I don't farm and I have a excess of dilithium. After level 50 the game starts shoveling dilithium at you. I'd say the current rise is intended.
Caveat: I find most of the available dilithium sinks pointless and/or a scam so my excess dilithium may simply be due to that. All I know is that my admirals always have more dilithium than I can refine at the end of the day.
I have 3 accounts with nine toons, my main toon is caped out at 10 mil un-refined Dil ore every day. The rest are getting close to it. I start my day re-fining 8.5k a day Claim my doffing and admiralty missions lol and I right back at cap or most of the time way over it , which goes into a bit bucket, this take like 10 mins. Something really needs to be fixed here. I hate seeing my over the cap un-refined dil ore go into that Bit bucket.
What really concerns me about threads, such as this, is that players that partake in a F2P function of the game (dil farming), want the dev's to act on thier behalf to increase the leverage of the dil farmers against people who are offering product that came about as a function of spending money (buying Zen, or Lifetime Sub' stipends), claiming that the people who spent money are greedy. I have also heard the statement that people that spend cash on the game are "rich". Really? These concepts and statements are not rational.
I have both bought Zen with dil', and bought dil with Zen. If the exchange rate was satisfactory, I bought/sold, if not, I didn't. I knew one thing, the person who spent money in the game had/should have the leverage, especially in a F2P game, as those dollars go directly to thegame, where time, is a metric that has to be converted, in one way or another, into cash.
If people want to try to sway the power of thier leverage, thats one thing but to ask for dev's support to do it becuase the players have been wronged or taken advantage of in some way is dishknest and unrealistic.
what are people saying about getting a sh*t-ton of dilithium from admiralty? I get 2k at the most, thats not very much. Oh sure completing kdf tour of duty gives you 30k but thats more of a long term project
I just got 2k dilithium out of the admiralty missions I ran yesterday...I can easily make double tripple or more for a days worth. If you have a nice ship selection you can make a killing from admiralty. (Well and with a little luck getting dilithium based missions)
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
I have 3 accounts with nine toons, my main toon is caped out at 10 mil un-refined Dil ore every day. The rest are getting close to it. I start my day re-fining 8.5k a day Claim my doffing and admiralty missions lol and I right back at cap or most of the time way over it , which goes into a bit bucket, this take like 10 mins. Something really needs to be fixed here. I hate seeing my over the cap un-refined dil ore go into that Bit bucket.
Well this is clearly an exception to the rule. I suspect most players do not run 3 accounts and have that many active toons. A game should not be calibrated to exceptional accounts.
What really concerns me about threads, such as this, is that players that partake in a F2P function of the game (dil farming), want the dev's to act on thier behalf to increase the leverage of the dil farmers against people who are offering product that came about as a function of spending money (buying Zen, or Lifetime Sub' stipends), claiming that the people who spent money are greedy. I have also heard the statement that people that spend cash on the game are "rich". Really? These concepts and statements are not rational.
I have both bought Zen with dil', and bought dil with Zen. If the exchange rate was satisfactory, I bought/sold, if not, I didn't. I knew one thing, the person who spent money in the game had/should have the leverage, especially in a F2P game, as those dollars go directly to thegame, where time, is a metric that has to be converted, in one way or another, into cash.
If people want to try to sway the power of thier leverage, thats one thing but to ask for dev's support to do it becuase the players have been wronged or taken advantage of in some way is dishknest and unrealistic.
I'd say some people maybe act that way but a lot of F2P players still pay money to the game on occasion so they still support it. Free players still by new ships and other goodies regularly.
I mean i'm F2P but in the last 12 months I've bought 7 T6 ships at full price, so at 3000 Zen apiece that's a fair investment despite me not having a sub. I'd say that gives me a right to speak my mind on an aspect of the game.
I also try to grind out Dil & Zen to supplement my real cash spending to get many other items at a discount so i'm probably spending even more if you could count the time spent in-game in terms of money.
From my point of view, a decent exchange rate is better because I can go half n' half on a ship or item, which means i'll probably spend more over a year in total but in many smaller transactions. I can supplement my spend with grinding.
Now out and out farming the system or using bots etc is maybe a bit much in my opinion, that's just taking advantage of the free nature of the game.
What really concerns me about threads, such as this, is that players that partake in a F2P function of the game (dil farming), want the dev's to act on thier behalf to increase the leverage of the dil farmers against people who are offering product that came about as a function of spending money (buying Zen, or Lifetime Sub' stipends), claiming that the people who spent money are greedy. I have also heard the statement that people that spend cash on the game are "rich". Really? These concepts and statements are not rational.
