I see more than one thread about solutions to the dilithium exchange.
Yes, so please, do not create more when there is an active discussion already going on a given subject. /merged
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> E. All TFOs should have a minimum damage threshold to get credit for completion, and TFOs with waves can have a damage threshold per wave.
I disagree.
A ) It will be incredibly frustrating for captains who've just reached the level to join TFOs and are still gearing up
B ) It will be incredibly frustrating for casual players when they are placed in a PUG with DPS Lords who vaporize everything
> 2. Refined Dilithium from things like Admiralty, Duty Officers, and other more common sources should be restricted to in-game uses and, therefore, not tradable. (dilithium/reputation stores, reputation/fleet projects, and other in-game services).
> A. Instead of dividing dilithium into three or more categories for specific uses (I.E., Fleet-only, Reputation-only), retain the ability to use the majority of dilithium in all areas across the game.
A ) Making some rewards Fleet-only and Reputation-only rewards act to increase demand from buyers as well as decreasing supply from sellers. This change might reduce supply but it will definitely reduce demand.
B ) It requires new development work to create a new currency of "personal use dil" and have rewards go to it
> 3. Eliminate the category of 'Unrefined Dilithium.'
> 4. Either change the 'Refine Dilithium' mechanic to 'Purify Dilithium.'
> A. Retain the 8,000 unit Purification limit per day.
Why? Renaming "refined" to "purified" doesn't change anything.
> B. Or once the player has earned 8,000 units of 'Pure Dilithium,' further rewards cease for 24 hours.
This punishes anyone who plays a lot on the weekends instead of spread out over the week, and also messes up event rewards.
> 6. Disable the sell zen portion of the exchange and allow current orders for zen to be fulfilled, then reopen the dilithium exchange.
Queues are better for most players than trying to catch the 10-minute window when zen goes back "in stock" again.
Think about trying to get a graphics card, PS5, Xbox One X. This is advocating for the "back in stock" frantic rush to get a confirmed order. It's much less painful to place an order now, then get your zen in 30-40 days whenever it clears.
I'm pretty sure some TFOs already have a damage threshold. I think Crystalline Catastrophe does. There is also a threshold for getting skill and experience point credit per enemy. The threshold doesn't have to be super high, just enough to say you've done something. It's already frustrating to be in a PUG with someone who vaporizes everything in sight with a harsh look.
I don't think you understand my second solution. It's basically to create "Exchange-only dilithium." The "refined" and "Purified" are just the terms I came up with. But according to the video, Bots that farm dilithium are having a huge impact on the exchange. If you look at the exchange on PS3 or Xbox, neither platform has the same issue as the PC exchange. My idea is to severely limit the sources of "Exchange-only Dilithium" to things that require direct player participation. There would only be two types of dilithium (exchange-only and refined) instead of dividing it into specific systems.
Cutting off further rewards to exchange-only dilithium is the same as the refining mechanic. You earn 8,000 exchange only dilithium once every 24 hours per character still.
For events, it may be a choice of dilithium box, exchange-only or refined.
(Video link removed due to content violating forum rules. - BMR)
Also, for the record, I don't condone the use of Bots.
> @crypticarmsman said:
> Orders clear when they hit their turn in the queue. I've had two orders for 5000 Zen each (total 10,000) complete within 30 minutes of the first order Zen starting to trickle in. Reducing it to 2500 per order wouldn't really increase the speed overall - it would just mean having to re-queue for another 30+ days more often and make things more frustrating for those that want Zen.
>
I call BS on this. The current ZEN market is taking almost 60 days to clear an order. if your buy orders cleared in 30 minutes then it occurred when the median Zen price was below 150 Lith/Zen.
I agree with everyones long term observation - the ratio of earning-to-spending Lith is out of balance, and no short term solution is likely to solve this.
LtChaos's idea about just limiting the size of the buy orders until a longer term solution can be arranged is a good one.
It should take an average sell time from 60 days to under 30 - and for what negative impact? players have to list once a month instead of every other. This hurts no one, while benefiting casual players and hardcore farmers alike.
I was saying after 34 days - WHEN my order's turn came up, it took 30 minutes to fill. (Unlike you I HAVE placed Zen orders and your '60 days to fill' is utter BS, Learn to read.
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> E. All TFOs should have a minimum damage threshold to get credit for completion, and TFOs with waves can have a damage threshold per wave.
I disagree.
A ) It will be incredibly frustrating for captains who've just reached the level to join TFOs and are still gearing up
B ) It will be incredibly frustrating for casual players when they are placed in a PUG with DPS Lords who vaporize everything
> 2. Refined Dilithium from things like Admiralty, Duty Officers, and other more common sources should be restricted to in-game uses and, therefore, not tradable. (dilithium/reputation stores, reputation/fleet projects, and other in-game services).
> A. Instead of dividing dilithium into three or more categories for specific uses (I.E., Fleet-only, Reputation-only), retain the ability to use the majority of dilithium in all areas across the game.
A ) Making some rewards Fleet-only and Reputation-only rewards act to increase demand from buyers as well as decreasing supply from sellers. This change might reduce supply but it will definitely reduce demand.
B ) It requires new development work to create a new currency of "personal use dil" and have rewards go to it
> 3. Eliminate the category of 'Unrefined Dilithium.'
> 4. Either change the 'Refine Dilithium' mechanic to 'Purify Dilithium.'
> A. Retain the 8,000 unit Purification limit per day.
Why? Renaming "refined" to "purified" doesn't change anything.
> B. Or once the player has earned 8,000 units of 'Pure Dilithium,' further rewards cease for 24 hours.
This punishes anyone who plays a lot on the weekends instead of spread out over the week, and also messes up event rewards.
> 6. Disable the sell zen portion of the exchange and allow current orders for zen to be fulfilled, then reopen the dilithium exchange.
Queues are better for most players than trying to catch the 10-minute window when zen goes back "in stock" again.
Think about trying to get a graphics card, PS5, Xbox One X. This is advocating for the "back in stock" frantic rush to get a confirmed order. It's much less painful to place an order now, then get your zen in 30-40 days whenever it clears.
I'm pretty sure some TFOs already have a damage threshold. I think Crystalline Catastrophe does. There is also a threshold for getting skill and experience point credit per enemy. The threshold doesn't have to be super high, just enough to say you've done something. It's already frustrating to be in a PUG with someone who vaporizes everything in sight with a harsh look.
Discussion about a damage threshold might not go over well with some players as it's lacking the specific context removed from the previous page.
Imagine if there was something that would complete without doing anything at all.
Vaporizing everything in sight with a harsh look (DPS) isn't related to something not having ANY threshold for action (including damage) to complete.
Was looking at that twitter thread and it had me thinking, the events put out a heck of a lot of dilithium and hate to admit it, but that is also contributing to the issue.
I see more than one thread about solutions to the dilithium exchange. I recently watched a video from CasualSAB where he discusses various issues affecting the dilithium exchange. Armed with that information, I propose the following:
1. Restrict sources of what I call "Tradable Dilithium" or "Pure Dilithium" (Dilithium that can be posted to the exchange).
A. Missions
B. Battlezones
C. Asteroid/Fleet mining facility.
D. Other activities that require player participation, such as certain TFOs.
E. All TFOs should have a minimum damage threshold to get credit for completion, and TFOs with waves can have a damage threshold per wave.
For the first bit of this, define "restrictions". Because the problem isn't the ability to generate dilithium. The problem is that there's nothing to spend it on that's worth while. Upgrades and fleets are only good for so long. Also in most fleets it ends up being only a small handful that cover the dilithium costs, usually upper leadership.
As for your minimum damage threshold for TFOs, this already exists. Damage threshold is 1-2% for the entirety of the TFO. As for TFOs with waves, putting the threshold on waves is not practical and would end up causing more harm than good. Just by the mechanics of certain TFOs you're incentivized not to engage the foes more than necessary. Threshold for the entirety of the TFO is more than reasonable. Unless you just get absolute worst luck of the draw, you will never see the AFK penalty.
Also if you can't do more than 1-2% for the entirety of the run in an advanced level TFO, you have no business in that TFO as you're not ready yet, especially elites. I know people don't like hearing that but honestly some of them need to hear it.
2. Refined Dilithium from things like Admiralty, Duty Officers, and other more common sources should be restricted to in-game uses and, therefore, not tradable. (dilithium/reputation stores, reputation/fleet projects, and other in-game services).
A. Instead of dividing dilithium into three or more categories for specific uses (I.E., Fleet-only, Reputation-only), retain the ability to use the majority of dilithium in all areas across the game.
If you want to really enrage the playerbase, this is exactly how to do it. Again the problem isn't dilithium generation, but nothing to spend it on. Because there's nothing worthwhile to spend it on long term, the dilithium is allowed to accumulate and pile up. Sort of like a fountain with the drainage blocked. In order to maintain a healthy water level, you want an equal amount of water leaving vs entering. Problem is the drain is blocked and not enough to can leave and the fountain has overflowed.
More restrictions might stop so much dilithium from accumulating as fast as it once did, but won't address the dilithium already present. Furthermore, restricting stuff isn't going to make folks magically start spending it. It's just going to enrage the playerbase and make people quit. If you want people doing certain things a certain way, give them an incentive to do so that's not "do this or else" as that never goes over well.
3. Eliminate the category of 'Unrefined Dilithium.'
4. Either change the 'Refine Dilithium' mechanic to 'Purify Dilithium.'
A. Retain the 8,000 unit Purification limit per day.
B. Or once the player has earned 8,000 units of 'Pure Dilithium,' further rewards cease for 24 hours.
Useless suggestion that would only change the face of the problem without actually addressing it. You're still "purifying" 8k dilithium per toon per day and not aren't changing anything from a programming standpoint. It's literally the same mechanic but with a different name and the unrefined dilithium step removed. overall function is the same.
