The Zen exchange has nothing to do with the game being Free to Play.
You have 2 carts for players to trade Zen or Dilithium. If the Dilithium is in demand, the Zen cart will fill up. If the Zen is in demand, the Dilithium will fill up. It is an exchange between players and Cryptic only supplies two empty empty carts. They benefit from people who buy items with cash. These "virtual goods" purchased with Zen are not free, someone purchased the Zen and traded it for the Dilithium, they just don't want to grind Dilithium and they paid the other player to do it for them.
As others have stated already, the game is free to play, the Zen is cash money. If the company dumps a ton of free Dilithium on the community, there is little to no desire to buy it from the grinders. If you post your bid at max, you will eventually get your Zen. Dilithium will have to dry up being used in sinks. If the company removes the sinks, then this could make the backlog last longer. These are the only 2 things they have to influence the market, flooding and sinks.
To add to the idea of lobi ships in the Phoenix. They could even make it a limited time deal. With the gold tier never having more then 1-2 lobi ships available at a time. That way they could still add them to mudd packs later then they could justify putting 4 or even 5 ships in a mudd pack and trying to get people to buy their multi pack. It would be a little less offensive if they had offered the lower end lobi ships as Phoenix unlocks previously.
I think a lot of the ships need to be reallocated. Some could be Phoenix, I don't see why others can't be GPL and some of the forgotten 1-4's in the C-Store given in episode rewards, a bit like the Ambassador Class.
It would also be terrific if there was some warning about the Mudd Packs, because you'd have people saving up for them. And also, bring all the Anniversary Packs back, because I'd buy the 10th to get the Voyager variant today.
[...]you are VASTLY underestimating the rarity of Phoenix Box UR and Epic Drops. They are currently the worst odds in the game, you have better chances of winning a lockbox or R&D Ship then to get a UR or better drop from Phoenix Boxes.[...]
Epic token you might be right but if you include the UR tier I need to be a quibbler. There is plenty of other stuff that is rarer to win as a lockbox ship. Every item in the infinity box that ain't curated in a choice box to be precise (obviously filler stuff excluded).
---snip---
Back to topic:
Of course anybody with half a braincell could see this coming from a mile away. Recent price inflation in the zenstore (i.e. muddstore started out with 80%!! discounts even had a 90% sale once) forces freepers to grind larger and larger amounts of dilithium to keep up with the shinies. And once you ramped up production you do not simply stop.
We even had a moment before where the dilex already was close to tapping out, until cryptic pulled a rabbit out of their hats and made phoenix boxes available all the time. That released some of the pressure back in the days but for obvious reasons that won't happen this time around.
My personal dilithium sink idea I was floating around a couple of times was this:
Make endeavor xp buyable with dilithium. 1xp for 10 dili. That translates into 200k dilithium for one endeavor point. And to leave some kind of time sink in place only allow buying out the remaining xp to finish your daily point once you completed all endeavors. Reduces the daily grind by a whopping 400 days to 'only' 600.
We won't get that.
What we most certainly will get is a switch to account refine cap. I'd guess around 40k per day if we are lucky.
Because that is exactly the bandaid stopgap measure which doesn't really address the underlying problem I would expect from most of the dev team.
> @dukedom01 said: > What we most certainly will get is a switch to account refine cap. I'd guess around 40k per day if we are lucky.
I could live with that. Abstracting this idea to my toon gang would have me reduce my log in time by another 75%. It also gives a final answer to my question if I should ever made a new character in this game again. The more I think about it the more I like it.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Some people also misunderstand what the concept of a F2P game actually means. It simply means you get to play the game for free. Some, like STO, give away litteraly all misson content for free(while others only offer the base game for free and sell expansions). But no part of the F2P model has anything to do with being able to get the game store items for free. The fact that STO has a zen exchange at all is a luxury, but not any kind of requirement.
It's getting annoying having to constantly agree with you.. please post something wrong for me to argue against.