I have both bought Zen with dil', and bought dil with Zen. If the exchange rate was satisfactory, I bought/sold, if not, I didn't. I knew one thing, the person who spent money in the game had/should have the leverage, especially in a F2P game, as those dollars go directly to thegame, where time, is a metric that has to be converted, in one way or another, into cash.
If people want to try to sway the power of thier leverage, thats one thing but to ask for dev's support to do it becuase the players have been wronged or taken advantage of in some way is dishknest and unrealistic.
I'd say some people maybe act that way but a lot of F2P players still pay money to the game on occasion so they still support it. Free players still by new ships and other goodies regularly.
I mean i'm F2P but in the last 12 months I've bought 7 T6 ships at full price, so at 3000 Zen apiece that's a fair investment despite me not having a sub. I'd say that gives me a right to speak my mind on an aspect of the game.
I also try to grind out Dil & Zen to supplement my real cash spending to get many other items at a discount so i'm probably spending even more if you could count the time spent in-game in terms of money.
From my point of view, a decent exchange rate is better because I can go half n' half on a ship or item, which means i'll probably spend more over a year in total but in many smaller transactions. I can supplement my spend with grinding.
Now out and out farming the system or using bots etc is maybe a bit much in my opinion, that's just taking advantage of the free nature of the game.
Totally agree- I've purchased many Zen ships and also subbed from time-to-time with my account. I think the biggest issue isn't the average player who's doing all they can to keep up in game, but rather the outright botting accounts which farm Dil for the purposes of selling it off, etc.
The problem lies therein of the nature of a F2P game- whenever you've got free accounts you'll have that... in ANY game. (it's not unique to STO)
How to remedy this? Lift restrictions for paying subbed accounts for Dil conversion and further restrict F2P accounts for daily refining. Sure it won't completely negate farming accounts, but it will definitely give them something to think about in terms of having to lay down cold hard cash in order to facilitate their activities. Either way, Cryptic/PWE wins as it ups their subscription counts and it alleviates a lot of the freeloaders from the resources of the servers, etc.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
I think the problem with Zen prices is not that people have too much dilithium to throw around. They certainly don't.
The problem is that people can't stop spending it on zen. The fact of the matter is that you need t6 ships and their traits to play the game well. So people will never stop spending dilithium on zen at any price.
The answer is by no means to make dilithium harder to earn. I spend almost all day every day farming dilithium on my four characters and still only used to earn a ship every month or two. And the price is much higher now. The higher the cost of Zen, the less our time is worth.
I say the answer to inflation is simply to cap Zen prices. Or possibly to reset them once a year or so.
"Thou shalt respect the weak and shalt constitute thyself defender of them."
-3rd Commmandment of Chivalry
I'm a life subscriber and am the proud owner of 18 c-store ships and I have 32 active characters only because I want 1 of every species and like to sell lots of things on the exchange, not necessarily because I want to grind anything. I do acquire some dilithium to convert to zen over time but I've always topped it up with real life money and monthly stipend to make any substantial acquisition from the c-store. It is more a priority shift to needing the T6 ships and a drop in demand for dilithium. To comment on this topic I can only use my only behavioural changes resulting from the content:
Before : Buy things on c-store to sell for ec to buy mirror or lockbox ships on the exchange and trade what's left to dilithium for fleet stuff
Change: Introduction of the admiralty system
After: EC price of ships now too high to be worth a single unlock and my non subscribed friends can't even hold enough ec in their character bank to buy some of them, I now trade dilithium to zen and save for accountwide ship unlocks instead or open lockboxes myself knowing I could get lucky, but there is the guaranteed Lobi ship at the end of it.
Before: Demand dilithium to buy fleet equipment as ultra rare is better than regular and not available on the exchange
Change: Upgrade system makes everyday items upgradeable to Epic quality so high availability of ultra-rare and better on the ec exchange
After: Only need dilithium for specific fleet items now, saving ec instead whilst trying my luck upgrading existing items with spare dilithium.
My own demand for refined dilithium is low now for the above reasons, if the zen price goes up even further I'm not even sure i'll bother collecting the ore beyond what I need for the fleet holding projects as I can do far more with energy credits.
To increase demand so I buy zen again to trade for dilithium I'd say improve the fleet only equipment so it returns to being the best available in the game or so it can be upgraded 1 tier higher than Epic Quality non-fleet equipment (Prodigious Quality with a shimmering black outline for example).
