sounds a little like the end-of-dungeon/skirmish chests in neverwinter...where if you don't like the results, you can pay (or spend a reroll token which only VIP members get) to change the results
Never played Neverwinter but that's essentially how I would expect it to work, in WoW you can buy two tokens per week and carry a max of five at a time, and each time you kill a dungeon, raid, or world boss you have the option of spending a token to get a bonus loot roll. Obviously though loot is MUCH more important in WoW than it is in STO since in WoW all the best items are loot drops, while in STO loot is practically useless, which is why TFO loot would need to be revamped first.
This thread is mammoth, and I haven't read it, so I imagine this has already been suggested, but: Use EC to account unlock Promo/Lobi/Lockbox ships perhaps? I'm guessing Cryptic and PWE don't want to give us that for free via Tier 6 Mastery like the Jemmie ships (though they should as acquiring them is rather dear in terms of real-world cash), but maybe this is a possible avenue to explore?
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
I'm guessing Cryptic and PWE don't want to give us that for free via Tier 6 Mastery like the Jemmie ships (though they should as acquiring them is rather dear in terms of real-world cash), but maybe this is a possible avenue to explore?
Actually... word on the grapevine is that Cryptic is actually considering account unlock lockbox/promo, but is in the process of gathering player habit data and other forms of data before making a final decision.
I'm guessing Cryptic and PWE don't want to give us that for free via Tier 6 Mastery like the Jemmie ships (though they should as acquiring them is rather dear in terms of real-world cash), but maybe this is a possible avenue to explore?
Actually... word on the grapevine is that Cryptic is actually considering account unlock lockbox/promo, but is in the process of gathering player habit data and other forms of data before making a final decision.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
I do hope that whatever nebulous data they are collecting does make them account unlock, because by god that has been one of the most wanted things since well... since lockbox and promo ships first came out.
well, when they get around to reviewing MY habit data, they should notice i have not bought a lockbox ship in years...and i will not until they make them account-wide - or at least their traits and console...i'll settle for that
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!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
well, when they get around to reviewing MY habit data, they should notice i have not bought a lockbox ship in years...and i will not until they make them account-wide - or at least their traits and console...i'll settle for that
I've only ever gotten 2 ships out of boxes. The rest I got with ECs off the Exchange.
I'm guessing Cryptic and PWE don't want to give us that for free via Tier 6 Mastery like the Jemmie ships (though they should as acquiring them is rather dear in terms of real-world cash), but maybe this is a possible avenue to explore?
Actually... word on the grapevine is that Cryptic is actually considering account unlock lockbox/promo, but is in the process of gathering player habit data and other forms of data before making a final decision.
Oh I know, I watched that Twitch stream. But, statistics can be manipulated and viewed from whatever point-of-view you wish to in order to arrive at one's intended conclusion. I can only say that if I could open a T'Liss Temporal Warbird on a Romulan or a Disco D7 on a Klingon or Klingon-aligned captain, they'd get more money from me because I'd play more than 2 characters as the baby-whale that I am.
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
I'm guessing Cryptic and PWE don't want to give us that for free via Tier 6 Mastery like the Jemmie ships (though they should as acquiring them is rather dear in terms of real-world cash), but maybe this is a possible avenue to explore?
Actually... word on the grapevine is that Cryptic is actually considering account unlock lockbox/promo, but is in the process of gathering player habit data and other forms of data before making a final decision.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
I do hope that whatever nebulous data they are collecting does make them account unlock, because by god that has been one of the most wanted things since well... since lockbox and promo ships first came out.
I'm not a big fan of Borticus. He and Ricossa are bad remnants of the old guard that need to GTFO honestly. We need to get some new blood in the dev department. Jette being in charge of ships is good, and I'm liking our new EP honestly, despite the bad start. He's no Daniel Stahl, but he's leagues better than Ricossa and D'Angelo, though that's not sayin much TBQH.
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
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!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I'm not a big fan of Borticus. He and Ricossa are bad remnants of the old guard
Lol, Bort isn't old guard.... also he's not the sort of guy to actually care WHY things are the way they are, he mainly cares about making things better.
I'm guessing Cryptic and PWE don't want to give us that for free via Tier 6 Mastery like the Jemmie ships (though they should as acquiring them is rather dear in terms of real-world cash), but maybe this is a possible avenue to explore?
