Keep in mind neverwinter has an account refine cap. Though it probably would be some kind of hilarious in a burn it all to the ground way to see how high the usual suspects could crank up their dilithium production.
And once the precedent is set for dilithium master keys do you really think people would slow down their dilithium production for the next time?
100k Astral Diamonds per day Account-wide. That's the equivalent of 133 Zen per day, if you could buy it. The problem is too many people took them seriously that it is F2P. There are too many people with too much time on their hands that spend it as farmers. They consider it an anathema if they have to spend even a $1 on a game that preoccupies them for who knows how many hours a day.
Post edited by ltminns on
'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.'
100k Astral Diamonds per day Account-wide. That's the equivalent of 133 Zen per day, if you could buy it. The problem is roo many people took them seriously that it is F2P. There are too many people with too much time on their hands that spend it as farmers. They consider it an anathema if they have to spend even a $1 on a game that preoccupies them for who knows how many hours a day.
It's weird but I would actually have no problem paying for mission packs. I am always wanting more mission content and would buy them up as quickly as I am able to play through them. I view it like paying for a movie or TV series I enjoy.
But when it comes to the ships and items, I would rather grind them out (and have been able to do so pretty effectively).
That was probably already planned out for like...weeks - considering we haven't had one for nearly half a year if not longer, it was high time for it to come back around...of course, it picked the absolute worst time to do so.
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.
That was probably already planned out for like...weeks - considering we haven't had one for nearly half a year if not longer, it was high time for it to come back around...of course, it picked the absolute worst time to do so.
There was a pretty funny post about this on reddit:
Players: OMG the Dilex is broken help!
Devs: we're working on it.
Devs: oh and here is something to drive up demand for zen even more.
Players: WTF man thats making things worse!!
Devs: sorry it was already scheduled, nothing we can do.
Devs: oh and we're having UNscheduled patch today to fix some tiny exploit.
Players: WTF? you just said you couldn't change the schedule!
Devs: sorry the call is breaking up, enjoy the promo!
So yeah, they can't change their schedule. Except any time they want to, and never when they don't want to
For what it's worth, I put up a nice chunk of dil yesterday and it had sold when I logged in today. Less than 24 hours isn't a big deal, but if that time frame grows to weeks-months like Neverwinter that would be a completely different story. Hopefully they will do something to prevent that from happening.
I guess cryptic doesn't really care about the dilex market. The only thing they care about is more money going in their pockets.
AGAIN... it was probably planned weeks in advance before this situation came up. Therefor its not some underhanded greed thing, its just awkward timing. They couldn't have known this was gonna happen when they put it on the schedule. They are working on it now, but that shouldn't mean they have to cancel EVERYTHING they had scheduled to do it. And again... there isn't some Snively Whiplash moustache twirling guy in a control room flipping switches on demand to watch the world burn.
Honestly its not the first time we've had unfortunate timing of things.
The 'Technical' reason they couldn't continue to give out Lobi with the Featured Episode Rerun Events is that the Developer that coded it left and no one else could figure it out, don't you know. That big one in the late Summer of 2013 you could get about 450 Lobi, enough for a couple of Rare Consoles and a Rare Ground Weapon, that at the time were non-upgradeable. 😉
Never had heard that tale before, it's fascinating & a bit depressing, but had heard that similar tale about 1 of the reasons Cryptic cancelled the Foundry so it makes falls in line.
The Champions exchange has been running a bit higher than normal. The Neverwinter exchange has been backlogged forever and in the last year went from a backlog of 40 million zen to 69 million zen. Some one at Cryptic had the bright idea of raising the cap there from 500 to 750 about a year ago... that sent the backlog shooting to the moon and all the auction house item went up 30% from the inflation.
Did they dump a bunch of free Dilithium on you? I bet they did. Some people think they plan to remove all the exchanges, others have said this creates an unreasonable delay, and people who can't wait buy it. I never bother with the exchange on any of these games much. I just buy my zen for what I need. If they pull the exchanges, the games are still free to play, you just have the option to buy. No one is twisting your arm to buy, there is no pay wall.