6. Disable the sell zen portion of the exchange and allow current orders for zen to be fulfilled, then reopen the dilithium exchange.
This won't actually do anything and again will just enrage the playerbase. In order to buy zen you still need people willing to sell it. You can't force people to sell their zen which is essentially what you're trying to make people do. It amounts to "sell your zen or else" and that's not how you do business.
At the moment 2 things need to happen. They're identifying ways they can slow down the dilithium accumulation without making it too hard to get the stuff. So far they've done good with that step imo. The next thing they need to do is find ways to remove some of the excess dilithium already present to bring the supply back down to earth. Right now using the previous fountain example, the fountain has just overflowed, it's flooded the whole town. Now they need to find a way to remove the excess water/dilithium that's worthwhile to the playerbase.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Was looking at that twitter thread and it had me thinking, the events put out a heck of a lot of dilithium and hate to admit it, but that is also contributing to the issue.
The only things mentioned in those tweets are..
1) Dil-farming admiralty alts
I do this. Maxed out (for me) is about 40K per day of fleet only dilithium. A Colony project takes about 88K dil. Clicking on so many things gets tiring though so my average is often less.
2) Botting being bad and bannable, but manual farming ok.
I don't bot. Am here to play a game. But if I AFK Defense of Starbase One (elite) on each character manually I could get 1440 dil per run plus marks and elite marks that get turned in for even more dil. Apparently you just start a private queue and fly to the edge of the map or cloak. Takes 11 minutes. Potentially this is a huge return.
3) Participating in major farming
Perhaps this is referring to those who AFK Defense of Starbase One (elite) all day long on multiple characters?
Not so sure if event dil rewards really amount to much as compared to other things such as what's mentioned in the tweets.
Would suggest the event dil rewards are possibly chump change by comparison.
Wasn't that long ago... I suspect the game has taken a player count dip recently. We'll see what the exchange ends up at in the next few weeks after sales are done.
In general attacking your customers and calling them unnormal for playing the game as developed is bad form. News flash Jeremy you have been working for a company making a F2P grinder for more then a few years... people are playing it like a F2P grinder SHOCKING I know, how unnormal.
Its good to know though that playing the game as it has been developed is acceptable. There isn't a ton holding a lot of old players to the game... having the devs come out and give them more reasons to say enough of this is just unwise.
Wasn't that long ago... I suspect the game has taken a player count dip recently. We'll see what the exchange ends up at in the next few weeks after sales are done.
In general attacking your customers and calling them unnormal for playing the game as developed is bad form. News flash Jeremy you have been working for a company making a F2P grinder for more then a few years... people are playing it like a F2P grinder SHOCKING I know, how unnormal.
Its good to know though that playing the game as it has been developed is acceptable. There isn't a ton holding a lot of old players to the game... having the devs come out and give them more reasons to say enough of this is just unwise.
There's nothing wrong with what he said. I think that whilst it makes for 'uncomfortable reading' for some, it is factually true, especially as the Dil market is player driven mostly.
Think about it. Everyone is posting for 500:1 at the moment, waiting for a sale; if everyone relisted for 250:1 then they'd get more Zen, but because there is no real demand for Dil, no-one will buy.
The exchange has barely shifted, the sales weren't targetted at the Dil Market, and the Vanity shields were considerably expensive....more expensive on PC btw.
News Flash: Jeremy being upfront, TRUTHFUL and abrupt is what is missing in this world
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
Wasn't that long ago... I suspect the game has taken a player count dip recently. We'll see what the exchange ends up at in the next few weeks after sales are done.
In general attacking your customers and calling them unnormal for playing the game as developed is bad form. News flash Jeremy you have been working for a company making a F2P grinder for more then a few years... people are playing it like a F2P grinder SHOCKING I know, how unnormal.
Its good to know though that playing the game as it has been developed is acceptable. There isn't a ton holding a lot of old players to the game... having the devs come out and give them more reasons to say enough of this is just unwise.
There's nothing wrong with what he said. I think that whilst it makes for 'uncomfortable reading' for some, it is factually true, especially as the Dil market is player driven mostly.
Think about it. Everyone is posting for 500:1 at the moment, waiting for a sale; if everyone relisted for 250:1 then they'd get more Zen, but because there is no real demand for Dil, no-one will buy.
The exchange has barely shifted, the sales weren't targetted at the Dil Market, and the Vanity shields were considerably expensive....more expensive on PC btw.
News Flash: Jeremy being upfront, TRUTHFUL and abrupt is what is missing in this world
Jeremey works for the company developing the game we have in front of us. What he said is very much like the developer of a Korean grind MMO coming out and saying WHY are you grinding... I mean I'm not saying your a jerk, but man what are you doing its so unnatural, weirdo.
STO has been developed in the same manner as your standard super grind free to play game for YEARS now. Why is he acting shocked that players are playing the game they developed?
If they don't want it to play that way its in their power to change it anytime they want. Its just proof that at least Jeremy has no idea how the game actually works which is scary as he is paid to know I thought.
My point is he is putting the blame on US as players for playing the game as its designed. If he doesn't like the design he can get it changed unless he just isn't in the loop on what the design actually is. If the company doesn't like the value of Dill they can at any time choose to sell something for purple rocks rather then $. If they are going to sell every single thing in the game for $... well people are going to grind. Its not rocket science here.
Ok, as I understand the situation, there is too much dilithium and not enough Zen on the exchange. So I suggest creating an exchange-only dil and restricting it to a few sources (Missions, Battlezones etc). This will limit the supply of exchangeable dil on the market and allow it to recover. With that change, you can remove 'fleet-only' and 'reputation-only' dil and return it to the 'refined dil' category. Then when the amount of dil to zen stabilizes, you can give exchange-only dil a few more sources (maybe part of the endeavor rewards?). But I suggest keeping it away from sources, that are shall we say, 'exploitable'?
You're understanding a symptom of the problem. Not the actual problem. You can make all the categories of Dilithium that you want, it's not going to solve the actual problem: That there's nothing long-term, sustainable to spend Dilithium on. Besides, there already is "Exchange only" Dilithium. It's called Refined Dilithium. You can't exchange Unrefined Dilithium, Fleet Dilithium, or Reputation Dilithium.
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You're understanding a symptom of the problem. Not the actual problem. You can make all the categories of Dilithium that you want, it's not going to solve the actual problem: That there's nothing long-term, sustainable to spend Dilithium on. Besides, there already is "Exchange only" Dilithium. It's called Refined Dilithium. You can't exchange Unrefined Dilithium, Fleet Dilithium, or Reputation Dilithium.
This is the issue. There just isn't enough to do with Dill to entice most people to buy it from other players. Which is what the exchange is. Someone that wants extra dill can buy it with money. It is traded to another player that has spare dill. Thus allowing Cryptic to say the game is Free to Play and EVERYTHING in the game even $200 ship packs can be had without spending a dime of your own money. While at the same time saying to whales... you can just buy everything you want including the games grind currency on the up and up. (making sure no one is using gold sellers... because there isn't anything that can't be purchased legitimate like)
Its a very good model. The only issue is for the last 3 years Cryptic has completely failed to do any work that was not directly added to the Zen store. Meaning the only thing to do with zen is buy store items... Buying zen to buy purple rocks? A lot of new players don't even understand that is an option... cause why would they even think about that.
The biggest mistake Cryptic ever made was getting greedy with old free event items and ships. The mudd store should be a place to buy over priced lockbox stuff, NOT previously free event things. The free event stuff ALL of it should have been added to the Dill store. (not the zen store via mudd) During all but the winter event items including the ships can be unlocked by spending Dill early to skip the grind. Mudds market should have been a second chance to pick up items you missed in the same manner.... at higher cost. Mudds cost should have been 100% event buy out cost +50-100% (perhaps 50% markup on items... and 100% markup on ships) same account unlock as you would have gotten during the actual event.
That simple change would have cost them a handful of direct sales.... but GAINED them a ton of Zen purchases that would have been traded for Dill. The net loss to Cryptic would have been ZERO. They would have made very much the same amount of money only the games exchange would still be flowing. Instead of new players buying Mudd event items and ships... they would have bought zen and traded for purple rocks.
Now, THAT is actually a good idea. Past Event items being made available via the Dilithium Store. Make the Dilithium Store purchase per character and you'd have at least one Dilithium sink that can be sustained for as long as they continue to make Event items.
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I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
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Now, THAT is actually a good idea. Past Event items being made available via the Dilithium Store. Make the Dilithium Store purchase per character and you'd have at least one Dilithium sink that can be sustained for as long as they continue to make Event items.
Ok, but they already did exactely this (and even added a gamble-factor to it to increase the amount of dill spent).
Past event items go to the phoenix-box as per-character unlocks.
Some items are there, yes, but it seems most things lately head to Mudd's instead. 🤷🏼♀️
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Now, THAT is actually a good idea. Past Event items being made available via the Dilithium Store. Make the Dilithium Store purchase per character and you'd have at least one Dilithium sink that can be sustained for as long as they continue to make Event items.
Ok, but they already did exactely this (and even added a gamble-factor to it to increase the amount of dill spent).
Past event items go to the phoenix-box as per-character unlocks.
Bingo.
They did used to have a form of that. When Phoenix first launched it helped the exchange limp on for a few more years before grinding out. Upgrades helped.
What I am suggesting is the Dill store should have had a "mudd" section. Which would have been an actual account unlock just like you completed the event you missed. They could have done both... having event things in Phoenix as one offs, and having a mudd tab in the Dill store that purchased an account unlock for the proper cost. I mean if it cost you 1 million dill (or the equivalent to that in Zen to buy out during an event) 1 year later when that item showed up in the Mudd Dill store section it should have had a cost of 1.5-2 million dill direct depending on type. Of course most people don't have 2 million dill sitting around... but if you buy 4000 zen and convert it, you would. Cryptic still gets paid their crazy Mudd Zen store price... the game market has a sink.
