Prices are really not that bad. There is not much difference between 240 and 290 tbh. Plus side, I am getting a little bit more DIL for the thousands of ZEN that I buy every month.
Could be it is so high people buy into the 240 290 amounts which I think is way to high 200 to 220 is a better choice, but like I said earlier I have seen it as low as 98
I decided a long time ago to play 'Star Trek Online', not 'Economics Online'. lol. If I need some Dilithium, then I go get some. If I need some Zen, I go purchase a prepaid card or two. All this hairpulling and jumping about over the value of pixelated fake pink rocks is just silly. It takes away from the enjoyment of the game.
And that is all this has ever been to me. A game. Something I do for fun when I have a spare hour or two.
Been playing STO since February of 2012. At the time the rate was 1 Zen ~ 325 Dilithium. I had a decent amount of Dil saved up. I didn't like the rate so I waited for it to come down. Eventually it did so. About a year and a half after I started playing, the rate was 1 Zen ~ 100 Dilithium. I didn't like this rate either. So I did not convert my Zen into Dilthium and waited for the rate to go up. Eventually, it did so.
The rate is what it is right now because of two reasons. No, three.
1) The percieved value of Zen has risen.
2) The percieved value of Dilthium has fallen.
3) A lot of people are stupid enough to pay the current rate while complaining about being treated unfairly.
They're okay with paying the current rate. As long as the stupidity of doing so can be blamed on other people.
This game has been called a Pay To Win game more times than I care to count. I say it is actually Pay For Convenience. A gallon of milk is generally more expensive at the Seven-Eleven than it is at the grocery store. Why? Because it is more convenient to go to the Seven-Eleven at the corner than it is to drive one minute longer to the grocery store. You get what you pay for. And in this case it is the convenience of having Zen available right now. Instead of when you get done refining that 8K limit in about three or four days.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
The price in real money for ZEN has not changed, and there are always Sales as well. As the exchange rate continues to creep up, one day, it WILL hit a point where it's cheaper to BUY ZEN with real money than it is using Dil..
It is very nearly always cheaper to buy Zen with real money than with dilithium. US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, even assuming that you pay 1/3 of that out in taxes, you get roughly $4.80 for an hour of work. That's 480 zen per hour. At the absolute minimum exchange rate, you can get 320 Zen per day per character, factoring out veteran and fleet refining. Already, you need to get your daily 8000 dilithium in under 40 minutes per character for it to be more efficient to get Zen for dilithium than to get it through a minimum wage job. At 50 dilithium per Zen, you would need to get to your 8000 in under 20 minutes. Those rates have essentially never happened, and anything above them just shrinks that required time to get the dilithium to convert to Zen even more unrealistically short.
In short, if you want Zen for the most-efficient investment of time, pick up a minimum wage side job, at least here in the US.
This is an MMO, not a Star Trek episode simulator. That would make for a terrible game.
I disagree with the fact that there is too much dilithium. I play almost every day. Mostly I just DOff and Admiralty. I don't get enough Dil to use my max daily conversion rate every day on most of the characters. I also don't make any effort to search out and collect Dil. So, to me, the payouts are fine. If the exchange is going up, then we need to look at why the value of Dil is going down.
Why is there no demand for the Dil at this time? I think that's because most people have used their dil to get what they want. SO they have nothing they feel the need to spend it on. Change that and the market will reverse. Just my opinion at this time.
Just because you don't doesn't mean others can't...plus you can make lots of extra dilithium by you know...doing other things.
One advanced STF can wield you a ton of dilithium between the STF itself and the mark turn ins.
I know when admiralty was launched and with the mirror event...not trying hard I was able to easily keep a surplus over over 100k ore till I took a break from STO after unlocking my Rezreth.
It is just incredibly easy to earn dilithium these days...so it isn't worth a whole lot.
Higher Fleet Credit ratio for Dilithium contributions per the above conversations.
Provide Fleet Credits for those dopey Provisions (Embassy, Spire, Mine, Research) contributions. Cost me some 250k Fleet Credits to buy the Research Lab Provisions for the Tier II Lab Upgrade Project today for no credit or notation on the Leaderboard.
