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Why haven't Exchange prices stabilized?
pweistheworst
Member Posts: 986 Arc User
I remember this time last year you could buy some Lobi store ships on the exchange for as little as 50-60 million EC ... which is a TON of money but wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility for serious farming.
Now, most lobi store ships are around 120 million EC and the lock box ships that are harder to get are 200 million or more!
I don't know what happened, but for a game that is supposed to be friendly for F2Pers, those prices are insane.
Let me say up front that I put STUPID amounts of REAL money into this game every month. When I did my taxes earlier this year I discovered I put so much into STO that I probably personally paid the salary of a junior staffer at PWE.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't have to pay for cool things in the game, but come on ... those lobi store ship prices are just CRAZY.
Now, most lobi store ships are around 120 million EC and the lock box ships that are harder to get are 200 million or more!
I don't know what happened, but for a game that is supposed to be friendly for F2Pers, those prices are insane.
Let me say up front that I put STUPID amounts of REAL money into this game every month. When I did my taxes earlier this year I discovered I put so much into STO that I probably personally paid the salary of a junior staffer at PWE.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't have to pay for cool things in the game, but come on ... those lobi store ship prices are just CRAZY.
In the immortal words of Captain Sisko: "It may not be what you believe, but that doesn't make it wrong."
Don't believe the lies in this forum. I am NOT an ARC user. I play STO on Steam or not at all.
Don't believe the lies in this forum. I am NOT an ARC user. I play STO on Steam or not at all.
Post edited by pweistheworst on
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Ship prices/dilithium/zen exchange will continue to increase until cryptic realized there always need to be a dilithium to maintain the status quo.
My assumption is that the crafting revamp will barely make a dent, everything will continue to increase as a result.
Can't believe that Cryptic doesn't know that crafting is a niche form of content that majority of players tend to avoid. And this current abomination will keep the majority from venturing too far into it.
Player driven market...demand of dil is low thus price is high
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
If you can make 50-60 million EC in a month then people have to decide if those ships they paid $ for - some of them equal to around $200.00 for - were worth 1 month of your farming. Many people believe it is worth more then 1 month - especially since the Dilithium to Zen conversion has most 2,500 Zen ships taking 1.5 to 2 months to earn.
Couple all that with no new sinks and boom. Inflation.
And while appreciate what you have spent on the game, a very junior staffer is probably making $45,000 based on the area's CoL indicators. If you have put $45,000.00 into this game then you need a new hobby. Get a mistress or something.
You think mistresses or drugs are less expensive? I hate to drop a SW quote in the STO forums but, "I find your lack of faith disturbing."
I won't drop my personal expense numbers here, but you'd be VERY surprised how much I sank in to STO last year. This is my primary entertainment expense, and I earn enough to let me enjoy my time here.
Still, the current exchange inflation is just sad ... very sad.
Don't believe the lies in this forum. I am NOT an ARC user. I play STO on Steam or not at all.
Or make the seasonal events have an option to exchange EC for favors at a very unfavorable rate.
Not going to happen though. They only currencies they care about are dilithium and lobi and they control the supply of those very carefully.
- Judge Aaron Satie
IF you are a small fleet, buying Commodities for Fleet Projects can get expensive. I have to spend literally 1 Million EC per day for just that.
Cryptic very much cares about EC. They cared that it was allowing people to buy things with time and savvy instead of dil/zen. So they killed it off to gain more control over the economy and ultimately more profits because a chunk of the business that used to be going on in the EC market is now forced by the dictates of sanity to move to the dil/zen market.
if the seller of an item on the ec exchange is selling a ship for 120 million EC and nobody is ever going to buy at that price he would eventually have to reduce the price by a substancial amount or get stuck with an item he dosent want but while buyers are happy enough to pay this level of ec for this item it will remain high.
simmilarly zen>dil exchange rates are set in a simmilar way, if the lowest amount for selling zen listed for was 300dil>1zen and nobody was willing to part with dil for that amount no dil and zen would ever be exchanged until the zen sellers bought their rates down.
the only time the rates would drop is when zen sellers are happy enough to sell for a lower amount and if all zen buyers refused to pay more then 130 dil for 1zen sellers would eventually have to lower their price to that amount or face never buying any dil they so desparatly want.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
They nerf the EC values of junk loot, but IMHO that's not enough, we need some optional moneysink added to the game (like the holoemitters or consumables*. Provisions for starbases or the ocassional 15k EC for a reputation project is not enough to counter the generated amount of EC)
*or, a extreme example: playable race unlock:pay 500M EC to unlock the ability to generate ONE <whatever... deferi ...>
Self Entitlement detected...
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
This is what I keep hoping. But this being Cryptic, they opted to nerf loot npc value instead. The gaping ec faucet is pumping slower, but there's still no real sink for existing ec. At most, inflation slows a little.
That's fairly usual on a monthly basis, first weekend of the month is usually payday for many monthly earners, so you're going to get more Zen dumped on the market than usual and the more that is available the cheaper it will become to get it to sell.
Best answers ever. There are some serious TRIBBLE going on that Cryptic is not doing anything about it. Is not entirely the inflation as most exploiters come on forums and preach about to cover up their schemes. Like 2-3 months ago I bought 2 ships, a Mobius destroyer and a Tal Shiar battle cruiser with 91m and 98m. A few days after, some1 bought allmost all the rest and repost them for 129m. And no promotion or anything changed in that time frame... This also happens when new lobi ships are released. I mean, how desperate they get that they even started to number how many ships were opened, thus to know how many are in the game to corner the market. And I think this is also related in some way with all the ECs sellers too. They keep high proces to make ppl buy ECs from various illegal sites. Or even sell ECs to those sites aswell. Even undetected, since they use the exchange to make the tranzaction, like putting a hypo for 200m or something like that.
Seriously, the Devs should just nerf, or actually no, better said adjust the doff mission "Turn in Confiscated Contraband" to 20h duration and 500 dil payout. This way it will be brought to the dil mine holding standard doff mission that pays 500 dil too.
Lots of exploiters are using 60-70 toons to farm the "Turn in Confiscated Contraband" doff mission, gaining like 500k RAFINED dil per day, some even with the aids of a few PCs and macro programs, since they cant be detected anyway. In 16 hours they can farm 8k dil cap per toon easy.
This is a seroius exploit, no diferent then the foundry clickies imo.
How is this not an exploit in dev's eyes when a normal person that actually plays the game's content, even on 2-3 toons, will gain 16k or 24k rafined dil, while these exploiters can make half of mil rafined dil per day? :eek:
I mean, this is a slap in the face of the ppl who buy zen aswell.
And in alot of cases its not needed even to farm contraband, becouse they maintain the keys at high prices, thus a stack of 250 contraband bought with around 11m will yield keys in 17-18m value, so there it is a 6m ec profit for just doing nothing but a clicky.
This is right darn outragious and it should be stoped.
Yep, other games "solve" this with item decay/bankslots/mounts etc.... more or less succsessfull.
(Could be far worse, in Vanguard Chinafarmers brought the system to collapse.
Ingame money was worth nothing, they fell back to a barter trade system)
And agreed, Dilithium/Zen and EC are two total different systems.
And the "market cornering" guys mosul33 has mentioned could be identified if the name of the seller of a product would show up at the market.
Greed
That would cause a dilithium over-inflation, you would remove 2 major dilithium sinks, with only one remaining(starbase), dilithium would be soon at 500 dil per zen with 0 Zen offers (see the dilemma?)
???
Your solution is exactly the same as mine, really good stuff for tonnes of EC.
No, I'm thinking having crazy prices, like at least twice what it costs to convert EC -> Contraband -> Dil.