Most of you are quite wrong with regards to how PWE does business. They jacked everything up over time to test the market, and players kept paying. Once Embracer Group and PWE had finished their preliminary assessments and a "Sure Deal" was informally agreed to, they raised the stake again by disabling the Dil. Exchange. So much content has hit in the last year. Seems a little too convenient to me.
Issue with this post is that Dil Exchange was not, at any point actually "disabled", and current state of DilEx is pretty much issue of negligence more than intentional sabotage.
I totally disagree. Its not because they have other priorities or out of shear laziness. Its intentional. Its one of the main facets that players can use to access features of the game and to disable it would promote further expenditure into the game as EC grinding for Keys is not viable..
Please keep in mind that impulse purchasing is at the very heart of the F2P gaming business model.
Look at Mudd's Market.. Why in the world would they jack up those prices that high for off sale items?
Most of you are quite wrong with regards to how PWE does business. They jacked everything up over time to test the market, and players kept paying. Once Embracer Group and PWE had finished their preliminary assessments and a "Sure Deal" was informally agreed to, they raised the stake again by disabling the Dil. Exchange. So much content has hit in the last year. Seems a little too convenient to me.
As mentioned above: the exchange is not and never was actually "disabled".
Also there were not price increases. The base price for ships hasn't changed since T6 was introduced, and that was in 2014. Yes there have been a few bundles (Legendary ships, Mudd's bundles) that have quite high prices, but they also had a lot of content in them (the 10th Anniversary bundle for example, is actually priced at a list price of 3000 per T6 ship, which is the same price equivalent ships are sold separately for) or have been account-unlocks of previously lockbox-only items.
Actually, they did disable the market as any offers that I post are not visible to other players. That happened exactly a year ago, not 3 years ago. My page has said DISABLED since then. Before that, it was a mess, and they didn't fix it at all. These are not real economies and PWE could easily remedy this, like other game developers have. Unless its intentional. Also, yes not on everything, but the introduction of top gear items at a premium in Mudd's Market / New Bundles does artificially increase cost to performance. Don't forget the eventual shift of top consoles and traits behind Lock Boxes or difficult means. Hence the raise in cost overall. Also, my people and I do not see consistency with there lottery numbers on T6 Infinity Lock Box ships unless you purchase keys in bulk and attempt to acquire it by that means. In fact, it took 1.8 times longer while opening 20 boxes at a time, 3 times a week.
Ultimately, companies need to make money. But this, along with all the bugs and the horrible reaction time and delay of power activation is making this game hard to play long term.
Quality Control measures really need to pursue to promote long term viability.
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,586Community Moderator
Uh... its not disabled. Its functioning right now as we speak. The issue is that we used to have a Zen surplus showing us what the exchange rate and how much Zen was actually on the market. Right now... the second any Zen is posted, its INSTANTLY snapped up, thus we have no visible amount of Zen on the exchange.
It might say disabled for a moment, but then it loads the UI like normal. And I currently have an order up waiting in line for Zen myself. Average wait time is about... 2 weeks. Slow, annoying, but still functioning. Just because its not instantly giving you Zen doesn't mean its been disabled outright. Its now pretty much a test of patience.
If something were to be introduced that makes Dilithium more desirable to have, that wait time will start to decrease until we start having a stockpile of Zen on the exchange again..
Its supply and demand. And right now there is too much supply OF and not enough demand FOR Dilithium. There is demand for Zen.
And as the nutjob who actually ground out multiple packs... I'm familiar with the old patterns of the Exchange.
Uh... its not disabled. Its functioning right now as we speak. The issue is that we used to have a Zen surplus showing us what the exchange rate and how much Zen was actually on the market. Right now... the second any Zen is posted, its INSTANTLY snapped up, thus we have no visible amount of Zen on the exchange.
It might say disabled for a moment, but then it loads the UI like normal. And I currently have an order up waiting in line for Zen myself. Average wait time is about... 2 weeks. Slow, annoying, but still functioning. Just because its not instantly giving you Zen doesn't mean its been disabled outright. Its now pretty much a test of patience.
If something were to be introduced that makes Dilithium more desirable to have, that wait time will start to decrease until we start having a stockpile of Zen on the exchange again..