This isn't real life business sales so it is not necessary to keep to the 3:1 (or 2:1 for non-specific Commons) ratio of cost vs. Credit for Common Doffs for Fleet Projects. Lower the cost for and have a mechanism for direct contribution to Fleet Projects. If not that implement a slider for purchase and opening and increase the credit given.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Why would Cryptic want to do anything to fix this 'problem?' The more expensive Zen is through use of Dilithium, the more likely players are to buy Zen with cash instead. There is one reason that the price is so high, people are paying it.. it's that simple.
Yup... if anything, Cryptic would push the price higher if* they could.
*Assuming they don't fiddle with it behind the scenes now.
it slows down the botters and the contraband crowd
let any one toon or toons on the account get to the cap, those that want to run one character can hit the cap, those that want to run more than one character can mix/match to hit the account cap
those that run 10 plus toons now have to waste time making multiple accounts
those that already run multiple accounts now have to waste time making even more accounts to try and game the system
that's what you want at the end of the day, a more even ground for all while at the same time discouraging botting and toon cycling for sake of dil
I have been thinking about this for a while now and I think it could work pretty well actually. I mean we'd have to make the account cap something higher then 8k of course...but it can't be too high either. The trouble is, to make this work, I think the account cap maybe too low for many player's liking. I think having it in the 20-30k per day range would be reasonable and should help stablized the dil influx from the hard core grinders. And of course for the silly people with the cap unrefined dil on multiple toon, we'd have to set a new account wide unrefined limit...or just remove it all together. Course I can see the flames of people only being able to refine 20-30k per account (and I am leaning towards the 20 side).
Hardcore grinder? With admiralty and doffing I think I need to play 1 pve or so to reach the daily refinement limit on a char. That’s roughly 10 minutes in sum. Your suggestion would give me no reason to play this game for longer than 30 minutes per day because my progression would simply be terminated after that.
I don’t think that would be a good game design for a mmorpg.
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The price in real money for ZEN has not changed, and there are always Sales as well. As the exchange rate continues to creep up, one day, it WILL hit a point where it's cheaper to BUY ZEN with real money than it is using Dil..
It is very nearly always cheaper to buy Zen with real money than with dilithium. US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, even assuming that you pay 1/3 of that out in taxes, you get roughly $4.80 for an hour of work. That's 480 zen per hour. At the absolute minimum exchange rate, you can get 320 Zen per day per character, factoring out veteran and fleet refining. Already, you need to get your daily 8000 dilithium in under 40 minutes per character for it to be more efficient to get Zen for dilithium than to get it through a minimum wage job. At 50 dilithium per Zen, you would need to get to your 8000 in under 20 minutes. Those rates have essentially never happened, and anything above them just shrinks that required time to get the dilithium to convert to Zen even more unrealistically short.
In short, if you want Zen for the most-efficient investment of time, pick up a minimum wage side job, at least here in the US.
While these are all fun number games, ultimately - you're playing a game. This is hopefully more fun or diversion to the player than working a minimum wage job or any other job.
And the goal of getting Zen is not just having Zen, but using it for something in game. Which also means the player needs to play it. So any comparison with an actual job is misleading.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Waaah, waaah, even though I am doing the devs a huge favour by playing their game for free, the economy in the game makes it so hard for me to get those shiny bundles of polygons, waaah, waaah...
Dil to Zen isn't an issue in itself, it's the worth of Zen going higher that is - in other words, players can expect everything Zen related to go higher in prices. I don't care for myself, I'm LTS and I also spend money when I need it (or want something), this does not concern me personally, I do however care for people that simply cannot pay that much or at all because they are less fortunate then portion of us (or from countries with very low wages, or cannot find a job etc, everyone should have the same chance of having fun, paying should be for convinience not required). I generally want to see more players, not less, I don't want players leaving the game.
My earlier post wasn't a doom post either, something similar happened in Neverwinter - and of course the game survived, but lost quite a chunk of playerbase. With incoming STBeyond and new series, of course the STO will attract new players (I don't see it dying anytime soon), it's just the portion of old playerbase that I care about and don't want to see leaving.
The price in real money for ZEN has not changed, and there are always Sales as well. As the exchange rate continues to creep up, one day, it WILL hit a point where it's cheaper to BUY ZEN with real money than it is using Dil..
It is very nearly always cheaper to buy Zen with real money than with dilithium. US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, even assuming that you pay 1/3 of that out in taxes, you get roughly $4.80 for an hour of work. That's 480 zen per hour. At the absolute minimum exchange rate, you can get 320 Zen per day per character, factoring out veteran and fleet refining. Already, you need to get your daily 8000 dilithium in under 40 minutes per character for it to be more efficient to get Zen for dilithium than to get it through a minimum wage job. At 50 dilithium per Zen, you would need to get to your 8000 in under 20 minutes. Those rates have essentially never happened, and anything above them just shrinks that required time to get the dilithium to convert to Zen even more unrealistically short.
