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Coming Soon! Energy Credit Cap Adjustments (PC and Console)
borticuscryptic
Member Posts: 2,478 Cryptic Developer
Star Trek Online has grown and changed significantly over the years, and its in-game economy is no exception to this. These days, it's easy to find players at various levels of wealth struggling with a few aspects of the energy credit economy. For example, players without the energy credit cap unlock have found that some items have grown just out of reach. Meanwhile, other wealthier players want to sell their hard-to-get items for more than the Exchange allows.
In an attempt to address these preferences, and to help keep Star Trek Online accessible and fun for as many players as possible, we are increasing the energy credit cap for all players, increasing the exchange maximum sell price, and increasing the amount of energy credits the account bank can hold. These changes will appear in a patch coming to both PC and Console very soon. We know the economy's health in Star Trek Online is important to keep a close eye on, so we'll be watching the results of these changes to see if additional adjustments may be needed.
Here is a breakdown of before/after for these upcoming changes:
Exchange Maximum Listing Price
• WAS = 750,000,000
• NOW = 1,500,000,000
Energy Credit Cap for Gold Players on PC and All Console Players
• WAS = 1,000,000,000
• NOW = 2,000,000,000
Energy Credit Cap for Silver Players on PC
• WAS = 10,000,000
• NOW = 15,000,000
Account Bank Energy Credit Cap for All Players
• WAS = 500,000,000
• NOW = 1,000,000,000
Along with the above changes, we’ve made some relevant UI tweaks to allow for these larger values with fewer faults or formatting errors.
** NOTE: The above changes are subject to change
In an attempt to address these preferences, and to help keep Star Trek Online accessible and fun for as many players as possible, we are increasing the energy credit cap for all players, increasing the exchange maximum sell price, and increasing the amount of energy credits the account bank can hold. These changes will appear in a patch coming to both PC and Console very soon. We know the economy's health in Star Trek Online is important to keep a close eye on, so we'll be watching the results of these changes to see if additional adjustments may be needed.
Here is a breakdown of before/after for these upcoming changes:
Exchange Maximum Listing Price
• WAS = 750,000,000
• NOW = 1,500,000,000
Energy Credit Cap for Gold Players on PC and All Console Players
• WAS = 1,000,000,000
• NOW = 2,000,000,000
Energy Credit Cap for Silver Players on PC
• WAS = 10,000,000
• NOW = 15,000,000
Account Bank Energy Credit Cap for All Players
• WAS = 500,000,000
• NOW = 1,000,000,000
Along with the above changes, we’ve made some relevant UI tweaks to allow for these larger values with fewer faults or formatting errors.
** NOTE: The above changes are subject to change
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
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Comments
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
If it was significantly higher, they wouldn't have only increased it to what it is now. The hard-coded limit is around 3 to 4 Billion IRC. Why invite the chance to cause issues by going towards the hard-coded limit that you would obviously ask for!?
If an when the game becomes 64-bit, there won't be issues for a short time, until people find the limit and inflate the prices.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
What about boosting that to 10k per day.
Every MMO goes through & has to deal with this economic situation. An MMO's economy grows, inflation hits a little or a lot, there's natural spikes & drops based upon supply & demand, game-play, & also artificial market manipulation too, then eventually the economy has such disparity that only the players that have played a long time have enough currency to compete market-wise & then new players slowly stop playing because they can see the writing on the wall.
It's already happening with even more common game items from Mk II through the mid-levels at high prices for new players but if an already established player you can probably bank-roll or craft the items for a new character. Then a significant drop in price back to a more normal price range for Mk XI-XII until Very Rare.
Thank goodness STO is a pretty generous game, if not the most generous of MMOs, even for it's free-to-play players. Most mission rewards are very good & can be earned with just an investment of time with patience. I'm glad Cryptic is taking a measured approach towards this dilemma.