Its supply and demand. And right now there is too much supply OF and not enough demand FOR Dilithium. There is demand for Zen.
And as the nutjob who actually ground out multiple packs... I'm familiar with the old patterns of the Exchange.
Actually, in the latest dilex report i did for the reddit/sto discord community (7 hours ago) the backlog has gone down to 3.1 million dilithium. Im getting reports that people's request to buy Zen are going through within 7 - 9 days. So things have definitely improved in the last week or so.
Question is though, can this turn around continue or remain where it is. Last thing we want is for the backlog to get back to 4.8 million and a 14 - 16 day turnaround for zen like it was 2 weeks ago.
'Disabled' the Dilex is not, in the literal sense, but still de facto so. And in a way, yes, sabotaged, over time, by Cryptic, by flooding the game with endless new sources of Dilithium: from Endeavors to now floating Dilithium containers in battle zones. What we're seeing today was the inevitable result of Cryptic having wrought manners to undermine the market.
Even if the sabotage wasn't intentional, it's certainly a convenient truth for them -- with no signs whatsoever of them even contemplating to remedy the situation.
Since I started my original Klingon Recruit, most of my Characters spend their 'Administrative' time at DS9. Every day there is one or two lack-of-White stupor Jem'Hadar Characters at the Bank Terminal. If Player's can't be bothered to complete ONE EPISODE to negate that, that is one reason why we have a Dilithium issue. The tendency to roll Characters with no intention to play them but just game the system.
'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.'
I've noticed only recently, in the last week or two that the ZEN backlog is slowly declining! It was almost over 4.2 million (a month or so earlier) before and just getting closer to only 3.09 million perhaps. I'd like to think the admiralty REROLL, as well as the endeavor REROLL are helping at least a little!
Still it's not a magical FIX, and a much more slow & steady thing kind of thing...
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I'm just really surprised they haven't introduced a new Fleet Holding. I'd love to see a Ferengi Commerce Holding, possible out to Tier IV (4). That take more time however, why I originally hoped they'd expand all Tier III Holding out to IV (4) with out too much requirement to build something new, just offer a few expanded items to unlock at NPC's.
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So I try to be fair and hope maybe they'll consider the 2nd Paragraph. A new Fleet Holding would have everyone start from scratch though, while the 5 existing Tier III Holdings could be done far faster if expanded to Tier IV, and give something new to get at Older Tier 3 Holdings. They wouldn't require large map updates; except a few minor enhancements and could introduce 1 every year as they slowly rolled them out...
Still let us be HOPEFUL for the future! I know they try to be FAIR to a wide variety of people, and despite perceived differences between some of us; far more often were more similar, given we all enjoy Star Trek.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,586Community Moderator
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I'm just really surprised they haven't introduced a new Fleet Holding. I'd love to see a Ferengi Commerce Holding, possible out to Tier IV (4). That take more time however, why I originally hoped they'd expand all Tier III Holding out to IV (4) with out too much requirement to build something new, just offer a few expanded items to unlock at NPC's.
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I think they said that the Colony was going to be the last holding, hence why it was a 5 tier rather than 3 so it bookends the whole fleet holding system. Also I don't know how popular the Colony was with its grind being partially tied to Lukari TFOs until you hit T1 for automated gathering of those resources.
Plans could change, but I think I do remember saying they had no plans to add new fleet holdings, and this was around VIL when we were all thinking that one Gamma Quad research outpost would make a good Fleet Holding.
Yea granted thats what I thought was originally the plan, still I think it makes sense to slowly expand the Tier III Holding out to at least IV (4) and it wouldn't require major redesign or design. It also wouldn't fall out of their original concept to stop developing new fleet holdings either, it would grow those we already have from Tier III into IV. Also it's easier to slightly update some existing maps, with a few subtle changes, rather than design a new one. If they released 1 upgrade to Fleet Tier III to IV (4) every 1 to 2 years, it wouldn't be anything too disruptive; and help provide a balancing force to the DILEX for 5 to 11 years.
Still I think the Admiralty and Endeavor Rerolls, being acquired by DIL are a good 'right' long term decision to have made that finds a fair balance.
They could also decide to only update 1 of the 5 Tier III to IV, and re-evaluate from time-to-time. Who knows...