In short, if you want Zen for the most-efficient investment of time, pick up a minimum wage side job, at least here in the US.
While these are all fun number games, ultimately - you're playing a game. This is hopefully more fun or diversion to the player than working a minimum wage job or any other job.
And the goal of getting Zen is not just having Zen, but using it for something in game. Which also means the player needs to play it. So any comparison with an actual job is misleading.
Not true
A comparison with an actual job is not misleading if you look at a common denominator. TIME
I use an average of 1h / 8000d as an average reference
1z now is 300d
100z now is $1 ( without factoring in sales )
i'm not from the US, so i will use anodyne's calculation of $4.80/hr after tax or $7.25 pre tax.
4 hours of playing will net me 8000x4 = 32000d = 107z
2 hours of working ( after deducting 2 hours of commuting/waiting to fit in with the 4 hours of playtime comparison ) = $9.60 = 960z
If one argues that one is "playing" vs boring work, i think many here will attest to how " boring " grinding can also be.
So ultimately, its the captain's choice
Don't use cash ( for whatever reason ) and grind in game for about 28z an hour?
or
Beat the crowd by finding a job, and converting the pay into zen at 480z/h
At current Dilithium exchange rates, one will have to grind for 17h just to get the same amount of zen 1hr of part time work @ minimal wage pays out.
No matter how one sees it, the math just doesn't work out for full grinding into zen at current exchange rates..
The fact anyone spends Zen on dilithium has always been a mystery to me and, bluntly, I'm fine with the exchange rate being high because, to me, that means game content isn't being deliberately hobbled and made more grind-centric around an in game currency that is artificially restricted to promote a monetary gain over what is actually fun and engaging.
If I'm getting what the game service promises me as the value proposition (i.e. entertaining gameplay) I'm content to spend in limited quantity to acquire said value.
Dilithium exchanges and systems like it (*cough* lockboxes *cough*) have done tremendous harm to the style of game construct I far prefer to play, so while I feel for those for whom exchanging was a go to strategy to support their play time, I don't lament the current state of affairs.
I would also argue the bigger issue here is that I would wager ZEN purchase for STO in general have gone significantly down due to:
- DPS ridiculously out of control for all ship combat (not just BFAW) and a few clear front runner horses in those cases; a lack of diversity in gameplay dramatically downturns the value of acquiring more options to play with, period.
- Similarly, we have more BOFFs than we'll ever need and they have not been integrated into meaningful gameplay with reasons to care about your 'big 4' in space and land. Admiralty system would have been better served by being an Away Team mission system, integrated with but distinct from DOFFs, to make us care about maintaining a roster here in a worthwhile, more active way.
- The fact that some of the most profitable game experiences are totally passive ones (DOFF, Admiralty) means alt rotating is the path to profit even though we are not really performing an engrossing activity.
- Buying another ship when I already have a massive fleet of them, across alts, is simply overkill
- The general North American and European economies are at present struggling for the middle classes; no matter how I consider that, that's not STO's fault, but it has to reduce Zen purchases when your market areas are spending less
- Fleets, due to things like the dilithium component, don't really promote teamwork so much as sponging off critical resource contributors, reducing their cohesion, camraderie and game value.
- Event logic has never evolved past 'do this one thing 20 times'. I actually liked the foot races in the winter event. I didn't like them past the 10th repetition in close order that I was required to do in order to make the first 9 worthwhile. This is a Zen issue as I know this acts as a constant deterrent for people to even play the game, and that clearly translates to reduction in sales of currency.
These of course are just my opinions and I suspect unpopular ones for those who want dilithium to be their ticket to acquisition. As far as I'm concerned, the more abundant refined dilithium is at the moment, the better because I'm not feeling compelled to pursue activities that are punitively tedious just to secure the resource. Then again, my desire to play at all lately given the things mentioned above is heavily reduced, so that too may just take my perspective out of the land of relevance for those still actively engaged.
