Dan can talk about what he wants all he wants... So can we. The reality is that Cryptic must do what its corporate taskmasters dictate, and our ideas and Dans are subject to that.
[snip]
I was suggesting that Dan wasn't telling us the truth about the intent behind these changes...
I believe that they want the average player to have a good amount of dilithium. I mean fleet action now give 500 dilithium and this probably gives people who didn't know about console-clicking and don't do STFs more dilithium than in S6.
I also believe that the 2 nerfs (console-click and btran) were just exploit preventions that were done out of principle and with no regard to the economic impact. Which is fine.
What the 3rd nerf (DOFF) was about, I am not really sure. Maybe DOFF upgrade is not needed anymore now that fleets only need white DOFFs, so to prevent purple DOFF overflow the dil costs were added.
So we have 4 well meaning changes here (fleet action dil, 2 exploit nerfs, DOFF nerf) and one 'evil' change (STF equip costs massive amounts of dil). Which lead to a big reduction of dilithium supply and a big increase in dilithium demand and the conspiracy theory that this was intended. I don't think it was, at least not to this extend. Time will tell how they react to the new data they are now getting.
I think that the dilithium depression is temporary. Really the status of the game right now is one of massive flux. We have new starbases, that will be finished in a few weeks. The embassy and reputation system will be maxed out too. Also with S8 coming there will be new things to buy. I do not see the nature of the game to permit the current low conversion rates and PWE knows it.
The perspective that the zen market has crashed over the past few months is insignificant to the course of the game over a few years. Really the major players are seeing less dilithium production, but the masses are seeing more. Also once dilithium's only real value was to get zen so it was devalued. Now it has other tangible values that increase demand.
In the end dilithium is of value to fill bounded projects. Those projects yield fleet marks and other currencies that will be used for purchasing upgrades. What we see now is just phase 1 of a multiphase plan.
PvE Jem'Hadar motto:Participation Ribbonsare life.
Dstahls "goals" are going to backfire and the "logic" behind it all is flawed.
Players are already reporting fleet members quitting the game in large numbers and others saying they will NOT be buying more Zen for real money until the prices in the Dilithium exchange goes back up (which is completely TRIBBLE-backwards of Cryptic's goals).
I unlocked tier 1 Omega today and saw how much Dilithium each assimilated gear piece is going to cost, via projects, just to unlock them in the store, and that's just for the Mk X equipment!. I logged out of the game soon after and I'm not sure if I even want to play anymore.
Screenshots of what I'm talking about:
I don't want to spend ALL of my time doing nothing but farming Dilithium on multiple characters when I could be doing episodes and playing other content. And to be honest this game feels like it has a ton less content than other games. Edit: In fact, I can't stand farming in any MMO. Doing the same TRIBBLE over and over and over and......just to get more and more money. I like playing content. Something this game seems to be lacking.
What new "content" did season 7 bring? More grind. A couple new STFs and some Fleet actions for Omega/Romulan marks but that is just more grind. New Romulus? Nothing but grind. Run around doing the dailies in each area for Romulan Marks, takes me 2 days solo to tag enough Epohhs to be able to do the doff assignment to get ONE of the items needed to get the pet and it takes 1 day for the doff assignment and a total of 5 items. I'm seeing it's going to take me weeks to get just 1 Epohh pet. I don't care for teaming with people very often.
No new episodes or stories or anything but friggen grind this grind that. I did all the episodes on 1 character and when I got to the Borg Collective series I was highly disappointed. The Klingon War up to The Cardassian Struggle all had 19+ episodes each.
The Borg Collective = 4 episodes
The Breen Invasion = 5 episodes.
And finally, The Undine advance = 4 episodes.
I like playing content that has stories to it. Not do a bunch of grind to get good gear. The movies and TV shows weren't all about what type of phasers they used. It had story to it. This game is flat out boring now.
Edit: And I forgot to mention, I'm in a couple different fleets on the Fed side. Usually there are a couple people or more online when I'm on and fleet projects were going at a steady pace being completed. Now when I'm online nobody else is on at all and fleet projects seemed to be doing good at first after season 7 launched but now they seem to be nearly at a dead stop in progress.
I agree with this. It feels like an everlasting grind... THIS is not why I joined STO in the first place and frankly is not really what I want to be doing all the time. Doing a STF now and then can be fun,... but not because you have if you want to get that set.