Actually... word on the grapevine is that Cryptic is actually considering account unlock lockbox/promo, but is in the process of gathering player habit data and other forms of data before making a final decision.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
I do hope that whatever nebulous data they are collecting does make them account unlock, because by god that has been one of the most wanted things since well... since lockbox and promo ships first came out.
Getting EC doesn't seem to be the problem - as for me anyway, I don't see any way to earn the EC to buy a promo ship in game.
So the only thing causing inflation must be shortage of the good things, so the fix is increase the drop rate!!
If they make it account wide many more people will try than before, making up any lost earnings.
I don't see any way to earn the EC to buy a promo ship in game.
Earning it may be slow, but we've had 9 years of new EC being added to the economy with very little of it being removed due to lack of decent EC sinks.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
All this would do is lower ship prices on the exchange. It does nothing to address that actual amount of EC in the game. The purpose of introducing an EC sink is to actually destroy EC. Such a thing would lead to exchange price reductions on everything. Not just ships.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
All this would do is lower ship prices on the exchange. It does nothing to address that actual amount of EC in the game. The purpose of introducing an EC sink is to actually destroy EC. Such a thing would lead to exchange price reductions on everything. Not just ships.
I don’t think destroying EC would have any impact on lowering prices as there is not any signs of inflation or to much EC in game nor any sign of price related problems from inflation. If anything destroying EC will just make the rare items harder to get not easier.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
All this would do is lower ship prices on the exchange. It does nothing to address that actual amount of EC in the game. The purpose of introducing an EC sink is to actually destroy EC. Such a thing would lead to exchange price reductions on everything. Not just ships.
I don’t think destroying EC would have any impact on lowering prices as there is not any signs of inflation or to much EC in game nor any sign of price related problems from inflation. If anything destroying EC will just make the rare items harder to get not easier.
The people with access to factual in-game statistics disagree with your opinion.
This thread is over 16 pages, so apologies if these have already been said.
Option 1: Money Bomb
Think of this as something older, more established players would buy to gift out things to newer players and/or less dedicated fleet members. The concept is simple enough - an objective I buy for energy credits, then go to a social zone of some kind and "detonate" it. When detonated, a number of item drops are spawned that others can pick up. The exact items might need some balancing, but things I can think of off the top of my head that might be valuable for less established characters/accounts:
VIP dilithium claims
Fleet dilithium packs
Restricted ec packs (if it's restricted to only fleet or reputation, for example, it would help the less developed character hopefully without adding to inflation)
Fleet marks/credits packs
Duty officer packs
Reputation dilithium/marks/elite marks
Ship token - phoenix, promo, dilithium store level-ups, old lockbox T5s; options here, not sure which would be best
These are just examples for what could go into a money bomb. I'm sure any of these would need balancing, and there are probably other contents that could be thought of.
Option 2: Phoenix-Style Promo Pack
This one's probably less likely to happen, but would hit the inflation problem at both ends - consuming (potentially major) amounts of EC and increasing the supply of the most demanded items. It would essentially be a phoenix pack that can be purchased with EC, and the top rewards are some of the promo ships that are normally locked into R&D packs, maybe old lockboxes as well. I'm on the fence as to whether these ships should be account bound on pick-up or tradeable (being able to trade would make it more likely that the space rich would continue to buy for them, but could over saturate the market and concentrate "wealth" even more into a select few hands). This would be periodic, so Cryptic can turn it on/off as needed to control inflation, maybe once or twice a year?
A lot of details would need to be looked at for this, including what should actually go into it, drop rates, frequency, lower tier prizes, etc., but something like this could have the greatest direct impact on inflation.
Option 3: Account Unlocks
I did see this mentioned a lot, and definitely agree that an option to spend EC to unlock a ship/admiralty card/trait/whatever for an entire account could be helpful. It should be more than just the top prizes, though, so even the lower level prizes (like the old mirror universe T5s, Tholian mesh weaver, the Malon trash hauler, etc.). My only reservation here is that I'd rather do this with the level 6 mastery unlock that was introduced with the Jem'Hadar ships, but anything's better than nothing.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
All this would do is lower ship prices on the exchange. It does nothing to address that actual amount of EC in the game. The purpose of introducing an EC sink is to actually destroy EC. Such a thing would lead to exchange price reductions on everything. Not just ships.