"The only thing mankind learns from the study of history is that mankind does not learn from the study of history." ~G. Santayana
it slows down the botters and the contraband crowd
let any one toon or toons on the account get to the cap, those that want to run one character can hit the cap, those that want to run more than one character can mix/match to hit the account cap
those that run 10 plus toons now have to waste time making multiple accounts
those that already run multiple accounts now have to waste time making even more accounts to try and game the system
that's what you want at the end of the day, a more even ground for all while at the same time discouraging botting and toon cycling for sake of dil
I have been thinking about this for a while now and I think it could work pretty well actually. I mean we'd have to make the account cap something higher then 8k of course...but it can't be too high either. The trouble is, to make this work, I think the account cap maybe too low for many player's liking. I think having it in the 20-30k per day range would be reasonable and should help stablized the dil influx from the hard core grinders. And of course for the silly people with the cap unrefined dil on multiple toon, we'd have to set a new account wide unrefined limit...or just remove it all together. Course I can see the flames of people only being able to refine 20-30k per account (and I am leaning towards the 20 side).
Hardcore grinder? With admiralty and doffing I think I need to play 1 pve or so to reach the daily refinement limit on a char. That’s roughly 10 minutes in sum. Your suggestion would give me no reason to play this game for longer than 30 minutes per day because my progression would simply be terminated after that.
I don’t think that would be a good game design for a mmorpg.
So...your doffing and admiralty and rep turn in gives you about 20k dil for ONE character?!? WTF are you doing that the rest of us are not...and if you can do that now, what reason do you have to play...well EVER since you can't even refine that much dil now without playing at all. If you are talking about doffing and admiralty on multiple toons to get around 20k...well then yes, you are indeed one of the hard core farmers this is meant to hurt. With this system you don't have to keep swapping to alts to play a click game and you can play the couple of toons you want to for that day and have fun. Or if you find the click game fun, log in and play the click game.
Oh and thank you for demonstrating why this won't work with your immediate, knew jerk it will ruin the game.
I can hazard a guess. There are a couple of Admiralty missions whose base dilithium payouts are 1000d or 2000d. If you crit those, and you cycle with pass tokens to get the highest ratio of these as well as the 500d Payout missions?
Voila, you could be generating a lot of dilithium very quickly if you have a lot of ships to draw from for your fleets.
"The only thing mankind learns from the study of history is that mankind does not learn from the study of history." ~G. Santayana
Prices are really not that bad. There is not much difference between 240 and 290 tbh. Plus side, I am getting a little bit more DIL for the thousands of ZEN that I buy every month.
+50 is actually a lot. Buying fleet ship module would cost an extra 25k dil, and most players don't make even half of that in a day. So it's quite a lot for the person who doesnt sit there and grind all day.
it slows down the botters and the contraband crowd
Another idea I have to disagree with. Cryptic provides the means to make alts for free up to 3 or 4 slots, and then charges for each new toon slot. It then also charges for every lockbox, lobi, rep, etc. etc. item on top of XP, R&D, etc., meaning a LOT has been put and continues to be put into alts by many people, or multiple mains (I have 3 mains). This is a source of revenue for them, a source of enjoyment for us to keep things fresh, a way to play more without constantly logging on other accounts, and to make use of account-wide giveaways.
I have to say it again, really bad idea, and I'm glad Cryptic has more sense than shoot themselves in the foot and hurt the game worse than a cap-locked 500-1 Dil-Ex in the community's attempts to keep that from happening.
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Why would Cryptic want to do anything to fix this 'problem?' The more expensive Zen is through use of Dilithium, the more likely players are to buy Zen with cash instead. There is one reason that the price is so high, people are paying it.. it's that simple.
Yup... if anything, Cryptic would push the price higher if* they could.
*Assuming they don't fiddle with it behind the scenes now.
Assuming all of the Zen on the exchange is put there by players, which is reasonable enough, Cryptic wouldn't give a fig about what the rate on the exchange is because they make their money either way. Only the amounts placed on there from LTS stipends, or surveys wouldn't be direct mon
The price in real money for ZEN has not changed, and there are always Sales as well. As the exchange rate continues to creep up, one day, it WILL hit a point where it's cheaper to BUY ZEN with real money than it is using Dil..
