the problem is now you have an economy that's too high in the game now. Rep is one thing but unlocking skill traits, fleet projects and costume unlocks, and the like are set from an older economy. Not all people abused the system dev's and now you force people to buy for a broken in game currency. Other games did this kind of thing 15 yrs ago guys, you did not do your homework into the solution you put in place. Sad really
Please allow it to be used to by Reputation Stores for weapons and such. Right now my KDF that got boosted to 65 still has a significant pile of Reputation Dilithium that don't really have any meaningful gear to spend it on, and can't buy things like Withering Disruptors for their redness using that pile. The pile of Reputation Dilithium I got on that character is a tiny fraction of getting all the Reps to T5 would be. Could also use other things to spend it on.
I suppose it does save me time, as I won't need nearly as much grinding for a targeted build on a new character. Thanks to being able to just hit the Reputation tiers I need for traits and gear, and then not having to wade through the remainder for the now un-needed payouts.
Day late, dollar short of a change IMO in the grand scheme of things for the Dil market.
About to say the same thing. Reputation dilithium you can't spend in the reputation stores. Why not stop conversion of marks to dilithium as well or remove dilithium altogether. I wouldn't have an issue with that.
Ratio at the start of this game for content/missions to ships now reversed. Every week a new ship.
32k is about the price of one piece of space gear from a rep. With the Ore you have to spend days to refine it all before its usable in ANYTHING. Rep Vouchers are usable for rep projects immediately.
Also I'm pretty sure Omega Rep only gave 9.5k, which was enough for one piece of ground gear.
Omega was actually nerfed once before.
Sometime pre-DR, it used to award the same 32k, 48k when a dilithium weekend was active (or maybe 56k, it's been a while).
They are saying they have no money to spend... and now if they want to grind dill to buy dill from players that do have $ they will have to actually play the alts they are milking.
The dilithium bonus from Repuation systems was never all that much. You could not refine it all at once either.
Bless you... your not an exploiter of game systems. Too your credit.
Let me give you an example... someone I know well, not myself I have never deleted a toon I created that I remember.
Anyway in this example this player has been keeping around 20 toon slots at all times as grind slots. They have/had a nice spread setup... they basically roll a new toon a week sometimes two. Get them to a point where its just a log in and quick click through rep missions to T5. (recruit rewards mean you don't actually have to play... especially if you burn a few lockbox duty officer missions in the leveling process which also reward tons of skill points) When they get to T5 they go into Sunset mode... which means they log in once a day and hit refine, and move on. When the unrefined dill hits zero after around 80 days... they make sure its stripped bare and delete the toon.
They have 2 sets of nice Ultra Rare doffs for power leveling and just mail them forward after there new toons hit 65.
The bottom line is for a long time they have basically rep clicked on 10 or 12 toons every day which probably took 7 or 8 min... then logged in and out of around the same number of toons they where sun setting.
160-200k every day in dill for 10 min of work every day... and a 30-60 min a week play session getting the next toon to level 11 to start the duty officer power level (which takes all of 1-2 days due to time gates not cause it requires actual play)
Anyway point is... this player was NOT in anyway alone. Many people are doing the same type of thing some maybe where only doing a few at a time some may have been even crazier I have no idea. Point is this player was spending a very minimal amount of time and getting what 320-400 ZEN every single day. That is easily 11-13k in Zen a month... for 4 hours leveling toons a month and 10 min of clicking every day. The fact that a few people on here are complaining that this was the only way they could afford Cryptics big ship packs should tell everyone this was actually pretty common.
Given the high price tag of bundles and ship packs? That is not all that much. Even still, the problem is not that this kind of dilithium can be farmed. The problem will continue to be the lack of anything meaningful to spend it on.
I agree this is only part of the problem. However I doubt Cryptic ever intended for people to turn 7-10 hours a month of farming into $120-150 in virtual currency.
People wonder why it ground out..... I mean its not that people aren't buying Dilithium right now. Orders do go through so someone is in need and skipping the grind for it. The single biggest issue IMO was THIS.
Yes its still very possible to grind Dilithium which is fine... that is intended of course. It just shouldn't be that easy... and obviously people know it wasn't intended. No developer makes a game thinking players are going to be constantly rolling new toons sucking them dry and deleting them after 3-5 months. I can't think of any other game where rolling 20 alts at a time with the intention of deleting them was intended behaviour.
Given the high price tag of bundles and ship packs? That is not all that much. Even still, the problem is not that this kind of dilithium can be farmed. The problem will continue to be the lack of anything meaningful to spend it on.
There isn't likely to be one silver bullet fix.
This is just one way to nerf dil farming by some amount. By itself it almost certainly isn't enough but it will have some effect. Several people have already posted here that it will cut into their farming.
Nerf more farming sources, add more sinks, and eventually you have a complete fix.
But it takes ages to even reach t5 in any if them as it is and it's only a finite supply what the hell it's not near as convenient or never-ending unlike the ToD10 admiralty rewards. I'm finding myself playing this game less and less because of these ridiculous changes, the games just losing its enjoyment for me.
You say many were abusing the T5 dilithium reward with the repeated character deleting, and I agree it was definitely exploiting a loophole in the system to earn excessive dilithium amounts. Two problems though.
1 - The horse has not only already bolted as far as this exploit is concerned, it has being going on that long, it has disappeared into the sunset and is probably on its way to a nice sunny none extradition territory. Put simply, the damage has long since been done.
2 - Relative to the actual player population, how many is 'many'? Enough to distort the market certainly, by this and other methods, but in typical Cryptic fashion we have the sledgehammer approach to problem solving instead of maybe trying the scapel first, and to TRIBBLE with the likely majority of players, especially new ones, who get hurt in the process.
