most of the things people want it for, they've already got. People spend money on games to get things they want "now", and if you don't need anything for Dil "right now", then there's little reason to buy Zen to trade for it.

As others have said here, the correct approach would be to add valuable options to the game for Dil. And also to change the way the Phoenix box works. If you could trade 4 Phoenix tokens for one token of the next higher quality, you'd see a heck of a lot more Phoenix sales.

If you could purchase one more Captain Skill point for 200,000 Dil, and the next for 400,000, and another for 600,000 and a fourth for 800,000 (bringing your skill point total to 50) - you'd sink 2 million Dil on a lot of characters without messing up any other sales strategies.

Lots of other great Dil sinks have been proposed over the years, there's not been a shortage of ideas. Only a shortage of marketing sense on Cryptics' end.

lordconn

tribbulater wrote: »

As others have said here, the correct approach would be to add valuable options to the game for Dil.

One thing that nearly everyone seems to want is costume options, particularly to customize existing uniforms. Literally the only thing I would consider joining a fleet for is the Odyssey dress uniform variant. I would pay plenty dil for that, if it were not a fleet only item is beyond me.

Before anyone asks, I barely have time for the game as is. I have no time for fleet projects and no tolerance for the drama and politics that always follow guild-based play.

saber1973a

lordconn#9249 wrote: »

tribbulater wrote: »

As others have said here, the correct approach would be to add valuable options to the game for Dil.

One thing that nearly everyone seems to want is costume options, particularly to customize existing uniforms. Literally the only thing I would consider joining a fleet for is the Odyssey dress uniform variant. I would pay plenty dil for that, if it were not a fleet only item is beyond me.

Before anyone asks, I barely have time for the game as is. I have no time for fleet projects and no tolerance for the drama and politics that always follow guild-based play.

What guild-based play ?
I got all my toons in the fleets, each in separate one (to get access to different banks and shops),
Then mostly forget about the fleets, just throw in any surplus of fleet marks.
Did not get yet any complains from any of the fleets :P

rattler2

peterconnorfirst wrote: »

No, fleet holdings were a terrible sink.

Only a fraction of players used their dil for it and they never asked for more. Those suggesting it up here in forums were/are all a bunch of hypocrites as they like to have better dil conditions for their zen trades but will certainly not contributing thier dil to any holding. Lol, what are you thinking…

Good part is that the coloy with its 50-80 mil Dil “sink” was all that was needed to kill that entire system once and for all sparing us this poo poo discussion if fleets holdings are suited. They are obviously not as nobody falls for them.

Were you around for when the Starbase was released? The DL Exchange was acutally down into the 80s a few times back then.
And I think you missed the part where I said that the big fleets wouldn't need to buy DL for a new holding. They pretty much have a surplus that they can just drop into it without needing to go to the Exchange.

trekpuppy

As someone who has an OCD to collect things I'll repeat two suggestions I've proposed in other places. The game has two discontinued mechanics that contains exclusive collectibles, services and accolades. The buddy referral system, which became obsolete when the game went F2P, and the monthly subscription system, which I can only assume didn't generate enough revenue to motivate keeping alive.

Activate those mechanics again and let us buy and use buddy codes and pay for subscriptions with dilithium. Only the second system has 1,000 days worth of collectibles and Cryptic is free to charge whatever dilithium price they feel would make an impact on the inflation in the game.

discojer

In my experience, fleets aren't great dilithium sinks, but fleet owners are great for buying dilithium off the exchange

In pretty much everyone I belong to, the average member contributes maybe 100,000 fleet credits worth, but then you have leaders who contribute tens of millions

I think at this point though, what would help is a project like "Unload surplus dilithium" that gives 5 to 10 fleet credits per every dilithium. Right now, the 1:1 ratio isn't really worth it for most people

postagepaid

Fleet holdings were a good dil sink but they had a shelf life that's long since passed for the long lived fleets that have dumped the dil into the upgrades. The last addition to fleets was the lukari colony stuff which was vastly overpriced in comparison to the other projects without any real stand out rewards. As with the older stuff those fleets who wanted to complete will have done so and again the stagnation is there.