It is very nearly always cheaper to buy Zen with real money than with dilithium. US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, even assuming that you pay 1/3 of that out in taxes, you get roughly $4.80 for an hour of work. That's 480 zen per hour. At the absolute minimum exchange rate, you can get 320 Zen per day per character, factoring out veteran and fleet refining. Already, you need to get your daily 8000 dilithium in under 40 minutes per character for it to be more efficient to get Zen for dilithium than to get it through a minimum wage job. At 50 dilithium per Zen, you would need to get to your 8000 in under 20 minutes. Those rates have essentially never happened, and anything above them just shrinks that required time to get the dilithium to convert to Zen even more unrealistically short.
In short, if you want Zen for the most-efficient investment of time, pick up a minimum wage side job, at least here in the US.
While these are all fun number games, ultimately - you're playing a game. This is hopefully more fun or diversion to the player than working a minimum wage job or any other job.
And the goal of getting Zen is not just having Zen, but using it for something in game. Which also means the player needs to play it. So any comparison with an actual job is misleading.
Not true
A comparison with an actual job is not misleading if you look at a common denominator. TIME
I use an average of 1h / 8000d as an average reference
1z now is 300d
100z now is $1 ( without factoring in sales )
i'm not from the US, so i will use anodyne's calculation of $4.80/hr after tax or $7.25 pre tax.
4 hours of playing will net me 8000x4 = 32000d = 107z
2 hours of working ( after deducting 2 hours of commuting/waiting to fit in with the 4 hours of playtime comparison ) = $9.60 = 960z
If one argues that one is "playing" vs boring work, i think many here will attest to how " boring " grinding can also be.
So ultimately, its the captain's choice
Don't use cash ( for whatever reason ) and grind in game for about 28z an hour?
or
Beat the crowd by finding a job, and converting the pay into zen at 480z/h
At current Dilithium exchange rates, one will have to grind for 17h just to get the same amount of zen 1hr of part time work @ minimal wage pays out.
No matter how one sees it, the math just doesn't work out for full grinding into zen at current exchange rates..
This is basically the assumption that I was working from. An hour of work right now frees you up from several hours of grind in the game, at current exchange rates, allowing you to just do what you want, not worrying about the dilithium payout. You brought up commute time, too, which was a factor that I glossed over, as it makes the math more complicated, since you also have to figure in the cost of getting to said job and back home. Public transportation in some places, or fuel (and maintenance costs) for a vehicle, as well as the time to get there and back that you mentioned. Those who live in petroleum-producing nations would generally pay less for fuel vs. those that don't, and those that live in nations that subsidize public transportation to a greater degree would pay less for that vs. those that don't, all complicating the math, and making the equation more specific to geographic location.
This is an MMO, not a Star Trek episode simulator. That would make for a terrible game.
I can only speak for myself here but I doubt that I'm alone in this.
I contraband farm and chat in my favorite channels while I do it on 2 KDF toons for a total of maybe 40 minutes every day that I log in. That nets me enough CB for all 5 of my captains to do enough turn-ins to meet the 8k refine limit if I even bother to put in the effort to log in multiple times/day for those turn-ins. So we're talking a 20-40k refined Dil/day depending on how lazy I'm feeling on any particular day. Add in how easy it is to bring in Dil through the Admiralty system on each captain and you're pretty much golden without even actually playing the game. All it takes from then on is time to let it pile up and then converting that Dil to Zen on the exchange when the price is good enough for you. That's the Supply end.
Now let's consider the Demand...first with the C-store ships they've been releasing. Once you've played the game long enough, you'll start looking at ship stats first before anything else while considering paying out the DilZen that you've earned. And, honestly, not many ships (and their traits) the past year have been worth paying out for. The last must-have bundle I bought was for the Battle Cruisers and their shared ship-trait. The ships I recently bought were mainly due to me finally giving up on a decent C-Store Sci ship for my Rom and throwing DilZen that was just sitting there toward that goal for my FedSci cap instead at Ship Sale purchase prices which I buy all my ships at anyways.
And then there's the lockbox game and the reward for gambling. Similar deal. The only ship worth burning keys on in a very long time (IMO) is the Krenim Sci-naught out of all the lockbox ships available right now. So, I can burn my DilZen on a slim chance for that or I can just sell those keys (that I also purchased at sale prices) and buy whatever else I want with the gobs of EC that I sold the keys for...or not buy keys at all and just let the dilithium keep piling up.
So, if anybody else's experience is similar to mine (easy supply, meh demand), then I can see why there's so much inflation at the moment. And it's probably going to continue unless they choke out the easier ways to earn dil (and probably chase off people like me in doing so) or start selling some more must-have ships/gear so we throw the reserves we all have at getting them.
