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<$ Toward Real Control of EC Inflation <$
repetitiveepic
Member Posts: 6,549 Arc User
@borticuscryptic today posted on twitter that he had designed the new 'salvage' system with a mind toward reducing or controlling EC inflation in STO, by means of incentivizing people to do something besides vendor their vendor trash.
This is a fine first step, but wrenching real control over EC inflation cannot rely only modifying the creation of EC, it must at the end of the day focus on destroying some of the very sizable amount of EC already in circulation.
This of course can never be accomplished by anything that players trade between themselves. No lockbox prize or promotion can reduce the amount of EC in the game. Something new is required. Something people can buy from NPCs for large sums of ec.
Most people would agree that the most gameplay-neutral items are cosmetic ones. Items that only affect how characters look, not their 'powers' or what they can do to enemies.
The obvious solution, therefore, is to sell desirable cosmetic items for straight EC, large sums of straight EC.
Some obvious candidates are special clothing, light and particle effects for toons or their ships, or cosmetic devices on the model of the Subspace Party Amplifier. Perhaps a Q Throne you can float around social zones in.
The ultimate item in my view would be a sort of 'senior officer decoration', a device which a player could equip that when activated caused nearby npcs and player characters to turn and salute him. To bring symmetry to the game, it could have a secondary effect of 'nullifying' this same function. So one 'senior officer' would not salute another when it was activated. The symmetry works like this: for each person who wants the device for its explicit function, there is a corresponding anti-person who wants it just as much for its secondary effect.
This idea is not new, but it has so far been incomplete. The complete solution is to add an element of chance to acquiring these cosmetic items.
Consider an NPC that sells cosmetic item packs for 1 million ec each. The pack has a fixed chance to drop a token that can be redeemed in the Cosmetic Item Store.
The top items like the veteran officer device could cost 1 epic token, which could have a drop chance on the order of 1/2000, sinking 2 billion ec out of the game, on average, for each item won. Other less desirable items would cost tokens that had a better chance of dropping.
Cryptic well knows that they get better outcomes when they add an element of chance to things. Chance also satisfies the condition of perfect fairness, everyone has a -chance- to get any item, and people who want it more have a better chance than people who want it less.
To be effective, the cosmetic items would need to be so desirable that people would buy zen and convert it to EC on the market in order to get them. The dilex can only go down when there are people willing to buy zen to get dil. in exactly the same way, inflated ec can only deflate when people -want- to burn ec rather than trade it to other players for tradable items.
A chance-based mechanism for highly desirable cosmetic items would be a strong curb to inflation and would, in my view, cause a marked deflation in EC, making all items cost less ec for everyone.
This is a fine first step, but wrenching real control over EC inflation cannot rely only modifying the creation of EC, it must at the end of the day focus on destroying some of the very sizable amount of EC already in circulation.
This of course can never be accomplished by anything that players trade between themselves. No lockbox prize or promotion can reduce the amount of EC in the game. Something new is required. Something people can buy from NPCs for large sums of ec.
Most people would agree that the most gameplay-neutral items are cosmetic ones. Items that only affect how characters look, not their 'powers' or what they can do to enemies.
The obvious solution, therefore, is to sell desirable cosmetic items for straight EC, large sums of straight EC.
Some obvious candidates are special clothing, light and particle effects for toons or their ships, or cosmetic devices on the model of the Subspace Party Amplifier. Perhaps a Q Throne you can float around social zones in.
The ultimate item in my view would be a sort of 'senior officer decoration', a device which a player could equip that when activated caused nearby npcs and player characters to turn and salute him. To bring symmetry to the game, it could have a secondary effect of 'nullifying' this same function. So one 'senior officer' would not salute another when it was activated. The symmetry works like this: for each person who wants the device for its explicit function, there is a corresponding anti-person who wants it just as much for its secondary effect.
This idea is not new, but it has so far been incomplete. The complete solution is to add an element of chance to acquiring these cosmetic items.
Consider an NPC that sells cosmetic item packs for 1 million ec each. The pack has a fixed chance to drop a token that can be redeemed in the Cosmetic Item Store.
The top items like the veteran officer device could cost 1 epic token, which could have a drop chance on the order of 1/2000, sinking 2 billion ec out of the game, on average, for each item won. Other less desirable items would cost tokens that had a better chance of dropping.
Cryptic well knows that they get better outcomes when they add an element of chance to things. Chance also satisfies the condition of perfect fairness, everyone has a -chance- to get any item, and people who want it more have a better chance than people who want it less.
To be effective, the cosmetic items would need to be so desirable that people would buy zen and convert it to EC on the market in order to get them. The dilex can only go down when there are people willing to buy zen to get dil. in exactly the same way, inflated ec can only deflate when people -want- to burn ec rather than trade it to other players for tradable items.
A chance-based mechanism for highly desirable cosmetic items would be a strong curb to inflation and would, in my view, cause a marked deflation in EC, making all items cost less ec for everyone.
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Comments
Maybe a box that hands out tokens for things that already exist (minor lock box items?), or maybe selling you a Phoenix pack for a million EC?