Bring the ec price of mirror ships down so more are below the account cap threshold to gain one-off zen sales from the non-subscribed players buying things to trade for ec. That could be achieved by increasing the frequency of mirror ships in the lockboxes. Or preferably add masterkeys to the dilithium store say 35k each to reduce the demand for converting dilithium to zen and then if the exchange rate remains over 280zen per dilithium c-store purchasers will keep adjusting the price by converting their zen to dilithium to buy the keys they would be buying anyway. Then as long as there are Lobi ships master keys will be bought and as long as there is the admiralty zen ships will be bought and the demand will remain both sides of the dilithium-zen exchange
Also, if they happened to add an expansion to the 40 exchange sale slot limit for sale in the services tab similar in price to the dry-dock slots I would buy zen to upgrade mine as soon as I'm paid next.
Post edited by wisecasper on
@Wisecasper
Non-faction Ship Bridge Collector and Junk Hauler with alt-itis
Contact in-game to add your fleet to a casual, friendly Armada
I am disabled and on a fixed income. And I just had my first anniversary and I still love this game. I put in what I can in cash, but what I have put in is about 227 strait days of play. And If I have X amount of Dil and want to sell it then I should get a fair price for my hard work. But If I put X amount of cash into the game for a shortcut then THAT should not effect what I have earned. The problem is you have One medium for TWO kinds of currency. What about two kind of Dil and two kinds of Zen both kinds can be used in the C-store. Silver Zen for Dil and Gold for Cash. Gold Zen could be sold for Dil vouchers which can't be resold but still used in game and should have a set lump sum for how much cash you put in. And the sum should increase with amount of cash that is put in. Now Silver Zen is what you should get for trading the TIME {DIL} you have put into game. And that is based on how much Gold Zen has been put into the game at that point. The beast part of this Idea is that you can combine the two. Like say you put $20 in Gold and have 1.2 mill in refined Dil and trade that in and get say $10 in Silver well there is the new ship you have been jonesing for. And if money is short and all you can afford $10 no problem just spend some time earning you some ore refine it and Boom you got what ever you need. With two kinds of Zen the dev's will be able to keep better track of who is putting money in for a short cut and who is busting there rear to earn a special something for there hard work.
If Cryptic really wanted to bring the zen prices down, all they would have to do would be to start posting zen on the exchange - there is no need for any other adjustments in the system, like capping this and that. Just like real world banks, who can print more money if the value of the currency gets too high, which devaluates it, Cryptic can create buttloads of zen or dil with a click of a button as is suited for their needs. How would anyone know? It's not like the zen exchange tells you who you got your zen/dil from. The option to manipulate zen prices with promotions and sales is just a cherry on top.
In short:
If they can adjust the price but don't, then it means the price is exactly where they want it, and until they want to have it somewhere else, it won't change.
Or, if they can adjust the price and are already doing it, then it means they were the ones who got the price where it is in the first place, so - once again - until they want the price to be somewhere else, it will stay where it is.
And if they can't adjust the price, well, then they can't and that's it.
So help me understand here ? we are unhappy about the cost of Dil per Zen that OTHER PLAYERS are asking for on a FREE MARKET called the Dilithium Exchange.
It's not a true free market, though. For one, you have a cap on how much dilithium you can store and how much Zen and dilithium you can place on the exchange at one time.
Secondly, you can only buy and sell within the 5-slot bracket that the system decides to display. If I wanted to quickly sell 800.000 Zen for 250 dilithium each, for example, or place a dilithium offer at 50 dil/Zen to wait for someone else to pick it up by accident, I'd not be able to do so, it simply wouldn't sell, even if their was a corresponding offer on "the other side".
(Considering that 5-slot bracket, I give Cryptic the benefit of doubt that it's really steered by supply and demand, but it could easily be the other way around as well as they could move the 5-slot bracket up and down at their choosing. We simply have no way of knowing, there is no security and exchange commission for the dilithium/Zen trade.)
Thirdly, there is the cap. We can't go above or below a certain threshold. Not so much an issue right not, but is has been in Neverwinter and it could become one in STO in a year or two at the current rate.
So it's not so much a free market as some sort of mixed economy.
Holy smoke since the start of this thread the exchange has jumped from 294 to 308 now.
New lock box and super ships have been presented along side some lobi goodies which appear to have a fan base (mirror universe costumes) so there is a LOT of hoarding going on.
Once this frenzy calms down i expect the exchange to stabilize at roughly 270-275.