Seriously though, while you're right.. an exchange system is not an inherent part of a F2P system, nor is it required.. it is a highly attractive feature for free players. It's an important part of the eco system that keeps some players playing, it gives them a purpose and an objective to work toward. You are right, it's considered a luxury but honestly.. I would say it's become a staple of F2P games that at this point could be argued is a requirement. Just personal opinion, I don't have data or anything, but I can't see the 'average' player sticking around knowing that there were so many things in the game that they just can't get without money, especially given how the cost of being a 'paid player' has inflated in recent years.
For those of you saying raising the cap would fix this, you should be aware that Neverwinter raised the cap to 1:750 and the exchange is now at a backlog of 70 million. There is a tracking thread (should you care to read) that states people who posted in January are just getting their Zen now. Raising the cap apparently makes your backlog swell and grow exponentially. The people posting for freebie zen on that game today will not see it until February of next year. This could be a lot worse the more Cryptic monkeys with it.
Indeed correct, from what I understand, raising the cap in Neverwinter took less then a day to max out at the new amount. To Cryptic's credit though, they seem to have learned from this and they did say that they are looking at methods other then raising the cap up from 500:1. That is a very poor solution and it seems that they're aware of that, so that is encouraging.
I think a lot of the ships need to be reallocated. Some could be Phoenix, I don't see why others can't be GPL and some of the forgotten 1-4's in the C-Store given in episode rewards, a bit like the Ambassador Class.
The T 1-4 Ships are an example of the mistakes that have been made to this point. T 1-4 ships were removed from the C-Store and put in the Ship vendor to be used as a Dilithium Sink. Not a bad idea overall, but that change came just after they made all T6 ships scaling, so they moved them to the Dilithium Store and then rendered them completely obsolete outside of one or two consoles or skins.
The idea though, was a good one.. it's an idea of a good Dilithium Sink, it's just unfortunate that it was introduced and rendered obsolete all in the same motion.
But the issue is that the demand for dil is nearly gone. You can't fix that by reducing the supply for dilithium. That can only be fixed by creating new, valuable, and long-lasting uses for it. And I've made some suggestions about addressing the supply side for dilithium as well, but none of that will matter without addressing the demand side, too.
Reducing supply causes scarcity that does indeed increase demand. But, you are absolutely right that both sides of the equation are equally important. If you just cut supply and call it good, you just get a currency that's harder to obtain but no one cares because it's useless anyway. The last thing we need to do is turn Dilithium into a dead currency like GPL. If you suddenly removed all the known methods to make GPL, absolutely no one would care because it's of no use anyway. The same would indeed happen if you 'fixed' Dilithium by only dealing with the supply side.
The Zen exchange has nothing to do with the game being Free to Play.
You have 2 carts for players to trade Zen or Dilithium. If the Dilithium is in demand, the Zen cart will fill up. If the Zen is in demand, the Dilithium will fill up. It is an exchange between players and Cryptic only supplies two empty empty carts. They benefit from people who buy items with cash. These "virtual goods" purchased with Zen are not free, someone purchased the Zen and traded it for the Dilithium, they just don't want to grind Dilithium and they paid the other player to do it for them.
As others have stated already, the game is free to play, the Zen is cash money. If the company dumps a ton of free Dilithium on the community, there is little to no desire to buy it from the grinders. If you post your bid at max, you will eventually get your Zen. Dilithium will have to dry up being used in sinks. If the company removes the sinks, then this could make the backlog last longer. These are the only 2 things they have to influence the market, flooding and sinks.
Zen will always be in demand, but most people aren't rich enough to simply spend their life savings on a game, there's an upper class, a middle class, a lower class like me and poor people, the Zen supply was supposed to be endless, it's the most valuable currency in the game, either give LTS more than 500 Zen or give Zen away as mission rewards, increasing the cap to 1000 Dil will drive players like me away from the Dil Exchange, I draw the line at 300 and no more, that's my offer take it or leave it.
