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Phoenix Run Unplanned - Meant to Help Dilex - Borticus
foxman00
Member Posts: 1,481 Arc User
Morning Everyone
Well, how effective it will be I have my doubts. But they are aware of the issue. Just dont be surprised if whatever plan they come up with you may not like. As to get the dilex down will have to take some drastic series of actions over several months/one year.
Well, how effective it will be I have my doubts. But they are aware of the issue. Just dont be surprised if whatever plan they come up with you may not like. As to get the dilex down will have to take some drastic series of actions over several months/one year.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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It did have some effect though, it's dropped it about 30pts.. it's still not great, but it's something.
Sadly the moment the phoenix box event is over, the dilex usually slowly climbs back to its original position before the run. That is what has happened several times in the past. There have been occurrences where it hasnt, but those have been rare.
The dilex is currently at 474. In order to get it to the lower 300's for example, would take something big.
I am pretty confident in saying it will never be anywhere near that low again.
Cryptic keeps pushing the demand for Zen with constant sales. There is never a time when there isn't some type of promotion and that keeps Zen demand high.
The formula is fairly easy.. if they waited a week till the Black Friday stuff died down, then did a Phoenix Event with no C-Store Sales it would have been more effective. Overall though, maybe 10-15 pts better then it is now.. I honestly don't see any feasible way to get it back down into the 300 range.
They have run so many Phoenix in the past 2 years that they've exhausted all the opportunities for people who want something from it, and now it only generates a small dip in the DilEx from people who are restocking their Phoenix upgrade tokens for an Upgrade weekend.
If they made Phoenix ship unlocks account wide, it would set off another major Phoenix box sale, but that would be only for a year or so til everyone had the ships they want unlocked. There isn't a large enough turnover in the player base that they will keep selling 'new' things to 'new' players given they are running Phoenix 3+ times a year now.
If they left Phoenix unlocks single char, but made it so that you could combine 4 Phoenix tokens into one higher level token, it would probably provoke a longer round of Phoenix box sales.
If they can't manage either of those then I suspect every re-run of the Phoenix event will have ever-smaller impacts on the DilEx and generate fewer sales of P-boxes.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Surprised the (previously 2) except the last one, was at the same time as the 2x Technology Points!
What could be reconsidered, is designing 1 Ship (Of both Klingon, Federation, Romulan) to be added to the Phoenix Boxes Epic tokens. Even if they made these ships account unlocks, they could make them exclusively Fleet Upgradeable, while introducing more (not all) Events ships that are also Fleet upgradeable. Or maybe some new Options for Missing items like, older Missing Omega Tailor Outfit Unlocks & Accolades?
I'm sure there is several other idea's they could explore and I've identified some below.
The exchange has been 200-400: for years up until about the last 6-9 months. In Star Trek Online the DZE is simply based on one of three things...
Just another thought... {to help slightly nudge} DZE back to sanity ?
Phoenix Packs despite the 4k cost, reintroduce a Smaller Dilithium Cost per Upgrade, given they have 5x the Technology Points of Superior Upgrades! All upgrades even Phoenix & Omega upgrades should still have a small or slight Dilithium cost as each is applied.
Some other options to consider are expanding Projects in Reputations:
Yea that would be nice, I always wished Faction Interiors were more customizable; as they could easily serve the same purpose.
I suspect most would love to see Apartments on Risa, or even on DS9 if I could use GPL to furnish it; might even be a combination of different GPL, Phoenix, or ZEN items too...
Yet this idea has been something they've seemed not open to.
Knee-jerk solutions like caps rarely solve much in a FtP game, they just encourage more bot accounts and whatnot. The carrot method works better in most cases than the big stick, though it is a lot harder to come up with that kind of solution without damaging balance.
i have no illusions that they will add say apartments near the academy or bungalow on the colony world. the team felt more up for that a few years ago. honestly, i suspect disco and picard may have saved this game. housing is just something that would amuse me here so i bring it up from time to time.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
That is about all I do as well, I certainly don't sell DIL for ZEN, and as others have said, wouldn't for more than 350:1 or so...
