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Upgrade Weekend
foppotee
Member Posts: 1,704 Arc User
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11302913-upgrade-weekend!
From Thursday, November 21st at 8AM PST to November 25th at 10AM PST
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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The phoenix events coupled with zen store sales at the same time for a number of occasions past didn't work so well in dropping prices.
Just keep in mind that Cryptic doesn't always announce those Phoenix opportunities so let's keep our fingers crossed, but it might be too soon for another.
I checked-out the dilithium exchange earlier today while completing my dailies & OUCH. I hadn't seen it that high, creeping-up to 500, in a long time. It seems like a drought of time since it has even been in the low 300s.
I think there are several factors deeply affecting the in-game STO economy(ies). I usually just stop spending from ECs to Zen during the hyper-inflated times, but in the end it is Cryptic that controls a lot of the STO economy(ies) with supply. Good luck to us all at these prices lol.
The question, of course is how much upgrading will people do this time with the previous upgrade event not long ago? The Jem Recruitment made quite a few new characters with mk 12 gear for people to upgrade, yet it is a little early for most of them to have a lot of spare dil, and they may not have any new Rep gear they want yet. Presumably upgraders will siphon dil from the rest of their account or buy some with zen but is that going to drain tons of dilithium?
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I think there are several factors deeply affecting the in-game STO economy(ies). I usually just stop spending from ECs to Zen during the hyper-inflated times, but in the end it is Cryptic that controls a lot of the STO economy(ies) with supply. Good luck to us all at these prices lol.
[/quote]
I dont think Cryptic has control anymore, there are a few stupidly rich (game currency) gamers in STO, with milions and millions of Dilli raking in every week on a x amount of chars.
Same with the energy credits, prices on alot of itmes are artificially high because those same peeps buy everything worthwhile and put it back on sale for a much higher price.
You can see it sometimes happening , the cheap items sometimes vaporize on the exhange and then come back 1000 % higher.
Just my thoughts
players now will simply skip a cost they don't like where before they would pay. now the only desire is to convert dil to keys for EC or for gambling.
So the only thing left is to reduce dil supply. However this would cause the most severe outcry. So, yes, you are right. Cryptic has lost control over the market. Now they must decide whether to leave the cap at 500 (if they even have the ability to raise it).
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Raising the cap on the dil exchange would be as much as admitting that they went too far with reducing the dil coming in while at the same time pushing the drains and demands for zen. The exchange never recovered from the doubling down on flash sales the weekend before the last R&D gamblebox and this new mud market addition to the zen store is just going to push it further.
Reducing the dil being created increases its value compared to zen, lowering the dil cost per zen not increasing it. Deflation not inflation.
Other than that you're correct that all the C-Store sales and R&D promos did increase competition for zen, reducing the value of dil.
I think you are all simply overanalyzing this. the 1:300 happened back when dill ore was generously given for randoms and TFO's generally speaking. They cut it out, meaning quite a few people were running dry on dill ore and seemed to have flooded the market with Zens. The various attempts to compensate added extra "elements of instability", to quote Dr Sibak. And keep in mind that we've seen quite a few bots and leeches in the last couple months. That probably mean that their individual 10+ accounts each maxed out with toons are farming ore overnight through reputation, and probably flooding the market like crazy in order to fuel those "come to our website to purchase game items with real money" offers we see in the ingame mail or what we see on eBay.
As for Cryptic controlling the supply, they do, but I'm not so sure they are fully aware how to modulate this.
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The upgrade kits are craftable, and at a higher quality than the dropped ones at that. They do take materials and EC to make though, and I have not recovered that much from the last one (I have been skirting burnout and not on quite as much as usual the last month or two) so I will not be able to take advantage of the upgrade weekend as much as if I was actually prepared for it. It is still handy though.
I also need omega fragments which cost over 900,000 EC in the market, not worth it!
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True, the Omega upgrades are not worth crafting until the anniversary event makes more omega particles available, but they are not the only craftable upgrades. Superior upgrades are not ideal but they do get the job done better than the usual blue or green upgrade kit drops. They are especially good for equipping low level characters with gear crafted on your higher level toons that the new ones do not have to spend their own dill to upgrade since it will often last all the way up to tier 10 if prepped during an upgrade weekend.