Long term, we need things that people will be willing to spend a lot of dilithium on over and over again. To my mind that means buffs that expire over time or useage, either as consumables or services. And not those pathetic 10 second hybrid batteries they have in the store now but things that will last hours or days. Additional weapon special effect mods for example. Or a tool to build your own vanity shields.
Short term, there is another problem in that a lot of players have large stockpiles of refined dilithium and that needs to be reduced to make it valuable again. Since going for The Burn is likely to make one or two people mildly upset, I have a suggestion that I doubt very much Cryptic would go for and would have a chaotic effect on the game economy: have an event where nearly everything in the Zen store can be bought for dilithium at a reduced cost.
Long term, we need things that people will be willing to spend a lot of dilithium on over and over again. To my mind that means buffs that expire over time or useage, either as consumables or services. And not those pathetic 10 second hybrid batteries they have in the store now but things that will last hours or days. Additional weapon special effect mods for example. Or a tool to build your own vanity shields.
Short term, there is another problem in that a lot of players have large stockpiles of refined dilithium and that needs to be reduced to make it valuable again. Since going for The Burn is likely to make one or two people mildly upset, I have a suggestion that I doubt very much Cryptic would go for and would have a chaotic effect on the game economy: have an event where nearly everything in the Zen store can be bought for dilithium at a reduced cost.
Wait... do people even use batteries on their ships, I just recycle them in exchange for easy EC, the Dilithium store doesn't have anything of interest to me (I like buying uniforms and playable species), about the burn that's gonna TRIBBLE off more than two people, imagine having all your hard earn cash suddenly disappear one day, I would personally want the head of whoever stole my cash mounted on pike, Zen store option seems pretty reasonable to me but as you said Cryptic probably isn't to go that route. "Welcome to the Stock Market Crash of 2411, this should be added to the (canon) history books people, personally I blame the Ferengi."
I wouldn't complain if they did this, but I also wouldn't be spending it on dil unless they gave me a reason to so this wouldn't help the dilex crash at all.
Long term, we need things that people will be willing to spend a lot of dilithium on over and over again. To my mind that means buffs that expire over time or useage, either as consumables or services. And not those pathetic 10 second hybrid batteries they have in the store now but things that will last hours or days. Additional weapon special effect mods for example. Or a tool to build your own vanity shields.
Short term, there is another problem in that a lot of players have large stockpiles of refined dilithium and that needs to be reduced to make it valuable again. Since going for The Burn is likely to make one or two people mildly upset, I have a suggestion that I doubt very much Cryptic would go for and would have a chaotic effect on the game economy: have an event where nearly everything in the Zen store can be bought for dilithium at a reduced cost.
Wait... do people even use batteries on their ships, I just recycle them in exchange for easy EC, the Dilithium store doesn't have anything of interest to me (I like buying uniforms and playable species), about the burn that's gonna TRIBBLE off more than two people, imagine having all your hard earn cash suddenly disappear one day, I would personally want the head of whoever stole my cash mounted on pike, Zen store option seems pretty reasonable to me but as you said Cryptic probably isn't to go that route. "Welcome to the Stock Market Crash of 2411, this should be added to the (canon) history books people, personally I blame the Ferengi."
Some do use batteries. You will see them more in DPS runs and PvP. For general PvE batteries are very rare and are not really needed.
If there was batteries that lasted a good hour and we could buy them with dilithium then I would be tempted to use them.
It kind of shocks me that the company doesn't cheat. I've always assumed they did, but the backlog on neverwinter and now here shows that they don't simply supply the necessary zen. I guess the question is - why not?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
It kind of shocks me that the company doesn't cheat. I've always assumed they did, but the backlog on neverwinter and now here shows that they don't simply supply the necessary zen. I guess the question is - why not?
I honestly can't tell. Is this a serious question?