The only reason it works the way it does now... is plainly clear. Cryptic doesn't actually understand the game they setup. They would loose nothing in sales if setup the way I describe... if anything they would make more money because more people would have incentive to grind, and people would have a clearer path to semi buy things. Players are more likely to say I have 1 million dill saved up and I want to unlock that ship I missed... ahh I'll spend $20 bucks and buy another million and unlock it. At the current 4500 zen to unlock that FREE ship I missed, na Cryptics greedy. It would be the same money in Cryptics pocket but that isn't how it would be perceived.
Putting everything in the zen store, has really hurt the free to grind part of the game. They need to better balance which currency (direct $ vs grind $) people are required to use in game. BOTH make them the same $ in the end anyway. By loading it all to direct zen store sales they are killing their own game... for really no reason. Balancing the two keeps the game healthy... and puts the same $ in their pockets anyway.
If some event items went into the dil store not Phoenix or Mudds, it would also make players happy because they no longer need to open 2,000 phoenix boxes in the hope of getting an Epic token.
I skip some events when the gear doesn't currently appeal to me, but sometimes a year later I have a new character theme to gear up for. I don't give in to FOMO and force myself to play, I don't buy out events "just in case," and I never buy old gear from Mudd's because I wouldn't get enough use out of it.
If instead the gear I skipped grinding for appeared in the dil store, I could see myself buying some dil to get it. It's an anecdote of one, but I'd use some dil in the shop, and Cryptic wouldn't lose any zen sales from me.
Wasn't that long ago... I suspect the game has taken a player count dip recently. We'll see what the exchange ends up at in the next few weeks after sales are done.
In general attacking your customers and calling them unnormal for playing the game as developed is bad form. News flash Jeremy you have been working for a company making a F2P grinder for more then a few years... people are playing it like a F2P grinder SHOCKING I know, how unnormal.
Its good to know though that playing the game as it has been developed is acceptable. There isn't a ton holding a lot of old players to the game... having the devs come out and give them more reasons to say enough of this is just unwise.
There's nothing wrong with what he said. I think that whilst it makes for 'uncomfortable reading' for some, it is factually true, especially as the Dil market is player driven mostly.
Think about it. Everyone is posting for 500:1 at the moment, waiting for a sale; if everyone relisted for 250:1 then they'd get more Zen, but because there is no real demand for Dil, no-one will buy.
The exchange has barely shifted, the sales weren't targetted at the Dil Market, and the Vanity shields were considerably expensive....more expensive on PC btw.
News Flash: Jeremy being upfront, TRUTHFUL and abrupt is what is missing in this world
Jeremey works for the company developing the game we have in front of us. What he said is very much like the developer of a Korean grind MMO coming out and saying WHY are you grinding... I mean I'm not saying your a jerk, but man what are you doing its so unnatural, weirdo.
STO has been developed in the same manner as your standard super grind free to play game for YEARS now. Why is he acting shocked that players are playing the game they developed?
If they don't want it to play that way its in their power to change it anytime they want. Its just proof that at least Jeremy has no idea how the game actually works which is scary as he is paid to know I thought.
My point is he is putting the blame on US as players for playing the game as its designed. If he doesn't like the design he can get it changed unless he just isn't in the loop on what the design actually is. If the company doesn't like the value of Dill they can at any time choose to sell something for purple rocks rather then $. If they are going to sell every single thing in the game for $... well people are going to grind. Its not rocket science here.
He is bringing up that to much dilithium is in the market, and I will be honest, this is uncomfortable to read coming from him but, he has a critical point.
I 100% stopped bothering grinding for dilithium. There is zero point with the exchange broken as badly as it is. Dilithium has lost almost all of it's value if not all of it, it's almost as bad as the franks before world war 2; if it was a paper currency in real life, it'd be cheaper to burn it than use wood for fuel. A game comparison would be gold in diablo 2; gold became useless in record time and everyone switched to the (for me at least) impossibly rare Stone of Jordan for currency. I never saw an SoJ drop in my life.
And people continue to grind dil endlessly, non-stop even after it lost all its value. It's become pay to win, not completely because of developers but because of non-stop dilithium grinding also contributing and the simple fact that the last major contributions to fleets had been maxed.
At this rate, they may have to scrap dilithium ENTIRELY for a different currency. I heard they did it before with latinum being the original currency, but dilithium has no value whatsoever. It it's taking a full month for processing and people like me with some disposable income have stopped spending money on dilithium(I was a dil buyer btw, haven't in at least a few months now, probably won't from here on, I have way to much dil in reserve and haven't played in a few months even.
(event burnout, stop having non stop events! They are killing the fun of this game for me and I'm sure others to, plus it's just another huge, huge source of excess dilithium.)
At this rate, without making something almost 100% inaccessible to all but the most extreme dil grinders, any "sink" will not make a dent. To do that you'll probably need items costing hundreds of millions for fleets ect just to make a dent.
The most uncomfortable idea I posted was dil exchange fees, which may be necessary and I hate to tell you all this but every game has auction house fees to help control the economy, a scaling sink that simply removes more currency from the economy to a point it's impossible for the extreme farmers to break it for others. And it'll HAVE to effect zen buyers; they are so overloaded with dil that it's not even funny. They have way, way more dil than you guys seem to think, why else are they still grinding even after the currency has flopped at this point?
Even then, there is a reason they have dilithium to begin with, besides allowing the free to play with things we can purchase with cash, but also tying the games in-game economy to another more stable currency. but right now, Dil has zero value at this point.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Wasn't that long ago... I suspect the game has taken a player count dip recently. We'll see what the exchange ends up at in the next few weeks after sales are done.
In general attacking your customers and calling them unnormal for playing the game as developed is bad form. News flash Jeremy you have been working for a company making a F2P grinder for more then a few years... people are playing it like a F2P grinder SHOCKING I know, how unnormal.
Its good to know though that playing the game as it has been developed is acceptable. There isn't a ton holding a lot of old players to the game... having the devs come out and give them more reasons to say enough of this is just unwise.
There's nothing wrong with what he said. I think that whilst it makes for 'uncomfortable reading' for some, it is factually true, especially as the Dil market is player driven mostly.
Think about it. Everyone is posting for 500:1 at the moment, waiting for a sale; if everyone relisted for 250:1 then they'd get more Zen, but because there is no real demand for Dil, no-one will buy.
The exchange has barely shifted, the sales weren't targetted at the Dil Market, and the Vanity shields were considerably expensive....more expensive on PC btw.
News Flash: Jeremy being upfront, TRUTHFUL and abrupt is what is missing in this world
Jeremey works for the company developing the game we have in front of us. What he said is very much like the developer of a Korean grind MMO coming out and saying WHY are you grinding... I mean I'm not saying your a jerk, but man what are you doing its so unnatural, weirdo.
STO has been developed in the same manner as your standard super grind free to play game for YEARS now. Why is he acting shocked that players are playing the game they developed?
If they don't want it to play that way its in their power to change it anytime they want. Its just proof that at least Jeremy has no idea how the game actually works which is scary as he is paid to know I thought.
My point is he is putting the blame on US as players for playing the game as its designed. If he doesn't like the design he can get it changed unless he just isn't in the loop on what the design actually is. If the company doesn't like the value of Dill they can at any time choose to sell something for purple rocks rather then $. If they are going to sell every single thing in the game for $... well people are going to grind. Its not rocket science here.
He is bringing up that to much dilithium is in the market, and I will be honest, this is uncomfortable to read coming from him but, he has a critical point.
I 100% stopped bothering grinding for dilithium. There is zero point with the exchange broken as badly as it is. Dilithium has lost almost all of it's value if not all of it, it's almost as bad as the franks before world war 2; if it was a paper currency in real life, it'd be cheaper to burn it than use wood for fuel. A game comparison would be gold in diablo 2; gold became useless in record time and everyone switched to the (for me at least) impossibly rare Stone of Jordan for currency. I never saw an SoJ drop in my life.
And people continue to grind dil endlessly, non-stop even after it lost all its value. It's become pay to win, not completely because of developers but because of non-stop dilithium grinding also contributing and the simple fact that the last major contributions to fleets had been maxed.
At this rate, they may have to scrap dilithium ENTIRELY for a different currency. I heard they did it before with latinum being the original currency, but dilithium has no value whatsoever. It it's taking a full month for processing and people like me with some disposable income have stopped spending money on dilithium(I was a dil buyer btw, haven't in at least a few months now, probably won't from here on, I have way to much dil in reserve and haven't played in a few months even.
(event burnout, stop having non stop events! They are killing the fun of this game for me and I'm sure others to, plus it's just another huge, huge source of excess dilithium.)
At this rate, without making something almost 100% inaccessible to all but the most extreme dil grinders, any "sink" will not make a dent. To do that you'll probably need items costing hundreds of millions for fleets ect just to make a dent.
The most uncomfortable idea I posted was dil exchange fees, which may be necessary and I hate to tell you all this but every game has auction house fees to help control the economy, a scaling sink that simply removes more currency from the economy to a point it's impossible for the extreme farmers to break it for others. And it'll HAVE to effect zen buyers; they are so overloaded with dil that it's not even funny. They have way, way more dil than you guys seem to think, why else are they still grinding even after the currency has flopped at this point?
Even then, there is a reason they have dilithium to begin with, besides allowing the free to play with things we can purchase with cash, but also tying the games in-game economy to another more stable currency. but right now, Dil has zero value at this point.
Nonsense. If you're willing to wait a little over a month, Dilithium HAS lost value in that you have to pay 500:1 to get 1 Zen; but you can still convert. I've converted Refined Dil into $150 worth of Zen over the last 2 months.
And, without any action from Cryptic Devs, that wait time will probably go up, but Refined Dil conversion to Zen is still quite possible.