I seem to remember, when we had a Calendar a couple of years ago, they canceled Weekend Events and jammed in a Duty Officer Weekend with an Infinity Promo thrown in with it. We had Duty Officer Weekends within weeks of each other, so the planned according to the Tablets from the Mountain argument seems very weak.
Post edited by ltminns on
'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 don't really care that Zen is expensive now. I usually buy it directly anyway as I am far too impatient to get it with dilithium. I might save and exchange dilithium for something like additional bank slots, but anything more expensive I just get with real money usually.
Even on the rare occassion where I do get larger amounts of Zen through the exchange, I'm more than willing to pay a large amount of dilithium. It's basically free money and other people who bought that Zen, deserve to get the most out of their hard earned money.
Nothing from the C-store is really required, except maybe some bank and inventory slots or reroll tokens for players who don't have any of that. So yeah, for me the priority would be to ensure that Zen bought with real money is worth something, even though I hardly ever sell it for dilithium.
Dilithium can be obtained so easily in the game - it's simply not worth more and hence why you have to let go so much of it to get that Zen. I don't think this is a bad thing, honestly.
I really think it be unwise to raise the CAP for DIL, very few will sell Dilithium for that much over 400:1, sure many new players will, as will some older ones as they now allow more ALTs than previously. When the game started you used to get 3 max without buying more in ZEN store, since then they had increased it to 7, given +1 for most of them all.
Yet like everything it simply depends how well you try to upgrade all your Characters, get them Traits, and so forth. As I am always upgrading my gear for them all, I find Dilithium too precious to give away at 500:1 as I'd rather get Phoenix Upgrades as a result yet I also buy ZEN as well. I never discourage people from getting ZEN, just so long as everyone plays within their budget or limits.
Also realize Neverwinter also had been at 500:1 almost since the year after it launched (so it was maxed for at least 5 years before they raised it) simply cause their Exchange uses Diamonds (our Dilithium) rather than Gold (our Energy Credit) and so people needed more diamonds to buy things to upgrade their characters.
I pretty sure a lot of Neverwinter players also left at that time, as I lost a lot of friends at that time and haven't played it myself in almost 2 years as a result. Despite I miss my Elves a lot. But Neverwinter also never used Diamonds to allow you to upgrade gear/weapons/artifacts, and every 6 months the item level on new gear would always increase, so constantly replace everything all the time. I never liked constantly working hard to get things on Characters, simply to use it for maybe 4-6 months before you then had to start replacing it all over again, and at best could only use the old gear as a appearance transmute at best. That was the biggest thing I never liked about Neverwinter.
I'm also a far bigger Star Trek fan, so glad to see they are trying to find other options for STO.
From a long time player perspective it should also be noted that the Dil exchange in STO actually worked for a VERY long time (8-9 years) , in comparison to at least one other (newer) Cryptic game (Neverwinter) , where either the concept or the execution (or both) have failed a lot sooner .
What can we learn from that -- apart from the idea that when all things considered , STO had a more or less stable and functioning economy ?
It is also less then clear what caused the economy to implode (more on this below) , as contrary to popular belief , it wasn't the Oberth ship pack .
Why ?
Because there is no real difference in between the Dil exchange being on 500 and on 492 or 489 or 485 .
The moment we passed 450-460-470 , we were on the proverbial "running on close to empty" , even if it didn't seem like it . The above 450-470 is a bad economic indicator , that puts failure of the system / exchange on the table .
So when Ambassador Kael said that they knew this was coming -- he wasn't exactly lying (although he wasn't exactly telling the truth either, as in market economics few things are set in stone or come with an exact date) .
I've heard from those wishing to state the obvious that it was the last 3-6 months worth of stuff that Cryptic put out for sale that finished the Dilex .
As primary reasons go , that is indeed the obvious answer .
I'm looking for secondary reasons .
The ones that are less obvious .
Like :
Did the presentation in the Mudd style packs TRIBBLE off regular spenders (who may have really waned just 1 ship) ?