I can never buy Zen even if I want to for different reasons. One of them being that I am a student and really don't have much room for pleasures like that. Secondly since I have promised myself to never buy stuff over interent due to the risk of scam and companies trying to bluff their way by sending me bills on stuff i already payed or not purchase. For that reason I am very hesitate to buy stuff from any companies over internet. Now if you could buy something like a refill card for zen (very much like Itunes have) for the game in a store I would be more willing to consider something like that - something I can buy with cash in a store.
Personally I am happy that the zen value is so low.. it enables me to get more Zen from the Dilithium I earn. I never earned 8000 dil a day..
...you people really all think that Cryptic / PWE gives a frak.
THEY DON'T!
They have initially set the minimum and maximum conversion rates of the exchange at the very beginning, they do not CARE if you get 25 or 500 Dilithium for your 1 Zen, if at all then they care about what Quantity of Product is moved.
The range is set in a way that works for them no matter if its high or low.
You can be sure they had meetings with spreadsheets and data mining and what not to nail down a range that works in their favor no matter what.
And don't forget, the ultimate goal of the dilithium exchange is to get people willing to Pay 2 Win to spend more $ on Zen, while not alienating Players that are wanting to play for the rewards.
It is the perfect solution, the Pay 2 Win minded player with a rich daddy can now just buy everything in the game, if it doesn't cost Zen than it costs dilithium.
The Free 2 Play player can just play away and earn everything for free, now even C-Store items, just for his playtime BUT he still consumes the Zen that is on the market by buying these C-Store items.
Personally i never bought Dilithium, i sell it, and if you ask me it can crash down to 25, the worst thing that could happen is that i run out of items on the C-Store to buy (i actually can see that day coming when i only got Lockboxes left to buy from it) ;P
You are all looking at this the wrong way, one bad thing in a market leads to a good thing also, Cryptic's biggest mistake: dilithium can now buy zen at a better rate, meaning lockbox keys, duty officer packs, and if your patient, Z-store ships, for no real money whatsoever. Im already working on getting a mogai retrofit. USE THIS AS AN OPPURTUNITY, PEOPLE.
When I bring up the fact that their new game allows for the acquisition of currency at a much higher rate (speaking of course about Neverwinter) people love to jump on the fail bandwagon that they allowed for 24k a day because of the auction house using the AD currency.
But what they fail to realize is the AH is the substitute for STO's reputation system.
Now the cost of Dil per Zen has gone up considerably which means there's no simple way of getting the things we need from the store without Real Money. If they are going to cap the amount of unrefined we get the least they could do is increase the amount that we can refine a day without the need to fly all over the universe for some special Doff mission that takes 20hours to complete or some other crazy thing.
It's very very poor to keep your players from advancing easily in one game while allowing players in another to have oodles of currency all the time. Shouldn't the philosophy for the whole company be the same? The philosophy for Neverwinter is play your way and build your characters without spending a dime if you don't want to which is true honestly, the things they sell in the store over there aren't required really they are just optional improvements as far as PVE is concerned (haven't paid attention to PVP).
I Also agree with the people pointing out the problems iwth the MKX gear, why is that even in there as a choice, the only things worth getting are MK XI and XII anyways so why bother having anything but the borg MK X engine in there for sector flight and why charge 14 k for the device when you're already paying a hefty fee for the items (approx 75 k EC).
You are all looking at this the wrong way, one bad thing in a market leads to a good thing also, Cryptic's biggest mistake: dilithium can now buy zen at a better rate, meaning lockbox keys, duty officer packs, and if your patient, Z-store ships, for no real money whatsoever. Im already working on getting a mogai retrofit. USE THIS AS AN OPPURTUNITY, PEOPLE.
Regent class, 2 extra character slots, 2 outfit sets, 10 keys, 2 extra BOFF slots on 1 character... The opurtunity has been there for quite some time since you did necro the thread. But kinda cool to see that all those worries never really panned out and the market sits around 111 dilithium per zen today.
==post above is by jetwtf===
EDIT: Closed for necroing an old thread. Remember, if a thread has been inactive for 30 days, you should not post to it. Feel free to create a new thread on the subject if you would like to discuss further ~BranFlakes
Join Date: Nobody cares.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
Comments
I was suggesting that Dan wasn't telling us the truth about the intent behind these changes...
I also believe that the 2 nerfs (console-click and btran) were just exploit preventions that were done out of principle and with no regard to the economic impact. Which is fine.