And to those who say new players will be better off with vouchers that they do not need to wait to refine, how long is it since you were an actual new player? And did anyone actually ask any genuinely new players their thoughts? Maybe they had other prorities than reputation gear for that dilithium reward, after they had gone through the effort to earn it.
But the single biggest mistake made with this change is one of the most dangerous any game can make - the removal of player choice.
You say many were abusing the T5 dilithium reward with the repeated character deleting, and I agree it was definitely exploiting a loophole in the system to earn excessive dilithium amounts. Two problems though.
1 - The horse has not only already bolted as far as this exploit is concerned, it has being going on that long, it has disappeared into the sunset and is probably on its way to a nice sunny none extradition territory. Put simply, the damage has long since been done.
2 - Relative to the actual player population, how many is 'many'? Enough to distort the market certainly, by this and other methods, but in typical Cryptic fashion we have the sledgehammer approach to problem solving instead of maybe trying the scapel first, and to TRIBBLE with the likely majority of players, especially new ones, who get hurt in the process.
And to those who say new players will be better off with vouchers that they do not need to wait to refine, how long is it since you were an actual new player? And did anyone actually ask any genuinely new players their thoughts? Maybe they had other prorities than reputation gear for that dilithium reward, after they had gone through the effort to earn it.
But the single biggest mistake made with this change is one of the most dangerous any game can make - the removal of player choice.
If Cryptic is going to go ahead with this, then there needs to be increases in dilthium income from some of the existing sources. The dil mining could do with some significant boosting, given how much time it takes just to gain 1K for five mining rounds on Vlugta, and 2.5K on the Fleet mine with its ridiculous 11 mining rounds. Multiplying that output by 2-4x at least will make it more worthwhile.
I still remember playing that particle scanning minigame during the game's first few years, taking at least 3 months of watching the event rotation like a hawk so I could get the max amount of dil I could. This was all just to buy a starship from the vendor that is now obsolete.
Someone suggested providing some sort of conversion to give us a dilithium voucher for the Event Store, which would be good for players who miss events or new players wanting to get caught up. Another idea would be to provide quality/tech point upgrades like the Omega particle upgrades that could be bought from the reputations so that the unused marks can at least have some sort of function for those who just got locked out. Also, an ability to pool rep dil across all toons might be a good plan too, so that new toons can start grabbing that gear as they move up through reputations. This will, of course, still result in a major stockpile of unused dilithium.
For people saying this is too late... I guess time will tell. If this makes an impact it will take a few months. I guess that would probably be about the outside of when peoples current farm toons that already hit T5 dry up.
To be clear though current there is 1,667,120,000 dilithium on sale. Or 208,390 toons daily 8k. Back log is around 10 days.... I had one go through today and it was almost exactly 10 days to the hour 21s to the 31st.
So right now aprox 20,839 toons daily Dill haul is being posted by players for sale every day.
I could be away off but if we assume the average dill seller is selling a pooled bunch of farmed dill from say 20 toons ? That would mean 1,041 players every single day are offering 160,000 dill for sale on average.... obviously some sell none and some sell twice that amount... but on average.
Steam charts show STO with a peak player number of 4,307... average of 1,398. Of course not everyone is using steam but heck even if we double those numbers. The math is clear a metric boat ton of players are farming at least some dill.
This is clearly without a doubt the easiest (and arguably most abused) method. So yes it is about time Cryptic closes it up. The fact that the gravy has been running for years isn't relevant. The backlog is what it is... I somehow doubt there are lots of player sitting on millions of unsold dill. People farming those big numbers are not holders there sellers. (in general.)
I would wager the backlog starts to move by the end of the month... and we drift down to a 1-2 day wait with in a couple months. We'll know soon enough... if I'm way off so be it.
I agree this is only part of the problem. However I doubt Cryptic ever intended for people to turn 7-10 hours a month of farming into $120-150 in virtual currency.
You can double, triple, quadruple or more on that amount and it is still meaningless since there is nothing worthwhile to spend that currency on.
Which currency ?
Zen ?
People sell their purple rocks for Zen every day... so for something people claim has no use. I don't know you guys should talk to whom ever is buying 166,712,000 of the stuff every day. Clearly some people are buying Zen and trading it for Dill.
Don't get me wrong I agree we could use even more things to use Dill on. Still clearly the game thankfully still has buyers.
As a 10year plus player and lifer, I don't your reasoning for a lot of things. . . I am a Fleet leader my fleet mates and I have worked tirelessly to level both our Fed and KDF fleets. Most of my character only have a few good items from the Rep. System. The others are not worth having. . . as many other Captain's have said here.
I and my fleet mates have used much of our Rep. System Dil. to fund our insanely expensive Fleet projects. Where all our combined Rep. System dil. has barely pushed a scant few projects to completion. By taking away that dil reward that we EARNED by doing the reputation dailies to get that Tier 5 dil. we can't use it in the Dil. store, we can't use it in fleet projects, we can't use it for fleet gear, and more. . .
So basically you shoot your customers in the leg, just because you want to fix the Dil. Exchange which Never has Zen in it every single day I get on?. . . First you make almost all mission rewards bind on pickup so fleet mates can't donate any of their mission rewards to other fleet mates. NOT helpful to fleets which make up a huge portion of this game. Crafting takes more dilithium and effort to be worth doing just to give fleet mates good gear. Not helpful to fleets. Why? Because dilithium is what runs the game. How can we craft the great items using dilithium when we need it for every other single thing in the game worth our time?
Cryptic you taking away our EARNED pass tokens and making us purchase them with dil, did it fix the Exchange problem? Nope!