The price when there was nothing to spend dilithium on is completely irrelevant. At the same time the hay day of the game prices of 120-140 have become irrelevant as well. The game has changed. With the new producer we saw a large influx of dilithium as well as more interesting and desirable lockbox items and ships. So for now it's up up and away.
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I'm sure someone has already said it, but why prices are how they are now, is exactly the reason why the price was so inflated years ago, it was too darn easy to get truckloads of dil! How did Cryptic fix that? They put the stop on the firehose amounts of dil that players were just swimming in, and saved the market from insane inflation!
We need to stop having events rewarding 50k dil, And especially those dil weekends need to stop which were a terrible idea from the start. The reputation mark and elite mark turn ins also need to be nerfed by probably half since we got so many reputations we can turn marks in for, and several other things including admiralty I'm sure. Not going to be a popular solution, but it must be done eventually! Right now the market only favors those with armies of alts who are willing to grind hours every day, not casuals who do things by normal play. I hate every time a dil rewarding event or weekend comes up, meaning more out of control inflation...
Comments
Could be it is so high people buy into the 240 290 amounts which I think is way to high 200 to 220 is a better choice, but like I said earlier I have seen it as low as 98
And that is all this has ever been to me. A game. Something I do for fun when I have a spare hour or two.
Been playing STO since February of 2012. At the time the rate was 1 Zen ~ 325 Dilithium. I had a decent amount of Dil saved up. I didn't like the rate so I waited for it to come down. Eventually it did so. About a year and a half after I started playing, the rate was 1 Zen ~ 100 Dilithium. I didn't like this rate either. So I did not convert my Zen into Dilthium and waited for the rate to go up. Eventually, it did so.
The rate is what it is right now because of two reasons. No, three.
1) The percieved value of Zen has risen.
2) The percieved value of Dilthium has fallen.
3) A lot of people are stupid enough to pay the current rate while complaining about being treated unfairly.
They're okay with paying the current rate. As long as the stupidity of doing so can be blamed on other people.
This game has been called a Pay To Win game more times than I care to count. I say it is actually Pay For Convenience. A gallon of milk is generally more expensive at the Seven-Eleven than it is at the grocery store. Why? Because it is more convenient to go to the Seven-Eleven at the corner than it is to drive one minute longer to the grocery store. You get what you pay for. And in this case it is the convenience of having Zen available right now. Instead of when you get done refining that 8K limit in about three or four days.
It is very nearly always cheaper to buy Zen with real money than with dilithium. US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, even assuming that you pay 1/3 of that out in taxes, you get roughly $4.80 for an hour of work. That's 480 zen per hour. At the absolute minimum exchange rate, you can get 320 Zen per day per character, factoring out veteran and fleet refining. Already, you need to get your daily 8000 dilithium in under 40 minutes per character for it to be more efficient to get Zen for dilithium than to get it through a minimum wage job. At 50 dilithium per Zen, you would need to get to your 8000 in under 20 minutes. Those rates have essentially never happened, and anything above them just shrinks that required time to get the dilithium to convert to Zen even more unrealistically short.
In short, if you want Zen for the most-efficient investment of time, pick up a minimum wage side job, at least here in the US.
Just because you don't doesn't mean others can't...plus you can make lots of extra dilithium by you know...doing other things.
One advanced STF can wield you a ton of dilithium between the STF itself and the mark turn ins.
I know when admiralty was launched and with the mirror event...not trying hard I was able to easily keep a surplus over over 100k ore till I took a break from STO after unlocking my Rezreth.
It is just incredibly easy to earn dilithium these days...so it isn't worth a whole lot.
Provide Fleet Credits for those dopey Provisions (Embassy, Spire, Mine, Research) contributions. Cost me some 250k Fleet Credits to buy the Research Lab Provisions for the Tier II Lab Upgrade Project today for no credit or notation on the Leaderboard.
This isn't real life business sales so it is not necessary to keep to the 3:1 (or 2:1 for non-specific Commons) ratio of cost vs. Credit for Common Doffs for Fleet Projects. Lower the cost for and have a mechanism for direct contribution to Fleet Projects. If not that implement a slider for purchase and opening and increase the credit given.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Yup... if anything, Cryptic would push the price higher if* they could.
*Assuming they don't fiddle with it behind the scenes now.