You and I both I'm sure would agree supply and demand can be and is often the major factor driving the in game economy. A key issue this game suffers from is there is too much of an EC supply with nothing to remove excess EC from the game. Phoenix Prize packs do a fairly good job at removing some of the excess dilithium from the game which keeps the zen-dilithium exchange rate at fairly reasonable levels. EC has no such equivalent which is one reason you see the hyper inflation of the game today. All this will do is allow even more EC supply to enter the game causing further dilution of the EC supply and even greater inflation of various prices within the game.
Increasing the exchange limit to keep it in line with the current cap, that I actually agreed with as if someone is able to earn the EC cap in a single sale then more power to them. Allowing people to carry additional EC does not solve the problem we have no and will at best extend that problem out to a later date. Eventually the excess supply of EC MUST be addressed as was done with the excess dilithium supply. Increasing the supply one can hold does without adding an EC sink only makes the problem as a whole worse.
In real life no there is no limit to how much an account can hold. The difference here is that there is a hard coded limit as to how much a person can hold. This limit is due to technological limitations otherwise the limit could be whatever the devs and players wanted it to be. Depending on the item there actually is a limit to how much a store can charge for something as there are laws to prevent price gouging. An example being the aids pill fairly recently. The pill was affordable for most people yet the guy decided to jack the price up tremendously potentially putting alot of lives in danger. They were smacked hard by government for price gouging as a result. Price gouging is not present in all cases but there are items that do have a limit to them. The best example of this though would be loans. Regarding banks and personal loans you can't legally charge interest above a certain percentage as it's considered usury. There are limits in place in certain items, though you would be correct this is not always the case.
Using the car example, someone can ask that trillion dollars all they want but no one is going to pay that price. In order to receive said price you must be able to justify said price and cost to people. If someone is going to charge $1trillion for a car, there needs to be roughly $1trillion worth of car there or something to justify the cost. Caps on their own do not limit price no, that you are correct on. However when paired with a sink of some type then a cap as well as the sink can and will reduce prices.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
i have and legitimate concern and opinion and i will not be silenced!
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
The Dilithium Economy is touchier than the EC Economy. Any influx of Refined Dilithium in any large quantities drives the exchange rate UP. This is usually seen a few days after people start finishing DL flooding events like Mirror. More noticeable after Crystalline. Increasing the refine cap will flood the market with supply, driving prices up unnecessarily.
The volume of the building in which you are trying to put your money.
Yes. It is called 'price control'. It was originally created in the year 301 by Roman Emperor Diocletian in his Edict of Maximum Prices. Although, the idea did not really gain wide scale traction until 1793 when it was implemented by France's Committee of Public Safety.
Were you under the impression that chocolate bars fell in to the same price range by coincidence?
^^ Everything he said!
Co-Leader of Serenity's Grasp
And inflation ist most certainly NOT caused by EC cap increase. That's the most ridicoulus statement I've ever heard. Like in real life, if you were to limit all personal bank accounts to to capped at 100'000$, inflation would be a thing of the past.
Yeah I know a guy has been a few years now since that mail fiasco where there was no adequate way to store doffs other than the mail system. So they basically destroyed hundreds of trillions worth of doffs from this player which I doubt he'd ever come back after that. Its mainly to cater to a certain group of players and not the entire community of players when it boils down to it.
Although when they nerfed that contraband method some of us in KDF used for so long and had heavily invested into it they could have solved the problem making it account bound and put in a sliding scale on just dropping it all at once and adjust the time until delivering it to make it easier but they just decided to put another nail in the coffin especially to the long time kdf players.
Promo ships are using master key currency market which limits their sales to trading channel. This cause them to try to rush the sale and lower prices of the items to actual market prices and not speculative prices.
With the increase of the exchange posting limit, promo ships that are not on the exchange at prices between 750M and 1.5B will now actually be on the exchange. What does that mean? It means that everything can be done out in the open now. Prices can be measured ACCURATELY instead of just guessed at in private trades.
It will be harder to swindle and harder to get swindled. This is a great move, and anybody saying otherwise just doesn't know jack or is probably a rip-off artist that's pissed off.