Same issue that phoenix has now that the only thing worth using them for is the upgrade tokens, eventually that will stagnate. They (temporarily) added the t6u tokens to that but the dilex barely blinked either because they weren't that popular, poorly advertised to favour the zen purchase or simply not that enticing because power creep without gameplay to back it up is pointless.

foxrockssocks

Keep in mind the other side of the dil exchange is zen. If the value of dil is dropping vs zen, then it can easily be because the available zen is drying up, rather than any change in relative demand. And at least right now, it is reasonable to assume people may have stopped their zen buying for the upcoming black Friday sale, and possibly a zen charge bonus.

I'm not disagreeing that dilithium has limited value in game usage, though, and converting it to zen is something of a default choice after a while. Fixing that issue would obviously also help the exchange rate.

skk1701j

492 since announce of the Titan

seaofsorrows

It will hit 500 and stay there permanently. Cryptic is showing no indication that they will ever pause their barrage of non stop ship packs and 'specials.'

Just assume that the rate is 500:1 and don't count on that changing anytime soon.

kosmi7

tribbulater wrote: »

Since Cryptic is a business, it's reasonable for them to do whatever drives the most Zen sales. It might seem to Cryptic like a high DilEx drives sales (because a Zen is more desirable if it gives you 500 Dil than 350), but this is actually a false impression.

High Dil values per Zen don't mean Zen is valuable, it means Dil is worth very little. It's worth very little because most of the things people want it for, they've already got. People spend money on games to get things they want "now", and if you don't need anything for Dil "right now", then there's little reason to buy Zen to trade for it.

As others have said here, the correct approach would be to add valuable options to the game for Dil. And also to change the way the Phoenix box works. If you could trade 4 Phoenix tokens for one token of the next higher quality, you'd see a heck of a lot more Phoenix sales.

If you could purchase one more Captain Skill point for 200,000 Dil, and the next for 400,000, and another for 600,000 and a fourth for 800,000 (bringing your skill point total to 50) - you'd sink 2 million Dil on a lot of characters without messing up any other sales strategies.

Lots of other great Dil sinks have been proposed over the years, there's not been a shortage of ideas. Only a shortage of marketing sense on Cryptics' end.

Ye i was thinking that too. Or to have special dil boxes and keys like for zen. Either way if the exchange hit the 500dil per zen then a lot of players should band together and stop geting zen untill the price gets half down other way wales will keep geting more dill when they need it and cryptic will keep getting more money for their greed. I like the game and i invested some money but they can't expect us to always toss 30-60$ on some bundels and 100$+ on some higher bundels. People with that money can get new games and much more goodies instead. Even blizzard with wow is not that much greedy....

alcyoneserene

At the cap and once Zen vanishes from the exchange this game should lose its F2P status. For such a broken mess, it deserves it.

atlantis

Another Issue is that too much dill is being created by farmers.. ppl with 50 alts spamming contraband and admirality.. They should change The Cap from 8k per day per alt to something like 50-100k per day Acc wide and remove the alt specific limits. Also getting a one-way delete the Dill type of activity would reduce the amount of dill in circulation without affecting the zen market in a negative way, maybe a special series of actual lockboxes that cost Dill instead of keys? (and aren't Phoenix style, where most people with the dill already have the ships and other goods from the boxes) Maybe add Endeavor perks as one of the prizes in the dil-boxes, to spice things up.

trillbuffet

Personally the greed got to a lot of people but that isn't the full picture of the problem in its entire scope. You also have quality of content issues which being this game has never been a pvp or competitive focused game it needs the kind of exciting content that this game isn't providing. If I told someone they had to choose between playing any battlezone in space that there is currently where you press F every 3 seconds or one modeled on the aspects of the DS9 episode Sacrifice of Angels where you are trying to keep yourself alive and destroy the enemy every 3 seconds. Same thing with ground battlezones in comparison to defend something like the DS9 episode AR-558 which there are plenty of places and episodes to find unsuspecting npcs waiting for you to attack them. Although not really legions of jem hadar or whatever enemy coming to try to end your life. The closest to that I'd say is probably the ground Pahvo TFO. So all I am saying is make these items you see in the exchange for 1.4 billion EC fall under some category of some type of system where it becomes obtainable and where people are having fun in much better content. So more focused direction than just give me money and press F is what is needed.

gaevsman

Lets invest in proyects for the fleet on things we cannot control.. for example, fleet reputation bonus week.. Fleet upgrade bonus week, Fleet Fleet Zen Discount bonus week (thats a strech), and so on.. they rotate, and those proyects cost a lot of dill..