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..."
event burnout, stop having non stop events! They are killing the fun of this game for me and I'm sure others to, plus it's just another huge, huge source of excess dilithium.
I'm quite enjoying the event. Somewhat disappointed that there currently is non.
Event dil is of no interest to the farmes, as it is only once per account.
Farmers go for dil-sources that take no effort and time AND are repeatable once per character per day.
Things like the "History 102"
You don't even have to move to do it. There's a spot between Commander Viala and the Exam-console where you can interact with both. Just go to starfleet academy and wait a little. You'll soon see someone logging in at this spot, turn to Viala, turn to the console, turn to Viala again and logg out again - having earned 500dil in ~30seconds.
Repeat this with 50 characters, and you get 25k dil in 30min, repeatable every day, and that probably isn't even the bst farmin method.
That's the type of dil-sources that need to be nerfed.
At this rate, without making something almost 100% inaccessible to all but the most extreme dil grinders, any "sink" will not make a dent. To do that you'll probably need items costing hundreds of millions for fleets ect just to make a dent.
Your reasoning is flawed.
Something inaccessible to most players will have absolutely no effect. When no one can afford it, no one will spend dil on it.
We need exactly the opposite:
A dil-sink that everyone can afford. Something worth spending dil on (and unlike you, most players don't consider dil worthless) and something that can be boughtis repeatably.
We need a sustainable long-term dil-sink.
Item-upgrades are a good example of an effective sink, expensive on-time purchases (eg vanity shields) only have a minor short-term impact on the economy
The most uncomfortable idea I posted was dil exchange fees, which may be necessary and I hate to tell you all this but every game has auction house fees to help control the economy, a scaling sink that simply removes more currency from the economy to a point it's impossible for the extreme farmers to break it for others.
Taxes and Fees have never solved anything. All they do is annoy players.
A few % will have no impact, while higher taxes will only discourage players from using the game-feature that tax them, and that would be very undesirable.
I had a little idea I just thought of while reading the start of this thread. (I didn't read the whole thing, and I don't know if this idea has been suggested before.) STO needs at least one (possibly more then one) dilithium sink that people would keep spending dil on long term. Maybe a new fleet holding that has one or more special projects that that uses dilithium to provide fleet members with a bonus that lasts as long as the project keeps getting fed, and possibly even scales with the amount of dilithium fed into it. (So more dilithium = bigger bonus.) In theory, if the "cost" of the bonus scaled with the number of members in the fleet, that might allow it to be useful for smaller fleets but not be too cheap for larger fleets. Multiple projects with different bonuses could potentially increase the sink rate.
Say, maybe one project might provide a crit chance bonus, another might do damage bonus, basically any stat in theory could have a bonus. There's a lot that would need to be worked out, and maybe it wouldn't work, but it seems to me that fleet members might be more willing to donate dilithium to a fleet project if they themselves will get a direct benefit from it. It would definitely require some under the hood work to get it setup.
event burnout, stop having non stop events! They are killing the fun of this game for me and I'm sure others to, plus it's just another huge, huge source of excess dilithium.
I'm quite enjoying the event. Somewhat disappointed that there currently is non.
Event dil is of no interest to the farmes, as it is only once per account.
Farmers go for dil-sources that take no effort and time AND are repeatable once per character per day.
Things like the "History 102"
You don't even have to move to do it. There's a spot between Commander Viala and the Exam-console where you can interact with both. Just go to starfleet academy and wait a little. You'll soon see someone logging in at this spot, turn to Viala, turn to the console, turn to Viala again and logg out again - having earned 500dil in ~30seconds.
Repeat this with 50 characters, and you get 25k dil in 30min, repeatable every day, and that probably isn't even the bst farmin method.
That's the type of dil-sources that need to be nerfed.
At this rate, without making something almost 100% inaccessible to all but the most extreme dil grinders, any "sink" will not make a dent. To do that you'll probably need items costing hundreds of millions for fleets ect just to make a dent.
Your reasoning is flawed.
Something inaccessible to most players will have absolutely no effect. When no one can afford it, no one will spend dil on it.
We need exactly the opposite:
A dil-sink that everyone can afford. Something worth spending dil on (and unlike you, most players don't consider dil worthless) and something that can be boughtis repeatably.
We need a sustainable long-term dil-sink.
Item-upgrades are a good example of an effective sink, expensive on-time purchases (eg vanity shields) only have a minor short-term impact on the economy
The most uncomfortable idea I posted was dil exchange fees, which may be necessary and I hate to tell you all this but every game has auction house fees to help control the economy, a scaling sink that simply removes more currency from the economy to a point it's impossible for the extreme farmers to break it for others.
Taxes and Fees have never solved anything. All they do is annoy players.
A few % will have no impact, while higher taxes will only discourage players from using the game-feature that tax them, and that would be very undesirable.
I'm aware that events aren't something farmers rely on, since it's just yeah, 1 time thing so I know it's not that big of an impact, still is more though.
Agree on the instant dil in 30 seconds needs to be nerfed, and similar sources. Still not sure it'd be enough, we still already have way to much dil in the market that'll take ages to remove. Not to mention some farmers live to farm, be it hobby ...or they are working in a sweatshop somewhere.
A dil sink everyone can afford is a dil sink that'll be instantly evaporated at this point, hence why I suggest a dil sink that'd take hundreds of dollars for someone to pay the way, thousands for a fleet.
I know the idea of a "tax" is unpopular, but what are we gonna do? Keep putting in easily evaporated dil sinks that don't make even the tiniest dent? I only propose the idea as I see it work in other games to keep inflation in check, which is the idea of sinks to begin with, and no one here is proposing a sink that retroactively scales to the dilithium supply. I'm playing devils advocate here. As it is players are probably leaving in droves due to being unable to see results from the dilithium exchange at all. I'll make a small statement at the end here on whales and game economies though on why a tax may not work at all, ironicly not because it "hurts the little guy".
1 month for an exchange is still a far, far to long time frame thats only growing, especially as theres not even a reason to buy dilithium with zen anymore for 90% of those of us who did spend to buy dil. Why else do you think it's getting longer, and longer, and longer? And think about a working man under a lot of stress, they could well move on to another game by that point. I know I'd have given up on this game if the economy was this bad when I was starting out and without a job 4 years ago.
Some math time.
Generally, whales comprise of 1% of the games population and about 80% of the profits come from them. If you expand it a bit, 10% of the games population are making 90% of the purchases, thats business for many companies, and where we find the whales in general, that top 1%, or top 10% of the top 10%. (Some businesses find the top 10% of that ONE percent put in 90% of the profits in that top 1% bracket btw....)
Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if 10% of the dil farmers are putting in for 90% of the zen requests, with 90% of that 90% being put in by 10% of that top 10%. 1% of the dil farmers are putting in orders for 80% of the zen. This is again business and capitalism. It's true of free to play games, and true of businesses elsewhere. In fact, the exploiters probably make up 1-2% of the games community. And some of those will not go away no matter what exploits are fixed, they'll just move on to another one(or keep an eye out for a new one if all the current known ones are fixed).
So all of the exchanging is really happening not between the poor/average spender/casual players, but the rich and those who never live. Or gold sellers .
That math above? True of business in general. Thats how whales function. Those players farming likely have so much dilithium stockpiled to, on top of the immense supply put in. I wouldn't even be surprised if it's less than 1% of people in these forums compared to the rest of the STO community at large. Odds are, they probably aren't even remotely impacted by 'anything' done here.
And so I don't think there is any fixing this issue anymore. The Dil exchange is for the 1% and 1% only at this point. Thats just how I feel about it though, maybe a miracle will happen. They simply have the dil exchange for themselves cornered for themselves. Not a conspiracy; you simply have 1% who have the money to burn and so dump a ton into the exchange for a ton of dilithium, and 1% of farmers who for some reason or another are able to make 80% of that dilithium supply.
Unfortunately for the rest of you all, that means waiting to purchase that legendary pack or those 1000 keys to fill that gambling itch over the years. Or god forbid someone who has a gambling addiction.
(Was probably a 10% bracket spender before I stopped, I have most of the legendary packs and they were all purchased with $$, forgive me, but honestly, I have no regrets, I also purchased a LOT of dil. I genuinely hope you enjoy the ships you got with it; I remember earning my first few ships when I was jobless a few months ago and it never felt the same getting them with $$. I only typically opened keys once in a while though, I usually sold them on the exchange, I usually likened opening them to a night at the casino. Make of that about me what you will, I enjoyed this game a lot before my burnout so I felt obliged to throw it money once in a while.).
(PLEASE note I have included a LITTLE sarcasm in a few lines, think before you reply to some sentences. Except some about my own spending here.)
Quick Edit: I do support a disclaimer for gambling addiction awareness regarding lockboxes by the way. In fact my sister actually has a gambling addiction, I couldn't imagine if she was into a game like even this one, not to mention other free to play titles....
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
I had a little idea I just thought of while reading the start of this thread. (I didn't read the whole thing, and I don't know if this idea has been suggested before.) STO needs at least one (possibly more then one) dilithium sink that people would keep spending dil on long term. Maybe a new fleet holding that has one or more special projects that that uses dilithium to provide fleet members with a bonus that lasts as long as the project keeps getting fed, and possibly even scales with the amount of dilithium fed into it. (So more dilithium = bigger bonus.) In theory, if the "cost" of the bonus scaled with the number of members in the fleet, that might allow it to be useful for smaller fleets but not be too cheap for larger fleets. Multiple projects with different bonuses could potentially increase the sink rate.
Say, maybe one project might provide a crit chance bonus, another might do damage bonus, basically any stat in theory could have a bonus. There's a lot that would need to be worked out, and maybe it wouldn't work, but it seems to me that fleet members might be more willing to donate dilithium to a fleet project if they themselves will get a direct benefit from it. It would definitely require some under the hood work to get it setup.
