How is it a nerf when it'll just be more balanced?
The problem isn't that it's more balanced, it's that the overall value is diminished under the new system... see the spreadsheet from the OP for a breakdown, or check Tribble. Of course, and again as stated in the OP, the Ground Weapon pricing may be a bug; of course, it may also be intentional as they are intending Ground items to be less valuable than Space items as they believe that "Ground combat tends to be faster and involve more creatures, which means more items are gained in the same amount of time." Though that seems to forget about farming SB24, Foundry missions, etc... we'll have to wait and see what they actually intend with the system.
Of course, if the concern is the EC inflation in the economy, a place or reason to spend EC's in-game rather than on the Exchange might be a better solution; the Exchange does not destroy EC's, it merely transfers them between players. If you are currently farming, you can start hoarding EC's, wait for the market to adjust, then use your reserve from the pre-adjusted prices to buy up and price fix hard to find items. Assuming the overall nerf is intentional and not a bug.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
There is literally TENS of Billion of EC flowing into the market every day through KDF contraband farming. The scale of it is hard for anyone not involved to comprehend.
WRONG. The amount of EC that actually flows into the market as a result of catfood is "next to nothing". When someone buys catfood from you, that money doesn't come from nowhere, it comes from that other player. No new money entered the system aside from you vendoring the non-catfood junk byproduct. When someone then processes the catfood into minerals and trades it for Zen and then keys, and then sells those keys, that money, again, doesn't appear from nowhere: Someone else pays for those keys.
Ultimately, the only thing the catfood cycle actually adds to the game is minerals, but those eventually wind up at the bottom of a starbase or fed to the rep engine.
I find this whole thread an amusing example of the austism that is the STO community.
There has been 12 pages of people complaining about the EC faucet (which by the way isn't significant) and that this won't stop the EC inflation while at the same time arguing that this change will ruin not only theirs but all new players income streams because :blame Cryptic:.
I hope this might shed a different perspective.
The exchange system in STO is based on an ingame supply/demand. It works that way with any MMO that functions on an exchange. A nerf to EC income won't effect supply but will change the demand and hence the price will fluctuate.
But regardless of the exchange price, vendor trash should be used as a tool to step into the exchange but has never been an efficient way to increase your EC amount significantly, nor should it. It's trash and should be treated as such, therefore why should it be an income backbone?
So I challenge players getting their nuts tangled over this rather meaningless change to perhaps look at the other (albeit short) options to earn income in STO and realize that there are much better time efficient ways to handle that wallet.
Just to reinforce my point I'll use an example. In an hour and a half on the Dyson Ground Battlezone and a couple doff missions I'd comfortably have enough dilithium for 2 to 3 days of refining. Given the current dilithium exchange prices, 2 days of dilithium will exchange into a master key which will then sell at current prices at close to 3mil EC. That means in less than a week and about 3-4 hours of game time, a player who has just hit level 50 can completely hit their F2P EC cap. That is without doing anything else either. EC is easy.
I do want to also address the EC sinks in the economy, and frankly the most common one is the one that plagues all F2P games; accounts going inactive. As soon as someone stops playing STO, which happens regularly, their EC is out of the ingame economy and sometimes that can be a significant amount.
So stop doom and glooming it, cause frankly if this is big deal to a player then something is strangely amiss.
That's not that big of a difference. I can live with that. You can still make Ec, just takes a tad longer now is all.
Everybody is all up in arms of "oh noes, I can't farm EC as fast! My life is over! the exchange will crash!!!"
Prices may fluctuate, but in the end, EC will still flow, people will still buy and sell. So frankly I am not worried about it in the least.
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That's not that big of a difference. I can live with that. You can still make Ec, just takes a tad longer now is all.
Everybody is all up in arms of "oh noes, I can't farm EC as fast! My life is over! the exchange will crash!!!"
Prices may fluctuate, but in the end, EC will still flow, people will still buy and sell. So frankly I am not worried about it in the least.
Me neither, but you know this place. Mountains out of molehills.
