I will adjust the amount of time I wish devote into this game as well as techniques to acquire as much of the daily dil refinement cap as possible. For my KDF toons gathering dilithium is not much of an issue since Doff missions can fulfill at least half of the daily 8k refinement cap. However, the same cannot be said for my Fed toons.
Since I cannot devote unlimited time to the game my Fed toons will be more less likely reach the 8k refinement limit now compared to just prior to DR's release.
I'm a little annoyed that they took out the foundry missions because I really enjoyed doing them. Sure, it was nice to get an incentive of some dilithium but I never took advantage of it and probably did one mission a day with a random character. Quite often I would do one of the missions with a few different characters because it was so much fun, and I wanted to see how a differently specc'd character would handle the same adventure.
Fleet Admiral Duane Gundrum, U.S.S. Merrimack
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
People who's gameplay activities aren't affected assuring someone who's gameplay activities just got nerfed that "nothing has changed" or "just trade the part of the game you actually enjoy for something you feel is mundane and uninteresting" is utterly tone deaf was my point.
And my point is that there's other parts of the game that more than satisfy the very specific need for dilithium (in spite of large scale rebalancing) that requires only minor adjustments. The most extreme case is the dyson ground battlezone (very particular but also VERY lucrative) but even if you drop down to normal and keep up the same playthroughs you're not exactly starving, now are you? You're making less from the single dil payout but that is by NO means the only source of income from even those missions. Compared running ISN now versus ISE two years ago and you're still better off thanks to the reputation system and daily payout. The only issue here is if your idea of "fun" is grinding the SAME type of mission repeatedly. THEN the drop in single rewards matters, but its easily supplemented by playing other types of missions (which devs do generally want to encourage, they did bother to create more game after the first STF's after all) and because there's quite a lot available its hard to imagine that absolutely none of it can satisfy you as the old, high paying, elite PVE's can somehow exclusively do.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I'm a little annoyed that they took out the foundry missions because I really enjoyed doing them. Sure, it was nice to get an incentive of some dilithium but I never took advantage of it and probably did one mission a day with a random character. Quite often I would do one of the missions with a few different characters because it was so much fun, and I wanted to see how a differently specc'd character would handle the same adventure.
Foundry seems to be offline with every expansion, was like this with Romulus expansion. I guess they be back in a week or two. for me, foundry is the best dil approach iv seen. One day that too will get hammered I am sure, and when that day comes, I too will have to adapt to new approach of dil. Such is the way of an MMO, adaptation, since everything is always changing.
Now they have nerfed dilithium, with absolutely NO compensation
(rabble rabble)
Cryptic defenders, defend away and explain to the others why the world this makes sense, when we are supposed to be attracting new players, not just getting rid of the "privileged" ones.
Dyson Combat Zoned Ground & Space. - It practically rains Dilithium here, didnt hear anyone lauding cryptic for their generosity here. You can afk and dil cap.
As long as we are talking about ingratitude and entitlement, no one thanked cryptic for expanding our inventory slots for free either.
KDF - Kdf get dilithium everyday for.... Dying! and just about anything else that involves logging in.
You now get Dilithium for leveling up after you have completed your captain traits which is another feature that will make you more powerful, and what else is dilithium for but if not to make you more powerful? Sure, the dili isnt there till you max, but face it: you are gonna spend far more time at max level then you will getting there, and you cant even really use dilithium to its greatest extent until you are maxed, so...
So they reduced the dilithium rewards for the stf's and made them so we cant faceroll them, so what? If you were counting on faceroll dilithium then you are mugging yourself, gameplay is its own reward.
There are far too many people who make it a point to boast that they dont pay anything to play Sto, and they just buy their zen with dilithium, doing nothing but ISE on 30 different characters. idk what the point to that kind of behavior is, but I do know its kind of hard to make money and continue to produce the game if you give everything away for free. Guess what? The golden age of free to play sto is over, it simply isnt necessary to hand it all out for free anymore, if you dont like it, the internet is full of other things you can do.
Also, I remember when zen-dili was much much more expensive.