There are already projects via the fleet research lab that offer 5 days of either a combat, dilithium ore, or skill point boost. Looking at their cost though it seems job #1 for them is to use up fleet credits. There are other projects that need lots of dil though.
The fleet Colony holding offers projects that require about 87 dilithium per fleet mark. Although these projects can be filled using fleet dilithium vouchers from KDF admiralty, the vast majority would go unfilled without fleet owners footing the bill. A busy fleet can flip a couple of these project daily, with each project needing about 88,000 dil.
An example - if a daily bonus for doing a TFO or event rewards 130 fleet marks that would be 130x87 = 11,310 dilithium needed just to cover those marks (more than a day's refining) in a Tier 4 Colony project. That is somewhat dil thirsty.
As much as I hate to sound like a broken record, VERY few fleet members are going to open their wallets to purchase dil with cash or grind 10/10 KDF admiralty again and again for a 40K voucher or part with earned dilithium to complete Colony projects so this task usually ends up falling upon the fleet owner(s).
What are fleet members doing with their dilithium? They're just like everybody else in that they're saving up as much as possible to convert to Zen. No disrespect to them is intended as they're only human and want to save as much money as possible just like the rest of us.
Spending cash to purchase dilithium or even parting with earned dilithium is always up to "somebody else" or "fleets" it seems.
I'm aware that events aren't something farmers rely on, since it's just yeah, 1 time thing so I know it's not that big of an impact, still is more though.
agreed, but the goal is to stop the farmars without drying up the dil-sources of the regular and casual players. Nerfing event-dil does exactly the opposite. You're only hitting the regulars and casuals.
Agree on the instant dil in 30 seconds needs to be nerfed, and similar sources. Still not sure it'd be enough, we still already have way to much dil in the market that'll take ages to remove.
True, but no ammount of dil-source-nerfing will change that. It will take a long time for these stockpiles to be used up, even if you'd disable all dil-rewards throughout the game.
A dil sink everyone can afford is a dil sink that'll be instantly evaporated at this point, hence why I suggest a dil sink that'd take hundreds of dollars for someone to pay the way, thousands for a fleet.
That's the theory, but who would buy that? What would be worth spending 100s of $ on? You'd need to sell something similar to aniversary-packs for dil, and that won't happen.
As for fleets: you seem to think that a fleet is a few hundred people contributing to the dil-cost.
It's not.
I run 2 fleets, one of them just recently founded, and I have to play for ~90% of the dil-cost myself, while everyone else just dumps their fleetmarks, expertise and the occasional doff.
In almost every fleet it's always just the leader how pays dil.
I know the idea of a "tax" is unpopular, but what are we gonna do? Keep putting in easily evaporated dil sinks that don't make even the tiniest dent? I only propose the idea as I see it work in other games to keep inflation in check [...]
A tax is evidence of incapacity for the devs. Incapacity to come up with something players actually want to spend their dil on.
It's the same nonsense as paying for equipment-repairs. In every game that does this, it's seriously annoying for poor new players, and absolutely irrelevant for older players who have huge amounts of resources. The overall effect on the economy is negligible, the annoyance that comes with it is not.
I'm aware that events aren't something farmers rely on, since it's just yeah, 1 time thing so I know it's not that big of an impact, still is more though.
agreed, but the goal is to stop the farmars without drying up the dil-sources of the regular and casual players. Nerfing event-dil does exactly the opposite. You're only hitting the regulars and casuals.
Agree on the instant dil in 30 seconds needs to be nerfed, and similar sources. Still not sure it'd be enough, we still already have way to much dil in the market that'll take ages to remove.
True, but no ammount of dil-source-nerfing will change that. It will take a long time for these stockpiles to be used up, even if you'd disable all dil-rewards throughout the game.
A dil sink everyone can afford is a dil sink that'll be instantly evaporated at this point, hence why I suggest a dil sink that'd take hundreds of dollars for someone to pay the way, thousands for a fleet.
That's the theory, but who would buy that? What would be worth spending 100s of $ on? You'd need to sell something similar to aniversary-packs for dil, and that won't happen.
As for fleets: you seem to think that a fleet is a few hundred people contributing to the dil-cost.
It's not.
I run 2 fleets, one of them just recently founded, and I have to play for ~90% of the dil-cost myself, while everyone else just dumps their fleetmarks, expertise and the occasional doff.
In almost every fleet it's always just the leader how pays dil.
I know the idea of a "tax" is unpopular, but what are we gonna do? Keep putting in easily evaporated dil sinks that don't make even the tiniest dent? I only propose the idea as I see it work in other games to keep inflation in check [...]
A tax is evidence of incapacity for the devs. Incapacity to come up with something players actually want to spend their dil on.
It's the same nonsense as paying for equipment-repairs. In every game that does this, it's seriously annoying for poor new players, and absolutely irrelevant for older players who have huge amounts of resources. The overall effect on the economy is negligible, the annoyance that comes with it is not.
So your saying, on the "no nerfing will help" that they 'should' keep that 500 dil in 30 seconds? I'm gonna be honest, it does nothing to help new players who only have a few character slots, while fully helping those with 50, that really does not help new players.
I don't see how a tax system would hurt newer players as much as you'd think, if it's well explained. Honestly another way I could think of taxing without punishing lower income earners would be an account-wide tracking system and hard enforcement against those who maintain multiple accounts for the sole purpose of bypassing; if say your earning more then 8000 dil in a day, you take a 10% tax for future dil earned, with increasing tax rates in increasing multiples up to a point. The idea is to place an increasing soft-cap against extreme dil earners to prevent them from having the capacity to break the economy. And so dilithium retains far more value. Right now, it's becoming worthless fast.
Let us look at how new players truely are impacted, not on paper where "Oh they can still convert it just takes longer" and consider that with such long transaction times, the effectiveness of converting is severely reduced.
Newer players need, if say they only have 2 characters, they can only earn 32 theoretical zen a day, though let us lower that even with 2 characters to about 16(possibly even less) practical to account for the ever-increasing amount of time needed for a transaction to go through(and we should lower it further as it gets to the two month mark). This, understand, is being generous. Actually, lets do some math, and let us assume the player has everything they needed to get with dil and so are putting all of the dil into zen for simplicity sake.
Lets use a normal C store ship at 3k to determine our economic value for dilithium. Normally, if we are at an extreme 500 di/zen you are looking at 1.5 million dilithium. At the ideal rate which is 250, thats 750k dilithium which is very doable in about a month and a half on two characters.
To purchase a C store ship let us assume no sales, 3k. Even if they put all the dil in, in theory it'd take 93.75 days, we then have to add the additional 35 days to obtain a ship. So now I am going to add some math for a more precise number of 'effective' earnable zen/day.
With an extra 35 days we end up with approx 128.75 days, I will use the decimal here.
If we take the cost of a ship at 500 dil/zen it comes to 1.5 million dilithium. If we take that 1.5 million dilithium and then divide THAT by the quickest theoretical a new player with only two characters could earn that 16k dilithium/day + the additional time of 35 days for those transactions to go through we reduce the earnable EFFECTIVE dilithium down to 11,650
The ideal range is around 250 dil/zen, thats what the devs have said.
So let us use this to determine the REAL dil/zen ratio assuming we had no cap but rates are current as are now(they'd be worst without the cap).
16000/11650 = 1.37 (rounded to nearest hundredth). So we are 37% higher than the 500, 500 * 1.37 = 685 Dilithium per zen
So now lets cut divide 250 by 685 for 36.4% I'll say a critical point is only about 25 days wait time away, economic death at 60, no one in there right mind is going to play for almost half a year for ONE ship even if grinding to the extremes to get that 8k dil/day.
In other words, Dilithium is almost only a third of it's intended value in the market. We have over 3 times the dilithium intended/needed for a balanced economy and that number is only getting worst. At the same time, players are already 'effectively' taxed; by a whopping 37% for the two-character starting earner.
It actually reduces for richer players with more time/characters per day and actually only to a point, because the wait time is just a set extra amount of time for all intents and purposes. What this means though, is that newer players with fewer toons earn exponentially LESS than richer players as they lose more overall due to value loss of the overall dilithium economy. A player would have to be able to earn 1.5 million dil in those 35 days to not have an effective "loss".
Thats at actually only 42857 dilithium/day, to get a 3k zen ship at 500/zen, but new players again typically have only 2 character slots, at least when I started out it was only 2. And your STILL seeing reduced effectiveness; because that means your looking at 70 days minimum at 35 day wait time, and that wait time will only get longer meaning the "proper" earning rate has to drop more and more. Further earnings are effectively, for buying zen, a waste of time. And also pushing other players back even further.
And any time the player earns less than 16k(or whatever they can/less than the ideal)? every day is more seconds/minutes/hours added to the wait time for a dil exchange.
I should probably stop before the math goes over everyones head.
Nerfs are needed badly and I hate saying this but sinks aren't going to cut it by themselves, your going to need something to really, really cut into that.
If there 'WAS' a tax in the right spots, say on earnings and it had a soft cap, you'd reduce effectiveness of the extreme earners tremendously. A tax on say, account-wide earning to place a hard soft-cap so say 5-6 characters before the hard soft-cap is hit(say, 10% for dil earned above 8000, 20% for earnings above 16k, 30% for 24k ect), ever increasing you'd hit a hard soft cap at around 7-8 characters. That'd reduce the 80k+/day earners or even 160k+ day earners down to a quarter of that. Maybe this could also occur if the system detects to much dilithium in the market in general to discourage excess farming. Just say over-mining dilithium supplies have dried up.
And maybe tie it to refinement rather than raw ore gaining.
And maybe put in a tracker for how much dilithium such a player dumps into the dil market over the course of say, a year(yes, a year). If past say, 2-3 million dilithium start increasing the earning tax on the player.