I don’t think destroying EC would have any impact on lowering prices as there is not any signs of inflation or to much EC in game nor any sign of price related problems from inflation. If anything destroying EC will just make the rare items harder to get not easier.
The people with access to factual in-game statistics disagree with your opinion.
We players have access to the factual data which shows we have deflation not inflation via an index tracker using in game data. The data is not hidden from us and we are in a deflation market with no evidence I can find of inflation or problem with prices from inflation.
Based on the live chat the devs seems to be concerned about the high prices of things like rare ships being 1 billion. But that has nothing to do with EC inflation. Removing EC won’t make those ships cheaper it will just make those ships harder to get.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
All this would do is lower ship prices on the exchange. It does nothing to address that actual amount of EC in the game. The purpose of introducing an EC sink is to actually destroy EC. Such a thing would lead to exchange price reductions on everything. Not just ships.
I don’t think destroying EC would have any impact on lowering prices as there is not any signs of inflation or to much EC in game nor any sign of price related problems from inflation. If anything destroying EC will just make the rare items harder to get not easier.
The people with access to factual in-game statistics disagree with your opinion.
We players have access to the factual data which shows we have deflation not inflation via an index tracker using in game data. The data is not hidden from us and we are in a deflation market with no evidence I can find of inflation or problem with prices from inflation.
Based on the live chat the devs seems to be concern about the high prices of things like rare ships being 1 billion. But that has nothing to do with EC inflation. Removing EC won’t make those ships cheaper it will just make those ships harder to get.
Absolutely spot on.
We don't need pages of data to understand what happens in front of our very eyes. As players, we're the ones out there every day on the exchange watching prices go up or down.. we don't need any 3rd party information to understand what we see in front of our faces every single day.
The 'inflation' is a myth, as many others have said.. prices on the highest dollar items have actually declined in recent years. The last thing we need is Cryptic intervening to 'balance' our economy. The current economy is the best of any MMO I have ever played.. I can currently get anything I want without a problem. I can either do it slowly, for free.. or I can pay money and do it fast. That's exactly how it should be.
I agree with @pottsey5g and @seaofsorrows on this. Borticus is wanting to solve one "problem", but would end up creating another by reducing the amount of EC in-game. If he truly would like to see an Exchange price reduction on promo ships, the only way to do that effectively is to increase supply.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
I agree with @pottsey5g and @seaofsorrows on this. Borticus is wanting to solve one "problem", but would end up creating another by reducing the amount of EC in-game. If he truly would like to see an Exchange price reduction on promo ships, the only way to do that effectively is to increase supply.
Well there's really only four ways they could do that:
1) the obvious, increase the odds of winning
2) decrease the Zen cost of keys and promo boxes
3) introduce an account unlock mechanic, either with currency (zen, dil, or EC), or level 6 mastery
4) add free keys and promo boxes as mission or TFO rewards
Of the four options account unlock is the most attractive to me, but I'm also not sure what the real impact on price would be since it would be increasing the perceived value to some players who currently aren't buying them while removing the need for wealthier players to purchase multiple copies.
I agree with @pottsey5g and @seaofsorrows on this. Borticus is wanting to solve one "problem", but would end up creating another by reducing the amount of EC in-game. If he truly would like to see an Exchange price reduction on promo ships, the only way to do that effectively is to increase supply.
This right here is exactly the truth.
Inflation would be the price of items rising steadily over time due to increased supply of money used to buy them (EC); in this case the saturation of EC would push prices up and up because the more EC the more money flowing so the more things cost as people try to make a higher profit.
What we actually have in the game is a general deflation of prices, look at Lobi ship prices for example, combined with an over abundance of EC as well. Removing EC via a sink won't actually solve the problem of things like R&D or lockbox ships being expensive. They cost a lot because people charge a lot, and the do that because supply of these items is severely limited. The rarer and more desirable an item then generally the more value it has.
The only way to solve those prices being high is to increase supply, or cut demand. As those ships are never gonna become unpopular then really supply is the only thing you could change.