Did the presentation in the Anniversary and other Mega bundles style TRIBBLE off regular spenders (who may have wanted just 1 or 2-3 ships) ?
Did the combination of the two above , along with a steady but growing list of paying players who closed their wallets to Cryptic for a variety of other offenses --- did the combination of all 3 finally done what singular frustrations with this that or the other couldn't have done in the past ?
In other words ... , have the chickens come home to roost ?
As to what will Cryptic actually do ? Look at the metrics of course .
The next 4-6 months will provide both an influx of returning players through the summer event (who may or may not move the needle on the Dil exchange) -- so Cryptic can look at their retention levels in regards to the current exchange numbers .
Cryptic can also look on the next 6 month cycle of remaining & incoming players , and compare them to 2-3 years ago (not last year , as last year was an anomaly for all businesses , for good or bad) .
All in all , what's likely to happen is either some half baked solution now , or some more thought out plans that will wait in the drawer for the next 6 month metrics analysis .
I also would not put it out of the realm of possibility that Cryptic may be telling themselves : "well sure , this batch of F2P-ers may get disheartened and leave , but the new ones won't know any better and think that this is the norm , and will play & pay as such " .
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.
I love this idea!
The fact that the Vanity shields are essentially a 'chance within a chance' is really very silly when you think about it. I mean, they drop in Weapons packs... but they're not weapons. In fact they're not actually shields either in the true sense of the word.
Anyway - this seems like a great idea to me, and even if they'd prefer to keep the silly 'chance within a chance' thing attached to lock boxes, surely they could create the odd purchasable Vanity shield in the same manner in which they did the summer event baseball themed ones and the free ones.
Agreed, and it's not like pulling Vanity shields out of lock boxes would really cause lock boxes to no longer sell.
If anything, it will help.. they really need to pull stuff out of lock boxes to stop diluting the prize pool. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.
Why not just kill the lobi store and move everything in it to Phoenix boxes? Are there a ton of people actually opening lockboxes for the lobi alone? That would be a decent dil sink in my opinion. I'm surprised they haven't ran into this problem already.
I really think it be unwise to raise the CAP for DIL, very few will sell Dilithium for that much over 400:1, sure many new players will, as will some older ones as they now allow more ALTs than previously. When the game started you used to get 3 max without buying more in ZEN store, since then they had increased it to 7 or even 8 a result of Recruitment Events, given +1 for most except one than maybe gave 2.
Yet like everything it simply depends how well you try to upgrade all your Characters, get them Traits, and so forth. As I am always upgrading my gear for them all, I find Dilithium too precious to give away at 500:1 as I'd rather get Phoenix Upgrades as a result yet I also buy ZEN as well. I never discourage people from getting ZEN, just so long as everyone plays within their budget or limits.
It would be nice to see a few new things added to the Phoenix as it's been awhile, and while @blargskull said Neverwinter raised it it also made the backlog worse.
Also realize Neverwinter also had been at 500:1 almost since the year after it launched (so it was maxed for at least 5 years before they raised it) simply cause their Exchange uses Diamonds (our Dilithium) rather than Gold (our Energy Credit) and so people needed more diamonds to buy things to upgrade their characters.
I pretty sure a lot of Neverwinter players also left at that time, as I lost a lot of friends at that time and haven't played it myself in almost 2 years as a result. Despite I miss my Elves a lot. But Neverwinter also never used Diamonds to allow you to upgrade gear/weapons/artifacts, and every 6 months the item level on new gear would always increase, so constantly replace everything all the time. I never liked constantly working hard to get things on Characters, simply to use it for maybe 4-6 months before you then had to start replacing it all over again, and at best could only use the old gear as a appearance transmute at best. That was the biggest thing I never liked about Neverwinter.
I'm also a far bigger Star Trek fan, so glad to see they are trying to find other options for STO.
I agree raising the Dil Cap would be an awful Idea.
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.
I love this idea!