As vocal as I have been over the whole 'new crafting is bad' trend at the moment, a part of me hopes that everyone is making a big fuss over nothing and in reality it's actually not so bad.
I think really there's more than just one issue here and things are getting mixed up.
Cutting the vendor sell price of items will mostly affect the newer players who use this as a primary means of earning ec, before they get into using the exchange properly. People with plenty of time (farmers) and experience (older players not needing ec) will either work double to earn the same or will not care and vendor stuff anyway.
The alternative to vendoring things is to use the exchange which has the advantage of you being able to set a price you think an item is worth. But if everyone suddenly drops a tonne of vendor trash on the exchange it simply won't sell for good prices because it's essentially trash, nobody wants it so they are dumping it anyway they can to try to recoup the perceived cost of getting the items.
The super-inflated prices of high level or more desirable items (a result of the whole supply & demand effect) is not going to be affected by a flood of vendor trash on the exchange. It won't be affected by the crafting revamp either unless certain items suddenly become more freely available.
Farmers will carry on as normal but with slightly more work to get the same income. Low level players will have to either take the income hit or learn to yes the exchange and hope they get a decent price.
I think really there's more than just one issue here and things are getting mixed up.
Cutting the vendor sell price of items will mostly affect the newer players who use this as a primary means of earning ec, before they get into using the exchange properly. People with plenty of time (farmers) and experience (older players not needing ec) will either work double to earn the same or will not care and vendor stuff anyway.
The alternative to vendoring things is to use the exchange which has the advantage of you being able to set a price you think an item is worth. But if everyone suddenly drops a tonne of vendor trash on the exchange it simply won't sell for good prices because it's essentially trash, nobody wants it so they are dumping it anyway they can to try to recoup the perceived cost of getting the items.
The super-inflated prices of high level or more desirable items (a result of the whole supply & demand effect) is not going to be affected by a flood of vendor trash on the exchange. It won't be affected by the crafting revamp either unless certain items suddenly become more freely available.
Farmers will carry on as normal but with slightly more work to get the same income. Low level players will have to either take the income hit or learn to yes the exchange and hope they get a decent price.
Or they do something else. CRAFTING. At lower levels you do not need Dil, and from what I understand it's realitively in expensive for a lower level player to get green or blue equipment for their ships. Might completely undercut the exchange up till tier XII.
Something else to take into account.
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Well the new crafting is a whole other can of worms.
Low level use might be ok and with a decent return but higher level items will be behind a lottery again.
It's essentially another incarnation of the lock box system. The desirable crafted items (tac consoles etc) that are stuck behind a lottery and huge initial investment will be sold on the exchange for stupid high prices encouraging more ec farming to obtain them. The other stuff will still be seen as junk so will go for low prices, same as the common items from lock boxes currently do.
And this is after moving drops that I get on my 12 characters and transferring to my Ferengi character for him to sell to the vendor.
Hmmm ... I was unaware that selling by a Ferengi gets a better EC income .
Admittedly my Ferengi is a low level toon , but still both on DS9 and the Deferi Trading outpost both he and a regular toon sold :
terraforming system -- 1200 (original price)
Battery -- 200 (original price)
non Ferengi got : 600 + 100
Ferengi got : 600 + 100
Same EC return from selling .
Did I miss something ?
Season 9.5 = STO's NGE is Coming!
Interesting Sig ... --- but I'd say that the removal of the Hourly bonuses and all the rest via the removal of the Calendar was more of an NGE (to me) .
I'm well aware that others disagree , so this is not a point of discussion .
Well the new crafting is a whole other can of worms.
Low level use might be ok and with a decent return but higher level items will be behind a lottery again.
It's essentially another incarnation of the lock box system. The desirable crafted items (tac consoles etc) that are stuck behind a lottery and huge initial investment will be sold on the exchange for stupid high prices encouraging more ec farming to obtain them. The other stuff will still be seen as junk so will go for low prices, same as the common items from lock boxes currently do.