So instead of creating new things we would desire to purchase with dil. You just take away from us the things we have come to count on. Before that time I was proud of Cryptic for sticking up for us players.
I don't care about the few people who spend a huge portion of their life trying to gain dilithium to get non-existent Zen on the Exchange. I do care about real people with limited time, who are just trying to play the game and be productive fleet members.
At the beginning of the Anniversary event we were all thanked for being a part of the game community who helped Cryptic have 2 of the most profitable years in their history. . . Yet Cryptic is being fearful of some people getting free Zen and purchasing Ships and stuff? Does Cryptic think that those people would somehow have money to spend on Zen? At 500 dilithium to get 1 Zen, and T6 ships costing 3000 Zen each, how many hours are these people spending to get this Zen which Cryptic seems to be so afraid of them getting? Many many hours, to get Zen that is gone within seconds on the Exchange. People with this much time to get this dilithium are unlikely to have disposable income. If they have any income at all.
So do you Cryptic think that punishing all of us who are just trying to enjoy the game and be good fleet mates is worth trying to stop the few with enough time to try to get the dilithium with Hours upon hours of their time to get the Zen which is almost non-existent on the Exchange? . . .
Your dilithium sinks are at the cost of Fleets and their Projects. . . Small fleets are hit the worst by this. Why even have fleets then? If you want to have people play your Free to Play game, to get dilithium for your sinks, and then they have them spend all their time (that most of us don't have) playing to get more dilithium for everything else that you have already put into the game, how is taking away the Reputation Dilithium reward we earned, going to fix your Broken Exchange system? Really I honestly want to know how you think this will play out?
Many people are going to leave the game if you keep taking away things we all have counted on. . . Then those 2 most profitable years will be the games last most profitable ones. Which makes me truly sad. Because I love STO. And the player base. . . Thank you all for taking the time to read my opinions. Please be healthy and happy!
Frankly, I think they should add more timer buyouts in places where there aren't any, or are in zen instead.
Something like the R&D or upgrade system. You can set off a project, and wait for it to finish, or you can pay dil to finish it early.
That's a sink that both doesn't hurt existing players, and offers a shortcut for those that are impatient or have dil to spend.
It might not work, but at least it doesn't break the game or affect players negatively in the process, like literally every other action Cryptic has taken, save for the vanity shields.
They already do for R&D projects. Lost a few dilithium that way due to an errant button press. And some R&D stuff takes dilithium too, whether flooding the exchange with omnidirectional phasers or teaching your tactical officer how to make your dreadnought invisible.
Meanwhile, just took an inventory. 650k dilithium (on XBox) and 20k in reputation vouchers on one of my toons. I'll miss the big payout if I ever make another for a recruiting event, playing for a few years now judging by how many Risian ships are in drydock. And this was after a decent cashout to zen (prices went down to 280!).
This is probably the easiest of the 'fixes' that they're looking at, which is why it's being put in now. Let's see if there's anything worthwhile later. (I know my Klingon carrier fan would loooove to see better pets ... )
As a 10year plus player and lifer, I don't your reasoning for a lot of things. . . I am a Fleet leader my fleet mates and I have worked tirelessly to level both our Fed and KDF fleets. Most of my character only have a few good items from the Rep. System. The others are not worth having. . . as many other Captain's have said here.
I and my fleet mates have used much of our Rep. System Dil. to fund our insanely expensive Fleet projects. Where all our combined Rep. System dil. has barely pushed a scant few projects to completion. By taking away that dil reward that we EARNED by doing the reputation dailies to get that Tier 5 dil. we can't use it in the Dil. store, we can't use it in fleet projects, we can't use it for fleet gear, and more. . .
So basically you shoot your customers in the leg, just because you want to fix the Dil. Exchange which Never has Zen in it every single day I get on?. . . First you make almost all mission rewards bind on pickup so fleet mates can't donate any of their mission rewards to other fleet mates. NOT helpful to fleets which make up a huge portion of this game. Crafting takes more dilithium and effort to be worth doing just to give fleet mates good gear. Not helpful to fleets. Why? Because dilithium is what runs the game. How can we craft the great items using dilithium when we need it for every other single thing in the game worth our time?
Cryptic you taking away our EARNED pass tokens and making us purchase them with dil, did it fix the Exchange problem? Nope!
So instead of creating new things we would desire to purchase with dil. You just take away from us the things we have come to count on. Before that time I was proud of Cryptic for sticking up for us players.
I don't care about the few people who spend a huge portion of their life trying to gain dilithium to get non-existent Zen on the Exchange. I do care about real people with limited time, who are just trying to play the game and be productive fleet members.
At the beginning of the Anniversary event we were all thanked for being a part of the game community who helped Cryptic have 2 of the most profitable years in their history. . . Yet Cryptic is being fearful of some people getting free Zen and purchasing Ships and stuff? Does Cryptic think that those people would somehow have money to spend on Zen? At 500 dilithium to get 1 Zen, and T6 ships costing 3000 Zen each, how many hours are these people spending to get this Zen which Cryptic seems to be so afraid of them getting? Many many hours, to get Zen that is gone within seconds on the Exchange. People with this much time to get this dilithium are unlikely to have disposable income. If they have any income at all.
So do you Cryptic think that punishing all of us who are just trying to enjoy the game and be good fleet mates is worth trying to stop the few with enough time to try to get the dilithium with Hours upon hours of their time to get the Zen which is almost non-existent on the Exchange? . . .
Your dilithium sinks are at the cost of Fleets and their Projects. . . Small fleets are hit the worst by this. Why even have fleets then? If you want to have people play your Free to Play game, to get dilithium for your sinks, and then they have them spend all their time (that most of us don't have) playing to get more dilithium for everything else that you have already put into the game, how is taking away the Reputation Dilithium reward we earned, going to fix your Broken Exchange system? Really I honestly want to know how you think this will play out?