Lower earners would pay less % in the 'tax' than extreme earners, extreme earners would find themselves unable to break the bank by themselves like they currently are. Put in a major sink for some actual items and you'd probably stabilize it a lot more than just dumping more sinks in only to find them vaporized by the 1% and then back to square 1.
I'm pretty sure someone will just "TLDR" me and say any tax is bad no matter where it is but really, we need to be targeting the extreme earners somehow. Poorer earners are effectively losing exponentially more zen than richer earners.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
In other words, all of that said, effective dilithium earnings for everyone already is capped based on what they are trying to get.
Using T6 standard ships as a baseline thats 42857/day for a 3k zen ship in 35 days(assuming its that, if it's longer, correct me). Grinding any more then that is ultimately a waste of time.
Actually per 500 zen, effective earnable dil is only 7,142 to get a 500 zen item in 35 days. Any more then that is a waste of time.
When you account for lower dil earners less than the ideal when it comes to ships, there effective dilithium earnings are significantly reduced and only seeing a further reduction. Higher earnings feel the impact of less effective earnings until they exceed that 42.8k mark at which point effective earnings once again drop significantly. 160k earners are actually only getting 25% of there dil per the time, at that point your looking at legendary packs once per month to not have that time go to waste. And of course, such grinding hurts the market for lower earners more and more. Right now, though, 160k earners are not impacted in regards to legendary ships as much. But that will change if this continues.
To half effective earnings from the 8k/day we need to create a wait time of 62.5 days/processing. That'd lower effective earnings to only 24k/day for a 3k zen ship, 96,000 for a 120$ pack/legendary pack on large discount.
To quarter that it's 125 days. Pretty sure everyone trying to earn zen with dil will have given up on the game entirely by this point, even the hardcore farmers may be considering if it's worth it anymore. Unless they just continue, and continue, and continue as if the nigerian prince is real.
Edit: Corrected to /day, clarified on higher earners capacity to not notice the impact vs lower earners.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
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I'm pretty sure some TFOs already have a damage threshold. I think Crystalline Catastrophe does. There is also a threshold for getting skill and experience point credit per enemy. The threshold doesn't have to be super high, just enough to say you've done something. It's already frustrating to be in a PUG with someone who vaporizes everything in sight with a harsh look.
I don't think you understand my second solution. It's basically to create "Exchange-only dilithium." The "refined" and "Purified" are just the terms I came up with. But according to the video, Bots that farm dilithium are having a huge impact on the exchange. If you look at the exchange on PS3 or Xbox, neither platform has the same issue as the PC exchange. My idea is to severely limit the sources of "Exchange-only Dilithium" to things that require direct player participation. There would only be two types of dilithium (exchange-only and refined) instead of dividing it into specific systems.
Cutting off further rewards to exchange-only dilithium is the same as the refining mechanic. You earn 8,000 exchange only dilithium once every 24 hours per character still.
For events, it may be a choice of dilithium box, exchange-only or refined.
(Video link removed due to content violating forum rules. - BMR)
Also, for the record, I don't condone the use of Bots.
I was saying after 34 days - WHEN my order's turn came up, it took 30 minutes to fill. (Unlike you I HAVE placed Zen orders and your '60 days to fill' is utter BS, Learn to read.
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Imagine if there was something that would complete without doing anything at all.
Vaporizing everything in sight with a harsh look (DPS) isn't related to something not having ANY threshold for action (including damage) to complete.
For the first bit of this, define "restrictions". Because the problem isn't the ability to generate dilithium. The problem is that there's nothing to spend it on that's worth while. Upgrades and fleets are only good for so long. Also in most fleets it ends up being only a small handful that cover the dilithium costs, usually upper leadership.
As for your minimum damage threshold for TFOs, this already exists. Damage threshold is 1-2% for the entirety of the TFO. As for TFOs with waves, putting the threshold on waves is not practical and would end up causing more harm than good. Just by the mechanics of certain TFOs you're incentivized not to engage the foes more than necessary. Threshold for the entirety of the TFO is more than reasonable. Unless you just get absolute worst luck of the draw, you will never see the AFK penalty.
Also if you can't do more than 1-2% for the entirety of the run in an advanced level TFO, you have no business in that TFO as you're not ready yet, especially elites. I know people don't like hearing that but honestly some of them need to hear it.
If you want to really enrage the playerbase, this is exactly how to do it. Again the problem isn't dilithium generation, but nothing to spend it on. Because there's nothing worthwhile to spend it on long term, the dilithium is allowed to accumulate and pile up. Sort of like a fountain with the drainage blocked. In order to maintain a healthy water level, you want an equal amount of water leaving vs entering. Problem is the drain is blocked and not enough to can leave and the fountain has overflowed.
More restrictions might stop so much dilithium from accumulating as fast as it once did, but won't address the dilithium already present. Furthermore, restricting stuff isn't going to make folks magically start spending it. It's just going to enrage the playerbase and make people quit. If you want people doing certain things a certain way, give them an incentive to do so that's not "do this or else" as that never goes over well.
Useless suggestion that would only change the face of the problem without actually addressing it. You're still "purifying" 8k dilithium per toon per day and not aren't changing anything from a programming standpoint. It's literally the same mechanic but with a different name and the unrefined dilithium step removed. overall function is the same.
This won't actually do anything and again will just enrage the playerbase. In order to buy zen you still need people willing to sell it. You can't force people to sell their zen which is essentially what you're trying to make people do. It amounts to "sell your zen or else" and that's not how you do business.
At the moment 2 things need to happen. They're identifying ways they can slow down the dilithium accumulation without making it too hard to get the stuff. So far they've done good with that step imo. The next thing they need to do is find ways to remove some of the excess dilithium already present to bring the supply back down to earth. Right now using the previous fountain example, the fountain has just overflowed, it's flooded the whole town. Now they need to find a way to remove the excess water/dilithium that's worthwhile to the playerbase.
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The only things mentioned in those tweets are..
1) Dil-farming admiralty alts
I do this. Maxed out (for me) is about 40K per day of fleet only dilithium. A Colony project takes about 88K dil. Clicking on so many things gets tiring though so my average is often less.
2) Botting being bad and bannable, but manual farming ok.
I don't bot. Am here to play a game. But if I AFK Defense of Starbase One (elite) on each character manually I could get 1440 dil per run plus marks and elite marks that get turned in for even more dil. Apparently you just start a private queue and fly to the edge of the map or cloak. Takes 11 minutes. Potentially this is a huge return.
3) Participating in major farming
Perhaps this is referring to those who AFK Defense of Starbase One (elite) all day long on multiple characters?
Not so sure if event dil rewards really amount to much as compared to other things such as what's mentioned in the tweets.
Would suggest the event dil rewards are possibly chump change by comparison.
Wasn't that long ago... I suspect the game has taken a player count dip recently. We'll see what the exchange ends up at in the next few weeks after sales are done.
In general attacking your customers and calling them unnormal for playing the game as developed is bad form. News flash Jeremy you have been working for a company making a F2P grinder for more then a few years... people are playing it like a F2P grinder SHOCKING I know, how unnormal.
Its good to know though that playing the game as it has been developed is acceptable. There isn't a ton holding a lot of old players to the game... having the devs come out and give them more reasons to say enough of this is just unwise.
There's nothing wrong with what he said. I think that whilst it makes for 'uncomfortable reading' for some, it is factually true, especially as the Dil market is player driven mostly.
Think about it. Everyone is posting for 500:1 at the moment, waiting for a sale; if everyone relisted for 250:1 then they'd get more Zen, but because there is no real demand for Dil, no-one will buy.
The exchange has barely shifted, the sales weren't targetted at the Dil Market, and the Vanity shields were considerably expensive....more expensive on PC btw.
News Flash: Jeremy being upfront, TRUTHFUL and abrupt is what is missing in this world
Jeremey works for the company developing the game we have in front of us. What he said is very much like the developer of a Korean grind MMO coming out and saying WHY are you grinding... I mean I'm not saying your a jerk, but man what are you doing its so unnatural, weirdo.
STO has been developed in the same manner as your standard super grind free to play game for YEARS now. Why is he acting shocked that players are playing the game they developed?
If they don't want it to play that way its in their power to change it anytime they want. Its just proof that at least Jeremy has no idea how the game actually works which is scary as he is paid to know I thought.
My point is he is putting the blame on US as players for playing the game as its designed. If he doesn't like the design he can get it changed unless he just isn't in the loop on what the design actually is. If the company doesn't like the value of Dill they can at any time choose to sell something for purple rocks rather then $. If they are going to sell every single thing in the game for $... well people are going to grind. Its not rocket science here.
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This is the issue. There just isn't enough to do with Dill to entice most people to buy it from other players. Which is what the exchange is. Someone that wants extra dill can buy it with money. It is traded to another player that has spare dill. Thus allowing Cryptic to say the game is Free to Play and EVERYTHING in the game even $200 ship packs can be had without spending a dime of your own money. While at the same time saying to whales... you can just buy everything you want including the games grind currency on the up and up. (making sure no one is using gold sellers... because there isn't anything that can't be purchased legitimate like)
Its a very good model. The only issue is for the last 3 years Cryptic has completely failed to do any work that was not directly added to the Zen store. Meaning the only thing to do with zen is buy store items... Buying zen to buy purple rocks? A lot of new players don't even understand that is an option... cause why would they even think about that.
The biggest mistake Cryptic ever made was getting greedy with old free event items and ships. The mudd store should be a place to buy over priced lockbox stuff, NOT previously free event things. The free event stuff ALL of it should have been added to the Dill store. (not the zen store via mudd) During all but the winter event items including the ships can be unlocked by spending Dill early to skip the grind. Mudds market should have been a second chance to pick up items you missed in the same manner.... at higher cost. Mudds cost should have been 100% event buy out cost +50-100% (perhaps 50% markup on items... and 100% markup on ships) same account unlock as you would have gotten during the actual event.