Still a bit high for my liking, but short term the best we can expect.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
TBH 300 is about average, that's where it was before the fleet starbases were added.
The exchange rate crash was deliberately caused by Cryptic, they aimed the starbase system at the largest fleets with the most whales, they knew that these people wouldn't sit back while others got to T5 first, so an absolute bloody fortune was dumped into the game, and it was the exchange rate that suffered as the whales kept undercutting each other, win win for Cryptic as the lower the rate the more zen the whales have to buy.
Once they had finished their starbase they no longer needed large amounts of dil so they removed their zen from the exchange, leaving just the wannabes and the light weights, and a low exchange rate is no use to them so it slowly rises until the next small dil sink.
Although i've said its a free market. looking at how quickly the exchange can jump and the amount of dil required to say buy up 43895k priced at 310 dil per Zen. I question is there really this many players A. online B. This much spare dil around.
This is what makes me think there is something iffy with the exchange.
At present there is 43,895 zen for sale at 310 so 13,607.450 dil is required to purchase all this up. thats a combined refining total of 1700 days.
Now say there are 136 people all with 100k dil to spend towards that 43895 Zen, thats still between them 13 days of refining to acquire 100k dil to buy all that Zen.
272 players needed for 50k still a weeks refine.
I know there are lots of acc's with vast amounts of dil and alts but they are the minority. But are there really that many players with such vast dil pools to not only buy that 43895Zen at 310 but to also clear the next level 12000k zen at 311 dil then the next, to lift the value of dil by 5-10 points within 24hrs ?. Or as we have seen over 20 points within 48hrs
Are the sellers being clever and selling so much then un-listing and re-listing at a higher rate ?.
I'm struggling to get my head around the dil required, the number of days it takes to acquire that much dil for the exchange to jump so many points.
This is what makes me think there is something iffy with the exchange.
At present there is 43,895 zen for sale at 310 so 13,607.450 dil is required to purchase all this up. thats a combined refining total of 1700 days.
Now say there are 136 people all with 100k dil to spend towards that 43895 Zen, thats still between them 13 days of refining to acquire 100k dil to buy all that Zen.
272 players needed for 50k still a weeks refine.
Eh, just a random note..... I don't religiously farm dil/etc. I don't play hours a day, I don't have 1mil unrefined backlog on my characters because I run STFs constantly, etc. I just queue up some doff & admiralty assignments on my extra alts once a day, and then play whatever "main" I feel like working on. (And my gear is mk12-13 purple/violet. I don't really STF, I do story missions and seasonal events). Yes, I do have a bunch of alts, because I've been playing since 2011 and I've got alt-itis in every game I play that allows multiple characters.
So while I might not fit the def of "casual", I'm certainly not hardcore. Either as a DPS/STFer, or as a dil farmer.
I checked yesterday, how much refined dil I have spread across my 10 alts..... it was 1.8mil. And this was after exchanging for around 8k zen since last November. (And the only character with any unrefined backlog was the one who hit rank 10 on KDF admiralty two days ago.)
Yeah, there's plenty of dil floating around out there. /shrug
...of course, now I'm out of zen again, since I bought 30 keys.
----
Again, the main reason the rate has been steadily going up for the past year is that there's been a constant stream of stuff to buy for zen, that people wanted. T6 ships, lockbox, more T6 ships, Admiralty (buy old ships!), more T6 ships, lockbox.... there's been fantastic demand for zen for ages now. And the more demand there is for something, the more it's "value" increases. It's pretty straightforward.
I am disabled and on a fixed income. And I just had my first anniversary and I still love this game. I put in what I can in cash, but what I have put in is about 227 strait days of play. And If I have X amount of Dil and want to sell it then I should get a fair price for my hard work. But If I put X amount of cash into the game for a shortcut then THAT should not effect what I have earned. The problem is you have One medium for TWO kinds of currency. What about two kind of Dil and two kinds of Zen both kinds can be used in the C-store. Silver Zen for Dil and Gold for Cash. Gold Zen could be sold for Dil vouchers which can't be resold but still used in game and should have a set lump sum for how much cash you put in. And the sum should increase with amount of cash that is put in. Now Silver Zen is what you should get for trading the TIME {DIL} you have put into game. And that is based on how much Gold Zen has been put into the game at that point. The beast part of this Idea is that you can combine the two. Like say you put $20 in Gold and have 1.2 mill in refined Dil and trade that in and get say $10 in Silver well there is the new ship you have been jonesing for. And if money is short and all you can afford $10 no problem just spend some time earning you some ore refine it and Boom you got what ever you need. With two kinds of Zen the dev's will be able to keep better track of who is putting money in for a short cut and who is busting there rear to earn a special something for there hard work.