Many people are going to leave the game if you keep taking away things we all have counted on. . . Then those 2 most profitable years will be the games last most profitable ones. Which makes me truly sad. Because I love STO. And the player base. . . Thank you all for taking the time to read my opinions. Please be healthy and happy!
been playing this game for years. and yes i do dil grind for zen. and yes it's takes FOREVER to get. right now i do each of my toons to 200K in dil then goign to mass convert for zen so i can get some zen ships. the rep dil helped alot in that. and now I nice boost for it is gone. and the fact they pull this off like this no warning .no chance of feeback means they KNEW this will be blowback and didn't care. this is not a good move. I just looked. my jem Hader toon which is not my main toon hads 19k in GPL..and hwat do i use it for.
As a 10year plus player and lifer, I don't your reasoning for a lot of things. . . I am a Fleet leader my fleet mates and I have worked tirelessly to level both our Fed and KDF fleets. Most of my character only have a few good items from the Rep. System. The others are not worth having. . . as many other Captain's have said here.
I and my fleet mates have used much of our Rep. System Dil. to fund our insanely expensive Fleet projects. Where all our combined Rep. System dil. has barely pushed a scant few projects to completion. By taking away that dil reward that we EARNED by doing the reputation dailies to get that Tier 5 dil. we can't use it in the Dil. store, we can't use it in fleet projects, we can't use it for fleet gear, and more. . .
So basically you shoot your customers in the leg, just because you want to fix the Dil. Exchange which Never has Zen in it every single day I get on?. . . First you make almost all mission rewards bind on pickup so fleet mates can't donate any of their mission rewards to other fleet mates. NOT helpful to fleets which make up a huge portion of this game. Crafting takes more dilithium and effort to be worth doing just to give fleet mates good gear. Not helpful to fleets. Why? Because dilithium is what runs the game. How can we craft the great items using dilithium when we need it for every other single thing in the game worth our time?
Cryptic you taking away our EARNED pass tokens and making us purchase them with dil, did it fix the Exchange problem? Nope!
So instead of creating new things we would desire to purchase with dil. You just take away from us the things we have come to count on. Before that time I was proud of Cryptic for sticking up for us players.
I don't care about the few people who spend a huge portion of their life trying to gain dilithium to get non-existent Zen on the Exchange. I do care about real people with limited time, who are just trying to play the game and be productive fleet members.
At the beginning of the Anniversary event we were all thanked for being a part of the game community who helped Cryptic have 2 of the most profitable years in their history. . . Yet Cryptic is being fearful of some people getting free Zen and purchasing Ships and stuff? Does Cryptic think that those people would somehow have money to spend on Zen? At 500 dilithium to get 1 Zen, and T6 ships costing 3000 Zen each, how many hours are these people spending to get this Zen which Cryptic seems to be so afraid of them getting? Many many hours, to get Zen that is gone within seconds on the Exchange. People with this much time to get this dilithium are unlikely to have disposable income. If they have any income at all.
So do you Cryptic think that punishing all of us who are just trying to enjoy the game and be good fleet mates is worth trying to stop the few with enough time to try to get the dilithium with Hours upon hours of their time to get the Zen which is almost non-existent on the Exchange? . . .
Your dilithium sinks are at the cost of Fleets and their Projects. . . Small fleets are hit the worst by this. Why even have fleets then? If you want to have people play your Free to Play game, to get dilithium for your sinks, and then they have them spend all their time (that most of us don't have) playing to get more dilithium for everything else that you have already put into the game, how is taking away the Reputation Dilithium reward we earned, going to fix your Broken Exchange system? Really I honestly want to know how you think this will play out?
Many people are going to leave the game if you keep taking away things we all have counted on. . . Then those 2 most profitable years will be the games last most profitable ones. Which makes me truly sad. Because I love STO. And the player base. . . Thank you all for taking the time to read my opinions. Please be healthy and happy!
You do understand the game doesn't have free zen right ?
As I post this right now... there is 3,306,196 in zen orders or... 1,653,098,000 dilithium on the exchange. Orders move in 10 days right now... which means Cryptics customers are buying 165,309,800 dill a day at 500 per... 330,619 zen a day. Or put another way Cryptics customers SPEND $3300 a day buying fake purple rocks.
I'm not sure why you feel Cryptic owes you easy purple rocks...
Also as much as I want to see more sinks in game... what do people really think the upper limit is. Cryptic is already selling over 3 grand in zen a day that is being converted to dill. It seems to me the sinks are actually working... its the supply that is the issue.
It seems to you, because you clearly don't understand this games economy and the balance that is needed for it to work. 80% of people are not willing to spend more than 50 bucks on a game and this game demands you spend much, much more. Now i get that means some are paying alot more, but on the other hand you can kiss all the f2p players goodbye, if they don't have a way to be competitive in the game for a reasonable price.
And the purple rocks are not easy, they never were - it's hard WORK.
It seems to you, because you clearly don't understand this games economy and the balance that is needed for it to work. 80% of people are not willing to spend more than 50 bucks on a game and this game demands you spend much, much more. Now i get that means some are paying alot more, but on the other hand you can kiss all the f2p players goodbye, if they don't have a way to be competitive in the game for a reasonable price.
I'm not sure I under stand how people abusing 40-50 toon farms of alt creation and deletion is sustainable. I mean what would you prefer as a seller of purple rocks a price of 500 per zen... or a price of 400 per zen.
You know the players that should be upset by this change... are the people that wallet dill.
Guessing by the amount of annoyance from "f2p" players (of which I am one 90% of the time) I would assume the dill exchange is about to come crashing down. If I'm spending money to buy DIll I don't want that.
Yep STO logic in action. Cut off the tap. Cut off way to buy things in rep stores except the now even more rare, unrefined and refined dil it leaves you in a position of where you have to decide is the store item worth that precious dil or is it just too much for the smaller amount of dil. Drilling, oh that will be fun. You already slammed Admiralty with vouchers, eventually you will need to create gpl vouchers, vouchers you can't use in dabo, and gpl that you must find other ways to get so you can play dabo.
Can you please start Star Trek Online 2.0, won't be many of us left at the rate you are going with all the changes you think are how to fix things instead of consulting with the base that is still here for ideas. When will gaming companies learn, just like they say what you learn from a book in a class is very different than when you are out there performing what the book and classroom as they are now totally different. Well sitting at a desk in Cryptic and making a decision for the whole based on the few or the one, opps. One day gamers will wise up and decide to just flip the switch to another game till they find the one that listens to them who truly see the game from the MMO side and not from the admin and stats side.
To me this is STRIKE 2. In our state 3 strikes and well you will be sitting in one of luxury jail cells on a basketball court for a long time. In gaming it works in reverse, in that each strike brings the game closer to losing its base that had made the game successful.
At this point, i can't see people who support this change as anything other than shills.
1. they took away admirality dilithium awards/nerfed them to the ground
2. they started charging for admirality reroll tokens
3. they started charging for endeavor reroll tokens (like... realy?)
4. they took away reputation dil reward and made it into a worthless pile of purple rocks
All this, while not giving us any new sinks. And some of you support this?
I'm not sure I under stand how people abusing 40-50 toon farms of alt creation and deletion is sustainable.
You keep repeating this as if doing so will somehow make it true for the vast majority of players. I will absolutely guarantee most players are not farming dilithium like this and the few that do are not having the detrimental impact on the economy that you seem to think they are. The problem is, has been and will continue to be there is nothing worthwhile to spend dilithium on. Without creating demand for things to spend it on, you are still going to have a supply problem.
Every single day people playing this game spend anywhere from 3-5 thousand dollars of real US currency buying Zen to trade to other players for their purple rocks.
I'm sorry I'm not buying this silly there is nothing to spend purple rocks on stuff.
If that where true who is buying thousands of dollars of the stuff every single day ? Please explain that to me.
I'm not sure I under stand how people abusing 40-50 toon farms of alt creation and deletion is sustainable.
You keep repeating this as if doing so will somehow make it true for the vast majority of players. I will absolutely guarantee most players are not farming dilithium like this and the few that do are not having the detrimental impact on the economy that you seem to think they are. The problem is, has been and will continue to be there is nothing worthwhile to spend dilithium on. Without creating demand for things to spend it on, you are still going to have a supply problem.
Every single day people playing this game spend anywhere from 3-5 thousand dollars of real US currency buying Zen to trade to other players for their purple rocks.
I'm sorry I'm not buying this silly there is nothing to spend purple rocks on stuff.
If that where true who is buying thousands of dollars of the stuff every single day ? Please explain that to me.
The fact that the market is capped proves that point. The dilithium in game is not being used, people want to get rid of it, so much so that the price of dil can't go lower.
And keep in mind some of the buyers of dil are undoubtedly speculators, betting that Cryptic is going to do something to bring the market back down one way or another. Its entirely possible they are sitting on billions of dilithium that they plan to unload later at a profit.
At this point, i can't see people who support this change as anything other than shills.
1. they took away admirality dilithium awards/nerfed them to the ground
2. they started charging for admirality reroll tokens
3. they started charging for endeavor reroll tokens (like... realy?)
4. they took away reputation dil reward and made it into a worthless pile of purple rocks
All this, while not giving us any new sinks. And some of you support this?
1 - They really didn't nerf it at all. Ferengi missions award a pool which you get in its entirety playing... or continuing to do admiralty. Who cares if it all comes in at once or is awarded as double awards for awhle. KDF missions award fleet dill which has been a huge boon for most fleets... where the mid tier players are now contributing. (which reduced some of the people who where buyers from having to buy as much) The effect on the dill exchange... absolutely nothing. Cryptic may have thought that would happen but ya they where very wrong. Having said that... the changes are actually good for the game even if they didn't work out exactly as intended.
2 - charging for rerolls in admiralty is perfectly logical... goes with the theme. They are fine with people earning dill with the system... but the skips made it far to easy for people to skip to the big rewards. Also smart people held them for Admiralty weeks and maxed their rewards from those making 20-30k per toon every day... you can still do that during admiralty weeks as long as your willing to actually keep missions going to get the x/10 missions moving.
IMO that makes it a very very effective change.... they didn't remove the ability to earn Dill, they simply stopped it from being a 30s mindless click click forget. You know have to play the card game such as it is.
3 - Everyone keeps saying we need sinks... not dill earning nerfs. Yet when they give you a sink you complain. Ok
4 - The fact that people are so upset about the rep dill change... highlights how many people where abusing it. If your a long time player you hit T5 YEARS ago... so why so upset ? The only answer is cause people have been deleting toons and starting new ones to abuse the system.
I'm not Shill... BUT I'll give credit when its due. This was the change that needed to happen >.< I am actually shocked they had the stones to follow through with it. Good on them.
Bottom line, as you unknowingly admitted, is: this TRIBBLE doesn't work. All they've done is TRIBBLE off the comunity, mostly hurt the new players and nothing got solved. And i can already tell you this TRIBBLE won't work either. Not until they stop taking away stuff that was already awailable and give us something NEW. They can nerf and remove 90% of dil sources and they will fix nothing in the end, because there is just no way to spend dilithium for the people who got the most of it (vets, whales and alike). And yeah, maybe you're not a shill, but you definetly don't have alot of connection to the game for a person with over 1000 posts under his belt.
One more thing about t5 dil rep: you think that dil just falls into players laps? Did you ever calculate, how many hours of gameplay it takes, to grind up rep marks? How many people actively play TFOs, to get that reward? This is not the contraband turn-in dil on 50 characters, my man, this is result of active gameplay - you wan't people to play the game less time, than they used to? Hm, hm... Well i hope my prediction turn out to be false, but TFO ques could suffer -and what else is rly to do, after you played the episodes for the 5th time? :>
Bottom line, as you unknowingly admitted, is: this TRIBBLE doesn't work. All they've done is TRIBBLE off the comunity, mostly hurt the new players and nothing got solved. And i can already tell you this TRIBBLE won't work either. Not until they stop taking away stuff that was already awailable and give us something NEW. They can nerf and remove 90% of dil sources and they will fix nothing in the end, because there is just no way to spend dilithium for the people who got the most of it (vets, whales and alike). And yeah, maybe you're not a shill, but you definetly don't have alot of connection to the game for a person with over 1000 posts under his belt.
They haven't removed dill sources... not legit ones. IF your a new player playing a new toon... by the time you get to the T5 reward. You already have more unrefined Dill then you can refine everyday anyway. So getting a big pool of Rep Dill you can use to spend on gear is actually a HUGE plus. People are confusing new toons with new players. New players are playing and grinding they have no problems stocking unrefined dill. Getting a secondary reputation pool is great. It means they don't have to go and roll 6 more toons so they can beat the 8k refine limit. lol
Comments
About to say the same thing. Reputation dilithium you can't spend in the reputation stores. Why not stop conversion of marks to dilithium as well or remove dilithium altogether. I wouldn't have an issue with that.
Ratio at the start of this game for content/missions to ships now reversed. Every week a new ship.
Omega was actually nerfed once before.
Sometime pre-DR, it used to award the same 32k, 48k when a dilithium weekend was active (or maybe 56k, it's been a while).
Bless you... your not an exploiter of game systems.
Let me give you an example... someone I know well, not myself I have never deleted a toon I created that I remember.
Anyway in this example this player has been keeping around 20 toon slots at all times as grind slots. They have/had a nice spread setup... they basically roll a new toon a week sometimes two. Get them to a point where its just a log in and quick click through rep missions to T5. (recruit rewards mean you don't actually have to play... especially if you burn a few lockbox duty officer missions in the leveling process which also reward tons of skill points) When they get to T5 they go into Sunset mode... which means they log in once a day and hit refine, and move on. When the unrefined dill hits zero after around 80 days... they make sure its stripped bare and delete the toon.
They have 2 sets of nice Ultra Rare doffs for power leveling and just mail them forward after there new toons hit 65.
The bottom line is for a long time they have basically rep clicked on 10 or 12 toons every day which probably took 7 or 8 min... then logged in and out of around the same number of toons they where sun setting.
160-200k every day in dill for 10 min of work every day... and a 30-60 min a week play session getting the next toon to level 11 to start the duty officer power level (which takes all of 1-2 days due to time gates not cause it requires actual play)
Anyway point is... this player was NOT in anyway alone. Many people are doing the same type of thing some maybe where only doing a few at a time some may have been even crazier I have no idea. Point is this player was spending a very minimal amount of time and getting what 320-400 ZEN every single day. That is easily 11-13k in Zen a month... for 4 hours leveling toons a month and 10 min of clicking every day. The fact that a few people on here are complaining that this was the only way they could afford Cryptics big ship packs should tell everyone this was actually pretty common.
I agree this is only part of the problem. However I doubt Cryptic ever intended for people to turn 7-10 hours a month of farming into $120-150 in virtual currency.
People wonder why it ground out..... I mean its not that people aren't buying Dilithium right now. Orders do go through so someone is in need and skipping the grind for it. The single biggest issue IMO was THIS.
Yes its still very possible to grind Dilithium which is fine... that is intended of course. It just shouldn't be that easy... and obviously people know it wasn't intended. No developer makes a game thinking players are going to be constantly rolling new toons sucking them dry and deleting them after 3-5 months. I can't think of any other game where rolling 20 alts at a time with the intention of deleting them was intended behaviour.
There isn't likely to be one silver bullet fix.
This is just one way to nerf dil farming by some amount. By itself it almost certainly isn't enough but it will have some effect. Several people have already posted here that it will cut into their farming.
Nerf more farming sources, add more sinks, and eventually you have a complete fix.
1 - The horse has not only already bolted as far as this exploit is concerned, it has being going on that long, it has disappeared into the sunset and is probably on its way to a nice sunny none extradition territory. Put simply, the damage has long since been done.
2 - Relative to the actual player population, how many is 'many'? Enough to distort the market certainly, by this and other methods, but in typical Cryptic fashion we have the sledgehammer approach to problem solving instead of maybe trying the scapel first, and to TRIBBLE with the likely majority of players, especially new ones, who get hurt in the process.
And to those who say new players will be better off with vouchers that they do not need to wait to refine, how long is it since you were an actual new player? And did anyone actually ask any genuinely new players their thoughts? Maybe they had other prorities than reputation gear for that dilithium reward, after they had gone through the effort to earn it.
But the single biggest mistake made with this change is one of the most dangerous any game can make - the removal of player choice.
I could not have said it better myself.
I still remember playing that particle scanning minigame during the game's first few years, taking at least 3 months of watching the event rotation like a hawk so I could get the max amount of dil I could. This was all just to buy a starship from the vendor that is now obsolete.