Or just double/triple the drop rate for lockbox and promo boxes. Suddenly they become more common and as such supply is increased. That should lead to lower prices.
The cost of these things is not an inflation issue; its a basic supply and demand problem.
I know that SWOTOR does not have anywhere near as good a F2P implementation as STO, but they have some items in the Cartel Market (their C-Store) that have dual pricing. One for Character unlock, one for Account unlock. They have also implemented some system that increases the chance of getting a 'Purple' item the more Crates (Lockboxes) of the same type you open.
In July they are relaxing some (but not too many) of the restrictions that F2P or Premium players have that VIP players do not.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I know that SWOTOR does not have anywhere near as good a F2P implementation as STO, but they have some items in the Cartel Market (their C-Store) that have dual pricing. One for Character unlock, one for Account unlock. They have also implemented some system that increases the chance of getting a 'Purple' item the more Crates (Lockboxes) of the same type you open.
In July they are relaxing some (but not too many) of the restrictions that F2P or Premium players have that VIP players do not.
SWTOR also puts their lockbox stuff up on their store for direct purchase. Not all of it is available that way at all times though, I could be wrong but I think they rotate it periodically and the most popular items are only made available on the store for a limited time. In STO terms the equivalent would be Cryptic putting the Disco Connie in the C-Store (and leaving it as single character unlock only) for like 5k Zen for 1 week, while also keeping it in the r&d promo box.
SWTOR also allows you to use cash shop currency to purchase account unlocks for any lockbox item you've collected.
If the goal is ultimately to lower the price of lockbox ships, there are two ways to do this, as mentioned increase supply, but also by lowering demand.
Increasing supply can come in a few forms, but chiefly by increasing the odds from the boxes. This is actually probably the best way to do it to actually increase profits for STO, but I do not think the overlords of PWE understand it very well, just like EA and other companies.
The Laffer curve has been in the news recently, and while that is specifically describing an economic phenomenon with taxation, it is fundamentally a basic economic principle. You can sell something at a very high price and make a certain amount of profit from that, lets say you sell phones at $1000 per. Well maybe you make $900 profit on each, but how many are you selling? What if you sold them for $105? Now you're only at $5 profit each, but how many more are you selling? Somewhere inbetween is a point where you actually maximize profit by finding the point where you get the price just right so that lots of people buy your phones, and while you're not making $900 per, the volume of sales more than makes up for that.
I'm of the belief that PWE is not at that point for STO lockboxes. I know the droprates for the ships not just for standard lockboxes but also Phoenix boxes does not make me interested in ever buying keys, nor tons of dilithium. If I do get keys I don't care about ships, I want lobi, and for P-boxes I'm after something else. The ships are a non-starter for me. I doubt I'm the only person who makes that decision to not even bother chasing the ships, and thus has low interest in bothering with boxes. They are too rare for me to care.
In this vein, another option to increase supply would be to add a penultimate category to lockboxes where you get a random, older lockbox ship, the odds of this being more common than the poster ship for the box, but still fairly rare.
Now the other option is to lower demand for these ships. No not by nerfing them, but by letting people actually get these ships in other ways. I think some methods have already been mentioned but strictly speaking it isn't increasing supply if you don't get a box that can go onto the exchange. If you're getting the ship from some other route, you're lowering that demand to compete for the ships on the exchange.
Some of the ways to do this could be letting people buy them in the Cstore after some time, or maybe in flash sales. Of course some method to turn a ship into an account unlock can also help here, but not a whole lot, I would think.
Another method might be say a Christmas event where you can pick a single character bound lockbox ship per account as a present. This could be limited to ships that are 3+ years old or something, or maybe a choice could be any ship, but anything 3+ years old would end up account unlocks as they aren't in great supply any more (none of them ever are, but still.)
Or why not make it a 1000+ day vet reward where every 1000 days you get a choice of char bound lockbox ship? The oldest accounts would get 3. And if you really want to make it interesting, make the box unbound so that they can be sold on the exchange (which of course would put it into supply increasing category at that point.)