Time is money. I feel sorry for you if you are gonna grind and grind and grind for 8k a day across multiple toons and exploit the zen exchange so you can transfer it all to one character, and consider it a good use of your time. Personally it takes me far more time then it is worth to harvest dilithium in this game while I can just convert zen.
I guess thats why I am having fun, and you are not.
***Warning Fuzzy Math****
8000 dilithium at the exchnage rate of 160 dil per zen = $0.50.
8000 dilithium at 960 per ISE run, plus mark conversion to dilithium under the old reward rate = about 6 runs, generously assuming you have the mustard to run with the dps leage and do the run in 3 minutes, thats 18 minutes. You are working for $1.60 per hour. Time to get a new job.
Fifty cents per day, per character. I dont care if you are just turning over contraband across an army of alts, at some point the time investment to gather the contraband, or the ec to buy contraband costs more time.
Maybe video gaming is a luxury you just cant afford.
If you made $10 an hour flipping burgers, just one hour of that work week set aside for your leisure activities on Sto would net you 160,000 dilithium.
--
Who said you have to have the things you want right this very second? You will earn them in time. If you arent patient enough to wait, the pay-2-win-right-now is available for you, that is your privlidge should you avail yourslef of the opportunity.
And my point is that there's other parts of the game that more than satisfy the very specific need for dilithium (in spite of large scale rebalancing) that requires only minor adjustments. The most extreme case is the dyson ground battlezone (very particular but also VERY lucrative) but even if you drop down to normal and keep up the same playthroughs you're not exactly starving, now are you? You're making less from the single dil payout but that is by NO means the only source of income from even those missions. Compared running ISN now versus ISE two years ago and you're still better off thanks to the reputation system and daily payout. The only issue here is if your idea of "fun" is grinding the SAME type of mission repeatedly. THEN the drop in single rewards matters, but its easily supplemented by playing other types of missions (which devs do generally want to encourage, they did bother to create more game after the first STF's after all) and because there's quite a lot available its hard to imagine that absolutely none of it can satisfy you as the old, high paying, elite PVE's can somehow exclusively do.
Okay, and AGAIN your idea of a solution here is for players to abandon the content they enjoy and have been enjoying all this time and replace it with content they enjoy less. Not to mention that Dil is hardly the only currency needed for progression. Rep gear needs specific token types, upgrade kits need VR mats, fleet gear needs marks for credits, and so on.
Your contempt of the idea of grinding STFs is the same as their contempt of logging in every day to cycle Doffs and zerg around a battlezone. You can stuff all the negative imagery into the other side you want, preferences are subjective and you blatantly don't have any interest in putting yourself in their shoes.
There are plenty of people on at 3am...just depends on WHERE at 3 am....
That is right....at 3 am last week I waited 30-45 seconds in the queue for a STF. On the ground this morning I was trying to cap voth points by myself.
I doubt any Cryptic employee would continue working at that studio if their boss came in and said "I'm gonna need you to do two to three times the amount of work your are currently doing, and for half of your current pay."
Seriously.
Since when were games supposed to feel like a job and not fun?
this whole expansion is a complete disaster and pink slips need to go out.
I found it very suspicious that that CaptainSmirk mentioned on Twitch that he was going to be off on vacation just before Delta launches. And just before he leaves, he has the gall to drop a post saying that people shouldn't complain about the terribad glitches and nerfs on these forums. Sorry dude, but you broke it, and we're gonna b*tch about it.
They did. We have Normal, Advanced (formerly known as Elite) and the new version of Elite.
My understanding from reading the Dev blogs was that Normal was staying the same, Advanced was 'slightly' harder than the old Elite and the new Elite was for the serious hardcore guys.
What the blogs say is not what the game is. I wish I had more old hp numbers to compare, but the advanced HP on baddies is about 10 times what it is on normal. Formerly, numbers were something like elite having baddies with 50% more hp. I wish I had a number sample of an old elite enemy vs a new advanced enemy, but I don't. I'm sure the comparison would be ridiculous though.
They just need you to buy some un-official star trek ships is all.
Once sales start dropping from those willing to accept the expansion, they will change things unless they want to see the servers go dark.
Problem leading up to the expansion was content drought - amongst other things, where with killing the queue maps there is actually LESS content than before.
I have even less to do now than before the wrecks-pansion and I am not even kidding either.
Like last time they tried to reduce them then they said they are gona evaluate them then they put them up a bit again. My guess is were lucky if its 480 for normal 760 for advanced and 980 or so for elite. Which imo due to them all being tweaked to last longer than 3 mins now i would have liked to see something like 480 for normal 980 for adv and 1440 for elite at the least. Maybe more for elite due to the difficulty.
this whole expansion is a complete disaster and pink slips need to go out.
Hell they all are at first, they make dumb changes, people rage, eventually a more agreeable compromise is reached, same stuff breaks every time since Beta, 4 things break trying to fix it, then only 3 then down to two, then eventually they nail it out.
What truly infuriates me is the massive skill point cut off on doffing some to all of them give you 1/4th the leveling skill points they used to, while the Doff/Rep exp says the same. That was stone cold garbage.
To be honest i never actually noticed the dil award had been changed till i read this post. Never farmed STFs for dil. I play them for fun/challenged and sometimes for a few marks for whatever rep thingy i want to get.
I know right.. how silly of me to play for fun.
For those comparing playing a game for electronic bits of pretend currency to real life work with real life compensation... your either working WAY to hard on the over exaggeration to make your point... or you need to find another game to play....
Dyson Combat Zoned Ground & Space. - It practically rains Dilithium here, didnt hear anyone lauding cryptic for their generosity here. You can afk and dil cap.
As long as we are talking about ingratitude and entitlement, no one thanked cryptic for expanding our inventory slots for free either.
KDF - Kdf get dilithium everyday for.... Dying! and just about anything else that involves logging in.
You now get Dilithium for leveling up after you have completed your captain traits which is another feature that will make you more powerful, and what else is dilithium for but if not to make you more powerful? Sure, the dili isnt there till you max, but face it: you are gonna spend far more time at max level then you will getting there, and you cant even really use dilithium to its greatest extent until you are maxed, so...
So they reduced the dilithium rewards for the stf's and made them so we cant faceroll them, so what? If you were counting on faceroll dilithium then you are mugging yourself, gameplay is its own reward.
There are far too many people who make it a point to boast that they dont pay anything to play Sto, and they just buy their zen with dilithium, doing nothing but ISE on 30 different characters. idk what the point to that kind of behavior is, but I do know its kind of hard to make money and continue to produce the game if you give everything away for free. Guess what? The golden age of free to play sto is over, it simply isnt necessary to hand it all out for free anymore, if you dont like it, the internet is full of other things you can do.
Also, I remember when zen-dili was much much more expensive.
Time is money. I feel sorry for you if you are gonna grind and grind and grind for 8k a day across multiple toons and exploit the zen exchange so you can transfer it all to one character, and consider it a good use of your time. Personally it takes me far more time then it is worth to harvest dilithium in this game while I can just convert zen.
I guess thats why I am having fun, and you are not.
***Warning Fuzzy Math****
8000 dilithium at the exchnage rate of 160 dil per zen = $0.50.
8000 dilithium at 960 per ISE run, plus mark conversion to dilithium under the old reward rate = about 6 runs, generously assuming you have the mustard to run with the dps leage and do the run in 3 minutes, thats 18 minutes. You are working for $1.60 per hour. Time to get a new job.
Fifty cents per day, per character. I dont care if you are just turning over contraband across an army of alts, at some point the time investment to gather the contraband, or the ec to buy contraband costs more time.
Maybe video gaming is a luxury you just cant afford.
If you made $10 an hour flipping burgers, just one hour of that work week set aside for your leisure activities on Sto would net you 160,000 dilithium.
--
Who said you have to have the things you want right this very second? You will earn them in time. If you arent patient enough to wait, the pay-2-win-right-now is available for you, that is your privlidge should you avail yourslef of the opportunity.
The key issue you are missing is, that if the usual dilithium farmer's find less and, less ways to get their dilithium.
Than there will be, effectively a possible rise in the cost of dilithium for, those who would buy it with zen.
It can backfire without even realizing it and, this is what some people do not consider.
If STFs is where farmers prefer to farm, than it keeps a steady source of dilithium pouring into the exchange, weaken that source and they will have to farm elsewhere.
Weaken the elsewhere source and, you will see a drop in available dilithium pouring into the market.
And while this may not effect tons of player's, it will effect enough to be noticeable or, cause a forum ruckus over the rising cost of dilithium>zen.
Comments
Since I cannot devote unlimited time to the game my Fed toons will be more less likely reach the 8k refinement limit now compared to just prior to DR's release.
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
And my point is that there's other parts of the game that more than satisfy the very specific need for dilithium (in spite of large scale rebalancing) that requires only minor adjustments. The most extreme case is the dyson ground battlezone (very particular but also VERY lucrative) but even if you drop down to normal and keep up the same playthroughs you're not exactly starving, now are you? You're making less from the single dil payout but that is by NO means the only source of income from even those missions. Compared running ISN now versus ISE two years ago and you're still better off thanks to the reputation system and daily payout. The only issue here is if your idea of "fun" is grinding the SAME type of mission repeatedly. THEN the drop in single rewards matters, but its easily supplemented by playing other types of missions (which devs do generally want to encourage, they did bother to create more game after the first STF's after all) and because there's quite a lot available its hard to imagine that absolutely none of it can satisfy you as the old, high paying, elite PVE's can somehow exclusively do.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Foundry seems to be offline with every expansion, was like this with Romulus expansion. I guess they be back in a week or two. for me, foundry is the best dil approach iv seen. One day that too will get hammered I am sure, and when that day comes, I too will have to adapt to new approach of dil. Such is the way of an MMO, adaptation, since everything is always changing.
Dyson Combat Zoned Ground & Space. - It practically rains Dilithium here, didnt hear anyone lauding cryptic for their generosity here. You can afk and dil cap.
As long as we are talking about ingratitude and entitlement, no one thanked cryptic for expanding our inventory slots for free either.
KDF - Kdf get dilithium everyday for.... Dying! and just about anything else that involves logging in.
You now get Dilithium for leveling up after you have completed your captain traits which is another feature that will make you more powerful, and what else is dilithium for but if not to make you more powerful? Sure, the dili isnt there till you max, but face it: you are gonna spend far more time at max level then you will getting there, and you cant even really use dilithium to its greatest extent until you are maxed, so...
So they reduced the dilithium rewards for the stf's and made them so we cant faceroll them, so what? If you were counting on faceroll dilithium then you are mugging yourself, gameplay is its own reward.
There are far too many people who make it a point to boast that they dont pay anything to play Sto, and they just buy their zen with dilithium, doing nothing but ISE on 30 different characters. idk what the point to that kind of behavior is, but I do know its kind of hard to make money and continue to produce the game if you give everything away for free. Guess what? The golden age of free to play sto is over, it simply isnt necessary to hand it all out for free anymore, if you dont like it, the internet is full of other things you can do.
Also, I remember when zen-dili was much much more expensive.
Time is money. I feel sorry for you if you are gonna grind and grind and grind for 8k a day across multiple toons and exploit the zen exchange so you can transfer it all to one character, and consider it a good use of your time. Personally it takes me far more time then it is worth to harvest dilithium in this game while I can just convert zen.
I guess thats why I am having fun, and you are not.
***Warning Fuzzy Math****
8000 dilithium at the exchnage rate of 160 dil per zen = $0.50.
8000 dilithium at 960 per ISE run, plus mark conversion to dilithium under the old reward rate = about 6 runs, generously assuming you have the mustard to run with the dps leage and do the run in 3 minutes, thats 18 minutes. You are working for $1.60 per hour. Time to get a new job.
Fifty cents per day, per character. I dont care if you are just turning over contraband across an army of alts, at some point the time investment to gather the contraband, or the ec to buy contraband costs more time.
Maybe video gaming is a luxury you just cant afford.
If you made $10 an hour flipping burgers, just one hour of that work week set aside for your leisure activities on Sto would net you 160,000 dilithium.
--
Who said you have to have the things you want right this very second? You will earn them in time. If you arent patient enough to wait, the pay-2-win-right-now is available for you, that is your privlidge should you avail yourslef of the opportunity.
Okay, and AGAIN your idea of a solution here is for players to abandon the content they enjoy and have been enjoying all this time and replace it with content they enjoy less. Not to mention that Dil is hardly the only currency needed for progression. Rep gear needs specific token types, upgrade kits need VR mats, fleet gear needs marks for credits, and so on.
Your contempt of the idea of grinding STFs is the same as their contempt of logging in every day to cycle Doffs and zerg around a battlezone. You can stuff all the negative imagery into the other side you want, preferences are subjective and you blatantly don't have any interest in putting yourself in their shoes.
That is right....at 3 am last week I waited 30-45 seconds in the queue for a STF. On the ground this morning I was trying to cap voth points by myself.
Seriously.
Since when were games supposed to feel like a job and not fun?
I found it very suspicious that that CaptainSmirk mentioned on Twitch that he was going to be off on vacation just before Delta launches. And just before he leaves, he has the gall to drop a post saying that people shouldn't complain about the terribad glitches and nerfs on these forums. Sorry dude, but you broke it, and we're gonna b*tch about it.
Rabble Rabble...DNR
What the blogs say is not what the game is. I wish I had more old hp numbers to compare, but the advanced HP on baddies is about 10 times what it is on normal. Formerly, numbers were something like elite having baddies with 50% more hp. I wish I had a number sample of an old elite enemy vs a new advanced enemy, but I don't. I'm sure the comparison would be ridiculous though.
Once sales start dropping from those willing to accept the expansion, they will change things unless they want to see the servers go dark.
Problem leading up to the expansion was content drought - amongst other things, where with killing the queue maps there is actually LESS content than before.
I have even less to do now than before the wrecks-pansion and I am not even kidding either.
I asked geko about the dil rewards of adv queues like isa and csa and kasa.
Al Rivera @CaptainGeko Oct 15
@Captain_Skeeter dilithium rewards for queues are being evaluated.
Like last time they tried to reduce them then they said they are gona evaluate them then they put them up a bit again. My guess is were lucky if its 480 for normal 760 for advanced and 980 or so for elite. Which imo due to them all being tweaked to last longer than 3 mins now i would have liked to see something like 480 for normal 980 for adv and 1440 for elite at the least. Maybe more for elite due to the difficulty.
That's too much like the real life of the American worker, these days.
Member since December 2009
Hell they all are at first, they make dumb changes, people rage, eventually a more agreeable compromise is reached, same stuff breaks every time since Beta, 4 things break trying to fix it, then only 3 then down to two, then eventually they nail it out.
What truly infuriates me is the massive skill point cut off on doffing some to all of them give you 1/4th the leveling skill points they used to, while the Doff/Rep exp says the same. That was stone cold garbage.
Oh, but I think you did. This was your best retort.
I have to agree, STFs are not my main source of dilithium income. When I play, STFs, it is for the marks.
Actually all it indicates is that I read what you quoted. Not that wall of text.
Been saying that for a while now...
I know right.. how silly of me to play for fun.
For those comparing playing a game for electronic bits of pretend currency to real life work with real life compensation... your either working WAY to hard on the over exaggeration to make your point... or you need to find another game to play....
Just my $0.02
Yeah but who has time to go through all that. Too much numb garbage.
The key issue you are missing is, that if the usual dilithium farmer's find less and, less ways to get their dilithium.
Than there will be, effectively a possible rise in the cost of dilithium for, those who would buy it with zen.
It can backfire without even realizing it and, this is what some people do not consider.
If STFs is where farmers prefer to farm, than it keeps a steady source of dilithium pouring into the exchange, weaken that source and they will have to farm elsewhere.
Weaken the elsewhere source and, you will see a drop in available dilithium pouring into the market.
And while this may not effect tons of player's, it will effect enough to be noticeable or, cause a forum ruckus over the rising cost of dilithium>zen.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!