It kind of shocks me that the company doesn't cheat. I've always assumed they did, but the backlog on neverwinter and now here shows that they don't simply supply the necessary zen. I guess the question is - why not?
Adding unpurchased zen would effectively be the same as giving away tons of C-Store items for free, so that's something they will never, ever do.
You shouldn't have to play the game to earn stuff. Most games at the upper end have the abilty to be rewarded with easier gameplay. WE are missing a greater economy go play a true economic game. This game is missing some of the original facets of games. We should have all the genres represented at minimal game infrastructure. Especially the oldest and least resource intense ones. then build up.
Some people also misunderstand what the concept of a F2P game actually means. It simply means you get to play the game for free. Some, like STO, give away litteraly all misson content for free(while others only offer the base game for free and sell expansions). But no part of the F2P model has anything to do with being able to get the game store items for free. The fact that STO has a zen exchange at all is a luxury, but not any kind of requirement.
It's getting annoying having to constantly agree with you.. please post something wrong for me to argue against.
Seriously though, while you're right.. an exchange system is not an inherent part of a F2P system, nor is it required.. it is a highly attractive feature for free players. It's an important part of the eco system that keeps some players playing, it gives them a purpose and an objective to work toward. You are right, it's considered a luxury but honestly.. I would say it's become a staple of F2P games that at this point could be argued is a requirement. Just personal opinion, I don't have data or anything, but I can't see the 'average' player sticking around knowing that there were so many things in the game that they just can't get without money, especially given how the cost of being a 'paid player' has inflated in recent years.
The exchange is also valuable for minnows like me who do spend the cash monies. I've bought keys with zen from PWE to sell for EC to get guaranteed lock box ships without the gamble.
It's also valuable to me as a safer, more convenient way to trade: I've sold things I don't want like a vanity shield that didn't fit any of my Space Barbie themes, to get lock box weapons that did work for a new Barbie theme.
My personal dilithium sink idea I was floating around a couple of times was this:
Make endeavor xp buyable with dilithium. 1xp for 10 dili. That translates into 200k dilithium for one endeavor point. And to leave some kind of time sink in place only allow buying out the remaining xp to finish your daily point once you completed all endeavors. Reduces the daily grind by a whopping 400 days to 'only' 600.
We won't get that.
What we most certainly will get is a switch to account refine cap. I'd guess around 40k per day if we are lucky.
Because that is exactly the bandaid stopgap measure which doesn't really address the underlying problem I would expect from most of the dev team.
f2p grind to earn stuff. Whales would just buy stuff and skip the grind. There should be a sufficient time maybe 1 year grind for something that a whale can buy. The item should be priced in DILITHIUM so that the whales would convert zen to dilithium when buying. However it must be done carefully with the right price/cost, so f2p does not have a endless grind.
The 1st idea, fit's something whales would buy. So anything that is grind in nature could be used to catch whales but must be bought in dilithium not zen.
2nd idea is to stop farming alts. It allows all players to spend more time playing than farming which would make the game healthy. F2p will grind even if it takes them a long time as long they can get zen.
Lol yea man I’m sure especially the change to ferengi admiralty 10/10 and low tier ships for dil had a massive impact on the exchange.
The very thought that those changes are being sold here as serious is such a comedy. At least business as usual.
Save your breath, he's obviously trolling. He thinks everything is fine, everything Cryptic has done has worked perfectly and there is no problem. It took me a while to figure out his posts are just trolling for reaction, don't buy into it, not worth it. There are some valid ideas, you just won't find them reading certain posts.
I do agree with some others, the best 'Dilithium Sinks' should be designed to take large sums of Dilithium from veteran players. New and leveling players constantly need Dilithium when leveling, the bulk of the supply comes from players like you and I and others that have maxed out our gear and now we have nothing else to do with Dilithium except donate it to fleets or convert it for Zen/EC.