Well that's why I said for lower levels the new crafting system might be a salvation from the Exchange and having to pay outrageous prices for lower level gear. But like we both said at higher levels out side of tier X equipment it becomes the DIL lottery.
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Been thinking the whole thing over (stuck at work ) and it'll actually be interesting to see what this (and the crafting revamp) does to certain aspects of the economy.
The way I see it the high level crafting will need a tonne of dil.
So lazy players who want crafted items NOW!!!! will pour zen into the exchange to get dil to pour into the crafting.
That means the exchange rate will drop as zen floods in.
Also, with ec being harder to get from loot farming I would gues the "sell keys for ec" method will be more popular. Players will either buy them with dil-zen conversions or with real $'s. So the price of keys drops as they flood the market also.
Plus with keys dropping in cost both in ec and dil, the cost of lock box ships could drop also as more people risk a few dil or ec on a key to chance their luck and win a nice prize.
Been thinking the whole thing over (stuck at work ) and it'll actually be interesting to see what this (and the crafting revamp) does to certain aspects of the economy.
The way I see it the high level crafting will need a tonne of dil.
So lazy players who want crafted items NOW!!!! will pour zen into the exchange to get dil to pour into the crafting.
That means the exchange rate will drop as zen floods in.
Also, with ec being harder to get from loot farming I would gues the "sell keys for ec" method will be more popular. Players will either buy them with dil-zen conversions or with real $'s. So the price of keys drops as they flood the market also.
Plus with keys dropping in cost both in ec and dil, the cost of lock box ships could drop also as more people risk a few dil or ec on a key to chance their luck and win a nice prize.
So it may not actually all be bad news?
That will be good news for Cryptic, and I think taht was their whole intention with it.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
A problem with 'Close Faucets and create sinks' is that the 'Sink' stuff needs to be better than the current stuff, or the 'Whales' will not bite.
An example is over there in 'Neverwinter', their 'timegated' currency, called 'Astral Diamonds'. There are people with lowlevel characters farming a certain Skirmish (one could say 'Fleet Action') for lowlevels, during the Event Hour (each won skirmish gives 1k Diamonds, and a steady group of those twinked out alts will faceroll them in 5 Minutes or less per run). The daily refine Limit is 24k Diamonds per Character. So they first run 2x 1 Hour of Skirms on a lowbie alt, 24k a day.
Then, there is a Character profession that ALSO generates unrefined (Raw) diamonds. And the Neverwinter Gateway allows 'remote' administration of the profession, some people generate another 24-30k a day per character.
Then, one can, once per hour, Invoke the characters' deity, at Level 60, this generates, the first 3 times a day, first 1000, then 665, then 335 Raw diamonds, netting 2k a day.
Now, imagine this on an account with 10 characters. 1 'Skirmish Farmer' Lowbie who can't generate Leadership (the profession) AD, but generates income actively. One 'Main' who runs dungeons, sells profitable loot on the Auction house (it is run on AD, not 'Gold'), refines the rest to raw AD. And 8 characters only being 'Invoke and Leadership Mules',that's at least 240k a Day, not counting sales of loot on the Auction House.
The 'Sinks' for Astral Diamonds are there, however, no one uses them, because they are:
1. Overpriced
5k Diamonds for a Scroll that can teleport you to a 'Hub Zone' - when the zones are so small that you can ride back to the 'door'
300k to upgrade a companion from 'White' Status (Max level 15, comparable to player level 30) to 'Green' (Max Level 20), with higher quality upgrades costing even more, green to blue is at 500k, blue to purple is 750k. A purple companion from the Zen store, when Zen are purchased via Diamonds to Zen exchange, costs, at max Exchange rate, 1.2 million Diamonds. , upgrading a 'white' Companion clocks in with 1.55 million. And the 'white' companions only give Stat bonuses, the Itemshop ones give actual procs as effect.
768k to upgrade a mount from 50% speed to 80%, and another 2.064 million to upgrade to 110% (maximum speed). This is 'Per Character'. Now, lets turn that to Zen, at maximum Exchange Rate. 5664 Zen. For 3500 Zen, you get an accountwide 110% speed Mount.