That is TERRIBLE for them because those silver zen are not being paid for by anyone. The reason that the current system is genius is that it's a f2p model in that YOU personally can get all the stuff without spending a dime, but SOMEBODY is always paying for it. You are thinking great for YOU. Oh and 1.2 mil dil for 10 bucks...even at the max exchange rate, you get a better deal then that...so really, this is a lose lose for everyone. So yeah, your make zen out of nowhere is not going to work for them.
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.
Hi,
given the general tone of your reply I’m under the impression that you had trouble to comprehend or perhaps even to read what I wrote. That’s why I decided to give it another try and to help you out.
I currently play 9 characters in this game. All of them play distinct and influential roles in STO’s teamed PvE and PvP end game contend. Contend my friends and I enjoy doing most. The number of chars helps me to keep the contend of this game fresh and diversified for me.
Like every mmorpg player I share the drive to develop my characters further and to make them better than they already are. Since I have my stuff together for the most part the only thing I need for that is Dil, the one currency one can never have enough of. Fortunately accumulating it is very easy at the moment. Here is a breakdown of my main sources on a single char/day basis:
1) Doffing: ~2000 Dil; 1k one can get easily from the dil mine and colonial assignments. The rest you get is spread over your ship stations. I also collect contraband but rarely turn it in and rather save it for times when RL does not permit me to do 3) as much.
2) Admirality: ~4000 Dil; 2k are an abstraction of the rerun of the Klingon tour of duty assignment chain which’s completion I manage approximately every 15 days. Rest comes from a focus on regular KDF campaign assignments with a special attention towards event rewards.
3) PvE: ~2500 Dil; 1 advanced or elite run from queue list is usually enough. And hey, game is easy remember.
Now what you misunderstand as hardcore grinding or “farming” is just a toonhop for me. All those klicks from Admiralty and Doffing I undertake while I wait in other’s lobby’s or in the queue list for the next pve to pop. That’s why I reach the daily refinement cap on a character within 10 minutes or so before I hop to the next toon better suited for the next PvE coming up. My deck of 9 chars is well balanced for an average gaming time of 2-3 hours with plenty of time to spare actually.
I claim the result of your “thinking for a while” and what suggests an account wide refinement limit to be bad as in REALLY BAD because it would slow down my toon's progressions by roughly 2/3 flat. Fun would suffer because the very reason I play a mmopg (progress my toons while having fun with my friends) would be crippled only to cater to those who want to enjoy this game strictly free to play and naturally want to grab more free stuff for doing less. Players would not be encouraged to make more toons or to play more or buy more and the entire game would suffer because of it.
I don’t think this would be a good mmorpg game design from basically everybody’s perspective involved, hence my reply to your post.
So...you are toon hopping...which currently is the best way to farm the fake purple crystals in the game. Look, I admit that I do the same thing. Which does in fact make you one of the hard core farmers of dil. You can deny it all you want, but you are hopping between 9 toons to maximize their dil output each under the current system. Under the new system proposed, you would instead just concentrate of a couple of toons you were interested in ACTUALLY playing that day for a few hours instead of toon hopping 9 times to maximize your dilitium. It would free you to ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME...instead of 1 queue on each toon. Now, you could toon hop to maximize your admiralty and doffing and play almost no time as well...but hey if you find that fun...I suppose more power to you?!? The whole point would be to make it so you don't need to toon hop to reach cap.
But like I said, your knee jerk reaction is all I needed to show why it wouldn't work.
And while you may cry about your fun being crippled...which it really wouldn't be, to say that your fun is somehow more important that somebody else's fun is kinda...well...egotistical don't you think? What matters isn't if the system is better for YOU or even for ME (because actually it'd be terrible for me...I am one of the people who actually BUYS zen every once in a while and almost never do the dil to zen...so I want 500 to 1)...what matter is if it's good for more players first of all...then followed by is it good for the enough of the people who spend money. Well...optimally...but it will be the other way around. Anyways, since the people who spend money will be people like you or me instead of these F2P dil converters, I doubt this would happen.