The fact that the Vanity shields are essentially a 'chance within a chance' is really very silly when you think about it. I mean, they drop in Weapons packs... but they're not weapons. In fact they're not actually shields either in the true sense of the word.
Anyway - this seems like a great idea to me, and even if they'd prefer to keep the silly 'chance within a chance' thing attached to lock boxes, surely they could create the odd purchasable Vanity shield in the same manner in which they did the summer event baseball themed ones and the free ones.
Agreed, and it's not like pulling Vanity shields out of lock boxes would really cause lock boxes to no longer sell.
If anything, it will help.. they really need to pull stuff out of lock boxes to stop diluting the prize pool. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.
If the Dil Store had Cosmetic stuff for Ships and Space Barbie like uniforms, more playable races and vanity Shields, I'd probably spend Dil, but I know most players care more about Ships, maybe add in ships not currently in game like TOS era Orion Ships or a Borg Cube to the Dil store.
Why not just kill the lobi store and move everything in it to Phoenix boxes? Are there a ton of people actually opening lockboxes for the lobi alone? That would be a decent dil sink in my opinion. I'm surprised they haven't ran into this problem already.
Or hell, even add another tier to the phoenix if they don't want to kill the store all together. Make a lobi token where you could get a lobi item from the phoenix box.
High selling Zen items like keys will NEVER be made permanently available for Dil. I could see it maybe happening once or twice a year (still unlikely), but not more than that.
Did you fail to read the whole thing?
No, I read the whole thing, it's simply never going to happen. They're clearly aware that they have trouble controlling dil inflation, so there's no chance they would put themselves in a position where they would lose money if they fail at it again and the dilex gets back above 400:1. Would it help? Definitely, but I can guarantee you that they would never do it, at least not as a permanently available option.
Neverwinter, occasionally runs the Sale of a specific Lockbox that doesn't require a key to open.
An OCCASIONAL Key for Dil or Unlocked Lockbox sale is certainly possible, but it would only ever be an occasional thing.
It doesn't lose them money. They aren't making that money in the first place. The only people they make money from are the ones buying zen. Those zen buyers want dilithium. For what I have no idea, however no one else has a real use for dilithium any longer.
With the exchanged capped out and no zen to be found, they are making all the money they can. They can't get more money from people who only get their zen from the dilex. They can't get people to buy more zen to exchange to dil because the dilex dried up due to no value for dilithium.
While they absolutely need new things to do with dilithium, they also need pressure valves to serve as conditional dil sinks. They obviously haven't been very good at managing dilithium's value, so slapping in some pressure valves to conditionally activate as dil value drops is a way to help relieve that problem.
And the thinking is backwards anyway. If someone wants 500 dil, they can spend 1 zen to get it right now. If the dilex was back to 100:1 because dil has a massive amount of value again, then they need 5 zen. And those dil buyers are the ones spending money, not the dil sellers.
From a long time player perspective it should also be noted that the Dil exchange in STO actually worked for a VERY long time (8-9 years) , in comparison to at least one other (newer) Cryptic game (Neverwinter) , where either the concept or the execution (or both) have failed a lot sooner .
What can we learn from that -- apart from the idea that when all things considered , STO had a more or less stable and functioning economy ?
It is also less then clear what caused the economy to implode (more on this below) , as contrary to popular belief , it wasn't the Oberth ship pack .
Why ?
Because there is no real difference in between the Dil exchange being on 500 and on 492 or 489 or 485 .
The moment we passed 450-460-470 , we were on the proverbial "running on close to empty" , even if it didn't seem like it . The above 450-470 is a bad economic indicator , that puts failure of the system / exchange on the table .
So when Ambassador Kael said that they knew this was coming -- he wasn't exactly lying (although he wasn't exactly telling the truth either, as in market economics few things are set in stone or come with an exact date) .
I've heard from those wishing to state the obvious that it was the last 3-6 months worth of stuff that Cryptic put out for sale that finished the Dilex .
As primary reasons go , that is indeed the obvious answer .
I'm looking for secondary reasons .
The ones that are less obvious .