2. Not needed or enforced onto the 'Whales'
All this is optional. So buying Zen Stuff directly gives you a better deal, for less invested AD. The situation at the moment is this dire that recently, there was a flash event intended to drain AD away, you purchased an egg and could get a certain companion at a 10% chance (on average) with a different one on the 90% other chances, each egg clocking in at 1.2 millions. The Mistake: Both companions were tradeable. So the Whales purchased a couple hundred or thousand eggs, opened them, pawned off the less rare for Auction House cut + Egg price (or slightly below), and pawned the rare Companion off for 6 million or upwards. End result: Whales get fatter, the poor or unlucky ones get poorer.
So it isn't just you, in STO, who suffer from missing or ineffective 'sinks'.
Hell, technically, there was an AD sink, back in the day, but it was too harsh on lowbies, so it got changed to 'Gold' instead. Which now causes the 'Whales' that experiment with Gear a lot to not have a sink anymore.
Well that's why I said for lower levels the new crafting system might be a salvation from the Exchange and having to pay outrageous prices for lower level gear. But like we both said at higher levels out side of tier X equipment it becomes the DIL lottery.
And if it wasn't we'd just have another store front with an incredibly grindy gate to get through first. As it is we have a system, one that you can't rely on (that's what fleet/rep stores are for) but one that at least seems like it has a function.
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Well that's why I said for lower levels the new crafting system might be a salvation from the Exchange and having to pay outrageous prices for lower level gear. But like we both said at higher levels out side of tier X equipment it becomes the DIL lottery.
i've always managed to survive lvl1-lvl40/45 with cr*p-cheap white, green, or sometimes blue gear. if you don't play the storyline on advanced/elite you could easily complete everything with a gear from whites/greens (ofc you have to choose this white/green properly and you need decent skilling). so i don't really understand this "salvation" since i didn't really need one anyway. playing on adv/elite is another thing, but i think that's also doable with blues and occasional purples. if a full newbie wants to do all story on elite, than hell he's gotta pay for it. otherwise it's basically no need to invest big money on gear below lvl40.
as for higher tier items... of course it's lottery. pwe/cryptic loves lottery.
Defiant
RnD and upgrade needs less RNG. Less lottery. Something has to change.
Blizzard had extremely fast flying mount skills that when purchased, destroyed currency and removed it from the game. Same deal with the travelers tundra mammoth mount that you bought off a npc vendor for a fortune. You didn't need either to play the game at its best competitively, but they were a handy convenience for those with the spare change. And they also served the purpose of currency deflation as the money spent on them never returned to the games economy.
It's too bad Cryptic doesn't think of anything like that. Always just doing a blanket nerf kicking casual players in the TRIBBLE.
Tax Exchange sales over 250k at 39% and redistribute to players with bank accounts with less than 100,000,000 EC. Charge an excise tax of 25% on any bank accounts with balances over 200,000,000 EC and redistribute to players with accounts with less than 100,000,000 EC.
It will create more economic opportunity for "average" players, it will cut inflation by forcing players to sell items for less. It will also remove the incentive for "economic" gain and bring STO more in line with one of the deepest ideals of Star Trek; a society that benefits everyone, not the super rich.
Tax Exchange sales over 250k at 39% and redistribute to players with bank accounts with less than 100,000,000 EC. Charge an excise tax of 25% on any bank accounts with balances over 200,000,000 EC and redistribute to players with accounts with less than 100,000,000 EC.
It will create more economic opportunity for "average" players, it will cut inflation by forcing players to sell items for less. It will also remove the incentive for "economic" gain and bring STO more in line with one of the deepest ideals of Star Trek; a society that benefits everyone, not the super rich.
communists werent known for their great economies.
Charge an excise tax of 25% on any bank accounts with balances over 200,000,000 EC and redistribute to players with accounts with less than 100,000,000 EC.
i don't want to be rude... but... are you out of you [REDACTED] mind? why would i allow players, who i don't know, to have my hard earned EC? players who might be not worthy of it at all.