Oh come on man, the "Hardcore Grinders" are the people with 50 characters per account on multiple accounts, not people with a tiny 9 characters, or even the 15 characters I have. Lemme do the math for you, 10 characters, at 8k per day, is 80k refined dil each day, if you max them all out, few thousand more with Dil mine and Vet status. 50 characters, doing nothing but feeding the cat (turn in contraband) for 2k dil each and very quick turnaround, is 100k dil refined daily, without maxing any of the characters out on dil, if they do 2 cycles, after running their main contraband farmer for a while to gather more cat food, its 200k refined per day, again without maxing out any character. The "Hardcore Grinders" know this, and will flat out tell people maxing dil refining on multiple characters that they are wasting time.
You are going beyond hardcore into this is a terrible job territory at that point. And really, having an account level cap will stop them too...unless they have those across mutiple accounts. In anycase, at 20k, they can cap that with 10 contra turn in instead of the amount of refine dil they can get hoing up by 2-4k per toon (depending on if they do 1 or 2 pass) per toon. And seriously, nerfing that sort of "play" actually sounds like a good thing for all involved...well other then those who are exploiting the system...but they can rot for all I care.
The difference in color is to show what was payed for with real money. I.E. The silver color is the Zen somebody else sold for Dil. and Gold is well what you payed cash for. The Silver Zen is what was put BACK into the game.
Yeah I'm pretty sure when I started in STO there were only a few ships a year being released. But post-DR we've had month after month with T6's, lock boxes, R&D promos, cross-faction bundles, 9 packs; it's just been a near constant stream of new shiny toys to spend zen on which means demand for the Z's is really high.
I reckon once we get the majority of faction ships re-released as T6 then the number of releases might stabilise and we'll get back to some sort of normality. We're in the middle of a glut of new ships at the moment and once we get past it maybe the perceived value of zen (I.e the demand to exchange for it) will drop. Who knows.
No, the onslaught of things to spend zen on will not stop until the game closes. This is the new business model introduced with DR and it's the one we are going to ride until the end - hopefully a very long time.
Will we ever see the 200's again? Maybe briefly, but I doubt we'll see the 280's ever again. If we we get up towards 350 over the next week then we will not go below 300 ever again.
I agree with what several have said here. The only way down is for the central bank to flood the market with their 'reserves.' I don't see them feeling the need to do that anymore until we approach 500. Then I do think they would step in.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
325 rubs hands together. Armada projects to be filles tonight.
Wait for 490 or so mate. As I've said often today is the best day to buy zen because tomorrow it will be higher. For you today is the worst day to buy dilithium!
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I reckon once we get the majority of faction ships re-released as T6 then the number of releases might stabilise and we'll get back to some sort of normality.
Comments
Caveat: I find most of the available dilithium sinks pointless and/or a scam so my excess dilithium may simply be due to that. All I know is that my admirals always have more dilithium than I can refine at the end of the day.
I have both bought Zen with dil', and bought dil with Zen. If the exchange rate was satisfactory, I bought/sold, if not, I didn't. I knew one thing, the person who spent money in the game had/should have the leverage, especially in a F2P game, as those dollars go directly to thegame, where time, is a metric that has to be converted, in one way or another, into cash.
If people want to try to sway the power of thier leverage, thats one thing but to ask for dev's support to do it becuase the players have been wronged or taken advantage of in some way is dishknest and unrealistic.
You can sub to this game. There's even a life time sub option. ..... Just sayin'...
I just got 2k dilithium out of the admiralty missions I ran yesterday...I can easily make double tripple or more for a days worth. If you have a nice ship selection you can make a killing from admiralty. (Well and with a little luck getting dilithium based missions)
Well this is clearly an exception to the rule. I suspect most players do not run 3 accounts and have that many active toons. A game should not be calibrated to exceptional accounts.
I'd say some people maybe act that way but a lot of F2P players still pay money to the game on occasion so they still support it. Free players still by new ships and other goodies regularly.
I mean i'm F2P but in the last 12 months I've bought 7 T6 ships at full price, so at 3000 Zen apiece that's a fair investment despite me not having a sub. I'd say that gives me a right to speak my mind on an aspect of the game.
I also try to grind out Dil & Zen to supplement my real cash spending to get many other items at a discount so i'm probably spending even more if you could count the time spent in-game in terms of money.
From my point of view, a decent exchange rate is better because I can go half n' half on a ship or item, which means i'll probably spend more over a year in total but in many smaller transactions. I can supplement my spend with grinding.
Now out and out farming the system or using bots etc is maybe a bit much in my opinion, that's just taking advantage of the free nature of the game.