I think people would go for Dilithium Tokens that let you skip grinds. Tokens that let you complete a reputation all the way to T6, tokens that would let you complete a specialization, tokens that would let you complete a DoFF track or an RnD school.. things like that. These would obviously be 'big ticket' items, they would cost 100k Dilithium and up.. but if someone wants to make a new alt for a particular build, that would help take the pain out. Heck, sell tokens that let you level up to 65.. it's so easy to level anyway.. who cares?
Let people pay a small Dilithium charge to complete daily events. Don't want to play 'To Hell With Honor' today for the event? Fine.. pay some Dilithium and complete it for today. Keep the Zen buyout for the entire event, just do daily for Dilithium.
Last idea, stop putting Vanity shields in lock boxes.. sell cosmetic items for Dilihtium. People will pay large sums for space barbie, take advantage of it.
Except that there is a "supply chain" that Cryptic feeds off at the end of the day .
Cryptic feeds off whales & spenders , whales and spenders feed off playing with casuals / non-payers in game .
If this turns off the casuals / non-payers , who will now see their dreams of a Zen ship float over the rainbow and disappear -- combined with the selection of a less then stellar endgame material that this game offers -- well let's just say that this might not end well .
I have not read all 7 pages. I'll admit that. the problem, which was pointed out in the first couple pages is that there needs to be a permanent sink. I suggest that consumables be introduced, Fuel and Ordinance you have to pay Dil to go. Especially transwarp jumps TO missions. Determine how many torpedoes each class can carry. as much as i love TS3 on my escort, maybe I'll think twice if 6 TS tank my torpedo inventory, and it will have the additional impact of making players who rely on torpedoes to come up with different strategies. of course the torpedo mechanics would need to be changed, probably allowing for more shield penetration. maybe the topedoes encountering shields draining them.
Except that there is a "supply chain" that Cryptic feeds off at the end of the day .
Cryptic feeds off whales & spenders , whales and spenders feed off playing with casuals / non-payers in game .
If this turns off the casuals / non-payers , who will now see their dreams of a Zen ship float over the rainbow and disappear -- combined with the selection of a less then stellar endgame material that this game offers -- well let's just say that this might not end well .
Pretty nicely sums it up, the game needs both the F2P crowd as well as the big spenders to survive. Big Spenders won't stick around in an empty game.
Ultimately, the 500:1 rate will end up being a negative for Cryptic as it will push players out of the game.. that's never a good thing.
Response to moderated post redacted. -- WingedHussar
Comments
You have 2 carts for players to trade Zen or Dilithium. If the Dilithium is in demand, the Zen cart will fill up. If the Zen is in demand, the Dilithium will fill up. It is an exchange between players and Cryptic only supplies two empty empty carts. They benefit from people who buy items with cash. These "virtual goods" purchased with Zen are not free, someone purchased the Zen and traded it for the Dilithium, they just don't want to grind Dilithium and they paid the other player to do it for them.
As others have stated already, the game is free to play, the Zen is cash money. If the company dumps a ton of free Dilithium on the community, there is little to no desire to buy it from the grinders. If you post your bid at max, you will eventually get your Zen. Dilithium will have to dry up being used in sinks. If the company removes the sinks, then this could make the backlog last longer. These are the only 2 things they have to influence the market, flooding and sinks.
I think a lot of the ships need to be reallocated. Some could be Phoenix, I don't see why others can't be GPL and some of the forgotten 1-4's in the C-Store given in episode rewards, a bit like the Ambassador Class.
It would also be terrific if there was some warning about the Mudd Packs, because you'd have people saving up for them. And also, bring all the Anniversary Packs back, because I'd buy the 10th to get the Voyager variant today.
Epic token you might be right but if you include the UR tier I need to be a quibbler. There is plenty of other stuff that is rarer to win as a lockbox ship. Every item in the infinity box that ain't curated in a choice box to be precise (obviously filler stuff excluded).