Hardcore grinder? With admiralty and doffing I think I need to play 1 pve or so to reach the daily refinement limit on a char. That’s roughly 10 minutes in sum. Your suggestion would give me no reason to play this game for longer than 30 minutes per day because my progression would simply be terminated after that.
I don’t think that would be a good game design for a mmorpg.
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While these are all fun number games, ultimately - you're playing a game. This is hopefully more fun or diversion to the player than working a minimum wage job or any other job.
And the goal of getting Zen is not just having Zen, but using it for something in game. Which also means the player needs to play it. So any comparison with an actual job is misleading.
My earlier post wasn't a doom post either, something similar happened in Neverwinter - and of course the game survived, but lost quite a chunk of playerbase. With incoming STBeyond and new series, of course the STO will attract new players (I don't see it dying anytime soon), it's just the portion of old playerbase that I care about and don't want to see leaving.
See see, you're on to something there. We need a new shiny massive dil sinkhole in game, that'd help.
Not true
A comparison with an actual job is not misleading if you look at a common denominator. TIME
I use an average of 1h / 8000d as an average reference
1z now is 300d
100z now is $1 ( without factoring in sales )
i'm not from the US, so i will use anodyne's calculation of $4.80/hr after tax or $7.25 pre tax.
4 hours of playing will net me 8000x4 = 32000d = 107z
2 hours of working ( after deducting 2 hours of commuting/waiting to fit in with the 4 hours of playtime comparison ) = $9.60 = 960z
If one argues that one is "playing" vs boring work, i think many here will attest to how " boring " grinding can also be.
So ultimately, its the captain's choice
Don't use cash ( for whatever reason ) and grind in game for about 28z an hour?
or
Beat the crowd by finding a job, and converting the pay into zen at 480z/h
At current Dilithium exchange rates, one will have to grind for 17h just to get the same amount of zen 1hr of part time work @ minimal wage pays out.
No matter how one sees it, the math just doesn't work out for full grinding into zen at current exchange rates..
If I'm getting what the game service promises me as the value proposition (i.e. entertaining gameplay) I'm content to spend in limited quantity to acquire said value.
Dilithium exchanges and systems like it (*cough* lockboxes *cough*) have done tremendous harm to the style of game construct I far prefer to play, so while I feel for those for whom exchanging was a go to strategy to support their play time, I don't lament the current state of affairs.
I would also argue the bigger issue here is that I would wager ZEN purchase for STO in general have gone significantly down due to:
- DPS ridiculously out of control for all ship combat (not just BFAW) and a few clear front runner horses in those cases; a lack of diversity in gameplay dramatically downturns the value of acquiring more options to play with, period.
- Similarly, we have more BOFFs than we'll ever need and they have not been integrated into meaningful gameplay with reasons to care about your 'big 4' in space and land. Admiralty system would have been better served by being an Away Team mission system, integrated with but distinct from DOFFs, to make us care about maintaining a roster here in a worthwhile, more active way.
- The fact that some of the most profitable game experiences are totally passive ones (DOFF, Admiralty) means alt rotating is the path to profit even though we are not really performing an engrossing activity.
- Buying another ship when I already have a massive fleet of them, across alts, is simply overkill
- The general North American and European economies are at present struggling for the middle classes; no matter how I consider that, that's not STO's fault, but it has to reduce Zen purchases when your market areas are spending less
- Fleets, due to things like the dilithium component, don't really promote teamwork so much as sponging off critical resource contributors, reducing their cohesion, camraderie and game value.
- Event logic has never evolved past 'do this one thing 20 times'. I actually liked the foot races in the winter event. I didn't like them past the 10th repetition in close order that I was required to do in order to make the first 9 worthwhile. This is a Zen issue as I know this acts as a constant deterrent for people to even play the game, and that clearly translates to reduction in sales of currency.
These of course are just my opinions and I suspect unpopular ones for those who want dilithium to be their ticket to acquisition. As far as I'm concerned, the more abundant refined dilithium is at the moment, the better because I'm not feeling compelled to pursue activities that are punitively tedious just to secure the resource. Then again, my desire to play at all lately given the things mentioned above is heavily reduced, so that too may just take my perspective out of the land of relevance for those still actively engaged.
I can hazard a guess. There are a couple of Admiralty missions whose base dilithium payouts are 1000d or 2000d. If you crit those, and you cycle with pass tokens to get the highest ratio of these as well as the 500d Payout missions?