But as everyone has already said, ships are expensive primarily because they are rare. They will not be less expensive unless they are made less rare, or if demand for the ships decreases significantly. Decreasing EC supply may work to lower the prices on the exchange but in a relative sense it would do absolutely nothing because they would still be insanely rare and thus priced at the same relative price point.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
All this would do is lower ship prices on the exchange. It does nothing to address that actual amount of EC in the game. The purpose of introducing an EC sink is to actually destroy EC. Such a thing would lead to exchange price reductions on everything. Not just ships.
I don’t think destroying EC would have any impact on lowering prices as there is not any signs of inflation or to much EC in game nor any sign of price related problems from inflation. If anything destroying EC will just make the rare items harder to get not easier.
It mathematically has to have an impact if enough EC is destroyed through a sink. There simply would be less EC to go around. Why he wants to do this I don't know and I don't have an opinion on it but the result of EC destruction is self-evident. It's basic math.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
Regardless of the reason, here's my "Let's do something stupid..." idea:
Let us spend EC so that we may use no more than 2 of our existing ships as a Reinforcements-type power.
In this capacity these ships would be restricted a bit for the sake of keeping the system as simple as possible.
For example:
Base hull configuration.
Faction specific weapons based upon the ship (Dominion=Polaron, Romulan=Plasma for example) , though the player may choose the weapon class, ie, Beam Array, Dual Beam Bank, Cannon, etc...
No fancy visual pollution powers on the ships in question.
Player chooses the ship captains from their roster with only the inherent species traits applied to the Reinforcement Ship.
The ships weapon output will be equal to one level (or one rank) below that of the player.
50,000 EC for one ship and 80,000 EC for two ships. Use of this ability can be purchased as a one time use or a five time use.
In the case of ships with hangars no pets will launch.
No Multi-Vector Assault Mode and no Saucer Separation.
Usable ships must be active, not in drydock (if that's an issue on the back end).
Many players have stated an interest in the rank of Fleet Admiral being relevant and this would lend itself to that concept.
Comments
Never played Neverwinter but that's essentially how I would expect it to work, in WoW you can buy two tokens per week and carry a max of five at a time, and each time you kill a dungeon, raid, or world boss you have the option of spending a token to get a bonus loot roll. Obviously though loot is MUCH more important in WoW than it is in STO since in WoW all the best items are loot drops, while in STO loot is practically useless, which is why TFO loot would need to be revamped first.
Actually... word on the grapevine is that Cryptic is actually considering account unlock lockbox/promo, but is in the process of gathering player habit data and other forms of data before making a final decision.
That would certainly help, but funny thing is Borticus has ignored much of the suggestions that Economics clearly suggest would do exactly what he wants to do. He seems to have... tunnel vision? Increasing the drop rates on ships instantly solves EC inflation in prices, and would probably make people more willing to spend money on the lockboxes and promos but of course he won't listen to that, and for some reason making the Infinity choice pack tradeable was also off limit? I had the richest people in the game telling me that making the choice packs tradeable would cut down on inflation quite a bit, but not as much as increasing the odds.
I do hope that whatever nebulous data they are collecting does make them account unlock, because by god that has been one of the most wanted things since well... since lockbox and promo ships first came out.
#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!"
I've only ever gotten 2 ships out of boxes. The rest I got with ECs off the Exchange.
Oh I know, I watched that Twitch stream. But, statistics can be manipulated and viewed from whatever point-of-view you wish to in order to arrive at one's intended conclusion. I can only say that if I could open a T'Liss Temporal Warbird on a Romulan or a Disco D7 on a Klingon or Klingon-aligned captain, they'd get more money from me because I'd play more than 2 characters as the baby-whale that I am.
I'm not a big fan of Borticus. He and Ricossa are bad remnants of the old guard that need to GTFO honestly. We need to get some new blood in the dev department. Jette being in charge of ships is good, and I'm liking our new EP honestly, despite the bad start. He's no Daniel Stahl, but he's leagues better than Ricossa and D'Angelo, though that's not sayin much TBQH.
#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!"
My character Tsin'xing
Getting EC doesn't seem to be the problem - as for me anyway, I don't see any way to earn the EC to buy a promo ship in game.
So the only thing causing inflation must be shortage of the good things, so the fix is increase the drop rate!!
If they make it account wide many more people will try than before, making up any lost earnings.
Earning it may be slow, but we've had 9 years of new EC being added to the economy with very little of it being removed due to lack of decent EC sinks.