Like :
Did the presentation in the Mudd style packs TRIBBLE off regular spenders (who may have really waned just 1 ship) ?
Did the presentation in the Anniversary and other Mega bundles style TRIBBLE off regular spenders (who may have wanted just 1 or 2-3 ships) ?
Did the combination of the two above , along with a steady but growing list of paying players who closed their wallets to Cryptic for a variety of other offenses --- did the combination of all 3 finally done what singular frustrations with this that or the other couldn't have done in the past ?
In other words ... , have the chickens come home to roost ?
As to what will Cryptic actually do ? Look at the metrics of course .
The next 4-6 months will provide both an influx of returning players through the summer event (who may or may not move the needle on the Dil exchange) -- so Cryptic can look at their retention levels in regards to the current exchange numbers .
Cryptic can also look on the next 6 month cycle of remaining & incoming players , and compare them to 2-3 years ago (not last year , as last year was an anomaly for all businesses , for good or bad) .
All in all , what's likely to happen is either some half baked solution now , or some more thought out plans that will wait in the drawer for the next 6 month metrics analysis .
I also would not put it out of the realm of possibility that Cryptic may be telling themselves : "well sure , this batch of F2P-ers may get disheartened and leave , but the new ones won't know any better and think that this is the norm , and will play & pay as such " .
There is an important misconception in your analysis.
It makes little sense to explain an increasing Zen price by assuming that fewer regular spenders are spending money on C-store packages.
Those regular spenders would buy Zen to get those packages after all. They wouldn't put it on the exchange, so there is no reduced supply of Zen in that regard.
And I seriously doubt that people who are used to getting the stuff they want by regularly spending, are now going to spend hours and hours grinding thousands of Zen to get a new package.
A reduction in real money spent isn't such a likely explanation. Far more reasonable to presume that it's an increase in demand for Zen - due to many formerly rather exclusive ships being added to the store - that's driving up the prices.
> @corinthalas said: >Once you've upgraded all your equipment, what else is there left to do with dilithium?
I do it again. For real. When I’m having fun I’m constantly making new and better builds on my 13 chars. Upgrades and re rolls are never finished and constantly replaced by new and better items. At my height I never had any dil for zen. It was all used up and I even needed to pay for dil.
Things of course rapidly change when I’m not having fun. Then I switch to I’ll make do with what I got mode and concentrate on 0 spending money.
One boring new pve map after the other, one boring event after the other, empty queue lists and even STO forum mods in too much love with their own texts.
All of that is part of the reason why my enthusiasm for this title is at its all time low. This game has sadly lived from its substance long enough with not much left to get enthusiastic about.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
From a long time player perspective it should also be noted that the Dil exchange in STO actually worked for a VERY long time (8-9 years) , in comparison to at least one other (newer) Cryptic game (Neverwinter) , where either the concept or the execution (or both) have failed a lot sooner .
What can we learn from that -- apart from the idea that when all things considered , STO had a more or less stable and functioning economy ?
It is also less then clear what caused the economy to implode (more on this below) , as contrary to popular belief , it wasn't the Oberth ship pack .
Why ?
Because there is no real difference in between the Dil exchange being on 500 and on 492 or 489 or 485 .
The moment we passed 450-460-470 , we were on the proverbial "running on close to empty" , even if it didn't seem like it . The above 450-470 is a bad economic indicator , that puts failure of the system / exchange on the table .
So when Ambassador Kael said that they knew this was coming -- he wasn't exactly lying (although he wasn't exactly telling the truth either, as in market economics few things are set in stone or come with an exact date) .
I've heard from those wishing to state the obvious that it was the last 3-6 months worth of stuff that Cryptic put out for sale that finished the Dilex .
As primary reasons go , that is indeed the obvious answer .
I'm looking for secondary reasons .
The ones that are less obvious .
Like :
Did the presentation in the Mudd style packs TRIBBLE off regular spenders (who may have really waned just 1 ship) ?
Did the presentation in the Anniversary and other Mega bundles style TRIBBLE off regular spenders (who may have wanted just 1 or 2-3 ships) ?