---snip---
Back to topic:
Of course anybody with half a braincell could see this coming from a mile away. Recent price inflation in the zenstore (i.e. muddstore started out with 80%!! discounts even had a 90% sale once) forces freepers to grind larger and larger amounts of dilithium to keep up with the shinies. And once you ramped up production you do not simply stop.
We even had a moment before where the dilex already was close to tapping out, until cryptic pulled a rabbit out of their hats and made phoenix boxes available all the time. That released some of the pressure back in the days but for obvious reasons that won't happen this time around.
My personal dilithium sink idea I was floating around a couple of times was this:
Make endeavor xp buyable with dilithium. 1xp for 10 dili. That translates into 200k dilithium for one endeavor point. And to leave some kind of time sink in place only allow buying out the remaining xp to finish your daily point once you completed all endeavors. Reduces the daily grind by a whopping 400 days to 'only' 600.
We won't get that.
What we most certainly will get is a switch to account refine cap. I'd guess around 40k per day if we are lucky.
Because that is exactly the bandaid stopgap measure which doesn't really address the underlying problem I would expect from most of the dev team.
> What we most certainly will get is a switch to account refine cap. I'd guess around 40k per day if we are lucky.
I could live with that. Abstracting this idea to my toon gang would have me reduce my log in time by another 75%. It also gives a final answer to my question if I should ever made a new character in this game again. The more I think about it the more I like it.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
It's getting annoying having to constantly agree with you.. please post something wrong for me to argue against.
Seriously though, while you're right.. an exchange system is not an inherent part of a F2P system, nor is it required.. it is a highly attractive feature for free players. It's an important part of the eco system that keeps some players playing, it gives them a purpose and an objective to work toward. You are right, it's considered a luxury but honestly.. I would say it's become a staple of F2P games that at this point could be argued is a requirement. Just personal opinion, I don't have data or anything, but I can't see the 'average' player sticking around knowing that there were so many things in the game that they just can't get without money, especially given how the cost of being a 'paid player' has inflated in recent years.
Indeed correct, from what I understand, raising the cap in Neverwinter took less then a day to max out at the new amount. To Cryptic's credit though, they seem to have learned from this and they did say that they are looking at methods other then raising the cap up from 500:1. That is a very poor solution and it seems that they're aware of that, so that is encouraging.
The T 1-4 Ships are an example of the mistakes that have been made to this point. T 1-4 ships were removed from the C-Store and put in the Ship vendor to be used as a Dilithium Sink. Not a bad idea overall, but that change came just after they made all T6 ships scaling, so they moved them to the Dilithium Store and then rendered them completely obsolete outside of one or two consoles or skins.
The idea though, was a good one.. it's an idea of a good Dilithium Sink, it's just unfortunate that it was introduced and rendered obsolete all in the same motion.
Reducing supply causes scarcity that does indeed increase demand. But, you are absolutely right that both sides of the equation are equally important. If you just cut supply and call it good, you just get a currency that's harder to obtain but no one cares because it's useless anyway. The last thing we need to do is turn Dilithium into a dead currency like GPL. If you suddenly removed all the known methods to make GPL, absolutely no one would care because it's of no use anyway. The same would indeed happen if you 'fixed' Dilithium by only dealing with the supply side.
Zen will always be in demand, but most people aren't rich enough to simply spend their life savings on a game, there's an upper class, a middle class, a lower class like me and poor people, the Zen supply was supposed to be endless, it's the most valuable currency in the game, either give LTS more than 500 Zen or give Zen away as mission rewards, increasing the cap to 1000 Dil will drive players like me away from the Dil Exchange, I draw the line at 300 and no more, that's my offer take it or leave it.
Short term, there is another problem in that a lot of players have large stockpiles of refined dilithium and that needs to be reduced to make it valuable again. Since going for The Burn is likely to make one or two people mildly upset, I have a suggestion that I doubt very much Cryptic would go for and would have a chaotic effect on the game economy: have an event where nearly everything in the Zen store can be bought for dilithium at a reduced cost.
But I respawn
I am duranium!