Someone suggested providing some sort of conversion to give us a dilithium voucher for the Event Store, which would be good for players who miss events or new players wanting to get caught up. Another idea would be to provide quality/tech point upgrades like the Omega particle upgrades that could be bought from the reputations so that the unused marks can at least have some sort of function for those who just got locked out. Also, an ability to pool rep dil across all toons might be a good plan too, so that new toons can start grabbing that gear as they move up through reputations. This will, of course, still result in a major stockpile of unused dilithium.
To be clear though current there is 1,667,120,000 dilithium on sale. Or 208,390 toons daily 8k. Back log is around 10 days.... I had one go through today and it was almost exactly 10 days to the hour 21s to the 31st.
So right now aprox 20,839 toons daily Dill haul is being posted by players for sale every day.
I could be away off but if we assume the average dill seller is selling a pooled bunch of farmed dill from say 20 toons ? That would mean 1,041 players every single day are offering 160,000 dill for sale on average.... obviously some sell none and some sell twice that amount... but on average.
Steam charts show STO with a peak player number of 4,307... average of 1,398. Of course not everyone is using steam but heck even if we double those numbers. The math is clear a metric boat ton of players are farming at least some dill.
This is clearly without a doubt the easiest (and arguably most abused) method. So yes it is about time Cryptic closes it up. The fact that the gravy has been running for years isn't relevant. The backlog is what it is... I somehow doubt there are lots of player sitting on millions of unsold dill. People farming those big numbers are not holders there sellers. (in general.)
I would wager the backlog starts to move by the end of the month... and we drift down to a 1-2 day wait with in a couple months. We'll know soon enough... if I'm way off so be it.
Which currency ?
Zen ?
People sell their purple rocks for Zen every day... so for something people claim has no use. I don't know you guys should talk to whom ever is buying 166,712,000 of the stuff every day. Clearly some people are buying Zen and trading it for Dill.
Don't get me wrong I agree we could use even more things to use Dill on. Still clearly the game thankfully still has buyers.
I and my fleet mates have used much of our Rep. System Dil. to fund our insanely expensive Fleet projects. Where all our combined Rep. System dil. has barely pushed a scant few projects to completion. By taking away that dil reward that we EARNED by doing the reputation dailies to get that Tier 5 dil. we can't use it in the Dil. store, we can't use it in fleet projects, we can't use it for fleet gear, and more. . .
So basically you shoot your customers in the leg, just because you want to fix the Dil. Exchange which Never has Zen in it every single day I get on?. . . First you make almost all mission rewards bind on pickup so fleet mates can't donate any of their mission rewards to other fleet mates. NOT helpful to fleets which make up a huge portion of this game. Crafting takes more dilithium and effort to be worth doing just to give fleet mates good gear. Not helpful to fleets. Why? Because dilithium is what runs the game. How can we craft the great items using dilithium when we need it for every other single thing in the game worth our time?
Cryptic you taking away our EARNED pass tokens and making us purchase them with dil, did it fix the Exchange problem? Nope!
So instead of creating new things we would desire to purchase with dil. You just take away from us the things we have come to count on. Before that time I was proud of Cryptic for sticking up for us players.
I don't care about the few people who spend a huge portion of their life trying to gain dilithium to get non-existent Zen on the Exchange. I do care about real people with limited time, who are just trying to play the game and be productive fleet members.
At the beginning of the Anniversary event we were all thanked for being a part of the game community who helped Cryptic have 2 of the most profitable years in their history. . . Yet Cryptic is being fearful of some people getting free Zen and purchasing Ships and stuff? Does Cryptic think that those people would somehow have money to spend on Zen? At 500 dilithium to get 1 Zen, and T6 ships costing 3000 Zen each, how many hours are these people spending to get this Zen which Cryptic seems to be so afraid of them getting? Many many hours, to get Zen that is gone within seconds on the Exchange. People with this much time to get this dilithium are unlikely to have disposable income. If they have any income at all.
So do you Cryptic think that punishing all of us who are just trying to enjoy the game and be good fleet mates is worth trying to stop the few with enough time to try to get the dilithium with Hours upon hours of their time to get the Zen which is almost non-existent on the Exchange? . . .
Your dilithium sinks are at the cost of Fleets and their Projects. . . Small fleets are hit the worst by this. Why even have fleets then? If you want to have people play your Free to Play game, to get dilithium for your sinks, and then they have them spend all their time (that most of us don't have) playing to get more dilithium for everything else that you have already put into the game, how is taking away the Reputation Dilithium reward we earned, going to fix your Broken Exchange system? Really I honestly want to know how you think this will play out?
Many people are going to leave the game if you keep taking away things we all have counted on. . . Then those 2 most profitable years will be the games last most profitable ones. Which makes me truly sad. Because I love STO. And the player base. . . Thank you all for taking the time to read my opinions. Please be healthy and happy!
They already do for R&D projects. Lost a few dilithium that way due to an errant button press. And some R&D stuff takes dilithium too, whether flooding the exchange with omnidirectional phasers or teaching your tactical officer how to make your dreadnought invisible.
Meanwhile, just took an inventory. 650k dilithium (on XBox) and 20k in reputation vouchers on one of my toons. I'll miss the big payout if I ever make another for a recruiting event, playing for a few years now judging by how many Risian ships are in drydock. And this was after a decent cashout to zen (prices went down to 280!).