Now is the time for a massive metagame to be added to STO that has dilithium requirements for every aspect. The more that Dilithium is needed the more demand for it there will be and the more Zen people will be willing to let go of on the exchange. at reasonable rates.
No - any content that REQUIRES Dilithium to play, but doesn't have a commensurate reward that players think is worth the Dilithium spent simply WILL NOT BE USED/PLAYED by the playerbase at large.
IE - Simply adding a Dilithium cost to things WON'T fix any of the issues. Any new Dil sinks created must have a real in game 'value' to the playerbase at large for the Dilithium spent, or they won't be used.
The current DilEx situation we have now is because a overwhelming majority of the STO PC playerbase believe the only real value refined Dilithium has is in conversion to Zen to allow them to buy ships and other in game items they want from the CStore.
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..."
To be fair even fleets aren't a good sink either as a lot of players will wait until they get fleet vouchers from tour of duty/recruits/trade ins at the dil mine.
Might not be popular but get rid of the voucher option and we may have a winner.
A significant boost (about 3%) to the UR/Epic chance from phoenix boxes and that should help in the short term.
However the years of abuse from the playerbase and apathy from Cryptic have brought us to where it is now.
That said on console it's been down to 250/260 the last couple of weeks or so, not sure why.
To be fair even fleets aren't a good sink either as a lot of players will wait until they get fleet vouchers from tour of duty/recruits/trade ins at the dil mine.
Might not be popular but get rid of the voucher option and we may have a winner.
So... completely change the reward for Klingon Admiralty, which I believe a lot of smaller fleets use to help with their projects. You know they changed Klingon Admiralty from raw DL to Fleet vouchers because of the influx of DL... right? It was also pretty much copied over to the Ferengi Admiralty initially as well so we had 2 tracks that had the same reward for ToD.
They could take the trade-up/lobi idea and go a step further -- account-binding keys (resulting in account-bound contents). VR voucher could be traded in for 1 lobi crystal. Then at the top-end of the Lobi store, maybe 1000 lobi crystals for a key (not subject to Lobi store sales). These keys would only be useable on infinity lockboxes. Then instead of giving away infinity lockboxes...sell them for 1-2k dilithium each. That would hit a lot of different issues from multiple angles. Any stashes of the most valuable lockboxes in the game would quickly be depleted, and the only way to get more would be to spend a modest sum of dilithium.
So... upend one element of the economy to fix another? Some people actually buy keys to sell on the Exchange for ECs to sidestep the lockboxes to get the higher end lockbox ships. Thus allowing for people who can't afford to buy a key with real money to still be able to have access to them for ECs. (Granted they're going for like 10-11 mil right now last I checked, but still...)
I feel like this would just make the complaints about lockboxes worse than they already are because now you're forcing people into lockbox opening to be able to access ANYTHING from them. Not exactly a smart move IMO as a lot of people don't want to chance the Random Number Gods for a ship or phaser array or whatever they're going after.
Uh... its not disabled. Its functioning right now as we speak. The issue is that we used to have a Zen surplus showing us what the exchange rate and how much Zen was actually on the market. Right now... the second any Zen is posted, its INSTANTLY snapped up, thus we have no visible amount of Zen on the exchange.
It might say disabled for a moment, but then it loads the UI like normal. And I currently have an order up waiting in line for Zen myself. Average wait time is about... 2 weeks. Slow, annoying, but still functioning. Just because its not instantly giving you Zen doesn't mean its been disabled outright. Its now pretty much a test of patience.
If something were to be introduced that makes Dilithium more desirable to have, that wait time will start to decrease until we start having a stockpile of Zen on the exchange again..
Its supply and demand. And right now there is too much supply OF and not enough demand FOR Dilithium. There is demand for Zen.
And as the nutjob who actually ground out multiple packs... I'm familiar with the old patterns of the Exchange.
Actually, in the latest dilex report i did for the reddit/sto discord community (7 hours ago) the backlog has gone down to 3.1 million dilithium. Im getting reports that people's request to buy Zen are going through within 7 - 9 days. So things have definitely improved in the last week or so.