Voila, you could be generating a lot of dilithium very quickly if you have a lot of ships to draw from for your fleets.
+50 is actually a lot. Buying fleet ship module would cost an extra 25k dil, and most players don't make even half of that in a day. So it's quite a lot for the person who doesnt sit there and grind all day.
Another idea I have to disagree with. Cryptic provides the means to make alts for free up to 3 or 4 slots, and then charges for each new toon slot. It then also charges for every lockbox, lobi, rep, etc. etc. item on top of XP, R&D, etc., meaning a LOT has been put and continues to be put into alts by many people, or multiple mains (I have 3 mains). This is a source of revenue for them, a source of enjoyment for us to keep things fresh, a way to play more without constantly logging on other accounts, and to make use of account-wide giveaways.
I have to say it again, really bad idea, and I'm glad Cryptic has more sense than shoot themselves in the foot and hurt the game worse than a cap-locked 500-1 Dil-Ex in the community's attempts to keep that from happening.
Assuming all of the Zen on the exchange is put there by players, which is reasonable enough, Cryptic wouldn't give a fig about what the rate on the exchange is because they make their money either way. Only the amounts placed on there from LTS stipends, or surveys wouldn't be direct mon
This is basically the assumption that I was working from. An hour of work right now frees you up from several hours of grind in the game, at current exchange rates, allowing you to just do what you want, not worrying about the dilithium payout. You brought up commute time, too, which was a factor that I glossed over, as it makes the math more complicated, since you also have to figure in the cost of getting to said job and back home. Public transportation in some places, or fuel (and maintenance costs) for a vehicle, as well as the time to get there and back that you mentioned. Those who live in petroleum-producing nations would generally pay less for fuel vs. those that don't, and those that live in nations that subsidize public transportation to a greater degree would pay less for that vs. those that don't, all complicating the math, and making the equation more specific to geographic location.
I contraband farm and chat in my favorite channels while I do it on 2 KDF toons for a total of maybe 40 minutes every day that I log in. That nets me enough CB for all 5 of my captains to do enough turn-ins to meet the 8k refine limit if I even bother to put in the effort to log in multiple times/day for those turn-ins. So we're talking a 20-40k refined Dil/day depending on how lazy I'm feeling on any particular day. Add in how easy it is to bring in Dil through the Admiralty system on each captain and you're pretty much golden without even actually playing the game. All it takes from then on is time to let it pile up and then converting that Dil to Zen on the exchange when the price is good enough for you. That's the Supply end.
Now let's consider the Demand...first with the C-store ships they've been releasing. Once you've played the game long enough, you'll start looking at ship stats first before anything else while considering paying out the DilZen that you've earned. And, honestly, not many ships (and their traits) the past year have been worth paying out for. The last must-have bundle I bought was for the Battle Cruisers and their shared ship-trait. The ships I recently bought were mainly due to me finally giving up on a decent C-Store Sci ship for my Rom and throwing DilZen that was just sitting there toward that goal for my FedSci cap instead at Ship Sale purchase prices which I buy all my ships at anyways.
And then there's the lockbox game and the reward for gambling. Similar deal. The only ship worth burning keys on in a very long time (IMO) is the Krenim Sci-naught out of all the lockbox ships available right now. So, I can burn my DilZen on a slim chance for that or I can just sell those keys (that I also purchased at sale prices) and buy whatever else I want with the gobs of EC that I sold the keys for...or not buy keys at all and just let the dilithium keep piling up.
So, if anybody else's experience is similar to mine (easy supply, meh demand), then I can see why there's so much inflation at the moment. And it's probably going to continue unless they choke out the easier ways to earn dil (and probably chase off people like me in doing so) or start selling some more must-have ships/gear so we throw the reserves we all have at getting them.
Isn't the record high somewhere in the mid-600 range?
The exchange has had a fixed 50-500 range, as long as I've been playing (2011? 12?). But it could have been different back before then.
/shrug
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
We need to stop having events rewarding 50k dil, And especially those dil weekends need to stop which were a terrible idea from the start. The reputation mark and elite mark turn ins also need to be nerfed by probably half since we got so many reputations we can turn marks in for, and several other things including admiralty I'm sure. Not going to be a popular solution, but it must be done eventually! Right now the market only favors those with armies of alts who are willing to grind hours every day, not casuals who do things by normal play. I hate every time a dil rewarding event or weekend comes up, meaning more out of control inflation...