(3) Lock Box Keys ?? Has any one noticed the Exchange price for Keys has been stagnant for what a year ?? @4mill and holding; Surely they aren't driving the market !!
I'm sorry...but BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You think that keys jumping to 4 mil in recent times is stagnated prices....yeah...that right there kinda ruined all your credibility.
The word "Stagnant" may not have been the best word to use. Averaged would have been better. If you "average" the price over the year, my statement remains "Valid" at "about" 4 mil and holding. 'nuff said...
IMHO one way to bring it down would be to increase the refining cap from the current 8 k to a more realistic 16k a day. The excess Dilth would very quickly be eaten up by fleet projects or conversion to zen. I have so much unrefined ore on my toons its sickening. I easily gather way more dilth a day then the 8k capthrough farming and mission rewards.
More and more people complain about the Dil Cap. Increasing the cap will only bring more dil to the exchange for more Zen, to buy More Keys, to sell on the exchange, or take pot-shots at the Lock Box Lottery/gambling geni.
People with "tons of dil sitting around" are obviously NOT donating it to fleet projects. Across my 9 toons I have over 1million Dil on 3, and at leat 600k on the rest, and after 5 years of playing, I keep about 5K unrefined on each toon. All 9 of my toons are in Fleets, and they all have over 1.5mil Fleet credits.
Want Zen, then whip out the REAL MONEY.. Don't want to, or your folks won't let you spend Real Money, then Dil is the only alternative. IMHO, the ONLY reason dil has any "perceived" value, is that it is the ONLY OTHER way, besides REAL MONEY, to buy Zen. And the "percieived" value of ZEN is based on what people will pay.
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..
Dilithium Exchange - Working as Intended....
Guy if your fleet is like ours all our projects are filled and done so yeah nothing to donate dilth to any more. So dilth just builds up and with a cap at refining raw undrefined is a massive srocklpile that cant be used until its refined and with an 8k a day cap on refining it builds up faster then you can refine it. So yeah I have tones of unrefined dilth that I can't use until it's refined but at 8k a day cap it just grows.
usually...about the time winter wonderland rolls around, the dilithium rates tank, the past two years, not counting this one, this has been the norm. this year? seriously off the rails as a result with the timing of the events.
Murphy's laws:
1- Murphy’s Law tells us that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
2- And anything that does go wrong will get progressively worse.
3- And if you survive the first two laws it’s time to panic.
see folks,
cause if you can PAY- to avoid hundreds and HUNDREDS of hours of in game grinding... by A swipe of a credit card...
that's pay to win-
and if the game makes the grind, so long, so pointless, that the OBVIOUS choice is to just swipe a credit card...
that's a crappy pay to win game-
Eh. That sounds more like "pay to convenience". A real p2w game is one of those Korean-sourced free-for-all PvP games. With "insurance" (only purchasable in the cash shop) to keep from losing your gear on death.
With auto-health-rechargers (only in the cash shop) to keep you on an even footing with the other pvpers who have them.
With absolutely-required crafting/enchanting boosters (only in the cash shop) to keep your gear from being destroyed when you try to up it to Epic Mk 14.
With best-in-slot gear, only in the cash shop.
And no way to get stuff from the shop other than spending actual cash (no exchange, or an exchange with no limits, so that only the best of the best players can hope to get any currency from it).
Oh, yeah, and since they're Korean-style MMOs, their "grinds" make STO look like a casual walk in the park.
Really not seeing what's worth all the drama.
(oh, and "dedicated teams, without refine limits/etc" is one reason why Neverwinter's economy was so screwed - uber-dungeoneers farming tons of great loot from the endgame, and selling it on the auction house for refined diamonds... the super rich, got super-richer. And everyone else was left in the dust. It was great, two expansions into the game, to have an exchange pegged at 500 for months, with so little zen for sale that it took 2-3 days for your offer to go through. No idea what it's like now, haven't played since Icewind Dale.)
Or this game could be like star wars the old republic where it's pay to survive where alternatives like dilithium are unheard of and f2ps are regarded as homeless bums
Captain Joseph Riker, U.S.S. Odyssey==General V'Mar, U.S.S. Blackwater-A==Admiral Laura Holmes, U.S.S. Forward Unto Dawn Grand Master Thotok, son of Koloth, I.K.S. Sompek==Dahar Master Shanara, I.K.S. Balth'Quv Admiral R'Tath V'Tirex, R.R.W. Dhael Glohha'enh==Commander Ta'eth Korval, R.R.W Hachae ch'Rhian==Admiral Vranuk, R.R.W Delevhas
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.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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Since cryptic is already using the "Exclusivity" excuse for throwing out the lockboxes or any other previous ships... Why not let set ships and consoles be sell able to players by players using Dil instead. Just make sure that the only way for that Ship to be resold is complete with the desire console.
That way even new players can have those ships and those who don't want them anymore for newer ships could just sell them. I think most new players or those who have missed those ships would buy them and Dill would actually be worth something. Also how about the ability to buy other faction's ship via the ferengi using Latinum. And Dil can be exchange for Latinum.