All this would do is lower ship prices on the exchange. It does nothing to address that actual amount of EC in the game. The purpose of introducing an EC sink is to actually destroy EC. Such a thing would lead to exchange price reductions on everything. Not just ships.
Option 1: Money Bomb
Think of this as something older, more established players would buy to gift out things to newer players and/or less dedicated fleet members. The concept is simple enough - an objective I buy for energy credits, then go to a social zone of some kind and "detonate" it. When detonated, a number of item drops are spawned that others can pick up. The exact items might need some balancing, but things I can think of off the top of my head that might be valuable for less established characters/accounts:
These are just examples for what could go into a money bomb. I'm sure any of these would need balancing, and there are probably other contents that could be thought of.
Option 2: Phoenix-Style Promo Pack
This one's probably less likely to happen, but would hit the inflation problem at both ends - consuming (potentially major) amounts of EC and increasing the supply of the most demanded items. It would essentially be a phoenix pack that can be purchased with EC, and the top rewards are some of the promo ships that are normally locked into R&D packs, maybe old lockboxes as well. I'm on the fence as to whether these ships should be account bound on pick-up or tradeable (being able to trade would make it more likely that the space rich would continue to buy for them, but could over saturate the market and concentrate "wealth" even more into a select few hands). This would be periodic, so Cryptic can turn it on/off as needed to control inflation, maybe once or twice a year?
A lot of details would need to be looked at for this, including what should actually go into it, drop rates, frequency, lower tier prizes, etc., but something like this could have the greatest direct impact on inflation.
Option 3: Account Unlocks
I did see this mentioned a lot, and definitely agree that an option to spend EC to unlock a ship/admiralty card/trait/whatever for an entire account could be helpful. It should be more than just the top prizes, though, so even the lower level prizes (like the old mirror universe T5s, Tholian mesh weaver, the Malon trash hauler, etc.). My only reservation here is that I'd rather do this with the level 6 mastery unlock that was introduced with the Jem'Hadar ships, but anything's better than nothing.
Based on the live chat the devs seems to be concerned about the high prices of things like rare ships being 1 billion. But that has nothing to do with EC inflation. Removing EC won’t make those ships cheaper it will just make those ships harder to get.
Absolutely spot on.
We don't need pages of data to understand what happens in front of our very eyes. As players, we're the ones out there every day on the exchange watching prices go up or down.. we don't need any 3rd party information to understand what we see in front of our faces every single day.
The 'inflation' is a myth, as many others have said.. prices on the highest dollar items have actually declined in recent years. The last thing we need is Cryptic intervening to 'balance' our economy. The current economy is the best of any MMO I have ever played.. I can currently get anything I want without a problem. I can either do it slowly, for free.. or I can pay money and do it fast. That's exactly how it should be.
Leave the economy alone, it's fine.
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Well there's really only four ways they could do that:
1) the obvious, increase the odds of winning
2) decrease the Zen cost of keys and promo boxes
3) introduce an account unlock mechanic, either with currency (zen, dil, or EC), or level 6 mastery
4) add free keys and promo boxes as mission or TFO rewards
Of the four options account unlock is the most attractive to me, but I'm also not sure what the real impact on price would be since it would be increasing the perceived value to some players who currently aren't buying them while removing the need for wealthier players to purchase multiple copies.
This right here is exactly the truth.
Inflation would be the price of items rising steadily over time due to increased supply of money used to buy them (EC); in this case the saturation of EC would push prices up and up because the more EC the more money flowing so the more things cost as people try to make a higher profit.
What we actually have in the game is a general deflation of prices, look at Lobi ship prices for example, combined with an over abundance of EC as well. Removing EC via a sink won't actually solve the problem of things like R&D or lockbox ships being expensive. They cost a lot because people charge a lot, and the do that because supply of these items is severely limited. The rarer and more desirable an item then generally the more value it has.
The only way to solve those prices being high is to increase supply, or cut demand. As those ships are never gonna become unpopular then really supply is the only thing you could change.
The cost of these things is not an inflation issue; its a basic supply and demand problem.