Defiant
RnD and upgrade needs less RNG. Less lottery. Something has to change.
Tax Exchange sales over 250k at 39% and redistribute to players with bank accounts with less than 100,000,000 EC. Charge an excise tax of 25% on any bank accounts with balances over 200,000,000 EC and redistribute to players with accounts with less than 100,000,000 EC.
It will create more economic opportunity for "average" players, it will cut inflation by forcing players to sell items for less. It will also remove the incentive for "economic" gain and bring STO more in line with one of the deepest ideals of Star Trek; a society that benefits everyone, not the super rich.
This would result in trades outside of the exchange and without EC, but an alternative currency as keys or other items. No average player would benefit.
Taxing the exchange is actually a decent EC sink. If the tax was progressive so it hits the bigger transactions proportionally more. Sure some would chose to do private trades but the majority of people would just go on.
While buyers could in theory raise the costs to make up the tax, the EC would still be removed from the system. Sadly, with the amount of EC already in the system, I don't think small measures would do it. If crafting costs were mostly EC then it might be have been a good way to siphon some EC ... but they would rather nickel and dime players.
I have given up hope that these devs can handle any real complexity in MMO. They have endless powercreep (which is stats inflation), EC inflation and inflation in zen costs.
Escalating greed ...
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Okay maybe we won't, but it would seem that the devs have noticed the crazy EC inflation that has been happening for a while now and they intend to do something about it.
For example, a MK XI Shield Array that is valued at 66,500 EC on Holodeck right now (vendors for 33,250) is only worth 22,572 on Tribble (vendors for 11,286). A 66% nerf. Ouch.
Before I go any further, I'll say that it looks like the Ground Weapon pricing on Tribble is currently bugged to be the inverse of what it should be, so take this next section with a small grain of salt.
We're looking at between ~45% and 75% nerf to the EC value of most space and ground gear. When you factor in the offset by the increase in Weapon values, we may be looking at an overall vendortrash nerf of ~40%.**
**Caveat: I only have a sample size of 2 in my testing so far (the right side section) because most of my time was spent on price checks and making the sheet (self-administer more grains of salt as needed) hence why I said we "may" have a 40% nerf on our hands. It depends on the ratio of weapon drops to drops of everything else and needs a larger sample size of testing. Feel free to do the math on your own loot hauls.
So Lobi ships in the future will sale for 30 mil Ecs instead of 100 mil Ecs. Nice, I'm not buying anything for about 6 months and see if I can't go on a shopping spree for all the goodies. Ty for this info.
So Lobi ships in the future will sale for 30 mil Ecs instead of 100 mil Ecs. Nice, I'm not buying anything for about 6 months and see if I can't go on a shopping spree for all the goodies. Ty for this info.
Won't work that way. The change Cryptic did will not reduce costs, because it does not reduce EC in circulation only the EC that can be added to circulation.
Comments
How is it a nerf when it'll just be more balanced?
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The problem isn't that it's more balanced, it's that the overall value is diminished under the new system... see the spreadsheet from the OP for a breakdown, or check Tribble. Of course, and again as stated in the OP, the Ground Weapon pricing may be a bug; of course, it may also be intentional as they are intending Ground items to be less valuable than Space items as they believe that "Ground combat tends to be faster and involve more creatures, which means more items are gained in the same amount of time." Though that seems to forget about farming SB24, Foundry missions, etc... we'll have to wait and see what they actually intend with the system.
Of course, if the concern is the EC inflation in the economy, a place or reason to spend EC's in-game rather than on the Exchange might be a better solution; the Exchange does not destroy EC's, it merely transfers them between players. If you are currently farming, you can start hoarding EC's, wait for the market to adjust, then use your reserve from the pre-adjusted prices to buy up and price fix hard to find items. Assuming the overall nerf is intentional and not a bug.