I think the latter is the primary reason ppl bought Phoenix boxes: finally there was a reasonably 'cheap' way to upgrade your stuff en masse. First time, I generated like 1,200 Upgrade Tokens. The next one 1,400 even (as there was a Mark increase to XV). But this time, I obligatorily only got like a 100 or so -- just in case. Simply put: at some point ppl have simnply upgraded everything they needed. Spent a few on Elachi DHCs, and on one or two other items, but that's it. I suspect my case may be true for others as well.
Player housing would be awesome, but would take too long to develop to be of help to the immediate situation. Same for fleet holdings.
They can always add new gear (rep, dil store, fleet, something new?) or more upgrade levels to existing gear (Mk16+, Legendary?)...but the game is so easy people won't need it. I still haven't upgraded anything to the current max.
They could add standard F2P paid shortcuts. Skipping cooldowns (as in R&D) is the most common. But again players don't need it since the game is designed to be played only once per day. The only thing you could do continuously is...farm dilithium. Another is subtituting for lesser currencies. But EC is only useful for the itself badly overinflated exchange, GPL is completely useless and the only long-term use for marks is...trading them for even more dilithium. Fleet credits you can already get with dilithium.
About the only thing they could make to sell quickly would be clothes or other small-scale cosmetic items. So yeah, another round of 2 million dil clothes to look forward to. Hopefully they won't be Fed-only this time.
And then there's the other side of the inflation equation, reducing supply.
All of this would address performance minded players one way or the other. Yea, I’m afraid this horse has been beaten to death.
If player housings are out of the question perhaps costumes, haircuts, cosmetics and pets are the way to go.
To be frank I was wondering why Bort even bothered to respond. I know this game needs the free to play model but if it’s free to players need to grind a tiny bit more for their ZEN I thought they could not care less. Not after making Dil that easy to come by in the first place.
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1. Buy a pen mod or other mod, replacing an existing mod, limit 1 total pen mod still, for 50-100k. This round of uprading I must have made 50 disruptor beam arrays trying to get 1 with pen to upgrade. I gave up. Of course this isn't too useful for crated weapons, it is more useful for stuff you can't craft, like say spiral wave.
2. Sell more ships for dilithium. This can take a variety of forms. Of course you can already buy a number of standard ships for dil, but why not expand that to the non T6 Cstore ships that have consoles? How many people buy those any more? These could have a rate per character or account wide.
2a. Phoenix/lobi/lockbox ships could be unlocked account wide or per character with a sizeable dilithium investment. 100k per character for that phoenix ship you unlocked with the token, maybe. Maybe 10 dil per lobi cost of an item to unlock per character, or a flat fee of 50 dil per lobi for an account wide unlock. Lockbox ships might be 500k per character for T6, and 100k for T5/shuttles. Obviously you need to unlock it on one character first before you can expand it.
2b. While it conflicts with Mudd's store, I would have done it with per character Dil unlocks for items like the feature episode rewards.
3. Better reputation/dilithium store weapons that people would want to buy. Make some mk 13 UR with unique modifier combinations that fit the reputations and aren't terrible, but maybe they don't open up till tier 6.
4. Mission/patrol cooldown reducer. Something cheap like 3k is obviously a loss, but to not have to wait a half hour might be worth it to someone.
5. Buy reputation progress. Must have completed T6 on some character first. Buy some smaller chunks to get to T6 in time for the next upgrade weekend, or maybe buyout the whole thing because you just don't care. Yeah you'd still get the T5 reward if you bought your way to it, but the cost should be maybe 2k per 1000 rep, so 300k total for a full buyout. Pay for convenience.
You sure? Just asking because I dont think the amount of RL money I was willing to spend on STO the past 7 years was influenced by the respective Dil to ZEN ratio. At times when I ended up spending it on Dil I simply spended it less on anything else STO related as a result.