Did the combination of the two above , along with a steady but growing list of paying players who closed their wallets to Cryptic for a variety of other offenses --- did the combination of all 3 finally done what singular frustrations with this that or the other couldn't have done in the past ?
In other words ... , have the chickens come home to roost ?
As to what will Cryptic actually do ? Look at the metrics of course .
The next 4-6 months will provide both an influx of returning players through the summer event (who may or may not move the needle on the Dil exchange) -- so Cryptic can look at their retention levels in regards to the current exchange numbers .
Cryptic can also look on the next 6 month cycle of remaining & incoming players , and compare them to 2-3 years ago (not last year , as last year was an anomaly for all businesses , for good or bad) .
All in all , what's likely to happen is either some half baked solution now , or some more thought out plans that will wait in the drawer for the next 6 month metrics analysis .
I also would not put it out of the realm of possibility that Cryptic may be telling themselves : "well sure , this batch of F2P-ers may get disheartened and leave , but the new ones won't know any better and think that this is the norm , and will play & pay as such " .
There is an important misconception in your analysis.
It makes little sense to explain an increasing Zen price by assuming that fewer regular spenders are spending money on C-store packages.
Those regular spenders would buy Zen to get those packages after all. They wouldn't put it on the exchange, so there is no reduced supply of Zen in that regard.
And I seriously doubt that people who are used to getting the stuff they want by regularly spending, are now going to spend hours and hours grinding thousands of Zen to get a new package.
A reduction in real money spent isn't such a likely explanation. Far more reasonable to presume that it's an increase in demand for Zen - due to many formerly rather exclusive ships being added to the store - that's driving up the prices.
We cannot conclude whether or not the bigger spenders are spending less zen. We can only conclude that they're spending less zen on dilithium. Which is hardly surprising. Once you've upgraded all your equipment, what else is there left to do with dilithium? You could spend it on upgrading equipment to sell, but what then are you supposed to do with all that EC? It has even less use.
Maybe it was always going to come to this. Not enough new players with money to spend coming in to buy dilithium, and the older established players have run out of reasons to buy it.
I wasn't concluding that big spenders are spending less Zen. Quite the opposite actually.
And no, we cannot conclude that they're spending less zen on dilithium either. A price paid in the market is the result of supply and demand. Like I said, it may well be that many more players are looking to buy zen, thus driving up the price.
But you do have a point regarding the limited purpose of dilithium. That will also likely increase the demand for Zen though, and have the same effect.
It's not like Reps and Fleets are doing anything to the Dilithium, pretty sure everyone here maxed out each one, Dilithium pretty much has no value, since there's nothing good to spend it on aside from Zen.
Comments
And once the precedent is set for dilithium master keys do you really think people would slow down their dilithium production for the next time?
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's weird but I would actually have no problem paying for mission packs. I am always wanting more mission content and would buy them up as quickly as I am able to play through them. I view it like paying for a movie or TV series I enjoy.
But when it comes to the ships and items, I would rather grind them out (and have been able to do so pretty effectively).
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
#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!"
There was a pretty funny post about this on reddit:
So yeah, they can't change their schedule. Except any time they want to, and never when they don't want to
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
I guess cryptic doesn't really care about the dilex market. The only thing they care about is more money going in their pockets.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
AGAIN... it was probably planned weeks in advance before this situation came up. Therefor its not some underhanded greed thing, its just awkward timing. They couldn't have known this was gonna happen when they put it on the schedule. They are working on it now, but that shouldn't mean they have to cancel EVERYTHING they had scheduled to do it. And again... there isn't some Snively Whiplash moustache twirling guy in a control room flipping switches on demand to watch the world burn.
Honestly its not the first time we've had unfortunate timing of things.
Never had heard that tale before, it's fascinating & a bit depressing, but had heard that similar tale about 1 of the reasons Cryptic cancelled the Foundry so it makes falls in line.