Results from sample 1: http://imgur.com/y8P89cA
Total: 43 items
Holodeck Value: 573,426
Tribble value: 346,942
Difference: -39.50%
Results from sample 2: http://imgur.com/CSXlatf
Total: 66 items
Holodeck Value: 885,940
Tribble Value: 500,927
Difference: -43.46%
Joined January 2009
lol, thats so true..
Also if people like it how it is, they did something wrong and must "fix" it..
Ultimately, the only thing the catfood cycle actually adds to the game is minerals, but those eventually wind up at the bottom of a starbase or fed to the rep engine.
There has been 12 pages of people complaining about the EC faucet (which by the way isn't significant) and that this won't stop the EC inflation while at the same time arguing that this change will ruin not only theirs but all new players income streams because :blame Cryptic:.
I hope this might shed a different perspective.
The exchange system in STO is based on an ingame supply/demand. It works that way with any MMO that functions on an exchange. A nerf to EC income won't effect supply but will change the demand and hence the price will fluctuate.
But regardless of the exchange price, vendor trash should be used as a tool to step into the exchange but has never been an efficient way to increase your EC amount significantly, nor should it. It's trash and should be treated as such, therefore why should it be an income backbone?
So I challenge players getting their nuts tangled over this rather meaningless change to perhaps look at the other (albeit short) options to earn income in STO and realize that there are much better time efficient ways to handle that wallet.
Just to reinforce my point I'll use an example. In an hour and a half on the Dyson Ground Battlezone and a couple doff missions I'd comfortably have enough dilithium for 2 to 3 days of refining. Given the current dilithium exchange prices, 2 days of dilithium will exchange into a master key which will then sell at current prices at close to 3mil EC. That means in less than a week and about 3-4 hours of game time, a player who has just hit level 50 can completely hit their F2P EC cap. That is without doing anything else either. EC is easy.
I do want to also address the EC sinks in the economy, and frankly the most common one is the one that plagues all F2P games; accounts going inactive. As soon as someone stops playing STO, which happens regularly, their EC is out of the ingame economy and sometimes that can be a significant amount.
So stop doom and glooming it, cause frankly if this is big deal to a player then something is strangely amiss.
That's not that big of a difference. I can live with that. You can still make Ec, just takes a tad longer now is all.
Everybody is all up in arms of "oh noes, I can't farm EC as fast! My life is over! the exchange will crash!!!"
Prices may fluctuate, but in the end, EC will still flow, people will still buy and sell. So frankly I am not worried about it in the least.
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http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Me neither, but you know this place. Mountains out of molehills.
As vocal as I have been over the whole 'new crafting is bad' trend at the moment, a part of me hopes that everyone is making a big fuss over nothing and in reality it's actually not so bad.
Cutting the vendor sell price of items will mostly affect the newer players who use this as a primary means of earning ec, before they get into using the exchange properly. People with plenty of time (farmers) and experience (older players not needing ec) will either work double to earn the same or will not care and vendor stuff anyway.
The alternative to vendoring things is to use the exchange which has the advantage of you being able to set a price you think an item is worth. But if everyone suddenly drops a tonne of vendor trash on the exchange it simply won't sell for good prices because it's essentially trash, nobody wants it so they are dumping it anyway they can to try to recoup the perceived cost of getting the items.
The super-inflated prices of high level or more desirable items (a result of the whole supply & demand effect) is not going to be affected by a flood of vendor trash on the exchange. It won't be affected by the crafting revamp either unless certain items suddenly become more freely available.
Farmers will carry on as normal but with slightly more work to get the same income. Low level players will have to either take the income hit or learn to yes the exchange and hope they get a decent price.
Or they do something else. CRAFTING. At lower levels you do not need Dil, and from what I understand it's realitively in expensive for a lower level player to get green or blue equipment for their ships. Might completely undercut the exchange up till tier XII.
Something else to take into account.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Low level use might be ok and with a decent return but higher level items will be behind a lottery again.
It's essentially another incarnation of the lock box system. The desirable crafted items (tac consoles etc) that are stuck behind a lottery and huge initial investment will be sold on the exchange for stupid high prices encouraging more ec farming to obtain them. The other stuff will still be seen as junk so will go for low prices, same as the common items from lock boxes currently do.