For example I'm a KDF and want that sweet Scimmy I could buy one from the ferengi. But the price should be high enough as not to let Cryptic lose money on all of this but still viable for players to grind for Dil->Latinum.
Also I would like to suggest that Latinum should also be used on another way. Making Fleet Projects much faster by dropping a ton of it reducing the time for it to complete.
Adding actual Fleet to Fleet sieges between Fleet factions that would make the Starbase take damage and can only be repaired by using Dil and Latinum would make it more interesting bring a bit of PvP back in the game. But for those who can burn money an alternative to quick repair instead of using Dil would be Zen repair. I wont go on to details since it's just on my head right now.
Anyway I respect everyone who would think this is a stupid idea but hey it's just an idea. No harm on trying to suggest it right?
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.
I’m not admitting anything because I don’t need to. I play the game for my entertainment in correlation to how much time I can or want to afford for it. My desk of characters is balanced accordingly and makes different approaches to the same contend possible without me ending up bored.
In short I have 9 different characters because I want to play 9 different characters.
Has it ever occurred to you that 9 toons simply need 9 times more Dil than 1 toon and that for the same amount of progression?
It’s the way this game is designed and your suggestion works in direct contradiction towards that and is thereby bad. It will be for as long as reputation gear, fleet gear, gear upgrades as well as lobi/lock box stuff aren’t account wide unlocks. And even then because differnt stuff will still cost.
Lol also, I’m not crying. I just managed to do fine under the current game rules which does not stop me to point out BAD ideas in forums.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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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.
Thoughts are that there is too much dil flooding the market causing the price to rise. So you want dil to be harder to obtain so there's less of it readily available ?.
So basically a Nerf to dil rewards ?.
Now usually the rarity of an item is what adds to the value not something that is readily available, correct me if i'm wrong with this statement.
Perhaps its all the Nice Events and Promotions (Thank you Cryptic/PWE) that offer nice rewards that can be fast tracked by the purchase of Zen. I.E the Special Event ships, or R&D Promo ships. Or Z-Store sales that has made the desire for Zen cause an inflation in the market not the actual amount of dil floating around.
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.
Thoughts are that there is too much dil flooding the market causing the price to rise. So you want dil to be harder to obtain so there's less of it readily available ?.
So basically a Nerf to dil rewards ?.
Now usually the rarity of an item is what adds to the value not something that is readily available, correct me if i'm wrong with this statement.
Perhaps its all the Nice Events and Promotions (Thank you Cryptic/PWE) that offer nice rewards that can be fast tracked by the purchase of Zen. I.E the Special Event ships, or R&D Promo ships. Or Z-Store sales that has made the desire for Zen cause an inflation in the market not the actual amount of dil floating around.
This was my take too. Surely if less DIL is available, then it is going to be rarer and worth more zen per unit?
And if people don't buy at the high rate, surely sellers will eventually drop it to a price it will sell at?
I don't use the Dil Exchange so I may be missing something here though.
Nerfing dilithium rewards is definitely not the answer. That just cuts people with no stockpile off at the knees.
I honestly couldn't tell you what the solution is. Dilithium is down like Gasoline is. It's great for people buying gas and dilithium, sucks for anyone selling it.
Cryptic has no reason to fix it. Our market misfortune is their profit. Many newer players don't even realize there's a problem. I started playing at the tail end of Season 5. Dilithium was @76. It had stabilized at around 150 for a good long while. After Delta Rising though...it was just a steady march to where it is now.
You'd basically need someone with a metric crapton of zen to sell cheap for an extended period and crash the market to trigger a reset. So without any generous rich folks trying to Mr. Robot the dilithium market for TRIBBLE and giggles or a worthwhile dilithium sink, this is the condition of business and it isn't changing anytime soon.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
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
Captain Joseph Riker, U.S.S. Odyssey==General V'Mar, U.S.S. Blackwater-A==Admiral Laura Holmes, U.S.S. Forward Unto Dawn Grand Master Thotok, son of Koloth, I.K.S. Sompek==Dahar Master Shanara, I.K.S. Balth'Quv Admiral R'Tath V'Tirex, R.R.W. Dhael Glohha'enh==Commander Ta'eth Korval, R.R.W Hachae ch'Rhian==Admiral Vranuk, R.R.W Delevhas
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)
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.
Comments
Guy if your fleet is like ours all our projects are filled and done so yeah nothing to donate dilth to any more. So dilth just builds up and with a cap at refining raw undrefined is a massive srocklpile that cant be used until its refined and with an 8k a day cap on refining it builds up faster then you can refine it. So yeah I have tones of unrefined dilth that I can't use until it's refined but at 8k a day cap it just grows.
1- Murphy’s Law tells us that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
2- And anything that does go wrong will get progressively worse.
3- And if you survive the first two laws it’s time to panic.
Eh. That sounds more like "pay to convenience". A real p2w game is one of those Korean-sourced free-for-all PvP games. With "insurance" (only purchasable in the cash shop) to keep from losing your gear on death.
With auto-health-rechargers (only in the cash shop) to keep you on an even footing with the other pvpers who have them.