That simple change would have cost them a handful of direct sales.... but GAINED them a ton of Zen purchases that would have been traded for Dill. The net loss to Cryptic would have been ZERO. They would have made very much the same amount of money only the games exchange would still be flowing. Instead of new players buying Mudd event items and ships... they would have bought zen and traded for purple rocks.
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Ok, but they already did exactely this (and even added a gamble-factor to it to increase the amount of dill spent).
Past event items go to the phoenix-box as per-character unlocks.
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Bingo.
They did used to have a form of that. When Phoenix first launched it helped the exchange limp on for a few more years before grinding out. Upgrades helped.
What I am suggesting is the Dill store should have had a "mudd" section. Which would have been an actual account unlock just like you completed the event you missed. They could have done both... having event things in Phoenix as one offs, and having a mudd tab in the Dill store that purchased an account unlock for the proper cost. I mean if it cost you 1 million dill (or the equivalent to that in Zen to buy out during an event) 1 year later when that item showed up in the Mudd Dill store section it should have had a cost of 1.5-2 million dill direct depending on type. Of course most people don't have 2 million dill sitting around... but if you buy 4000 zen and convert it, you would. Cryptic still gets paid their crazy Mudd Zen store price... the game market has a sink.
The only reason it works the way it does now... is plainly clear. Cryptic doesn't actually understand the game they setup. They would loose nothing in sales if setup the way I describe... if anything they would make more money because more people would have incentive to grind, and people would have a clearer path to semi buy things. Players are more likely to say I have 1 million dill saved up and I want to unlock that ship I missed... ahh I'll spend $20 bucks and buy another million and unlock it. At the current 4500 zen to unlock that FREE ship I missed, na Cryptics greedy. It would be the same money in Cryptics pocket but that isn't how it would be perceived.
Putting everything in the zen store, has really hurt the free to grind part of the game. They need to better balance which currency (direct $ vs grind $) people are required to use in game. BOTH make them the same $ in the end anyway. By loading it all to direct zen store sales they are killing their own game... for really no reason. Balancing the two keeps the game healthy... and puts the same $ in their pockets anyway.
I skip some events when the gear doesn't currently appeal to me, but sometimes a year later I have a new character theme to gear up for. I don't give in to FOMO and force myself to play, I don't buy out events "just in case," and I never buy old gear from Mudd's because I wouldn't get enough use out of it.
If instead the gear I skipped grinding for appeared in the dil store, I could see myself buying some dil to get it. It's an anecdote of one, but I'd use some dil in the shop, and Cryptic wouldn't lose any zen sales from me.
He is bringing up that to much dilithium is in the market, and I will be honest, this is uncomfortable to read coming from him but, he has a critical point.
I 100% stopped bothering grinding for dilithium. There is zero point with the exchange broken as badly as it is. Dilithium has lost almost all of it's value if not all of it, it's almost as bad as the franks before world war 2; if it was a paper currency in real life, it'd be cheaper to burn it than use wood for fuel. A game comparison would be gold in diablo 2; gold became useless in record time and everyone switched to the (for me at least) impossibly rare Stone of Jordan for currency. I never saw an SoJ drop in my life.
And people continue to grind dil endlessly, non-stop even after it lost all its value. It's become pay to win, not completely because of developers but because of non-stop dilithium grinding also contributing and the simple fact that the last major contributions to fleets had been maxed.
At this rate, they may have to scrap dilithium ENTIRELY for a different currency. I heard they did it before with latinum being the original currency, but dilithium has no value whatsoever. It it's taking a full month for processing and people like me with some disposable income have stopped spending money on dilithium(I was a dil buyer btw, haven't in at least a few months now, probably won't from here on, I have way to much dil in reserve and haven't played in a few months even.
(event burnout, stop having non stop events! They are killing the fun of this game for me and I'm sure others to, plus it's just another huge, huge source of excess dilithium.)
At this rate, without making something almost 100% inaccessible to all but the most extreme dil grinders, any "sink" will not make a dent. To do that you'll probably need items costing hundreds of millions for fleets ect just to make a dent.
The most uncomfortable idea I posted was dil exchange fees, which may be necessary and I hate to tell you all this but every game has auction house fees to help control the economy, a scaling sink that simply removes more currency from the economy to a point it's impossible for the extreme farmers to break it for others. And it'll HAVE to effect zen buyers; they are so overloaded with dil that it's not even funny. They have way, way more dil than you guys seem to think, why else are they still grinding even after the currency has flopped at this point?
Even then, there is a reason they have dilithium to begin with, besides allowing the free to play with things we can purchase with cash, but also tying the games in-game economy to another more stable currency. but right now, Dil has zero value at this point.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Nonsense. If you're willing to wait a little over a month, Dilithium HAS lost value in that you have to pay 500:1 to get 1 Zen; but you can still convert. I've converted Refined Dil into $150 worth of Zen over the last 2 months.
And, without any action from Cryptic Devs, that wait time will probably go up, but Refined Dil conversion to Zen is still quite possible.
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I'm quite enjoying the event. Somewhat disappointed that there currently is non.
Event dil is of no interest to the farmes, as it is only once per account.
Farmers go for dil-sources that take no effort and time AND are repeatable once per character per day.
Things like the "History 102"
You don't even have to move to do it. There's a spot between Commander Viala and the Exam-console where you can interact with both. Just go to starfleet academy and wait a little. You'll soon see someone logging in at this spot, turn to Viala, turn to the console, turn to Viala again and logg out again - having earned 500dil in ~30seconds.
Repeat this with 50 characters, and you get 25k dil in 30min, repeatable every day, and that probably isn't even the bst farmin method.
That's the type of dil-sources that need to be nerfed.
Your reasoning is flawed.
Something inaccessible to most players will have absolutely no effect. When no one can afford it, no one will spend dil on it.
We need exactly the opposite:
A dil-sink that everyone can afford. Something worth spending dil on (and unlike you, most players don't consider dil worthless) and something that can be boughtis repeatably.
We need a sustainable long-term dil-sink.
Item-upgrades are a good example of an effective sink, expensive on-time purchases (eg vanity shields) only have a minor short-term impact on the economy
Taxes and Fees have never solved anything. All they do is annoy players.
A few % will have no impact, while higher taxes will only discourage players from using the game-feature that tax them, and that would be very undesirable.
Say, maybe one project might provide a crit chance bonus, another might do damage bonus, basically any stat in theory could have a bonus. There's a lot that would need to be worked out, and maybe it wouldn't work, but it seems to me that fleet members might be more willing to donate dilithium to a fleet project if they themselves will get a direct benefit from it. It would definitely require some under the hood work to get it setup.
I'm aware that events aren't something farmers rely on, since it's just yeah, 1 time thing so I know it's not that big of an impact, still is more though.
Agree on the instant dil in 30 seconds needs to be nerfed, and similar sources. Still not sure it'd be enough, we still already have way to much dil in the market that'll take ages to remove. Not to mention some farmers live to farm, be it hobby ...or they are working in a sweatshop somewhere.
A dil sink everyone can afford is a dil sink that'll be instantly evaporated at this point, hence why I suggest a dil sink that'd take hundreds of dollars for someone to pay the way, thousands for a fleet.
I know the idea of a "tax" is unpopular, but what are we gonna do? Keep putting in easily evaporated dil sinks that don't make even the tiniest dent? I only propose the idea as I see it work in other games to keep inflation in check, which is the idea of sinks to begin with, and no one here is proposing a sink that retroactively scales to the dilithium supply. I'm playing devils advocate here. As it is players are probably leaving in droves due to being unable to see results from the dilithium exchange at all. I'll make a small statement at the end here on whales and game economies though on why a tax may not work at all, ironicly not because it "hurts the little guy".
1 month for an exchange is still a far, far to long time frame thats only growing, especially as theres not even a reason to buy dilithium with zen anymore for 90% of those of us who did spend to buy dil. Why else do you think it's getting longer, and longer, and longer? And think about a working man under a lot of stress, they could well move on to another game by that point. I know I'd have given up on this game if the economy was this bad when I was starting out and without a job 4 years ago.
Some math time.
Generally, whales comprise of 1% of the games population and about 80% of the profits come from them. If you expand it a bit, 10% of the games population are making 90% of the purchases, thats business for many companies, and where we find the whales in general, that top 1%, or top 10% of the top 10%. (Some businesses find the top 10% of that ONE percent put in 90% of the profits in that top 1% bracket btw....)
Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if 10% of the dil farmers are putting in for 90% of the zen requests, with 90% of that 90% being put in by 10% of that top 10%. 1% of the dil farmers are putting in orders for 80% of the zen. This is again business and capitalism. It's true of free to play games, and true of businesses elsewhere. In fact, the exploiters probably make up 1-2% of the games community. And some of those will not go away no matter what exploits are fixed, they'll just move on to another one(or keep an eye out for a new one if all the current known ones are fixed).
So all of the exchanging is really happening not between the poor/average spender/casual players, but the rich and those who never live. Or gold sellers
That math above? True of business in general. Thats how whales function. Those players farming likely have so much dilithium stockpiled to, on top of the immense supply put in. I wouldn't even be surprised if it's less than 1% of people in these forums compared to the rest of the STO community at large. Odds are, they probably aren't even remotely impacted by 'anything' done here.
And so I don't think there is any fixing this issue anymore. The Dil exchange is for the 1% and 1% only at this point. Thats just how I feel about it though, maybe a miracle will happen. They simply have the dil exchange for themselves cornered for themselves. Not a conspiracy; you simply have 1% who have the money to burn and so dump a ton into the exchange for a ton of dilithium, and 1% of farmers who for some reason or another are able to make 80% of that dilithium supply.