Hmmm ... I was unaware that selling by a Ferengi gets a better EC income .
Admittedly my Ferengi is a low level toon , but still both on DS9 and the Deferi Trading outpost both he and a regular toon sold :
terraforming system -- 1200 (original price)
Battery -- 200 (original price)
non Ferengi got : 600 + 100
Ferengi got : 600 + 100
Same EC return from selling .
Did I miss something ?
Interesting Sig ... --- but I'd say that the removal of the Hourly bonuses and all the rest via the removal of the Calendar was more of an NGE (to me) .
I'm well aware that others disagree , so this is not a point of discussion .
Well that's why I said for lower levels the new crafting system might be a salvation from the Exchange and having to pay outrageous prices for lower level gear. But like we both said at higher levels out side of tier X equipment it becomes the DIL lottery.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
The way I see it the high level crafting will need a tonne of dil.
So lazy players who want crafted items NOW!!!! will pour zen into the exchange to get dil to pour into the crafting.
That means the exchange rate will drop as zen floods in.
Also, with ec being harder to get from loot farming I would gues the "sell keys for ec" method will be more popular. Players will either buy them with dil-zen conversions or with real $'s. So the price of keys drops as they flood the market also.
Plus with keys dropping in cost both in ec and dil, the cost of lock box ships could drop also as more people risk a few dil or ec on a key to chance their luck and win a nice prize.
So it may not actually all be bad news?
That will be good news for Cryptic, and I think taht was their whole intention with it.
An example is over there in 'Neverwinter', their 'timegated' currency, called 'Astral Diamonds'. There are people with lowlevel characters farming a certain Skirmish (one could say 'Fleet Action') for lowlevels, during the Event Hour (each won skirmish gives 1k Diamonds, and a steady group of those twinked out alts will faceroll them in 5 Minutes or less per run). The daily refine Limit is 24k Diamonds per Character. So they first run 2x 1 Hour of Skirms on a lowbie alt, 24k a day.
Then, there is a Character profession that ALSO generates unrefined (Raw) diamonds. And the Neverwinter Gateway allows 'remote' administration of the profession, some people generate another 24-30k a day per character.
Then, one can, once per hour, Invoke the characters' deity, at Level 60, this generates, the first 3 times a day, first 1000, then 665, then 335 Raw diamonds, netting 2k a day.
Now, imagine this on an account with 10 characters. 1 'Skirmish Farmer' Lowbie who can't generate Leadership (the profession) AD, but generates income actively. One 'Main' who runs dungeons, sells profitable loot on the Auction house (it is run on AD, not 'Gold'), refines the rest to raw AD. And 8 characters only being 'Invoke and Leadership Mules',that's at least 240k a Day, not counting sales of loot on the Auction House.
The 'Sinks' for Astral Diamonds are there, however, no one uses them, because they are:
1. Overpriced
5k Diamonds for a Scroll that can teleport you to a 'Hub Zone' - when the zones are so small that you can ride back to the 'door'
300k to upgrade a companion from 'White' Status (Max level 15, comparable to player level 30) to 'Green' (Max Level 20), with higher quality upgrades costing even more, green to blue is at 500k, blue to purple is 750k. A purple companion from the Zen store, when Zen are purchased via Diamonds to Zen exchange, costs, at max Exchange rate, 1.2 million Diamonds. , upgrading a 'white' Companion clocks in with 1.55 million. And the 'white' companions only give Stat bonuses, the Itemshop ones give actual procs as effect.
768k to upgrade a mount from 50% speed to 80%, and another 2.064 million to upgrade to 110% (maximum speed). This is 'Per Character'. Now, lets turn that to Zen, at maximum Exchange Rate. 5664 Zen. For 3500 Zen, you get an accountwide 110% speed Mount.