Question is though, can this turn around continue or remain where it is. Last thing we want is for the backlog to get back to 4.8 million and a 14 - 16 day turnaround for zen like it was 2 weeks ago.
that is almost certainly due to the KDF recruit event. like the Uber DPSers, the people with a trillion tons of Dil are a small percentage. casual players are dropping 10 bucks to get the zen to get the dil to outfit those toons.
as far as the comments blaming the whales, and the whales need to do this or that..
you either have the wrong definition of whale, your you are not looking at things the way a whale does.
I have bought most of the packs and ships and whatnot.. I guess that makes me a whale, and i for one do not want to see the number drop from 500, since i'm not a dil farmer.
Yes, exactly that. Fleets managed just fine before the change from the 'OP' reward from before, no need for vouchers. Fleet ownership is a horrible grind, YET it has the rewards to make it worth. Yeah, rep stuff is mostly better but as gap fillers it's great.
Like I said, won't be popular killing it now but it's a solid idea IMO. Make it literally anything else just nothing dil related.
I made a JH dil mule a couple of weeks ago (T6 discount unlocks cost bank), he barely gets 15 minutes a day play and he's sat on 100k dil. Not a single rep at T5 either.
I'm not sure how you came to any of your conclusions, but they're not based on anything I wrote. Regular keys wouldn't go anywhere. If anything, they'd drop in value a bit, since they'd have some (very marginal) competition from a new, limited source. It was only the keys bought from the *LOBI* store that would be account-bound, as would the contents of any infinity lockboxes opened with them (this mechanic already exists, so it requires no adjustments). It was a way of maintaining parity with prize pack awards, which are character- or account-bound, as is most of what's sold on the lobi store. The point of which is to keep dilithium locked to a given account unless zen changes hands.
It reinvigorates the value of dilithium, prize packs, and lobi crystals, all in one.
What keys bought from the lobi store? Far as I know the only source of keys is the C-Store, and the occasional promo thing.
Fleets managed just fine before the change from the 'OP' reward from before, no need for vouchers.
Not necessarily. The Colony holding was a substantial and reoccurring Zen to Dil monthly VISA bill for some people. For others this particular holding was abandoned outright after reaching Tier 3 due to the high $cost$. This holding requires > $1700 usd worth of dil to complete.
I made a JH dil mule a couple of weeks ago (T6 discount unlocks cost bank), he barely gets 15 minutes a day play and he's sat on 100k dil. Not a single rep at T5 either.
Small potatoes. That's enough for 1.1 Tier 4 Colony projects (roughly 88K dil per Tier 4 project) and there are 150 of them just to get one of the three tracks from Tier 4 to 5.
Might not be popular but get rid of the voucher option and we may have a winner.
You're right... it wouldn't be popular for some people. There are people in fleets that have really had enough of being a dil sink / dilex balancer and for the first time in many years they're actually able to save a little dilithium for things like upgrade weekends thanks to the dil vouchers from kdf admiralty.
Perhaps some of these people will be able to put in their very first dil to Zen order one of these days?
I'm not sure how you came to any of your conclusions, but they're not based on anything I wrote. Regular keys wouldn't go anywhere. If anything, they'd drop in value a bit, since they'd have some (very marginal) competition from a new, limited source. It was only the keys bought from the *LOBI* store that would be account-bound, as would the contents of any infinity lockboxes opened with them (this mechanic already exists, so it requires no adjustments). It was a way of maintaining parity with prize pack awards, which are character- or account-bound, as is most of what's sold on the lobi store. The point of which is to keep dilithium locked to a given account unless zen changes hands.
It reinvigorates the value of dilithium, prize packs, and lobi crystals, all in one.
What keys bought from the lobi store? Far as I know the only source of keys is the C-Store, and the occasional promo thing.
The ones in his proposal above, which do not currently exist.
Yes. That would be the idea. Account-bound keys that can only be used to open infinity lockboxes, purchasable for a sizable chunk of Lobi crystals, and only result in account- or character-bound items when used.
Any scheme for dil => keys or dil => lobi => keys is equivalent to Cryptic offering to buy dil using their own zen instead of having players trade each other zen for dil. Cryptic loses real-world cash.
Sure, the results are account-locked but that's still giving Cryptic players locked zen for their dil and reducing their own real-world cash income from players.