Wait... do people even use batteries on their ships, I just recycle them in exchange for easy EC, the Dilithium store doesn't have anything of interest to me (I like buying uniforms and playable species), about the burn that's gonna TRIBBLE off more than two people, imagine having all your hard earn cash suddenly disappear one day, I would personally want the head of whoever stole my cash mounted on pike, Zen store option seems pretty reasonable to me but as you said Cryptic probably isn't to go that route. "Welcome to the Stock Market Crash of 2411, this should be added to the (canon) history books people, personally I blame the Ferengi."
If there was batteries that lasted a good hour and we could buy them with dilithium then I would be tempted to use them.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I honestly can't tell. Is this a serious question?
Adding unpurchased zen would effectively be the same as giving away tons of C-Store items for free, so that's something they will never, ever do.
The very thought that those changes are being sold here as serious is such a comedy. At least business as usual.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The exchange is also valuable for minnows like me who do spend the cash monies. I've bought keys with zen from PWE to sell for EC to get guaranteed lock box ships without the gamble.
It's also valuable to me as a safer, more convenient way to trade: I've sold things I don't want like a vanity shield that didn't fit any of my Space Barbie themes, to get lock box weapons that did work for a new Barbie theme.
f2p grind to earn stuff. Whales would just buy stuff and skip the grind. There should be a sufficient time maybe 1 year grind for something that a whale can buy. The item should be priced in DILITHIUM so that the whales would convert zen to dilithium when buying. However it must be done carefully with the right price/cost, so f2p does not have a endless grind.
The 1st idea, fit's something whales would buy. So anything that is grind in nature could be used to catch whales but must be bought in dilithium not zen.
2nd idea is to stop farming alts. It allows all players to spend more time playing than farming which would make the game healthy. F2p will grind even if it takes them a long time as long they can get zen.
Save your breath, he's obviously trolling. He thinks everything is fine, everything Cryptic has done has worked perfectly and there is no problem. It took me a while to figure out his posts are just trolling for reaction, don't buy into it, not worth it. There are some valid ideas, you just won't find them reading certain posts.
I do agree with some others, the best 'Dilithium Sinks' should be designed to take large sums of Dilithium from veteran players. New and leveling players constantly need Dilithium when leveling, the bulk of the supply comes from players like you and I and others that have maxed out our gear and now we have nothing else to do with Dilithium except donate it to fleets or convert it for Zen/EC.
I think people would go for Dilithium Tokens that let you skip grinds. Tokens that let you complete a reputation all the way to T6, tokens that would let you complete a specialization, tokens that would let you complete a DoFF track or an RnD school.. things like that. These would obviously be 'big ticket' items, they would cost 100k Dilithium and up.. but if someone wants to make a new alt for a particular build, that would help take the pain out. Heck, sell tokens that let you level up to 65.. it's so easy to level anyway.. who cares?
Let people pay a small Dilithium charge to complete daily events. Don't want to play 'To Hell With Honor' today for the event? Fine.. pay some Dilithium and complete it for today. Keep the Zen buyout for the entire event, just do daily for Dilithium.
Last idea, stop putting Vanity shields in lock boxes.. sell cosmetic items for Dilihtium. People will pay large sums for space barbie, take advantage of it.
Except that there is a "supply chain" that Cryptic feeds off at the end of the day .
Cryptic feeds off whales & spenders , whales and spenders feed off playing with casuals / non-payers in game .
If this turns off the casuals / non-payers , who will now see their dreams of a Zen ship float over the rainbow and disappear -- combined with the selection of a less then stellar endgame material that this game offers -- well let's just say that this might not end well .
Pretty nicely sums it up, the game needs both the F2P crowd as well as the big spenders to survive. Big Spenders won't stick around in an empty game.
Ultimately, the 500:1 rate will end up being a negative for Cryptic as it will push players out of the game.. that's never a good thing.
Response to moderated post redacted. -- WingedHussar