Unfortunately for the rest of you all, that means waiting to purchase that legendary pack
(Was probably a 10% bracket spender before I stopped, I have most of the legendary packs and they were all purchased with $$, forgive me, but honestly, I have no regrets, I also purchased a LOT of dil. I genuinely hope you enjoy the ships you got with it; I remember earning my first few ships when I was jobless a few months ago and it never felt the same getting them with $$. I only typically opened keys once in a while though, I usually sold them on the exchange, I usually likened opening them to a night at the casino. Make of that about me what you will, I enjoyed this game a lot before my burnout so I felt obliged to throw it money once in a while.).
(PLEASE note I have included a LITTLE sarcasm in a few lines, think before you reply to some sentences. Except some about my own spending here.)
Quick Edit: I do support a disclaimer for gambling addiction awareness regarding lockboxes by the way. In fact my sister actually has a gambling addiction, I couldn't imagine if she was into a game like even this one, not to mention other free to play titles....
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
There are already projects via the fleet research lab that offer 5 days of either a combat, dilithium ore, or skill point boost. Looking at their cost though it seems job #1 for them is to use up fleet credits. There are other projects that need lots of dil though.
The fleet Colony holding offers projects that require about 87 dilithium per fleet mark. Although these projects can be filled using fleet dilithium vouchers from KDF admiralty, the vast majority would go unfilled without fleet owners footing the bill. A busy fleet can flip a couple of these project daily, with each project needing about 88,000 dil.
An example - if a daily bonus for doing a TFO or event rewards 130 fleet marks that would be 130x87 = 11,310 dilithium needed just to cover those marks (more than a day's refining) in a Tier 4 Colony project. That is somewhat dil thirsty.
As much as I hate to sound like a broken record, VERY few fleet members are going to open their wallets to purchase dil with cash or grind 10/10 KDF admiralty again and again for a 40K voucher or part with earned dilithium to complete Colony projects so this task usually ends up falling upon the fleet owner(s).
What are fleet members doing with their dilithium? They're just like everybody else in that they're saving up as much as possible to convert to Zen. No disrespect to them is intended as they're only human and want to save as much money as possible just like the rest of us.
Spending cash to purchase dilithium or even parting with earned dilithium is always up to "somebody else" or "fleets" it seems.
agreed, but the goal is to stop the farmars without drying up the dil-sources of the regular and casual players. Nerfing event-dil does exactly the opposite. You're only hitting the regulars and casuals.
True, but no ammount of dil-source-nerfing will change that. It will take a long time for these stockpiles to be used up, even if you'd disable all dil-rewards throughout the game.
That's the theory, but who would buy that? What would be worth spending 100s of $ on? You'd need to sell something similar to aniversary-packs for dil, and that won't happen.
As for fleets: you seem to think that a fleet is a few hundred people contributing to the dil-cost.
It's not.
I run 2 fleets, one of them just recently founded, and I have to play for ~90% of the dil-cost myself, while everyone else just dumps their fleetmarks, expertise and the occasional doff.
In almost every fleet it's always just the leader how pays dil.
A tax is evidence of incapacity for the devs. Incapacity to come up with something players actually want to spend their dil on.
It's the same nonsense as paying for equipment-repairs. In every game that does this, it's seriously annoying for poor new players, and absolutely irrelevant for older players who have huge amounts of resources. The overall effect on the economy is negligible, the annoyance that comes with it is not.
So your saying, on the "no nerfing will help" that they 'should' keep that 500 dil in 30 seconds? I'm gonna be honest, it does nothing to help new players who only have a few character slots, while fully helping those with 50, that really does not help new players.
I don't see how a tax system would hurt newer players as much as you'd think, if it's well explained. Honestly another way I could think of taxing without punishing lower income earners would be an account-wide tracking system and hard enforcement against those who maintain multiple accounts for the sole purpose of bypassing; if say your earning more then 8000 dil in a day, you take a 10% tax for future dil earned, with increasing tax rates in increasing multiples up to a point. The idea is to place an increasing soft-cap against extreme dil earners to prevent them from having the capacity to break the economy. And so dilithium retains far more value. Right now, it's becoming worthless fast.
Let us look at how new players truely are impacted, not on paper where "Oh they can still convert it just takes longer" and consider that with such long transaction times, the effectiveness of converting is severely reduced.
Newer players need, if say they only have 2 characters, they can only earn 32 theoretical zen a day, though let us lower that even with 2 characters to about 16(possibly even less) practical to account for the ever-increasing amount of time needed for a transaction to go through(and we should lower it further as it gets to the two month mark). This, understand, is being generous. Actually, lets do some math, and let us assume the player has everything they needed to get with dil and so are putting all of the dil into zen for simplicity sake.
Lets use a normal C store ship at 3k to determine our economic value for dilithium. Normally, if we are at an extreme 500 di/zen you are looking at 1.5 million dilithium. At the ideal rate which is 250, thats 750k dilithium which is very doable in about a month and a half on two characters.
To purchase a C store ship let us assume no sales, 3k. Even if they put all the dil in, in theory it'd take 93.75 days, we then have to add the additional 35 days to obtain a ship. So now I am going to add some math for a more precise number of 'effective' earnable zen/day.
With an extra 35 days we end up with approx 128.75 days, I will use the decimal here.
If we take the cost of a ship at 500 dil/zen it comes to 1.5 million dilithium. If we take that 1.5 million dilithium and then divide THAT by the quickest theoretical a new player with only two characters could earn that 16k dilithium/day + the additional time of 35 days for those transactions to go through we reduce the earnable EFFECTIVE dilithium down to 11,650
The ideal range is around 250 dil/zen, thats what the devs have said.
So let us use this to determine the REAL dil/zen ratio assuming we had no cap but rates are current as are now(they'd be worst without the cap).
16000/11650 = 1.37 (rounded to nearest hundredth). So we are 37% higher than the 500, 500 * 1.37 = 685 Dilithium per zen
So now lets cut divide 250 by 685 for 36.4% I'll say a critical point is only about 25 days wait time away, economic death at 60, no one in there right mind is going to play for almost half a year for ONE ship even if grinding to the extremes to get that 8k dil/day.
In other words, Dilithium is almost only a third of it's intended value in the market. We have over 3 times the dilithium intended/needed for a balanced economy and that number is only getting worst. At the same time, players are already 'effectively' taxed; by a whopping 37% for the two-character starting earner.
It actually reduces for richer players with more time/characters per day and actually only to a point, because the wait time is just a set extra amount of time for all intents and purposes. What this means though, is that newer players with fewer toons earn exponentially LESS than richer players as they lose more overall due to value loss of the overall dilithium economy. A player would have to be able to earn 1.5 million dil in those 35 days to not have an effective "loss".
Thats at actually only 42857 dilithium/day, to get a 3k zen ship at 500/zen, but new players again typically have only 2 character slots, at least when I started out it was only 2. And your STILL seeing reduced effectiveness; because that means your looking at 70 days minimum at 35 day wait time, and that wait time will only get longer meaning the "proper" earning rate has to drop more and more. Further earnings are effectively, for buying zen, a waste of time. And also pushing other players back even further.
And any time the player earns less than 16k(or whatever they can/less than the ideal)? every day is more seconds/minutes/hours added to the wait time for a dil exchange.
I should probably stop before the math goes over everyones head.
Nerfs are needed badly and I hate saying this but sinks aren't going to cut it by themselves, your going to need something to really, really cut into that.
If there 'WAS' a tax in the right spots, say on earnings and it had a soft cap, you'd reduce effectiveness of the extreme earners tremendously. A tax on say, account-wide earning to place a hard soft-cap so say 5-6 characters before the hard soft-cap is hit(say, 10% for dil earned above 8000, 20% for earnings above 16k, 30% for 24k ect), ever increasing you'd hit a hard soft cap at around 7-8 characters. That'd reduce the 80k+/day earners or even 160k+ day earners down to a quarter of that. Maybe this could also occur if the system detects to much dilithium in the market in general to discourage excess farming. Just say over-mining dilithium supplies have dried up.
And maybe tie it to refinement rather than raw ore gaining.
And maybe put in a tracker for how much dilithium such a player dumps into the dil market over the course of say, a year(yes, a year). If past say, 2-3 million dilithium start increasing the earning tax on the player.
Lower earners would pay less % in the 'tax' than extreme earners, extreme earners would find themselves unable to break the bank by themselves like they currently are. Put in a major sink for some actual items and you'd probably stabilize it a lot more than just dumping more sinks in only to find them vaporized by the 1% and then back to square 1.
I'm pretty sure someone will just "TLDR" me and say any tax is bad no matter where it is but really, we need to be targeting the extreme earners somehow. Poorer earners are effectively losing exponentially more zen than richer earners.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Using T6 standard ships as a baseline thats 42857/day for a 3k zen ship in 35 days(assuming its that, if it's longer, correct me). Grinding any more then that is ultimately a waste of time.
Actually per 500 zen, effective earnable dil is only 7,142 to get a 500 zen item in 35 days. Any more then that is a waste of time.
When you account for lower dil earners less than the ideal when it comes to ships, there effective dilithium earnings are significantly reduced and only seeing a further reduction. Higher earnings feel the impact of less effective earnings until they exceed that 42.8k mark at which point effective earnings once again drop significantly. 160k earners are actually only getting 25% of there dil per the time, at that point your looking at legendary packs once per month to not have that time go to waste. And of course, such grinding hurts the market for lower earners more and more. Right now, though, 160k earners are not impacted in regards to legendary ships as much. But that will change if this continues.
To half effective earnings from the 8k/day we need to create a wait time of 62.5 days/processing. That'd lower effective earnings to only 24k/day for a 3k zen ship, 96,000 for a 120$ pack/legendary pack on large discount.
To quarter that it's 125 days. Pretty sure everyone trying to earn zen with dil will have given up on the game entirely by this point, even the hardcore farmers may be considering if it's worth it anymore. Unless they just continue, and continue, and continue as if the nigerian prince is real.
Edit: Corrected to /day, clarified on higher earners capacity to not notice the impact vs lower earners.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.