Totally agree- I've purchased many Zen ships and also subbed from time-to-time with my account. I think the biggest issue isn't the average player who's doing all they can to keep up in game, but rather the outright botting accounts which farm Dil for the purposes of selling it off, etc.
The problem lies therein of the nature of a F2P game- whenever you've got free accounts you'll have that... in ANY game. (it's not unique to STO)
How to remedy this? Lift restrictions for paying subbed accounts for Dil conversion and further restrict F2P accounts for daily refining. Sure it won't completely negate farming accounts, but it will definitely give them something to think about in terms of having to lay down cold hard cash in order to facilitate their activities. Either way, Cryptic/PWE wins as it ups their subscription counts and it alleviates a lot of the freeloaders from the resources of the servers, etc.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
The problem is that people can't stop spending it on zen. The fact of the matter is that you need t6 ships and their traits to play the game well. So people will never stop spending dilithium on zen at any price.
The answer is by no means to make dilithium harder to earn. I spend almost all day every day farming dilithium on my four characters and still only used to earn a ship every month or two. And the price is much higher now. The higher the cost of Zen, the less our time is worth.
I say the answer to inflation is simply to cap Zen prices. Or possibly to reset them once a year or so.
-3rd Commmandment of Chivalry
Before : Buy things on c-store to sell for ec to buy mirror or lockbox ships on the exchange and trade what's left to dilithium for fleet stuff
Change: Introduction of the admiralty system
After: EC price of ships now too high to be worth a single unlock and my non subscribed friends can't even hold enough ec in their character bank to buy some of them, I now trade dilithium to zen and save for accountwide ship unlocks instead or open lockboxes myself knowing I could get lucky, but there is the guaranteed Lobi ship at the end of it.
Before: Demand dilithium to buy fleet equipment as ultra rare is better than regular and not available on the exchange
Change: Upgrade system makes everyday items upgradeable to Epic quality so high availability of ultra-rare and better on the ec exchange
After: Only need dilithium for specific fleet items now, saving ec instead whilst trying my luck upgrading existing items with spare dilithium.
My own demand for refined dilithium is low now for the above reasons, if the zen price goes up even further I'm not even sure i'll bother collecting the ore beyond what I need for the fleet holding projects as I can do far more with energy credits.
To increase demand so I buy zen again to trade for dilithium I'd say improve the fleet only equipment so it returns to being the best available in the game or so it can be upgraded 1 tier higher than Epic Quality non-fleet equipment (Prodigious Quality with a shimmering black outline for example).
Bring the ec price of mirror ships down so more are below the account cap threshold to gain one-off zen sales from the non-subscribed players buying things to trade for ec. That could be achieved by increasing the frequency of mirror ships in the lockboxes. Or preferably add masterkeys to the dilithium store say 35k each to reduce the demand for converting dilithium to zen and then if the exchange rate remains over 280zen per dilithium c-store purchasers will keep adjusting the price by converting their zen to dilithium to buy the keys they would be buying anyway. Then as long as there are Lobi ships master keys will be bought and as long as there is the admiralty zen ships will be bought and the demand will remain both sides of the dilithium-zen exchange
Also, if they happened to add an expansion to the 40 exchange sale slot limit for sale in the services tab similar in price to the dry-dock slots I would buy zen to upgrade mine as soon as I'm paid next.
@Wisecasper
Non-faction Ship Bridge Collector and Junk Hauler with alt-itis
Contact in-game to add your fleet to a casual, friendly Armada
In short:
If they can adjust the price but don't, then it means the price is exactly where they want it, and until they want to have it somewhere else, it won't change.
Or, if they can adjust the price and are already doing it, then it means they were the ones who got the price where it is in the first place, so - once again - until they want the price to be somewhere else, it will stay where it is.
And if they can't adjust the price, well, then they can't and that's it.
Best comment of the thread !
It's not a true free market, though. For one, you have a cap on how much dilithium you can store and how much Zen and dilithium you can place on the exchange at one time.
Secondly, you can only buy and sell within the 5-slot bracket that the system decides to display. If I wanted to quickly sell 800.000 Zen for 250 dilithium each, for example, or place a dilithium offer at 50 dil/Zen to wait for someone else to pick it up by accident, I'd not be able to do so, it simply wouldn't sell, even if their was a corresponding offer on "the other side".
(Considering that 5-slot bracket, I give Cryptic the benefit of doubt that it's really steered by supply and demand, but it could easily be the other way around as well as they could move the 5-slot bracket up and down at their choosing. We simply have no way of knowing, there is no security and exchange commission for the dilithium/Zen trade.)
