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STO Money Mistakes!
nabreeki
Member Posts: 2,657 Arc User
There are certain threads that keep popping up in different iterations: "...such and such ship or item costs WAY too much ec! It's not affordable for anyone save the uber rich, a cabal of close-knit players that control the market."
When players offer advice on how to increase the EC flow without opening their IRL wallet (or perhaps a stray $20 to get started), or if people offer advice on how to play the economy in STO, there is often resistance -- sometimes open hostility -- tossed back at those helpful players.
I think a lot of players resist the idea of playing the exchange market out of a fear of losing money. That happens, a lot, to all of us. A lot of players who have done well in the STO economy have done so through trial and error, and many of us have made some horrific mistakes that have cost us many millions, even billions. I'm on the low end of the space billionaire club, but I have made mistakes that have cost me billions of ec, both in real EC and in potential earnings.
Let's talk about some of our biggest money mistakes in STO!
1. I was hosting a small giveaway several years back, and a participant won the grand price (a popular ship in its time worth around 400m back then). This player won a scavenger hunt and was in a different sector completely. They wanted their prize immediately; I asked them to come back to the party and open a trade window; they refused and started accusing me of false advertising. In order to stem the whining, I sent the prize in the mail. I misspelled their name, they didn't get the prize, and the complaining reached a frenzy. I only had about 800m at that point, so I spent what was half my total ec on another ship to send them. If you count the cost of the ship sent to the wrong person, I dropped a whopping 2/3 of my total net worth on a mistake!
2. I bought 2 Vonph (1 I still use) for 700m each, hoping to sell one. The price increased to 1bill, but I took a long break from STO. When I came back, the Vonph price absolutely crashed, and I was again out hundreds of millions.
Share your dumb EC mistakes!
When players offer advice on how to increase the EC flow without opening their IRL wallet (or perhaps a stray $20 to get started), or if people offer advice on how to play the economy in STO, there is often resistance -- sometimes open hostility -- tossed back at those helpful players.
I think a lot of players resist the idea of playing the exchange market out of a fear of losing money. That happens, a lot, to all of us. A lot of players who have done well in the STO economy have done so through trial and error, and many of us have made some horrific mistakes that have cost us many millions, even billions. I'm on the low end of the space billionaire club, but I have made mistakes that have cost me billions of ec, both in real EC and in potential earnings.
Let's talk about some of our biggest money mistakes in STO!
1. I was hosting a small giveaway several years back, and a participant won the grand price (a popular ship in its time worth around 400m back then). This player won a scavenger hunt and was in a different sector completely. They wanted their prize immediately; I asked them to come back to the party and open a trade window; they refused and started accusing me of false advertising. In order to stem the whining, I sent the prize in the mail. I misspelled their name, they didn't get the prize, and the complaining reached a frenzy. I only had about 800m at that point, so I spent what was half my total ec on another ship to send them. If you count the cost of the ship sent to the wrong person, I dropped a whopping 2/3 of my total net worth on a mistake!
2. I bought 2 Vonph (1 I still use) for 700m each, hoping to sell one. The price increased to 1bill, but I took a long break from STO. When I came back, the Vonph price absolutely crashed, and I was again out hundreds of millions.
Share your dumb EC mistakes!
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Comments
Not converting all of my EC into keys before Admiralty cut its value in half.
While it wasn't technically a loss, I do kind of regret selling the Tuffli right after I got it instead of hanging on to it.
The Quas had me concerned for a while, but I was able to eventually make a decent return on that investment.
I suspect the disconnect for most people is that most of the equipment in the game is earned through gameplay, not sitting infront of a market terminal and abstracting the landscape of the EC economy. I do think the Risa favor grind is a good compromise between the two paradigms though. It's a shame the winter event market isn't as finely tuned. I wouldn't mind seeing the winter commodities consolidated into a singular common and/or rare item while conversely tying their acquisition exclusively to active, periodic gameplay(it would breathe life back into the various minigames).