What the 3rd nerf (DOFF) was about, I am not really sure. Maybe DOFF upgrade is not needed anymore now that fleets only need white DOFFs, so to prevent purple DOFF overflow the dil costs were added.
So we have 4 well meaning changes here (fleet action dil, 2 exploit nerfs, DOFF nerf) and one 'evil' change (STF equip costs massive amounts of dil). Which lead to a big reduction of dilithium supply and a big increase in dilithium demand and the conspiracy theory that this was intended. I don't think it was, at least not to this extend. Time will tell how they react to the new data they are now getting.
The perspective that the zen market has crashed over the past few months is insignificant to the course of the game over a few years. Really the major players are seeing less dilithium production, but the masses are seeing more. Also once dilithium's only real value was to get zen so it was devalued. Now it has other tangible values that increase demand.
In the end dilithium is of value to fill bounded projects. Those projects yield fleet marks and other currencies that will be used for purchasing upgrades. What we see now is just phase 1 of a multiphase plan.
I agree with this. It feels like an everlasting grind... THIS is not why I joined STO in the first place and frankly is not really what I want to be doing all the time. Doing a STF now and then can be fun,... but not because you have if you want to get that set.
I can never buy Zen even if I want to for different reasons. One of them being that I am a student and really don't have much room for pleasures like that. Secondly since I have promised myself to never buy stuff over interent due to the risk of scam and companies trying to bluff their way by sending me bills on stuff i already payed or not purchase. For that reason I am very hesitate to buy stuff from any companies over internet. Now if you could buy something like a refill card for zen (very much like Itunes have) for the game in a store I would be more willing to consider something like that - something I can buy with cash in a store.
Personally I am happy that the zen value is so low.. it enables me to get more Zen from the Dilithium I earn. I never earned 8000 dil a day..
THEY DON'T!
They have initially set the minimum and maximum conversion rates of the exchange at the very beginning, they do not CARE if you get 25 or 500 Dilithium for your 1 Zen, if at all then they care about what Quantity of Product is moved.
The range is set in a way that works for them no matter if its high or low.
You can be sure they had meetings with spreadsheets and data mining and what not to nail down a range that works in their favor no matter what.
And don't forget, the ultimate goal of the dilithium exchange is to get people willing to Pay 2 Win to spend more $ on Zen, while not alienating Players that are wanting to play for the rewards.
It is the perfect solution, the Pay 2 Win minded player with a rich daddy can now just buy everything in the game, if it doesn't cost Zen than it costs dilithium.
The Free 2 Play player can just play away and earn everything for free, now even C-Store items, just for his playtime BUT he still consumes the Zen that is on the market by buying these C-Store items.
Personally i never bought Dilithium, i sell it, and if you ask me it can crash down to 25, the worst thing that could happen is that i run out of items on the C-Store to buy (i actually can see that day coming when i only got Lockboxes left to buy from it) ;P
::WARNING:: This game is not intended for use as a source of self-esteem.
But what they fail to realize is the AH is the substitute for STO's reputation system.
Now the cost of Dil per Zen has gone up considerably which means there's no simple way of getting the things we need from the store without Real Money. If they are going to cap the amount of unrefined we get the least they could do is increase the amount that we can refine a day without the need to fly all over the universe for some special Doff mission that takes 20hours to complete or some other crazy thing.
It's very very poor to keep your players from advancing easily in one game while allowing players in another to have oodles of currency all the time. Shouldn't the philosophy for the whole company be the same? The philosophy for Neverwinter is play your way and build your characters without spending a dime if you don't want to which is true honestly, the things they sell in the store over there aren't required really they are just optional improvements as far as PVE is concerned (haven't paid attention to PVP).
I Also agree with the people pointing out the problems iwth the MKX gear, why is that even in there as a choice, the only things worth getting are MK XI and XII anyways so why bother having anything but the borg MK X engine in there for sector flight and why charge 14 k for the device when you're already paying a hefty fee for the items (approx 75 k EC).
Doesn't make any logical sense to me honestly.
Regent class, 2 extra character slots, 2 outfit sets, 10 keys, 2 extra BOFF slots on 1 character... The opurtunity has been there for quite some time since you did necro the thread. But kinda cool to see that all those worries never really panned out and the market sits around 111 dilithium per zen today.
==post above is by jetwtf===
EDIT: Closed for necroing an old thread. Remember, if a thread has been inactive for 30 days, you should not post to it. Feel free to create a new thread on the subject if you would like to discuss further
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek: