Inflation is only bad if you sit on your money, hence the reason for investing it!
Three years ago at the introduction of lockboxes keys cost 900k ec on the exchange. Now they cost 4-5 mil ec. This is because more ec is in the market and this is a good thing because currency expansion is necessary for a growing economy.
Comparatively speaking lockbox ships and such are actually cheaper now than ever before. The Quas cruiser for example costs 120 mil ec right now so you could buy it for $30 worth of keys. If you did it during the recent sales you could've had it for about $20 or less!
All it's going to do is make some people richer in the short run and cause EC inflation in the long run.
"I can now charge a Billion EC for the same ship I could only charge 500 million for before? Cool!"
Frankly, they should remove the ability to do 1 on 1 trades for the super rare ships. That way they're forced to use a max price of 1 billion EC. Otherwise, we'll just end up in an even worse situation down the road.
Not surprising, but it's a little discouraging that players are so down on the ec "billionaires." If you've been playing for awhile now, and have half a brain for how the exchange works, there's no reason most of you should be in the 1b and above club. Complaining that people understand the in-game economy better than you does what, exactly, besides alerting everyone else that you don't know what you're doing?
I bought a Vonph for 1b, now it's down to 650-700m. The price has come down considerably from a month or two before, and I lost out a few hundred mil by not being more patient. It's not a big hit to my bank -- I made up the amount pretty quickly with a few other exchange transactions -- but the point is that prices fluctuate based on demand. Vonph was a new extra-rare shiny, but not that great of a ship. The price started high just out of pure scarcity, and now that more are floating around out there (and people realize it's not a good ship), price has gone down quite a bit. A 1b exchange cap isn't going to change the in-game economy drastically. I want the best price for what I sell, but if I have a Vonph on the exchange for 1b right now, it won't sell unless I lower the price to the going rate.
Well if there is only 3 or 4 Vonphs being sold ? and all priced at 1b or near to it ?
It really comes back to supply of said ship, if there is several pages of Vonph's then yes this will force downward prices, but if there is only a handful at any time. This downward trend wont happen, you'll have 1 ship at 1b, the next at 999 mil, the next at 998 mil, the next at 997. and then the list would end.
You can't have proper and fair market competition when an artificially low supply is provided.
The Ferengi in this game are never satisfied. Now I see some people asking to increase the player EC cap. Frankly, if you're going to be selling stuff at that high of a price, you better know what you're doing. IMO, this seems like an awesome way to destroy EC due to player carelessness.
Their would be more voghs if everyone would start opening boxes. When you have a majority of the playerbase thumb their noses at lockboxes, then you arrive at the low supply we are at now. So for those who are free to play, you can pay up now.
I feel sorry for those fresh players that are about to waste a lot of time only to end in disappointment all for the enjoyment of a handful of players that only real entertainment in this game is trolling markets to leech off the accumulated wealth of the playerbase:(
I cant see this making that much of a difference to the price if an item is in short supply there are not going to be enough to push down the price by any significant amount, you may see the highest price undercut by a few hundred but with only a small amount of them around its only likely to make 1000-1500 off the top price for the cheapest at best then once the ships sell eventually you will be left with the choice of just the highest price ones or go without.
its easy if you have a lot of characters and access to account banking to make sure you always have one character who has no EC and sells your high priced ship for you.
now sellers can stick their ships on the exchange and forget about the hassle of trying to sell them quickly and can just keep relisting them each week till they eventually sell so theres no pressure to lower the price for a quick sale unless you are desperate for the EC and lets face it nobody is ever going to be desperate for that.
also anyone who might have been inclined to sell for a lot less perhaps because they wasn't sure how much they go for is going to see how much others are listed for and put theirs on for close to those higher prices.
the only good thing that might come from this is you will have less players touting their stuff on the chat channel.
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.
I'm not big on economics, but isn't the baseline problem that EC have no value but can be "generated" infinitely, hence causing too much of it to be in the game? If repairs or fleet projects would cost EC in significant amounts and thus EC was eliminated it would help with the inflation. For example, if fleets could start projects transfering EC into dilithium (which is bound to fleet projects) and use that for cosmetic unlocks etc. a lot of EC could be drained.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Or they could just cut to the chase and pull a set "ship for gold/gold for ship" option like they had to do in "that orcish game" with game time trading and lvl 90 boosters to stop the $ sellers hehe
Inflation is only bad if you sit on your money, hence the reason for investing it!
Three years ago at the introduction of lockboxes keys cost 900k ec on the exchange. Now they cost 4-5 mil ec. This is because more ec is in the market and this is a good thing because currency expansion is necessary for a growing economy.
Comparatively speaking lockbox ships and such are actually cheaper now than ever before. The Quas cruiser for example costs 120 mil ec right now so you could buy it for $30 worth of keys. If you did it during the recent sales you could've had it for about $20 or less!
So, yeah.
Inflation is always bad, except to those who inflate it for......you know reasons of not enough $$$$.
I'm not big on economics, but isn't the baseline problem that EC have no value but can be "generated" infinitely, hence causing too much of it to be in the game? If repairs or fleet projects would cost EC in significant amounts and thus EC was eliminated it would help with the inflation. For example, if fleets could start projects transfering EC into dilithium (which is bound to fleet projects) and use that for cosmetic unlocks etc. a lot of EC could be drained.
The problem with in game inflation, is it doesn't revolve around limited $$$ like in RL, so they create this excuse of more pixel $$$ being generated = a need for huge inflation, because they simply can never have too much pixel $$$.
But, than again, people have this grotesque view, that this is how things need be in RL as well!!!
Because you know, johnny trillionaire just doesn't have enough $$$, so inflation need increase in his favor.
If you don't like the price then don't buy it that's how it works!!!
You have no right to second guess how people want to spend their money, and the next time anyone here wants to whine about the price of the Vonph or other promo ships I dare you to buy promo packs until you win one.
If you put price caps in place people will do trades to get their value so it changes.nothing except making them expensive and difficult to get for everyone, regulated economics don't work.
@shadowwraith77, I'm talking about printing more money as opposed to the idea of more "tangible" resources entering the system. Your comment about more oil, uranium, etc. is equivalent instead to, say, increasing the drop rate on the Vonph. A greater commodity supply does decrease prices. A greater MONEY supply without a change in other resources, in contrast, increases prices (see the Weimar Republic and other failed states for the most dramatic examples, though this phenomenon can occur to a lesser degree in economies that have not yet reached that maximum level of dysfunction). Adding more EC is the equivalent of printing money (and remember that currency is no longer really backed by anything except for someone's word, which is the same situation with EC.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
@shadowwraith77, I'm talking about printing more money as opposed to the idea of more "tangible" resources entering the system. Your comment about more oil, uranium, etc. is equivalent instead to, say, increasing the drop rate on the Vonph. A greater commodity supply does decrease prices. A greater MONEY supply without a change in other resources, in contrast, increases prices (see the Weimar Republic and other failed states for the most dramatic examples, though this phenomenon can occur to a lesser degree in economies that have not yet reached that maximum level of dysfunction). Adding more EC is the equivalent of printing money (and remember that currency is no longer really backed by anything except for someone's word, which is the same situation with EC.
The whole problem with this mentality, is that people think the more $$$ being made, the less valuable it becomes!
News flash, $$$ isn't worth TRIBBLE, not even the paper it is printed on, or the coin it is minted on, and only has what can be deemed a value, because people are willing to trade for it, steal it, kill for it, rob others of out of it, etc.
A virtual load of TRIBBLE incentive put in peoples mind, to collect more of something that has no real value, other than people still clinging to the tradition of trading it for just about everything.
Does making more tires for you automobile, lower the value of those tires?
Than why should making more $$$, lower the value of itself? Oh, that's right, $$$ has no actual value, and is backed by like you said, nothing more than a promise, while the tires have actual RL value!!!
Artificially inflated economies in RL, artificially inflated economies in games, no wonder there is no equality anywhere!
I'm not big on economics, but isn't the baseline problem that EC have no value but can be "generated" infinitely, hence causing too much of it to be in the game? If repairs or fleet projects would cost EC in significant amounts and thus EC was eliminated it would help with the inflation. For example, if fleets could start projects transfering EC into dilithium (which is bound to fleet projects) and use that for cosmetic unlocks etc. a lot of EC could be drained.
Good ideas. And many more things couldve been done to destroy EC. Like I remember when I used to play L2 lots of curency was destroyed by enchanting skills and stuff like that, since it was chanced based and for higher lvl the chance was very low (but rewards higher ofc). You failed and you had to start all over and so on. Something similar couldve been done here on items, skills etc... Or other meaningful way of spending EC wich wouldve been destroyed by the game and stop or even reverse the inflation.
But sadly Cryptic just gave in to the exploiters, multi-accounting, scamming and such. Its really a sad day for STO. At least until now they would have to work for their profits on ever 500m tranzactions. Now the devs just gave them an entire new "sea", or better said "ocean", so fish in for suckers.
And this will indeed generate even more inflation, indirectly. Most ppl have a view at costs (EC costs) as what they work for in-game. Thus they will just farm even more ECs since thats what they think its onest and fair to get it. And it doesnt matter what exploiter X or scammer Y will preach about how to "make" EC. Ppl will generate even more EC and the inflation will grow even more and faster.
I'm still waiting on theories as to how EC sellers operate... no one seems to want to address this. Wonder why ?
Ohh, this will just make happy the gold sellers. Well... they also operate by buying EC too. I have no doubt that alot of bilionaires, OP included, are in fact selling EC for real money to those EC sites. And that WAS the main reason they wanted this limit raised. "They" becouse in fact its an entire gang of a few exploiters, with multi-accounts and many farm characters, wich pretty much control the exchange, more or less.
When you have a majority of the playerbase thumb their noses at lockboxes, then you arrive at the low supply we are at now.
And the OP was one of those who was preaching and "teaching" ppl not to open lockboxes...
Anyway, its a fking game after all, even a Star Trek theme one, yet it will require soon to have a degree in wall street scammings... ohh the irony.
Its really sad, and if Cryptic really think that this is the right path, and not one to actually adress and reduce the inflation, they pretty much shoot themselves in the foot. And its their game afterall and they can TRIBBLE it up as much as the want and can, atleast until 2018 when their licence expires.
It's only a thousand million not a million million. Either one is out of my reach though.
@artan42 Is this actually an issue for anyone but Germans? What the English language calls "billion" and comes after "million" is called "milliarde" in German while a "billion" which also exists comes after that (the million-million you mentioned). I always wondered about why that is, but never dug into the details
"Milliarde" (for 1'000'000'000) is used in ALL Germanic languages (except by the Brits), all Latin languages (like French, Spanish, Italian), all Slavic languages and in the Turkish language. Billion is used for 10^12.
Billion (for 10^9) is used in English, Irish, Breton, Scotish, Hungarian, Arab and in the Hebrew language.
Not in hungarian. Everything scientific comes from german language for us. We use milliárd too (with a slight change in spelling). Brits and their colonies are alone with this backward "billion" hehe...
Its really said, and if Cryptic really think that this is the right path, and not one to actually adress and reduce the inflation, they pretty much shoot themselves in the foot.
It's more than likely that it was introduced to prevent people being scammed through the trade system rather than to reduce inflation.
And its their game afterall and they can TRIBBLE it up as much as the want and can, atleast until 2018 when their licence expires.
Unless they go against CBS's wishes, or there's a ridiculously large drop in the number of active players or CBS promises the license to another company, that Cryptic will easily renew the license in 2018.
Their would be more voghs if everyone would start opening boxes. When you have a majority of the playerbase thumb their noses at lockboxes, then you arrive at the low supply we are at now. So for those who are free to play, you can pay up now.
Spending a $1.25 in either money or time on a 1/400 chance sounds like a sound investment strategy. You totally wouldn't want to gamble $25-30 bucks away on a meager 100% chance of getting an account wide ship through the C-Store. That'd be silly.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Absolutely the worst idea ever. This will not end well. The largest portion of the economy potential lies with the casual gamers not the 1%ers. Any new players even just looking at the exchange prices are likely to leave and not spend RL money which helps to keep Cryptic running. I would say hell no, and lock box items should be account bound and therefore not tradable. This would regulate the economy much better. The exchange should only have been used for lower value items. Any lockbox high value items should only be able to be sold at vendors. Then the player would appreciate those said items more. I also know these changes will never happen although it makes me sad to witness. This is a game and not any real economy.
"Khan Noonien Singh is the most dangerous adversary the Enterprise ever faced. He is brilliant, ruthless, and he will not hesitate to kill every single one of you."
– Spock, 2259 (Star Trek Into Darkness)
Absolutely the worst idea ever. This will not end well. The largest portion of the economy potential lies with the casual gamers not the 1%ers. Any new players even just looking at the exchange prices are likely to leave and not spend RL money which helps to keep Cryptic running. I would say hell no, and lock box items should be account bound and therefore not tradable. This would regulate the economy much better. The exchange should only have been used for lower value items. Any lockbox high value items should only be able to be sold at vendors. Then the player would appreciate those said items more. I also know these changes will never happen although it makes me sad to witness. This is a game and not any real economy.
Just my two cents.
Keeping high value items off the exchange can easily inflate their price because you can't see what they are posted or how many are being made available.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
We will see in a few weeks how this will play out.
But I'm willing to bet all my EC, that we will not see a large supply of premiere ships flood the market. And therefore we will not see equitability and fair market competition.
Too many people with too much time on their hands and nothing better to do manipulate the market, Then there are all the people selling things for less than it's worth. Somehow mats>components>tech upgrades even if you consider the crits and time involved making them. Peoplee with a lot of x item goes and posts a bunch of 999 lots at a very low price to:
1) Make people looking for price by unit have to scroll through pages to find a lot size they want.
2) Artificially lower the price of single units.
Exchange needs to add a way of controlling these folk and penalizing them for market shenanigans.
@shadowwraith77, I'm talking about printing more money as opposed to the idea of more "tangible" resources entering the system. Your comment about more oil, uranium, etc. is equivalent instead to, say, increasing the drop rate on the Vonph. A greater commodity supply does decrease prices. A greater MONEY supply without a change in other resources, in contrast, increases prices (see the Weimar Republic and other failed states for the most dramatic examples, though this phenomenon can occur to a lesser degree in economies that have not yet reached that maximum level of dysfunction). Adding more EC is the equivalent of printing money (and remember that currency is no longer really backed by anything except for someone's word, which is the same situation with EC.
The whole problem with this mentality, is that people think the more $$$ being made, the less valuable it becomes!
News flash, $$$ isn't worth TRIBBLE, not even the paper it is printed on, or the coin it is minted on, and only has what can be deemed a value, because people are willing to trade for it, steal it, kill for it, rob others of out of it, etc.
A virtual load of TRIBBLE incentive put in peoples mind, to collect more of something that has no real value, other than people still clinging to the tradition of trading it for just about everything.
Does making more tires for you automobile, lower the value of those tires?
Than why should making more $$$, lower the value of itself? Oh, that's right, $$$ has no actual value, and is backed by like you said, nothing more than a promise, while the tires have actual RL value!!!
Artificially inflated economies in RL, artificially inflated economies in games, no wonder there is no equality anywhere!
I'm not sure you're getting the difference between the effect of increasing supplies of real commodities (such as the tires in your example) and making more currency (such as dollars or EC's). Increasing supply of a real commodity is a good thing up until the point where you flood the market beyond the level it demands. So, whether or not you agree with the lockboxes, cidjack's proposal actually IS one way to get the prices on the high-end ships down. Throwing more EC into the game without sinks for it, however, just raises the price without accomplishing any real, meaningful change to the supply and demand curves.
The thing is that some people have contended that raising the EC cap on the market in and of itself was somehow going to mess up the market. I contend that by itself, raising the cap should have had no effect (or a positive one) by bringing potentially overvalued grey-market transactions into plain view. If THAT happened, that would be a good thing because the full market could then weigh in on what the price of those ships should be. That was what repetitiveepic said would happen, and if the only thing that had happened were to be the EC cap on the market being raised, then I think he'd be right.
BUT, because Cryptic has decided to do the equivalent of printing more money at the same time, I do not think they are going to actually GET the effect they seek of driving prices down or making things more affordable. If the EC is valued less, prices have the potential of inflating until the grey-market transaction problem starts right back up at twice the level it did before. Status quo, in other words.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
The problem with that line of thinking is keeping it in terms of maxing value ofbthe money you are spending for max return. This is a game after all, any money anyone spend is for pure enjoyment not increasing one's wealth.
To all the naysayers: Please stop posting now. All you're accomplishing is shouting to the world that you don't understand economics, that you haven't paid attention to pricing development of valuable items and you didn't even know players could sell items without involving the Exchange. Stop digging yourself deeper while you still can.
Yes, when this goes live someone will post the promo ships for 1 billion each, hoping to catch a sucker. Just like every time a new lockbox is released and the first ship has gone up for 500m. Maybe someone will even buy one, after all "there's a sucker born every minute." But few suckers can ever get that much money in this game, so sellers will quickly move to prices someone who knows what they're doing is willing to pay.
The only way this could actually increase the market price of promo ships is by increasing the size of the target audience. Meaning you people who didn't know you could trade items outside the exchange. However, I doubt many of you are rich enough to buy them in the first place, so such an increase is not statistically significant.
The problem with that line of thinking is keeping it in terms of maxing value ofbthe money you are spending for max return. This is a game after all, any money anyone spend is for pure enjoyment not increasing one's wealth.
How does keeping items that are above 500 million EC in value in a shadow market maximize the value of your money?
If you're trying to sell you have to waste time spamming zone chat and you don't know what competitors in other zones are spamming.
If you're trying to buy you have to waste time reading zone chat and hoping you catch the seller while they are online.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The whole problem with this mentality, is that people think the more $$$ being made, the less valuable it becomes!
News flash, $$$ isn't worth TRIBBLE, not even the paper it is printed on, or the coin it is minted on, and only has what can be deemed a value, because people are willing to trade for it, steal it, kill for it, rob others of out of it, etc.
(...)
But this is exactly what causes inflation. You are right that currency has no objective value, that is it's point. But if everyone can generate more and more currency it becomes less valued. 100.000 EC in STO is basically not worth spending because you can generate that amount in a matter of minutes (or an hour) via for example a full run of hourly rep projects or selling loot to a vendor. You and anyone else can easily generate that amount of EC out of thin air basically which is why 100.000 EC is not much. And since we all generate more and more EC automatically it loses more and more value which is why the prices go up. The admirality system added a huge EC spring with assignments that crit for several 100k EC, as a result prices go up cosntantly because people ask for more EC to increase the gap between what they can generate themselves and what hteir profit through selling stuff will be.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
The problem with that line of thinking is keeping it in terms of maxing value ofbthe money you are spending for max return. This is a game after all, any money anyone spend is for pure enjoyment not increasing one's wealth.
How does keeping items that are above 500 million EC in value in a shadow market maximize the value of your money?
Becouse those 500m ec items have not increased in value. They are artificially increased. The 1% shadow market has just brought its sheninigans into the exchange, wich pretty much what the exploiters and flipers wanted.
If you're trying to buy you have to waste time reading zone chat and hoping you catch the seller while they are online.
And again, you just use the exchange, as the devs intended. Unfortunaly, they manage to trick the devs into giving them what they wanted.
This whole over 500m TRIBBLE started with the annorax, with exploiters and flipers intercepting (via pms or bots buying every ship posted) promo ships and redirecting them from been posted on exchange by ppl that opened them, towards 1% shadow markets with channels and zone etc... where artificially increased their price by selling to other resellers (wich wont sell lower since they will lose EC thus will just sit on them until they will sell them=finding the sucker who thinks thats "the right price" for it, or just another fliper who gets enuf EC for it, since contrary to all the ridiculous things that STO is like real ecomony, in the game's economy there is no drawback for keep posting stuff over and over... in RL you have bills (electricity, rent etc), taxes etc and if you wait/dont sell quick that just piles up, in game there isnt even an exchange fee) or just plain morrons with too much EC and not enuf brains. I know that very well since i bought my annorax for 500m from exchange, wich i am using it and enjoying it very much thank you.
Then it continued with the Voph aswell. I didnt looked on exchange since i didnt wanted that ship, but I bet there WERE some posted for 500m aswell, but probably just for a split of a second until snatched by bots.
But again, if Cryptic thinks this way the new ships like the Mirror Temporal Dread (wich stupidly or... hmm... maybe smartly, its not even needed to be data mined since the admirality card was posted in the trible patchnotes lol) will sell better on their end, then by all means. But i highly doubt it. In fact it will draw away players from the game, new and old aswell.
Comments
Three years ago at the introduction of lockboxes keys cost 900k ec on the exchange. Now they cost 4-5 mil ec. This is because more ec is in the market and this is a good thing because currency expansion is necessary for a growing economy.
Comparatively speaking lockbox ships and such are actually cheaper now than ever before. The Quas cruiser for example costs 120 mil ec right now so you could buy it for $30 worth of keys. If you did it during the recent sales you could've had it for about $20 or less!
So, yeah.
Frankly, they should remove the ability to do 1 on 1 trades for the super rare ships. That way they're forced to use a max price of 1 billion EC. Otherwise, we'll just end up in an even worse situation down the road.
Well if there is only 3 or 4 Vonphs being sold ? and all priced at 1b or near to it ?
It really comes back to supply of said ship, if there is several pages of Vonph's then yes this will force downward prices, but if there is only a handful at any time. This downward trend wont happen, you'll have 1 ship at 1b, the next at 999 mil, the next at 998 mil, the next at 997. and then the list would end.
You can't have proper and fair market competition when an artificially low supply is provided.
Late Era Capitalism summed up.
its easy if you have a lot of characters and access to account banking to make sure you always have one character who has no EC and sells your high priced ship for you.
now sellers can stick their ships on the exchange and forget about the hassle of trying to sell them quickly and can just keep relisting them each week till they eventually sell so theres no pressure to lower the price for a quick sale unless you are desperate for the EC and lets face it nobody is ever going to be desperate for that.
also anyone who might have been inclined to sell for a lot less perhaps because they wasn't sure how much they go for is going to see how much others are listed for and put theirs on for close to those higher prices.
the only good thing that might come from this is you will have less players touting their stuff on the chat channel.
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.
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Inflation is always bad, except to those who inflate it for......you know reasons of not enough $$$$.
The problem with in game inflation, is it doesn't revolve around limited $$$ like in RL, so they create this excuse of more pixel $$$ being generated = a need for huge inflation, because they simply can never have too much pixel $$$.
But, than again, people have this grotesque view, that this is how things need be in RL as well!!!
Because you know, johnny trillionaire just doesn't have enough $$$, so inflation need increase in his favor.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Man, Poe's Law is a bugger...
If you don't like the price then don't buy it that's how it works!!!
You have no right to second guess how people want to spend their money, and the next time anyone here wants to whine about the price of the Vonph or other promo ships I dare you to buy promo packs until you win one.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
The whole problem with this mentality, is that people think the more $$$ being made, the less valuable it becomes!
News flash, $$$ isn't worth TRIBBLE, not even the paper it is printed on, or the coin it is minted on, and only has what can be deemed a value, because people are willing to trade for it, steal it, kill for it, rob others of out of it, etc.
A virtual load of TRIBBLE incentive put in peoples mind, to collect more of something that has no real value, other than people still clinging to the tradition of trading it for just about everything.
Does making more tires for you automobile, lower the value of those tires?
Than why should making more $$$, lower the value of itself? Oh, that's right, $$$ has no actual value, and is backed by like you said, nothing more than a promise, while the tires have actual RL value!!!
Artificially inflated economies in RL, artificially inflated economies in games, no wonder there is no equality anywhere!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Good ideas. And many more things couldve been done to destroy EC. Like I remember when I used to play L2 lots of curency was destroyed by enchanting skills and stuff like that, since it was chanced based and for higher lvl the chance was very low (but rewards higher ofc). You failed and you had to start all over and so on. Something similar couldve been done here on items, skills etc... Or other meaningful way of spending EC wich wouldve been destroyed by the game and stop or even reverse the inflation.
But sadly Cryptic just gave in to the exploiters, multi-accounting, scamming and such. Its really a sad day for STO. At least until now they would have to work for their profits on ever 500m tranzactions. Now the devs just gave them an entire new "sea", or better said "ocean", so fish in for suckers.
And this will indeed generate even more inflation, indirectly. Most ppl have a view at costs (EC costs) as what they work for in-game. Thus they will just farm even more ECs since thats what they think its onest and fair to get it. And it doesnt matter what exploiter X or scammer Y will preach about how to "make" EC. Ppl will generate even more EC and the inflation will grow even more and faster.
Ohh, this will just make happy the gold sellers. Well... they also operate by buying EC too. I have no doubt that alot of bilionaires, OP included, are in fact selling EC for real money to those EC sites. And that WAS the main reason they wanted this limit raised. "They" becouse in fact its an entire gang of a few exploiters, with multi-accounts and many farm characters, wich pretty much control the exchange, more or less.
And the OP was one of those who was preaching and "teaching" ppl not to open lockboxes...
Anyway, its a fking game after all, even a Star Trek theme one, yet it will require soon to have a degree in wall street scammings... ohh the irony.
Its really sad, and if Cryptic really think that this is the right path, and not one to actually adress and reduce the inflation, they pretty much shoot themselves in the foot. And its their game afterall and they can TRIBBLE it up as much as the want and can, atleast until 2018 when their licence expires.
Not in hungarian. Everything scientific comes from german language for us. We use milliárd too (with a slight change in spelling). Brits and their colonies are alone with this backward "billion" hehe...
Nothing in the game requires the use of the exchange at all, or the ships people are talking about.
It's more than likely that it was introduced to prevent people being scammed through the trade system rather than to reduce inflation.
Unless they go against CBS's wishes, or there's a ridiculously large drop in the number of active players or CBS promises the license to another company, that Cryptic will easily renew the license in 2018.
Spending a $1.25 in either money or time on a 1/400 chance sounds like a sound investment strategy. You totally wouldn't want to gamble $25-30 bucks away on a meager 100% chance of getting an account wide ship through the C-Store. That'd be silly.
Just my two cents.
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Keeping high value items off the exchange can easily inflate their price because you can't see what they are posted or how many are being made available.
Too many people with too much time on their hands and nothing better to do manipulate the market, Then there are all the people selling things for less than it's worth. Somehow mats>components>tech upgrades even if you consider the crits and time involved making them. Peoplee with a lot of x item goes and posts a bunch of 999 lots at a very low price to:
1) Make people looking for price by unit have to scroll through pages to find a lot size they want.
2) Artificially lower the price of single units.
Exchange needs to add a way of controlling these folk and penalizing them for market shenanigans.
I'm not sure you're getting the difference between the effect of increasing supplies of real commodities (such as the tires in your example) and making more currency (such as dollars or EC's). Increasing supply of a real commodity is a good thing up until the point where you flood the market beyond the level it demands. So, whether or not you agree with the lockboxes, cidjack's proposal actually IS one way to get the prices on the high-end ships down. Throwing more EC into the game without sinks for it, however, just raises the price without accomplishing any real, meaningful change to the supply and demand curves.
The thing is that some people have contended that raising the EC cap on the market in and of itself was somehow going to mess up the market. I contend that by itself, raising the cap should have had no effect (or a positive one) by bringing potentially overvalued grey-market transactions into plain view. If THAT happened, that would be a good thing because the full market could then weigh in on what the price of those ships should be. That was what repetitiveepic said would happen, and if the only thing that had happened were to be the EC cap on the market being raised, then I think he'd be right.
BUT, because Cryptic has decided to do the equivalent of printing more money at the same time, I do not think they are going to actually GET the effect they seek of driving prices down or making things more affordable. If the EC is valued less, prices have the potential of inflating until the grey-market transaction problem starts right back up at twice the level it did before. Status quo, in other words.
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The problem with that line of thinking is keeping it in terms of maxing value ofbthe money you are spending for max return. This is a game after all, any money anyone spend is for pure enjoyment not increasing one's wealth.
Yes, when this goes live someone will post the promo ships for 1 billion each, hoping to catch a sucker. Just like every time a new lockbox is released and the first ship has gone up for 500m. Maybe someone will even buy one, after all "there's a sucker born every minute." But few suckers can ever get that much money in this game, so sellers will quickly move to prices someone who knows what they're doing is willing to pay.
The only way this could actually increase the market price of promo ships is by increasing the size of the target audience. Meaning you people who didn't know you could trade items outside the exchange. However, I doubt many of you are rich enough to buy them in the first place, so such an increase is not statistically significant.
How does keeping items that are above 500 million EC in value in a shadow market maximize the value of your money?
If you're trying to sell you have to waste time spamming zone chat and you don't know what competitors in other zones are spamming.
If you're trying to buy you have to waste time reading zone chat and hoping you catch the seller while they are online.
Short term...WORST idea EVER and the players will LOVE it
Long term...who knows? Why caps if we are going that way. Eliminate ALL caps and probably someone would be asking for a GAZZZZILLION $$$$
But this is exactly what causes inflation. You are right that currency has no objective value, that is it's point. But if everyone can generate more and more currency it becomes less valued. 100.000 EC in STO is basically not worth spending because you can generate that amount in a matter of minutes (or an hour) via for example a full run of hourly rep projects or selling loot to a vendor. You and anyone else can easily generate that amount of EC out of thin air basically which is why 100.000 EC is not much. And since we all generate more and more EC automatically it loses more and more value which is why the prices go up. The admirality system added a huge EC spring with assignments that crit for several 100k EC, as a result prices go up cosntantly because people ask for more EC to increase the gap between what they can generate themselves and what hteir profit through selling stuff will be.
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You just use the exchange as it ment to be used. Simple as that.
And again, you just use the exchange, as the devs intended. Unfortunaly, they manage to trick the devs into giving them what they wanted.
This whole over 500m TRIBBLE started with the annorax, with exploiters and flipers intercepting (via pms or bots buying every ship posted) promo ships and redirecting them from been posted on exchange by ppl that opened them, towards 1% shadow markets with channels and zone etc... where artificially increased their price by selling to other resellers (wich wont sell lower since they will lose EC thus will just sit on them until they will sell them=finding the sucker who thinks thats "the right price" for it, or just another fliper who gets enuf EC for it, since contrary to all the ridiculous things that STO is like real ecomony, in the game's economy there is no drawback for keep posting stuff over and over... in RL you have bills (electricity, rent etc), taxes etc and if you wait/dont sell quick that just piles up, in game there isnt even an exchange fee) or just plain morrons with too much EC and not enuf brains. I know that very well since i bought my annorax for 500m from exchange, wich i am using it and enjoying it very much thank you.
Then it continued with the Voph aswell. I didnt looked on exchange since i didnt wanted that ship, but I bet there WERE some posted for 500m aswell, but probably just for a split of a second until snatched by bots.
But again, if Cryptic thinks this way the new ships like the Mirror Temporal Dread (wich stupidly or... hmm... maybe smartly, its not even needed to be data mined since the admirality card was posted in the trible patchnotes lol) will sell better on their end, then by all means. But i highly doubt it. In fact it will draw away players from the game, new and old aswell.