With absolutely-required crafting/enchanting boosters (only in the cash shop) to keep your gear from being destroyed when you try to up it to Epic Mk 14.
With best-in-slot gear, only in the cash shop.
And no way to get stuff from the shop other than spending actual cash (no exchange, or an exchange with no limits, so that only the best of the best players can hope to get any currency from it).
Oh, yeah, and since they're Korean-style MMOs, their "grinds" make STO look like a casual walk in the park.
Really not seeing what's worth all the drama.
(oh, and "dedicated teams, without refine limits/etc" is one reason why Neverwinter's economy was so screwed - uber-dungeoneers farming tons of great loot from the endgame, and selling it on the auction house for refined diamonds... the super rich, got super-richer. And everyone else was left in the dust. It was great, two expansions into the game, to have an exchange pegged at 500 for months, with so little zen for sale that it took 2-3 days for your offer to go through. No idea what it's like now, haven't played since Icewind Dale.)
Grand Master Thotok, son of Koloth, I.K.S. Sompek==Dahar Master Shanara, I.K.S. Balth'Quv
Admiral R'Tath V'Tirex, R.R.W. Dhael Glohha'enh==Commander Ta'eth Korval, R.R.W Hachae ch'Rhian==Admiral Vranuk, R.R.W Delevhas
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.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Since cryptic is already using the "Exclusivity" excuse for throwing out the lockboxes or any other previous ships... Why not let set ships and consoles be sell able to players by players using Dil instead. Just make sure that the only way for that Ship to be resold is complete with the desire console.
That way even new players can have those ships and those who don't want them anymore for newer ships could just sell them. I think most new players or those who have missed those ships would buy them and Dill would actually be worth something. Also how about the ability to buy other faction's ship via the ferengi using Latinum. And Dil can be exchange for Latinum.
For example I'm a KDF and want that sweet Scimmy I could buy one from the ferengi. But the price should be high enough as not to let Cryptic lose money on all of this but still viable for players to grind for Dil->Latinum.
Also I would like to suggest that Latinum should also be used on another way. Making Fleet Projects much faster by dropping a ton of it reducing the time for it to complete.
Adding actual Fleet to Fleet sieges between Fleet factions that would make the Starbase take damage and can only be repaired by using Dil and Latinum would make it more interesting bring a bit of PvP back in the game. But for those who can burn money an alternative to quick repair instead of using Dil would be Zen repair. I wont go on to details since it's just on my head right now.
Anyway I respect everyone who would think this is a stupid idea but hey it's just an idea. No harm on trying to suggest it right?
I’m not admitting anything because I don’t need to. I play the game for my entertainment in correlation to how much time I can or want to afford for it. My desk of characters is balanced accordingly and makes different approaches to the same contend possible without me ending up bored.
In short I have 9 different characters because I want to play 9 different characters.
Has it ever occurred to you that 9 toons simply need 9 times more Dil than 1 toon and that for the same amount of progression?
It’s the way this game is designed and your suggestion works in direct contradiction towards that and is thereby bad. It will be for as long as reputation gear, fleet gear, gear upgrades as well as lobi/lock box stuff aren’t account wide unlocks. And even then because differnt stuff will still cost.
Lol also, I’m not crying. I just managed to do fine under the current game rules which does not stop me to point out BAD ideas in forums.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Thoughts are that there is too much dil flooding the market causing the price to rise. So you want dil to be harder to obtain so there's less of it readily available ?.
So basically a Nerf to dil rewards ?.
Now usually the rarity of an item is what adds to the value not something that is readily available, correct me if i'm wrong with this statement.
Perhaps its all the Nice Events and Promotions (Thank you Cryptic/PWE) that offer nice rewards that can be fast tracked by the purchase of Zen. I.E the Special Event ships, or R&D Promo ships. Or Z-Store sales that has made the desire for Zen cause an inflation in the market not the actual amount of dil floating around.
This was my take too. Surely if less DIL is available, then it is going to be rarer and worth more zen per unit?
And if people don't buy at the high rate, surely sellers will eventually drop it to a price it will sell at?
I don't use the Dil Exchange so I may be missing something here though.
I honestly couldn't tell you what the solution is. Dilithium is down like Gasoline is. It's great for people buying gas and dilithium, sucks for anyone selling it.
Cryptic has no reason to fix it. Our market misfortune is their profit. Many newer players don't even realize there's a problem. I started playing at the tail end of Season 5. Dilithium was @76. It had stabilized at around 150 for a good long while. After Delta Rising though...it was just a steady march to where it is now.
You'd basically need someone with a metric crapton of zen to sell cheap for an extended period and crash the market to trigger a reset. So without any generous rich folks trying to Mr. Robot the dilithium market for TRIBBLE and giggles or a worthwhile dilithium sink, this is the condition of business and it isn't changing anytime soon.
Grand Master Thotok, son of Koloth, I.K.S. Sompek==Dahar Master Shanara, I.K.S. Balth'Quv
Admiral R'Tath V'Tirex, R.R.W. Dhael Glohha'enh==Commander Ta'eth Korval, R.R.W Hachae ch'Rhian==Admiral Vranuk, R.R.W Delevhas
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