Did they dump a bunch of free Dilithium on you? I bet they did. Some people think they plan to remove all the exchanges, others have said this creates an unreasonable delay, and people who can't wait buy it. I never bother with the exchange on any of these games much. I just buy my zen for what I need. If they pull the exchanges, the games are still free to play, you just have the option to buy. No one is twisting your arm to buy, there is no pay wall.
Enjoy the game, grind or die!
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.'
Even on the rare occassion where I do get larger amounts of Zen through the exchange, I'm more than willing to pay a large amount of dilithium. It's basically free money and other people who bought that Zen, deserve to get the most out of their hard earned money.
Nothing from the C-store is really required, except maybe some bank and inventory slots or reroll tokens for players who don't have any of that. So yeah, for me the priority would be to ensure that Zen bought with real money is worth something, even though I hardly ever sell it for dilithium.
Dilithium can be obtained so easily in the game - it's simply not worth more and hence why you have to let go so much of it to get that Zen. I don't think this is a bad thing, honestly.
I really think it be unwise to raise the CAP for DIL, very few will sell Dilithium for that much over 400:1, sure many new players will, as will some older ones as they now allow more ALTs than previously. When the game started you used to get 3 max without buying more in ZEN store, since then they had increased it to 7, given +1 for most of them all.
Yet like everything it simply depends how well you try to upgrade all your Characters, get them Traits, and so forth. As I am always upgrading my gear for them all, I find Dilithium too precious to give away at 500:1 as I'd rather get Phoenix Upgrades as a result yet I also buy ZEN as well. I never discourage people from getting ZEN, just so long as everyone plays within their budget or limits.
Also realize Neverwinter also had been at 500:1 almost since the year after it launched (so it was maxed for at least 5 years before they raised it) simply cause their Exchange uses Diamonds (our Dilithium) rather than Gold (our Energy Credit) and so people needed more diamonds to buy things to upgrade their characters.
I pretty sure a lot of Neverwinter players also left at that time, as I lost a lot of friends at that time and haven't played it myself in almost 2 years as a result. Despite I miss my Elves a lot. But Neverwinter also never used Diamonds to allow you to upgrade gear/weapons/artifacts, and every 6 months the item level on new gear would always increase, so constantly replace everything all the time. I never liked constantly working hard to get things on Characters, simply to use it for maybe 4-6 months before you then had to start replacing it all over again, and at best could only use the old gear as a appearance transmute at best. That was the biggest thing I never liked about Neverwinter.
I'm also a far bigger Star Trek fan, so glad to see they are trying to find other options for STO.
They tried it in Neverwinter, it backfired and they don't want to repeat the mistake. That is commendable.
What can we learn from that -- apart from the idea that when all things considered , STO had a more or less stable and functioning economy ?
It is also less then clear what caused the economy to implode (more on this below) , as contrary to popular belief , it wasn't the Oberth ship pack .
Why ?
Because there is no real difference in between the Dil exchange being on 500 and on 492 or 489 or 485 .
The moment we passed 450-460-470 , we were on the proverbial "running on close to empty" , even if it didn't seem like it . The above 450-470 is a bad economic indicator , that puts failure of the system / exchange on the table .
So when Ambassador Kael said that they knew this was coming -- he wasn't exactly lying (although he wasn't exactly telling the truth either, as in market economics few things are set in stone or come with an exact date) .
I've heard from those wishing to state the obvious that it was the last 3-6 months worth of stuff that Cryptic put out for sale that finished the Dilex .
As primary reasons go , that is indeed the obvious answer .
I'm looking for secondary reasons .
The ones that are less obvious .
Like :
Did the presentation in the Mudd style packs TRIBBLE off regular spenders (who may have really waned just 1 ship) ?
Did the presentation in the Anniversary and other Mega bundles style TRIBBLE off regular spenders (who may have wanted just 1 or 2-3 ships) ?
Did the combination of the two above , along with a steady but growing list of paying players who closed their wallets to Cryptic for a variety of other offenses --- did the combination of all 3 finally done what singular frustrations with this that or the other couldn't have done in the past ?