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With one exception, a year and a half ago during a Phoenix Event and the DilEx dropped into the upper 200s, I have always bought Dilithium, not Zen.
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.'
Well, yes. The only reason there is a DilEx at all is because one group of people wants Dil, doesn't have time to grind for it, and is willing to buy Zen to trade for Dil. You yourself may or may not choose to do this but that's the basis of the DilEx.
A high DilEx has two side-issues: If the DilEx is high (>450 Dil for 1 Zen) then people who buy Zen for Dil are getting a good 'deal'. On the other hand, a high DilEx means Dil is much more available, relatively speaking, than Zen. Which means people are either making too much Dil (in general, not every player), or there are too few things that players are spending their Dil on and so it is accumulating.
For the past couple years, Cryptic has introduced far more new options and sales for spending Zen than for spending Dil. The overall supply of Zen has gotten scarcer and Dil has gotten much more common.
If they want to bring the DilEx back to say the 400-ish level (fairly good for both sides), then they need to increase the attractiveness of Phoenix boxes and toss a few more Dil sinks into the game. Capping Dil earning per account is an option but would also have considerable side-effects.
Only if so many people buy Zen and with that buy dillitium it would make sense, but who does that??
I often read people's posting about the million's and millions dilli they farm on there zillion account's with bots, think going after that would have a bigger impact.
There are a few big fish that controls prices on the exchange and influence the dilli market.Go get them !
Maybe they should try making some stuff for microtransactions (the game does not actually use that concept even though some call it that, if the cost is more than a cup of coffee or a vending machine snack or thereabouts it is not "micro"), some small cosmetic items and whatnot, maybe making some of it cost the equivalent in dill instead of zen. They could even just be reskins of something else, like someone was asking about accurately modeled "dustbuster" phaser pistols in zone chat last night which apparently do not actually exist ingame except for the un-upgradable white level ones from tutorial and a few other places.
Making a sort of "costume" for some of the show-sourced weapons that directly costs a small amount of dill to customize (sort of like changing the function of ship equipment with re-engineering, but just for looks) would be an example of that sort of thing. That way people who concentrate on authentic canon looks could have the proper equipment without their stuff being hopelessly outclassed.
Good point - Cryptic should offer all of the fleet cosmetic projects for the holidays to soak some dil.
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.'
It was hit hard by the weekend of back to back flash sales right on top of the start of the R&D gamble box and was never given a chance to recover before they went in with another push.
Without a bump to the drop rates for epic and UR tokens (or account unlcoks for those ships) it'll do very little to counteract the effect for longer than the week phoenix runs for. And the next zen item they push will just have the exchange hitting that stagnation point even harder than before.
You obviously miss the point about the Dilithium Exchange.
The whole point that the exchange exists is for the benefit of the f2p experience. Back when the game went from Sub to f2p, the exchange was introduced as a way for players who didn't want to spend money/unable to spend money for whatever reason to obtain Zen (or Cryptic Points as they used to be called before they switched to zen) by selling their zen to other players buying dilithium. Keep in mind that this was back when dilithium was harder to come by and more people were willing to trade zen for dilithium.
Would the devs like more people to buy zen to get stuff via money? Yes. However, they also understand that not everyone is willing to pitch out money often enough. This game would be vastly different for me and other f2p players if we could not get whatever we need from the C-store.
That's what I think as well. Perhaps they are afraid to annoy the f2p peeps over it too much but for those willig to insert a coin into STO every once in a while the current situation feels ok. As a paying customer for cryptic I dont mind it at all. I find it even sad that it is caped at 500. If I would get even more dil for zen (RL money) I might even consider not pissing myself off every day with Admirality and stuff and just buy the stupid Dil whenever I think I need it.
Zen, EC, DIL, lobi... all the same anyway but with dil feeling the cheapest/easiest to come by.
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