Nobody said "it's not gambling, you only convert keys to Lobi" yet? 😁
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Nobody said "it's not gambling, you only convert keys to Lobi" yet? 😁
Yeah. That's my issue with calling loot boxes gambling. It tries to put it on the same level as stuff like poker, slot machines, roulette, etc. Everything I've listed has one thing in common that loot boxes lack. It's the chance that the gambler gets nothing. When a player opens a loot box, they always get something, and, among the games that I know the loot box mechanics of, there's usually a way for the player to use the items that have little value to them to obtain the items that have lots of value to them.
Nobody said "it's not gambling, you only convert keys to Lobi" yet? 😁
Yeah. That's my issue with calling loot boxes gambling. It tries to put it on the same level as stuff like poker, slot machines, roulette, etc. Everything I've listed has one thing in common that loot boxes lack. It's the chance that the gambler gets nothing. When a player opens a loot box, they always get something, and, among the games that I know the loot box mechanics of, there's usually a way for the player to use the items that have little value to them to obtain the items that have lots of value to them.
With a non-winning lottery ticket you still get a piece of paper too.
Well they added a new ship to the box and have still not done any cleaning.
I just though I would point out one more thing that drives me nuts about the inf box. Duty officer packs.
A bunch of white duty officer packs have been updated to drop 2 blue or better doffs instead of 1.
The Inf box still drops the old packs. Its why the exchange is littered with the older slightly less good packs. You can find reinforcement packs with 2 blue and ones from inf box drops that have 1.
Cryptic really needs to go through the inf box and clean up the loot table. Add the choice boxes for all the things... and for some of the obnoxious things like the TRIBBLE versions of doff packs... OR worse the old mini packs. Update things. It wouldn't hurt anyone if the duty officer mini packs where removed from the inf box.
Another add another fold in of an old box.... still no loot table clean.
I mean to be fair at least all the stuff coming in from the Angle box will be going into choice packs. Its all those silly things from the original boxes that are annoying. If all the lockboxes had been done like the Angle box it wouldn't be an issue as everything would be in choice boxes. Going back and fixing the old box items is overdue. Remove the mini packs... update the silly doff packs dropping with old values. And add a choice box for kits at least. (getting a ground kit is still painful... but at least make it a choice so its not a blue garbage throw away)
It seems Cryptic wants us opening inf boxes... make it a bit more attractive by removing the 5 year old boobie prize mini packs and add every reward to a choice box so things like xindi ground kids can still be had, but I mean seriously I have a stack of about 300 blue xindi ground kits. I can't imagine new players pulling 3 or 4 of those when they spend cash on a 20 pack of keys is even remotely happy with their consolation prize.
The main problem with lockboxes is that there is ever fewer interesting stuff in it. Some old traits and Boff powers are nice to have, new interesting ones were added, but the grand prizes have been very 'meh' lately. It doesn't help of course that more exclusive ships have moved to the more expensive promo boxes of course.
As for inflation: fewer people are probably opening boxes while roughly the same number or even many more newer players still want the old traits and so on - from the exchange. So fewer people are opening boxes for grand prizes, while many more want to buy the other stuff with EC.
That, and the ever larger sums we can get with Admiralty, daily endeavours and so on.
The root cause is an absence of 'valuable' activities that remove EC from the game. Nearly everything people do with EC is just moving it between different players, so the amount of EC in the game just keeps going up and up. And that's because of the underlying drive to monetize everything of 'perceived' value in the game. So instead of adding things to do with EC, it's with Dilithium or (far more often) with Zen.
Cryptic (whether by direction or intention) is short-circuiting important facets of every currency-based game. And instead of taking steps to really dig into why this is happening, they keep doubling down on those problems. At some point, something is going to give, and it won't be good for the health and longevity of the game.
An example of something they could do: sell phoenix prize packs for EC, at extremely high prices, limited to 1 per character, per day. Something like 10-25m each. That would strip obscene amounts of EC out of the game at record rates. The EC price of items would swinging wildly for a bit until the market settles back down into a new equillibrium with that new, nearly unlimited EC sink in place.
The market runs off supply and demand. Some things go up in price, some things go down, based on the supply of them and the demand for them. The amount of EC in existence isn't relevant, especially as such solutions as you offer have no effect on it.
What someone else spends their EC on has no effect on my EC. Creating what I deem a waste to spend EC on won't make me use it either, nor will many people who see no value in the sink.
Such things are usually noob traps, in that they almost never are actually worth it, because a person can get more value for their currency saving up to buy some other item off the market, but someone who doesn't know the market, what can be bought, when is a good time to buy, how much those things cost etc. thinks the sink is a good place to spend their money because they just aren't experienced enough.