Comments
I totally disagree. Its not because they have other priorities or out of shear laziness. Its intentional. Its one of the main facets that players can use to access features of the game and to disable it would promote further expenditure into the game as EC grinding for Keys is not viable..
Please keep in mind that impulse purchasing is at the very heart of the F2P gaming business model.
Look at Mudd's Market.. Why in the world would they jack up those prices that high for off sale items?
Take off the rose colored glass my friend.
Actually, they did disable the market as any offers that I post are not visible to other players. That happened exactly a year ago, not 3 years ago. My page has said DISABLED since then. Before that, it was a mess, and they didn't fix it at all. These are not real economies and PWE could easily remedy this, like other game developers have. Unless its intentional. Also, yes not on everything, but the introduction of top gear items at a premium in Mudd's Market / New Bundles does artificially increase cost to performance. Don't forget the eventual shift of top consoles and traits behind Lock Boxes or difficult means. Hence the raise in cost overall. Also, my people and I do not see consistency with there lottery numbers on T6 Infinity Lock Box ships unless you purchase keys in bulk and attempt to acquire it by that means. In fact, it took 1.8 times longer while opening 20 boxes at a time, 3 times a week.
Ultimately, companies need to make money. But this, along with all the bugs and the horrible reaction time and delay of power activation is making this game hard to play long term.
Quality Control measures really need to pursue to promote long term viability.
The whales need to push back a bit..
It might say disabled for a moment, but then it loads the UI like normal. And I currently have an order up waiting in line for Zen myself. Average wait time is about... 2 weeks. Slow, annoying, but still functioning. Just because its not instantly giving you Zen doesn't mean its been disabled outright. Its now pretty much a test of patience.
If something were to be introduced that makes Dilithium more desirable to have, that wait time will start to decrease until we start having a stockpile of Zen on the exchange again..
Its supply and demand. And right now there is too much supply OF and not enough demand FOR Dilithium. There is demand for Zen.
And as the nutjob who actually ground out multiple packs... I'm familiar with the old patterns of the Exchange.
Actually, in the latest dilex report i did for the reddit/sto discord community (7 hours ago) the backlog has gone down to 3.1 million dilithium. Im getting reports that people's request to buy Zen are going through within 7 - 9 days. So things have definitely improved in the last week or so.
Question is though, can this turn around continue or remain where it is. Last thing we want is for the backlog to get back to 4.8 million and a 14 - 16 day turnaround for zen like it was 2 weeks ago.
Even if the sabotage wasn't intentional, it's certainly a convenient truth for them -- with no signs whatsoever of them even contemplating to remedy the situation.
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.'
Still it's not a magical FIX, and a much more slow & steady thing kind of thing...
▬♫♪♫♪♪▬▬▬▬♫♪▬▬▬▬♪♪♫♪♪▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬♫♪♫♪♪▬▬▬▬♫♪▬▬▬▬♪♪♫♪♪▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
I'm just really surprised they haven't introduced a new Fleet Holding. I'd love to see a Ferengi Commerce Holding, possible out to Tier IV (4). That take more time however, why I originally hoped they'd expand all Tier III Holding out to IV (4) with out too much requirement to build something new, just offer a few expanded items to unlock at NPC's.
▬♫♪♫♪♪▬▬▬▬♫♪▬▬▬▬♪♪♫♪♪▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬♫♪♫♪♪▬▬▬▬♫♪▬▬▬▬♪♪♫♪♪▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
So I try to be fair and hope maybe they'll consider the 2nd Paragraph. A new Fleet Holding would have everyone start from scratch though, while the 5 existing Tier III Holdings could be done far faster if expanded to Tier IV, and give something new to get at Older Tier 3 Holdings. They wouldn't require large map updates; except a few minor enhancements and could introduce 1 every year as they slowly rolled them out...
Still let us be HOPEFUL for the future! I know they try to be FAIR to a wide variety of people, and despite perceived differences between some of us; far more often were more similar, given we all enjoy Star Trek.
I think they said that the Colony was going to be the last holding, hence why it was a 5 tier rather than 3 so it bookends the whole fleet holding system. Also I don't know how popular the Colony was with its grind being partially tied to Lukari TFOs until you hit T1 for automated gathering of those resources.