In other words ... , have the chickens come home to roost ?
As to what will Cryptic actually do ? Look at the metrics of course .
The next 4-6 months will provide both an influx of returning players through the summer event (who may or may not move the needle on the Dil exchange) -- so Cryptic can look at their retention levels in regards to the current exchange numbers .
Cryptic can also look on the next 6 month cycle of remaining & incoming players , and compare them to 2-3 years ago (not last year , as last year was an anomaly for all businesses , for good or bad) .
All in all , what's likely to happen is either some half baked solution now , or some more thought out plans that will wait in the drawer for the next 6 month metrics analysis .
I also would not put it out of the realm of possibility that Cryptic may be telling themselves : "well sure , this batch of F2P-ers may get disheartened and leave , but the new ones won't know any better and think that this is the norm , and will play & pay as such " .
Agreed, and it's not like pulling Vanity shields out of lock boxes would really cause lock boxes to no longer sell.
If anything, it will help.. they really need to pull stuff out of lock boxes to stop diluting the prize pool. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.
If the Dil Store had Cosmetic stuff for Ships and Space Barbie like uniforms, more playable races and vanity Shields, I'd probably spend Dil, but I know most players care more about Ships, maybe add in ships not currently in game like TOS era Orion Ships or a Borg Cube to the Dil store.
Or hell, even add another tier to the phoenix if they don't want to kill the store all together. Make a lobi token where you could get a lobi item from the phoenix box.
It doesn't lose them money. They aren't making that money in the first place. The only people they make money from are the ones buying zen. Those zen buyers want dilithium. For what I have no idea, however no one else has a real use for dilithium any longer.
With the exchanged capped out and no zen to be found, they are making all the money they can. They can't get more money from people who only get their zen from the dilex. They can't get people to buy more zen to exchange to dil because the dilex dried up due to no value for dilithium.
While they absolutely need new things to do with dilithium, they also need pressure valves to serve as conditional dil sinks. They obviously haven't been very good at managing dilithium's value, so slapping in some pressure valves to conditionally activate as dil value drops is a way to help relieve that problem.
And the thinking is backwards anyway. If someone wants 500 dil, they can spend 1 zen to get it right now. If the dilex was back to 100:1 because dil has a massive amount of value again, then they need 5 zen. And those dil buyers are the ones spending money, not the dil sellers.
There is an important misconception in your analysis.
It makes little sense to explain an increasing Zen price by assuming that fewer regular spenders are spending money on C-store packages.
Those regular spenders would buy Zen to get those packages after all. They wouldn't put it on the exchange, so there is no reduced supply of Zen in that regard.
And I seriously doubt that people who are used to getting the stuff they want by regularly spending, are now going to spend hours and hours grinding thousands of Zen to get a new package.
A reduction in real money spent isn't such a likely explanation. Far more reasonable to presume that it's an increase in demand for Zen - due to many formerly rather exclusive ships being added to the store - that's driving up the prices.
>Once you've upgraded all your equipment, what else is there left to do with dilithium?
I do it again. For real. When I’m having fun I’m constantly making new and better builds on my 13 chars. Upgrades and re rolls are never finished and constantly replaced by new and better items. At my height I never had any dil for zen. It was all used up and I even needed to pay for dil.
Things of course rapidly change when I’m not having fun. Then I switch to I’ll make do with what I got mode and concentrate on 0 spending money.
One boring new pve map after the other, one boring event after the other, empty queue lists and even STO forum mods in too much love with their own texts.
All of that is part of the reason why my enthusiasm for this title is at its all time low. This game has sadly lived from its substance long enough with not much left to get enthusiastic about.
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I wasn't concluding that big spenders are spending less Zen. Quite the opposite actually.
And no, we cannot conclude that they're spending less zen on dilithium either. A price paid in the market is the result of supply and demand. Like I said, it may well be that many more players are looking to buy zen, thus driving up the price.
But you do have a point regarding the limited purpose of dilithium. That will also likely increase the demand for Zen though, and have the same effect.