The dil exchange hasn't changed by a percentile in comparison with pre-event prices, it used to respond to the increased supply of dil.
Before you know it, you forget a zero and stuff like that
I've also sat on lockbox ships too long and watched their prices drop, which means you either rush for a sale to get some of your cash back or end up sitting on the thing playing the long game. Sadly you lose some of the time.
I also wasted dilithium on useless stuff for characters I don't even play. Translating that into EC would also be hundrets of millions.
-Sold a stack of 10 keys for the price of one, because I didn't check that the mouse click to select 'one to sell' had been accepted, and just clicked 'post. Of course, as soon as I saw it happen, I tried to remove the item from sale, but they'd already been bought.
-Bought a load of Vaadwaur anchor drones for several million, but then the price tanked. Pretty much gave them away in the end.
-Bought a load of Herald heavy beam projectors, the price tanked, and as above, I pretty mich gave them away to be rid of them.
-Bought some keys for about 5.6 just before Season 13 was released, then the price tanked, and I panic-sold for about 4.9, fearing the price would just go lower and not recover.
-Had been flipping Dreadnoughts for a reasonable profit, then had to take care of some personal business which kept me off a pc for 10 days. When I got home, the dreadnought had sold, but the price have also gone up since then, meaning that, and outfitting alts with the good stuff, means that I can't immediately buy another to resume the cycle.
But thems the breaks, and what makes the exchange fun
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Yeah that has caught me out a few times too.
Something new hits the game and i figure i can make some EC here as it looks good and attractive on paper. Then the exchange price bombs and i'm left with something nobody will touch (I'M LOOKING AT YOU SPHERE BUILDER SHIPS!). Finally got 'em shifted but lost a bit on their value.
You can't win 'em all though.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
I had a similar experience a few weeks ago. I needed some more lobi so I sold a Narcine, knowing that it would be better to wait a bit. But I can be very impatient so I sold it anyway.
Not really mistakes since I knew full well what I was doing, but it did cost me a lot of EC. About 40m for the Narcine, and I could have saved a couple hundred million EC if I had waited half a year or so for the Vonph.
I bought spare T5 jem'hadar dreadies when they were retired, still waiting for the price to go up. Apparently all the collectors in the game already have them.
All the usual "invested in ships before infbox came," "sat on kemo then it was nerfed," etc of course. Every trader has those.
And yes, I did buy my Vonph and Acheros back when they were actually worth something, but at least I didn't have any spares left when they tanked.
I have liked every rare ship I have gotten this way. And even when I sell some I don't have the buyers regret that gave me. And I both wanted and like the Wells. Just not that way somehow. .
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
bought JHAS for 500 mill way too late haha...
Delta rising was a rude awakening. My TBC moment of STO. At least admiralty brought back some dignity as T5 ships are worth something.
It probably means he believes no one has ever had to spend more than $50 in getting keys to open Lockboxes to win the ship via the 'Lockbox Lottery' (Yeas, he's greatly deluded if he thinks any High-End Lockbox ship will be awarded for $50 in actual keys. Yes, you have guys willing after 10 ties and others NOT getting what they want after 500-1000 tries - the RNG seed is indeed random.)
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
People resist because whining about the system means the system is bad. BUT if they admitted that "Hey, I can't be arsed to sit in front of the Ex for 2-3 hours every 3 days to make a ridicolous amount of profit..." then being poor would all of a sudden be their fault.
There are 2 kinds of people. Some of us learn from their mistakes and others'. While the other part does not like to be called an idiot.
Lesson learned. But I guess its not that big a deal. 10 keys is like pocket change.
No major investment blunders here, other then not having patience on Cell ships.
Had 2 of them at one point.
They're now 3x the price I sold them at.
All things considered, I've faired pretty well in general. Especially in the R&D console market.
We come in peace, SHOOT TO KILL!