In any case, the STO market is fairly complex, and we have never had enough data to properly see what is causing what in many cases. If key prices are going up, its most likely that less people are buying them with zen to sell, or more people are buying them off the market.
I'd say it is entirely reasonable to assume that there is a zen shortage right now, due to the world wide recession, given the nonsensical response to the virus in many places. This alone would cause higher key prices, and higher zen prices on the dilithium market. Keep in mind, if key prices are rising, that is a good incentive for someone to take their zen and turn it into keys if they have a use for EC, but if not enough people are doing that, then it would be consistent with people spending less real money on zen for real world reasons.
In my opinion it would be better if Vanity shields dropped in their own boxes rather than being a chance drop in a 'Weapons box'. The fact that they are in a weapons box makes no sense to me as they are not weapons! They are purely cosmetic items which play no part whatsoever in improving the performance of the ship they're equipped on.
They should simply create a new 'Vanity Shield box' - themed for the themed lock boxes and choice of any in the infinity lock boxes. A box that has a chance to drop in it's own right rather than this preposterous 'chance within a chance' scenario.
i dont think vanity shields or anything else similar should be in a box to begin with. just offer them in the cstore (maybe the complete variety as an option to single) and be done with it. i dislike that anything cosmetic is in a bundle or lobi. all that should be cstore. (yes, my opinion, not meant to impose my views of how things could be upon anyone elses)
I agree.
Though on the other hand, if they were added to the C-store, they'd likely end up as part of some very expensive 6000 zen bundle or something. And I probably still wouldn't pay that much zen if I wasn't interested in the other stuff in said bundle.
The root cause is an absence of 'valuable' activities that remove EC from the game. Nearly everything people do with EC is just moving it between different players, so the amount of EC in the game just keeps going up and up. And that's because of the underlying drive to monetize everything of 'perceived' value in the game. So instead of adding things to do with EC, it's with Dilithium or (far more often) with Zen.
Cryptic (whether by direction or intention) is short-circuiting important facets of every currency-based game. And instead of taking steps to really dig into why this is happening, they keep doubling down on those problems. At some point, something is going to give, and it won't be good for the health and longevity of the game.
An example of something they could do: sell phoenix prize packs for EC, at extremely high prices, limited to 1 per character, per day. Something like 10-25m each. That would strip obscene amounts of EC out of the game at record rates. The EC price of items would swinging wildly for a bit until the market settles back down into a new equillibrium with that new, nearly unlimited EC sink in place.
The market runs off supply and demand. Some things go up in price, some things go down, based on the supply of them and the demand for them. The amount of EC in existence isn't relevant, especially as such solutions as you offer have no effect on it.
What someone else spends their EC on has no effect on my EC. Creating what I deem a waste to spend EC on won't make me use it either, nor will many people who see no value in the sink.
Such things are usually noob traps, in that they almost never are actually worth it, because a person can get more value for their currency saving up to buy some other item off the market, but someone who doesn't know the market, what can be bought, when is a good time to buy, how much those things cost etc. thinks the sink is a good place to spend their money because they just aren't experienced enough.
In any case, the STO market is fairly complex, and we have never had enough data to properly see what is causing what in many cases. If key prices are going up, its most likely that less people are buying them with zen to sell, or more people are buying them off the market.
I'd say it is entirely reasonable to assume that there is a zen shortage right now, due to the world wide recession, given the nonsensical response to the virus in many places. This alone would cause higher key prices, and higher zen prices on the dilithium market. Keep in mind, if key prices are rising, that is a good incentive for someone to take their zen and turn it into keys if they have a use for EC, but if not enough people are doing that, then it would be consistent with people spending less real money on zen for real world reasons.
If supply goes up and demand remains unchanged then ( fill in the blank )
Then the price goes down. I'm not sure what your point is though.
I've honestly been surprised we've seen two very recent announcements stating 2 new ships going direct to Infinity, yet that was even before they appeared in yet a different Lockbox first. So at least it seems they are trying to make the Infinity proposition a bit more advantageous.
It's also possible the work on those ships took place earlier in Season 3 of Discovery, and with Discovery Season 4 starting in August (last I heard) we may possibly see a few new ships (hopefully with a bit more Federation inspired theme) as I'm suspecting will be the case as the Allies begin to work more together once again.
I'm not saying they won't make new lockboxes, just found it surprising that the two most recent ship announcements:
The root cause is an absence of 'valuable' activities that remove EC from the game. Nearly everything people do with EC is just moving it between different players, so the amount of EC in the game just keeps going up and up. And that's because of the underlying drive to monetize everything of 'perceived' value in the game. So instead of adding things to do with EC, it's with Dilithium or (far more often) with Zen.