In July they are relaxing some (but not too many) of the restrictions that F2P or Premium players have that VIP players do not.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
SWTOR also puts their lockbox stuff up on their store for direct purchase. Not all of it is available that way at all times though, I could be wrong but I think they rotate it periodically and the most popular items are only made available on the store for a limited time. In STO terms the equivalent would be Cryptic putting the Disco Connie in the C-Store (and leaving it as single character unlock only) for like 5k Zen for 1 week, while also keeping it in the r&d promo box.
SWTOR also allows you to use cash shop currency to purchase account unlocks for any lockbox item you've collected.
Increasing supply can come in a few forms, but chiefly by increasing the odds from the boxes. This is actually probably the best way to do it to actually increase profits for STO, but I do not think the overlords of PWE understand it very well, just like EA and other companies.
The Laffer curve has been in the news recently, and while that is specifically describing an economic phenomenon with taxation, it is fundamentally a basic economic principle. You can sell something at a very high price and make a certain amount of profit from that, lets say you sell phones at $1000 per. Well maybe you make $900 profit on each, but how many are you selling? What if you sold them for $105? Now you're only at $5 profit each, but how many more are you selling? Somewhere inbetween is a point where you actually maximize profit by finding the point where you get the price just right so that lots of people buy your phones, and while you're not making $900 per, the volume of sales more than makes up for that.
I'm of the belief that PWE is not at that point for STO lockboxes. I know the droprates for the ships not just for standard lockboxes but also Phoenix boxes does not make me interested in ever buying keys, nor tons of dilithium. If I do get keys I don't care about ships, I want lobi, and for P-boxes I'm after something else. The ships are a non-starter for me. I doubt I'm the only person who makes that decision to not even bother chasing the ships, and thus has low interest in bothering with boxes. They are too rare for me to care.
In this vein, another option to increase supply would be to add a penultimate category to lockboxes where you get a random, older lockbox ship, the odds of this being more common than the poster ship for the box, but still fairly rare.
Now the other option is to lower demand for these ships. No not by nerfing them, but by letting people actually get these ships in other ways. I think some methods have already been mentioned but strictly speaking it isn't increasing supply if you don't get a box that can go onto the exchange. If you're getting the ship from some other route, you're lowering that demand to compete for the ships on the exchange.
Some of the ways to do this could be letting people buy them in the Cstore after some time, or maybe in flash sales. Of course some method to turn a ship into an account unlock can also help here, but not a whole lot, I would think.
Another method might be say a Christmas event where you can pick a single character bound lockbox ship per account as a present. This could be limited to ships that are 3+ years old or something, or maybe a choice could be any ship, but anything 3+ years old would end up account unlocks as they aren't in great supply any more (none of them ever are, but still.)
Or why not make it a 1000+ day vet reward where every 1000 days you get a choice of char bound lockbox ship? The oldest accounts would get 3. And if you really want to make it interesting, make the box unbound so that they can be sold on the exchange (which of course would put it into supply increasing category at that point.)
But as everyone has already said, ships are expensive primarily because they are rare. They will not be less expensive unless they are made less rare, or if demand for the ships decreases significantly. Decreasing EC supply may work to lower the prices on the exchange but in a relative sense it would do absolutely nothing because they would still be insanely rare and thus priced at the same relative price point.
Let us spend EC so that we may use no more than 2 of our existing ships as a Reinforcements-type power.
In this capacity these ships would be restricted a bit for the sake of keeping the system as simple as possible.
For example:
Base hull configuration.
Faction specific weapons based upon the ship (Dominion=Polaron, Romulan=Plasma for example) , though the player may choose the weapon class, ie, Beam Array, Dual Beam Bank, Cannon, etc...
No fancy visual pollution powers on the ships in question.
Player chooses the ship captains from their roster with only the inherent species traits applied to the Reinforcement Ship.
The ships weapon output will be equal to one level (or one rank) below that of the player.
50,000 EC for one ship and 80,000 EC for two ships. Use of this ability can be purchased as a one time use or a five time use.
In the case of ships with hangars no pets will launch.
No Multi-Vector Assault Mode and no Saucer Separation.
Usable ships must be active, not in drydock (if that's an issue on the back end).
Many players have stated an interest in the rank of Fleet Admiral being relevant and this would lend itself to that concept.
Alright, everyone, shoot this idea full of holes!