This is probably the easiest of the 'fixes' that they're looking at, which is why it's being put in now. Let's see if there's anything worthwhile later. (I know my Klingon carrier fan would loooove to see better pets ... )
been playing this game for years. and yes i do dil grind for zen. and yes it's takes FOREVER to get. right now i do each of my toons to 200K in dil then goign to mass convert for zen so i can get some zen ships. the rep dil helped alot in that. and now I nice boost for it is gone. and the fact they pull this off like this no warning .no chance of feeback means they KNEW this will be blowback and didn't care. this is not a good move. I just looked. my jem Hader toon which is not my main toon hads 19k in GPL..and hwat do i use it for.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
You do understand the game doesn't have free zen right ?
As I post this right now... there is 3,306,196 in zen orders or... 1,653,098,000 dilithium on the exchange. Orders move in 10 days right now... which means Cryptics customers are buying 165,309,800 dill a day at 500 per... 330,619 zen a day. Or put another way Cryptics customers SPEND $3300 a day buying fake purple rocks.
I'm not sure why you feel Cryptic owes you easy purple rocks...
Also as much as I want to see more sinks in game... what do people really think the upper limit is. Cryptic is already selling over 3 grand in zen a day that is being converted to dill. It seems to me the sinks are actually working... its the supply that is the issue.
And the purple rocks are not easy, they never were - it's hard WORK.
I'm not sure I under stand how people abusing 40-50 toon farms of alt creation and deletion is sustainable. I mean what would you prefer as a seller of purple rocks a price of 500 per zen... or a price of 400 per zen.
You know the players that should be upset by this change... are the people that wallet dill.
Guessing by the amount of annoyance from "f2p" players (of which I am one 90% of the time) I would assume the dill exchange is about to come crashing down. If I'm spending money to buy DIll I don't want that.
Can you please start Star Trek Online 2.0, won't be many of us left at the rate you are going with all the changes you think are how to fix things instead of consulting with the base that is still here for ideas. When will gaming companies learn, just like they say what you learn from a book in a class is very different than when you are out there performing what the book and classroom as they are now totally different. Well sitting at a desk in Cryptic and making a decision for the whole based on the few or the one, opps. One day gamers will wise up and decide to just flip the switch to another game till they find the one that listens to them who truly see the game from the MMO side and not from the admin and stats side.
To me this is STRIKE 2. In our state 3 strikes and well you will be sitting in one of luxury jail cells on a basketball court for a long time. In gaming it works in reverse, in that each strike brings the game closer to losing its base that had made the game successful.
1. they took away admirality dilithium awards/nerfed them to the ground
2. they started charging for admirality reroll tokens
3. they started charging for endeavor reroll tokens (like... realy?)
4. they took away reputation dil reward and made it into a worthless pile of purple rocks
All this, while not giving us any new sinks. And some of you support this?
Every single day people playing this game spend anywhere from 3-5 thousand dollars of real US currency buying Zen to trade to other players for their purple rocks.
I'm sorry I'm not buying this silly there is nothing to spend purple rocks on stuff.
If that where true who is buying thousands of dollars of the stuff every single day ? Please explain that to me.
The fact that the market is capped proves that point. The dilithium in game is not being used, people want to get rid of it, so much so that the price of dil can't go lower.
And keep in mind some of the buyers of dil are undoubtedly speculators, betting that Cryptic is going to do something to bring the market back down one way or another. Its entirely possible they are sitting on billions of dilithium that they plan to unload later at a profit.
1 - They really didn't nerf it at all. Ferengi missions award a pool which you get in its entirety playing... or continuing to do admiralty. Who cares if it all comes in at once or is awarded as double awards for awhle. KDF missions award fleet dill which has been a huge boon for most fleets... where the mid tier players are now contributing. (which reduced some of the people who where buyers from having to buy as much) The effect on the dill exchange... absolutely nothing. Cryptic may have thought that would happen but ya they where very wrong. Having said that... the changes are actually good for the game even if they didn't work out exactly as intended.
2 - charging for rerolls in admiralty is perfectly logical... goes with the theme. They are fine with people earning dill with the system... but the skips made it far to easy for people to skip to the big rewards. Also smart people held them for Admiralty weeks and maxed their rewards from those making 20-30k per toon every day... you can still do that during admiralty weeks as long as your willing to actually keep missions going to get the x/10 missions moving.
IMO that makes it a very very effective change.... they didn't remove the ability to earn Dill, they simply stopped it from being a 30s mindless click click forget. You know have to play the card game such as it is.
3 - Everyone keeps saying we need sinks... not dill earning nerfs. Yet when they give you a sink you complain. Ok
4 - The fact that people are so upset about the rep dill change... highlights how many people where abusing it. If your a long time player you hit T5 YEARS ago... so why so upset ? The only answer is cause people have been deleting toons and starting new ones to abuse the system.
I'm not Shill... BUT I'll give credit when its due. This was the change that needed to happen >.< I am actually shocked they had the stones to follow through with it. Good on them.
One more thing about t5 dil rep: you think that dil just falls into players laps? Did you ever calculate, how many hours of gameplay it takes, to grind up rep marks? How many people actively play TFOs, to get that reward? This is not the contraband turn-in dil on 50 characters, my man, this is result of active gameplay - you wan't people to play the game less time, than they used to? Hm, hm... Well i hope my prediction turn out to be false, but TFO ques could suffer -and what else is rly to do, after you played the episodes for the 5th time? :>
They haven't removed dill sources... not legit ones. IF your a new player playing a new toon... by the time you get to the T5 reward. You already have more unrefined Dill then you can refine everyday anyway. So getting a big pool of Rep Dill you can use to spend on gear is actually a HUGE plus. People are confusing new toons with new players. New players are playing and grinding they have no problems stocking unrefined dill. Getting a secondary reputation pool is great. It means they don't have to go and roll 6 more toons so they can beat the 8k refine limit. lol