Plans could change, but I think I do remember saying they had no plans to add new fleet holdings, and this was around VIL when we were all thinking that one Gamma Quad research outpost would make a good Fleet Holding.
Still I think the Admiralty and Endeavor Rerolls, being acquired by DIL are a good 'right' long term decision to have made that finds a fair balance.
They could also decide to only update 1 of the 5 Tier III to IV, and re-evaluate from time-to-time. Who knows...
No - any content that REQUIRES Dilithium to play, but doesn't have a commensurate reward that players think is worth the Dilithium spent simply WILL NOT BE USED/PLAYED by the playerbase at large.
IE - Simply adding a Dilithium cost to things WON'T fix any of the issues. Any new Dil sinks created must have a real in game 'value' to the playerbase at large for the Dilithium spent, or they won't be used.
The current DilEx situation we have now is because a overwhelming majority of the STO PC playerbase believe the only real value refined Dilithium has is in conversion to Zen to allow them to buy ships and other in game items they want from the CStore.
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..."
Might not be popular but get rid of the voucher option and we may have a winner.
A significant boost (about 3%) to the UR/Epic chance from phoenix boxes and that should help in the short term.
However the years of abuse from the playerbase and apathy from Cryptic have brought us to where it is now.
That said on console it's been down to 250/260 the last couple of weeks or so, not sure why.
So... completely change the reward for Klingon Admiralty, which I believe a lot of smaller fleets use to help with their projects. You know they changed Klingon Admiralty from raw DL to Fleet vouchers because of the influx of DL... right? It was also pretty much copied over to the Ferengi Admiralty initially as well so we had 2 tracks that had the same reward for ToD.
So... upend one element of the economy to fix another? Some people actually buy keys to sell on the Exchange for ECs to sidestep the lockboxes to get the higher end lockbox ships. Thus allowing for people who can't afford to buy a key with real money to still be able to have access to them for ECs. (Granted they're going for like 10-11 mil right now last I checked, but still...)
I feel like this would just make the complaints about lockboxes worse than they already are because now you're forcing people into lockbox opening to be able to access ANYTHING from them. Not exactly a smart move IMO as a lot of people don't want to chance the Random Number Gods for a ship or phaser array or whatever they're going after.
that is almost certainly due to the KDF recruit event. like the Uber DPSers, the people with a trillion tons of Dil are a small percentage. casual players are dropping 10 bucks to get the zen to get the dil to outfit those toons.
as far as the comments blaming the whales, and the whales need to do this or that..
you either have the wrong definition of whale, your you are not looking at things the way a whale does.
I have bought most of the packs and ships and whatnot.. I guess that makes me a whale, and i for one do not want to see the number drop from 500, since i'm not a dil farmer.
Yes, exactly that. Fleets managed just fine before the change from the 'OP' reward from before, no need for vouchers. Fleet ownership is a horrible grind, YET it has the rewards to make it worth. Yeah, rep stuff is mostly better but as gap fillers it's great.
Like I said, won't be popular killing it now but it's a solid idea IMO. Make it literally anything else just nothing dil related.
I made a JH dil mule a couple of weeks ago (T6 discount unlocks cost bank), he barely gets 15 minutes a day play and he's sat on 100k dil. Not a single rep at T5 either.
What keys bought from the lobi store? Far as I know the only source of keys is the C-Store, and the occasional promo thing.
Small potatoes. That's enough for 1.1 Tier 4 Colony projects (roughly 88K dil per Tier 4 project) and there are 150 of them just to get one of the three tracks from Tier 4 to 5.
You're right... it wouldn't be popular for some people. There are people in fleets that have really had enough of being a dil sink / dilex balancer and for the first time in many years they're actually able to save a little dilithium for things like upgrade weekends thanks to the dil vouchers from kdf admiralty.
Perhaps some of these people will be able to put in their very first dil to Zen order one of these days?
Any scheme for dil => keys or dil => lobi => keys is equivalent to Cryptic offering to buy dil using their own zen instead of having players trade each other zen for dil. Cryptic loses real-world cash.
Sure, the results are account-locked but that's still giving Cryptic players locked zen for their dil and reducing their own real-world cash income from players.