Cryptic (whether by direction or intention) is short-circuiting important facets of every currency-based game. And instead of taking steps to really dig into why this is happening, they keep doubling down on those problems. At some point, something is going to give, and it won't be good for the health and longevity of the game.
An example of something they could do: sell phoenix prize packs for EC, at extremely high prices, limited to 1 per character, per day. Something like 10-25m each. That would strip obscene amounts of EC out of the game at record rates. The EC price of items would swinging wildly for a bit until the market settles back down into a new equillibrium with that new, nearly unlimited EC sink in place.
The market runs off supply and demand. Some things go up in price, some things go down, based on the supply of them and the demand for them. The amount of EC in existence isn't relevant, especially as such solutions as you offer have no effect on it.
What someone else spends their EC on has no effect on my EC. Creating what I deem a waste to spend EC on won't make me use it either, nor will many people who see no value in the sink.
Such things are usually noob traps, in that they almost never are actually worth it, because a person can get more value for their currency saving up to buy some other item off the market, but someone who doesn't know the market, what can be bought, when is a good time to buy, how much those things cost etc. thinks the sink is a good place to spend their money because they just aren't experienced enough.
In any case, the STO market is fairly complex, and we have never had enough data to properly see what is causing what in many cases. If key prices are going up, its most likely that less people are buying them with zen to sell, or more people are buying them off the market.
I'd say it is entirely reasonable to assume that there is a zen shortage right now, due to the world wide recession, given the nonsensical response to the virus in many places. This alone would cause higher key prices, and higher zen prices on the dilithium market. Keep in mind, if key prices are rising, that is a good incentive for someone to take their zen and turn it into keys if they have a use for EC, but if not enough people are doing that, then it would be consistent with people spending less real money on zen for real world reasons.
If supply goes up and demand remains unchanged then ( fill in the blank )
Then the price goes down. I'm not sure what your point is though.
The value of the supply goes down. The 'supply' is energy credits. The supply of energy credits is constantly increasing. The demand for energy credits is going down, because there's only so much to do with them before they become worthless. Add new things to do with ECs, things that remove them from the game instead of just moving them between players, the supply goes down, demand goes up, value of EC goes up.
ECs are a trade medium, with basically nothing else to do with them, and always have been.
They are also only generated by doing "work" over time, and are basically never in circulation outside the market. All the EC I've generated in the past, lets say, 6 months, is nonexistant as far as the market is concerned. Maybe I made a billion EC, maybe a million, but the market has nothing to interest me as I have what I want there so my EC are irrelevant.
EC as a trade medium has value measured against other things that also have an ever increasing supply as well. Every box opened increases the supply of whatever. This is very clearly overlooked by people claiming inflation. A very simple example: Space beans go for 1 EC per can, with 100 EC chasing them and 100 cans made per month. Now lets say the amount of EC chasing these cans doubles for whatever reason. They would now cost 2 EC per can. But what if the production also doubled? Now there are 200 cans to chase with 200 EC total spent on them. They remain 1 EC a can in that case.
Every box opened, thing crafted or looted creates a new item in the supply that now competes for EC.
That is why inflation is never truly a thing in MMOs without a code issue like easy duping or some massive change to generation parameters. Its also why it doesn't make sense to go right to currency inflation as an explanation for high prices when there are other supply/demand considerations that take place first, in this case like key and zen generation which have outside factors to seriously consider. Inflation is a broad spectrum of price increases over time, independent of supply/demand changes, so that needs to be supported with a price index to be taken seriously.
Comments
I'll have to check-out the song.
I used to play GW2 a bit after release but could never get into it as much as I did the original GW.
Thanks for the origin story too.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Yeah. That's my issue with calling loot boxes gambling. It tries to put it on the same level as stuff like poker, slot machines, roulette, etc. Everything I've listed has one thing in common that loot boxes lack. It's the chance that the gambler gets nothing. When a player opens a loot box, they always get something, and, among the games that I know the loot box mechanics of, there's usually a way for the player to use the items that have little value to them to obtain the items that have lots of value to them.
With a non-winning lottery ticket you still get a piece of paper too.
I just though I would point out one more thing that drives me nuts about the inf box. Duty officer packs.
A bunch of white duty officer packs have been updated to drop 2 blue or better doffs instead of 1.
The Inf box still drops the old packs. Its why the exchange is littered with the older slightly less good packs. You can find reinforcement packs with 2 blue and ones from inf box drops that have 1.