Thirdly, there is the cap. We can't go above or below a certain threshold. Not so much an issue right not, but is has been in Neverwinter and it could become one in STO in a year or two at the current rate.
So it's not so much a free market as some sort of mixed economy.
New lock box and super ships have been presented along side some lobi goodies which appear to have a fan base (mirror universe costumes) so there is a LOT of hoarding going on.
Once this frenzy calms down i expect the exchange to stabilize at roughly 270-275.
Still a bit high for my liking, but short term the best we can expect.
The exchange rate crash was deliberately caused by Cryptic, they aimed the starbase system at the largest fleets with the most whales, they knew that these people wouldn't sit back while others got to T5 first, so an absolute bloody fortune was dumped into the game, and it was the exchange rate that suffered as the whales kept undercutting each other, win win for Cryptic as the lower the rate the more zen the whales have to buy.
Once they had finished their starbase they no longer needed large amounts of dil so they removed their zen from the exchange, leaving just the wannabes and the light weights, and a low exchange rate is no use to them so it slowly rises until the next small dil sink.
This is what makes me think there is something iffy with the exchange.
At present there is 43,895 zen for sale at 310 so 13,607.450 dil is required to purchase all this up. thats a combined refining total of 1700 days.
Now say there are 136 people all with 100k dil to spend towards that 43895 Zen, thats still between them 13 days of refining to acquire 100k dil to buy all that Zen.
272 players needed for 50k still a weeks refine.
I know there are lots of acc's with vast amounts of dil and alts but they are the minority. But are there really that many players with such vast dil pools to not only buy that 43895Zen at 310 but to also clear the next level 12000k zen at 311 dil then the next, to lift the value of dil by 5-10 points within 24hrs ?. Or as we have seen over 20 points within 48hrs
Are the sellers being clever and selling so much then un-listing and re-listing at a higher rate ?.
I'm struggling to get my head around the dil required, the number of days it takes to acquire that much dil for the exchange to jump so many points.
Eh, just a random note..... I don't religiously farm dil/etc. I don't play hours a day, I don't have 1mil unrefined backlog on my characters because I run STFs constantly, etc. I just queue up some doff & admiralty assignments on my extra alts once a day, and then play whatever "main" I feel like working on. (And my gear is mk12-13 purple/violet. I don't really STF, I do story missions and seasonal events). Yes, I do have a bunch of alts, because I've been playing since 2011 and I've got alt-itis in every game I play that allows multiple characters.
So while I might not fit the def of "casual", I'm certainly not hardcore. Either as a DPS/STFer, or as a dil farmer.
I checked yesterday, how much refined dil I have spread across my 10 alts..... it was 1.8mil. And this was after exchanging for around 8k zen since last November. (And the only character with any unrefined backlog was the one who hit rank 10 on KDF admiralty two days ago.)
Yeah, there's plenty of dil floating around out there. /shrug
...of course, now I'm out of zen again, since I bought 30 keys.
----
Again, the main reason the rate has been steadily going up for the past year is that there's been a constant stream of stuff to buy for zen, that people wanted. T6 ships, lockbox, more T6 ships, Admiralty (buy old ships!), more T6 ships, lockbox.... there's been fantastic demand for zen for ages now. And the more demand there is for something, the more it's "value" increases. It's pretty straightforward.
The difference in color is to show what was payed for with real money. I.E. The silver color is the Zen somebody else sold for Dil. and Gold is well what you payed cash for. The Silver Zen is what was put BACK into the game.
I reckon once we get the majority of faction ships re-released as T6 then the number of releases might stabilise and we'll get back to some sort of normality. We're in the middle of a glut of new ships at the moment and once we get past it maybe the perceived value of zen (I.e the demand to exchange for it) will drop. Who knows.
Will we ever see the 200's again? Maybe briefly, but I doubt we'll see the 280's ever again. If we we get up towards 350 over the next week then we will not go below 300 ever again.
I agree with what several have said here. The only way down is for the central bank to flood the market with their 'reserves.' I don't see them feeling the need to do that anymore until we approach 500. Then I do think they would step in.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
I find the fervor of those who consider themselves as the "have nots" to be... Intriguing.
Wait for 490 or so mate. As I've said often today is the best day to buy zen because tomorrow it will be higher. For you today is the worst day to buy dilithium!
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
/rofl the Naïveté
then we will get T7 ships lol...
Damn skippy. Already done that on my end.
I love rampant currency speculation.