I did see in an in-game chat earlier today that suggested the best upgrading technique is: begin with Mk II Very Rare, use an Omega (If you have one) & also apply a x2 quality accelerator. Then there was something said about if after applying a x2 accelerator twice or something & not achieving Epic then sadly begin again based off of cost/performance ratio. I haven't done the math, it is above my head, but I can see that making sense.
As for the STO economy I just hope it settles-down. I still think Cryptic is the primary source for affecting the STO economy, they do control the supply, but there's been many valid statements too about how players can influence in positive & negative ways. I usually only use that dilthium exchange converter to zen when buying something for zen & then using it to round-out my zen to an even amount, but as I stated previously when prices keep inflating I usually just stop buying mostly with all currencies.
Not worth it? 5M EC to get an Epic Mark X item that you then need to upgrade to XV? Of course that depends what item we are talking about but a [Pen] beam or cannon is worth it once you can get a steady income.
It didn't work.. last time. It normally does.
The fix is exactly what Cryptic is doing.. and upgrade weekend with no Phoenix Boxes. This does 2 things..
1. Gets players to use up all their stored Phoenix Kits draining reserves on these kits.
2. Gets some players to use Dilithium to do upgrades.
The biggest reason it didn't work last time is because there were so many Phoenix Kits in circulation when they ran the last promo, that people just didn't spend to get them. This upgrade weekend should get people to burn off those excess kits so next event there will be more demand.
People can take their guesses all they want, but the market is what it is because Zen is valuable and Dilithium is not. It's really just that simple. The market will never get back to the 300:1 times because Cryptic has decided that there should never be a minute of any day where there isn't some sort of Zen Sale or promotion.
The best they're going to do is increase the demand for Phoenix Boxes, and you can't do that until you force people to use the ones they already have stocked up. I believe that's what they're trying to do here, and it's a good move.
It certainly looks that way.
I found the absence of phoenix a bit irritating but can live with it just fine. In light of the huge power creep tsunami we are getting with the perk points cryptic does not seem have handed out that much gear related power creep the past months. For the first time I find myself without anything to upgrade.
Time to print some serious EC via upgrade tech sales with phoenix out of the way.
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I'm in the same boat.
I'm like you, Upgrade Weekends are normally huge events for me.. but this weekend, I upgraded 2 consoles on one of my alts.. and that's it. It's not that I don't have Kits.. I have plenty, I just really have nothing left I need to upgrade. My upgrades have all come from maxing out the Endeavor system because there is simply no real gear worth collecting and upgrading.
The last new gear item I obtained was the Altamid Modified Swarm Processor and I upgraded that a long time ago.
I don't disagree with you on the premise here. I spent several hundred thousand dil upgrading yesterday on a few characters, myself. Those are new or completely rethought characters that need everything upgraded. And I'm not finished yet.
What I'm curious about is why the thing you quoted has my name on it, because I didn't say that, it was someone two posts above mine.
indeed, I don't upgrade stuff without the phoenix upgrades. the lesson is assimilated.
I have no idea.. I hit quote, and that's how it came out.
I fixed it, sorry about that.
I assumed as much as it didn't make sense and didn't seem antagonistic or anything like that, but it was confusing. Thank you for fixing it.
I have still some items to upgrade but my main gear is for the most already XV epic.
But I regret to focused so much on upgrades because I was here when the exchange was at 250:1.
I think I will stop the upgrade and exchange dil for zen, now.
I did not get much done this upgrade weekend either, but it was not due to the lack of a phoenix event. Things were too busy outside of the game the past few days, and since I was close to burnout I have not been in the game long enough each day to build up the particle, EC, and dil resources to properly take advantage of it (in fact, I have been running on stored resources for reputation and whatnot and avoiding the worst drags like admiralty as part of burnout recovery, and that takes a toll in resources).
Phoenix upgrades are the best route if one has them (especially for the highest tier, and "golding" is not particularly practical without them) but a lot can be done without them. I have upgraded a lot of stuff to purple/violet XV for instance (though nowhere near what I would have if properly prepared) so they are ready for the next phoenix event/upgrade weekend set.