Cryptic really needs to go through the inf box and clean up the loot table. Add the choice boxes for all the things... and for some of the obnoxious things like the TRIBBLE versions of doff packs... OR worse the old mini packs. Update things. It wouldn't hurt anyone if the duty officer mini packs where removed from the inf box.
I mean to be fair at least all the stuff coming in from the Angle box will be going into choice packs. Its all those silly things from the original boxes that are annoying. If all the lockboxes had been done like the Angle box it wouldn't be an issue as everything would be in choice boxes. Going back and fixing the old box items is overdue. Remove the mini packs... update the silly doff packs dropping with old values. And add a choice box for kits at least. (getting a ground kit is still painful... but at least make it a choice so its not a blue garbage throw away)
It seems Cryptic wants us opening inf boxes... make it a bit more attractive by removing the 5 year old boobie prize mini packs and add every reward to a choice box so things like xindi ground kids can still be had, but I mean seriously I have a stack of about 300 blue xindi ground kits. I can't imagine new players pulling 3 or 4 of those when they spend cash on a 20 pack of keys is even remotely happy with their consolation prize.
They want it hard and expensive, and until all whales say no and they can't make money from the gambling, they will continue with their s.o.p.
As for inflation: fewer people are probably opening boxes while roughly the same number or even many more newer players still want the old traits and so on - from the exchange. So fewer people are opening boxes for grand prizes, while many more want to buy the other stuff with EC.
That, and the ever larger sums we can get with Admiralty, daily endeavours and so on.
The market runs off supply and demand. Some things go up in price, some things go down, based on the supply of them and the demand for them. The amount of EC in existence isn't relevant, especially as such solutions as you offer have no effect on it.
What someone else spends their EC on has no effect on my EC. Creating what I deem a waste to spend EC on won't make me use it either, nor will many people who see no value in the sink.
Such things are usually noob traps, in that they almost never are actually worth it, because a person can get more value for their currency saving up to buy some other item off the market, but someone who doesn't know the market, what can be bought, when is a good time to buy, how much those things cost etc. thinks the sink is a good place to spend their money because they just aren't experienced enough.
In any case, the STO market is fairly complex, and we have never had enough data to properly see what is causing what in many cases. If key prices are going up, its most likely that less people are buying them with zen to sell, or more people are buying them off the market.
I'd say it is entirely reasonable to assume that there is a zen shortage right now, due to the world wide recession, given the nonsensical response to the virus in many places. This alone would cause higher key prices, and higher zen prices on the dilithium market. Keep in mind, if key prices are rising, that is a good incentive for someone to take their zen and turn it into keys if they have a use for EC, but if not enough people are doing that, then it would be consistent with people spending less real money on zen for real world reasons.
I agree.
Though on the other hand, if they were added to the C-store, they'd likely end up as part of some very expensive 6000 zen bundle or something. And I probably still wouldn't pay that much zen if I wasn't interested in the other stuff in said bundle.
Then the price goes down. I'm not sure what your point is though.
It's also possible the work on those ships took place earlier in Season 3 of Discovery, and with Discovery Season 4 starting in August (last I heard) we may possibly see a few new ships (hopefully with a bit more Federation inspired theme) as I'm suspecting will be the case as the Allies begin to work more together once again.
I'm not saying they won't make new lockboxes, just found it surprising that the two most recent ship announcements:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11487283-command-book's-frigate!
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11485433-command-the-jovian-raider!
Have been directed to the Infinity Function.
ECs are a trade medium, with basically nothing else to do with them, and always have been.
They are also only generated by doing "work" over time, and are basically never in circulation outside the market. All the EC I've generated in the past, lets say, 6 months, is nonexistant as far as the market is concerned. Maybe I made a billion EC, maybe a million, but the market has nothing to interest me as I have what I want there so my EC are irrelevant.
EC as a trade medium has value measured against other things that also have an ever increasing supply as well. Every box opened increases the supply of whatever. This is very clearly overlooked by people claiming inflation. A very simple example: Space beans go for 1 EC per can, with 100 EC chasing them and 100 cans made per month. Now lets say the amount of EC chasing these cans doubles for whatever reason. They would now cost 2 EC per can. But what if the production also doubled? Now there are 200 cans to chase with 200 EC total spent on them. They remain 1 EC a can in that case.
Every box opened, thing crafted or looted creates a new item in the supply that now competes for EC.
That is why inflation is never truly a thing in MMOs without a code issue like easy duping or some massive change to generation parameters. Its also why it doesn't make sense to go right to currency inflation as an explanation for high prices when there are other supply/demand considerations that take place first, in this case like key and zen generation which have outside factors to seriously consider. Inflation is a broad spectrum of price increases over time, independent of supply/demand changes, so that needs to be supported with a price index to be taken seriously.