2. Not needed or enforced onto the 'Whales'
All this is optional. So buying Zen Stuff directly gives you a better deal, for less invested AD. The situation at the moment is this dire that recently, there was a flash event intended to drain AD away, you purchased an egg and could get a certain companion at a 10% chance (on average) with a different one on the 90% other chances, each egg clocking in at 1.2 millions. The Mistake: Both companions were tradeable. So the Whales purchased a couple hundred or thousand eggs, opened them, pawned off the less rare for Auction House cut + Egg price (or slightly below), and pawned the rare Companion off for 6 million or upwards. End result: Whales get fatter, the poor or unlucky ones get poorer.
So it isn't just you, in STO, who suffer from missing or ineffective 'sinks'.
Hell, technically, there was an AD sink, back in the day, but it was too harsh on lowbies, so it got changed to 'Gold' instead. Which now causes the 'Whales' that experiment with Gear a lot to not have a sink anymore.
And if it wasn't we'd just have another store front with an incredibly grindy gate to get through first. As it is we have a system, one that you can't rely on (that's what fleet/rep stores are for) but one that at least seems like it has a function.
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i've always managed to survive lvl1-lvl40/45 with cr*p-cheap white, green, or sometimes blue gear. if you don't play the storyline on advanced/elite you could easily complete everything with a gear from whites/greens (ofc you have to choose this white/green properly and you need decent skilling). so i don't really understand this "salvation" since i didn't really need one anyway. playing on adv/elite is another thing, but i think that's also doable with blues and occasional purples. if a full newbie wants to do all story on elite, than hell he's gotta pay for it. otherwise it's basically no need to invest big money on gear below lvl40.
as for higher tier items... of course it's lottery. pwe/cryptic loves lottery.
RnD and upgrade needs less RNG. Less lottery. Something has to change.
It's too bad Cryptic doesn't think of anything like that. Always just doing a blanket nerf kicking casual players in the TRIBBLE.
Better way to fix the economy...
Tax Exchange sales over 250k at 39% and redistribute to players with bank accounts with less than 100,000,000 EC. Charge an excise tax of 25% on any bank accounts with balances over 200,000,000 EC and redistribute to players with accounts with less than 100,000,000 EC.
It will create more economic opportunity for "average" players, it will cut inflation by forcing players to sell items for less. It will also remove the incentive for "economic" gain and bring STO more in line with one of the deepest ideals of Star Trek; a society that benefits everyone, not the super rich.
communists werent known for their great economies.
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What?!?
That's just pure hogwash!
Tell China that!!!
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Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
when i talk about communism, im talking eastern europe, the ussr, and 'pre-hong kong handover' china.
and if we did start these silly rules i would simply hold the majority of ec in lockbox ships and whatnot, trade them in NoP Trading Channel, etc.
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http://itself.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/is-china-a-communist-country/
http://www.bustle.com/articles/8836-is-china-a-communist-country-why-americans-cant-be-ignorant-about-china-anymore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_China
Just a few, and also Russia was deemed at one time, to be a socialist nation as well.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
i don't want to be rude... but... are you out of you [REDACTED] mind? why would i allow players, who i don't know, to have my hard earned EC? players who might be not worthy of it at all.
RnD and upgrade needs less RNG. Less lottery. Something has to change.
This would result in trades outside of the exchange and without EC, but an alternative currency as keys or other items. No average player would benefit.
While buyers could in theory raise the costs to make up the tax, the EC would still be removed from the system. Sadly, with the amount of EC already in the system, I don't think small measures would do it. If crafting costs were mostly EC then it might be have been a good way to siphon some EC ... but they would rather nickel and dime players.
I have given up hope that these devs can handle any real complexity in MMO. They have endless powercreep (which is stats inflation), EC inflation and inflation in zen costs.
Escalating greed ...
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So Lobi ships in the future will sale for 30 mil Ecs instead of 100 mil Ecs. Nice, I'm not buying anything for about 6 months and see if I can't go on a shopping spree for all the goodies. Ty for this info.
Won't work that way. The change Cryptic did will not reduce costs, because it does not reduce EC in circulation only the EC that can be added to circulation.