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Dilithium exchange...unable to sell dilithium?
djf021
Member Posts: 1,382 Arc User
So, I know everyone is well aware of the problems with the dilithium exchange, but I'm hoping someone smarter with economics than me can educate me.
The last couple of days I have tried buying zen with dilithium at 500 per zen. But the offer just sits there. There are no offers listed. Is this because no one is willing to offer up zen at that price anymore? Are there simply no zen sellers right now?
On a related note, if they were to remove dilithium rewards from missions, reduce or remove dilithium from event rewards, etc would that help to balance the exchange better? It doesn't seem like occasional sinks are working.
Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse. I scanned the FCTs and didn't see the dilex in the list.
The last couple of days I have tried buying zen with dilithium at 500 per zen. But the offer just sits there. There are no offers listed. Is this because no one is willing to offer up zen at that price anymore? Are there simply no zen sellers right now?
On a related note, if they were to remove dilithium rewards from missions, reduce or remove dilithium from event rewards, etc would that help to balance the exchange better? It doesn't seem like occasional sinks are working.
Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse. I scanned the FCTs and didn't see the dilex in the list.
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
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Comments
Before the release of the Romulan Legendary pack I was still getting my daily zen from my Admiralty rotation, but it wasn't instant like when we do have Zen up. Took a few hours, usually had it by the next day. Odds are until after the hype from the Flash Sale and the Legendary pack dies down it will go back to wait a few hours for Zen.
So... just be patient. You'll get the Zen... eventually.
As for the sources for Dilithium... we may have to rely more on sinks than trying to curb sources at this point because people have gotten used to the sources and may riot. Its a tricky fine line to walk. Maybe they could reduce the amount you get from after you complete the main event and run extra days, but I don't think the mission reward DL has too much of an impact. And don't forget that characters are still only able to refine 8k a day. So unless someone's burning themselves out grinding missions to cap out every day... Mission Reward DL, IMO, is not enough to warrent attention. I'd say the attention has to be on the bulk rewards that guarantee refine cap a bit more.
I could also point out Mark to DL conversion, but that's a trade off and dependant on what the player's working on...
Its complicated and may require data that we don't have access to.
But at the end of the day we need something people will spend Dilithium on, and something people are WILLING to spend on. We got a whole thread of people coming up with ideas.
So either way... Dilithium needs to be desirable. Where the Dilithium comes from isn't as much of an issue because the people who want the shiny now will more than likely open the wallet and trade Zen for Dilithium.
I can't solo my fleet's colony on the Dilithium. (Yes my fleet STILL hasn't finished the colony, its on T4 right now. We're working on it... slowly.)
But I strongly suspect the real culprit are Jemhadar characters. Letting people skip the leveling process and basically go straight to admiralty and reputation rewards
I think the only real solution would be a daily account refining cap. Say 40,000. That would still let people get enough to buy a regular ship every 5 weeks, but is low enough to discourage farming
The problem isn't the supply. Its the Demand. We need something to spend the Dilithium on after getting everything we want upgraded and all the rep gear we want, not to mention the big fleets having finished their holdings...
There comes a point where Dilithium really is ONLY used for Zen. We've got the supply, but there's no demand.
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
They're willing to giveaway a choice of Promotion ship, Lockbox ship, a large pile of Lobi, or two C-Store ships for playing through enough FOMO events this year, on top of the usual three end game ships from smaller FOMO events, so surely free-style grinding for an extra ship or pack now and then doesn't seem that far out. It might even keep metrics up for less popular events too, which seems to be already in play given how much Dilithium the Events pour out.
Cryptic has shifted it's whale-hunting from being hidden behind Zen-to-Dil-to-Fleet feeds to directly selling high-cost packs, so they're still getting money either way. Admittedly, I thought the Zen<->Dil was quite a a creative way 'monetize' grinding in the beginning, but it doesn't seem to have ever been thought of this way by Cryptic, though I'm mostly basing that on off-hand comments in Livestreams.
As for other games not being Cryptic games, that's an odd thought... I know they kinda do their own thing most of the time, but if hugely popular and successful F2P games, as well as smaller-than-STO games that still make money, have a given feature surely it'd be worth considering.
#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!"
The problem is both. It's a very basic economic process that something with a high supply is worth less then something that is more scarce. Gold is worth more then Silver for one reason.. scarcity. When you flood the market with a currency, it devalues that currency. This isn't my opinion, it's basic economic principal.
Now, I am not calling for a total nerf on Dilithium Supply, that just angers people. But maybe slow down the events for a while that are dumping so much Dilithium into the economy. The bonus days after unlocking the prize are absolutely flooding the economy with Dilithium. When you combine that with everything Westmetals said about having nothing to spend it on, it's no wonder Dilithum is completely worthless.
The fleet holding idea remains, in my opinion, the worst of the ideas. Nothing but a tax on fleet leaders, and still doesn't create a re-usable and sustainable sink. We have been down that path before, it has a small impact for a short period of time, nothing more.
Reputations are not a dilithium sink, they are a source of Dilithium gain. Adding another one makes the problem worse.
#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!"
See, there's nothing at all strange about the recent behavior of the dil exchange. The price of zen has been rising gradually but steadily for years. Bid-ask spreads have rarely been more than 2. Trading has been orderly and swift, and the market cleared very nicely. Until the market-clearing price bumped into the 500 zen cap, at which point the market did exactly as expected -- it mostly froze up. That's what price caps do.
Now, we can't know exactly what the market-clearing price of zen is at the moment: a price cap breaks the price-discovery function of the market. So it's sort of understandable that people are in a bit of a panic. "What if the market clearing price has for some reason jumped to 600? Or 10,000? Or what if there is no market clearing price, and nobody will sell zen for any quantity of dilithium no matter how huge?" But that's just panic. Chill.
If the price cap weren't there, my guess is that we'd be buying and selling dil just like we have all along, for around 510. And stories explaining why "demand for dil has dropped to zero at all finite prices" are explaining something that hasn't -- as far as anyone can tell -- happened at all.
Now, we might not want the price of zen to keep rising like this. There are good reasons to want better stuff to spend dil on, a lower dil refining cap, less stuff to spend zen (directly) on, and so forth. But talk about "zero demand" is baseless.
The real issue is actually a lack of people.
In theory, that is possible. It is however, just theory because we have never hit that point.. even now. Dilithium is not completely worthless, if anything some people are saving it just in anticipation of upcoming sinks. People read the market and anyone that is reading this one still values dilithium. The people that don't think that way are mostly newer or casual players that still need dilithium.
Again though, I am not calling for Dilithium Nerfs, I believe the biggest culprit in the influx of supply is the events, what we need is a Dilithium Sink, combined with a moratorium on events for 2-4 weeks. The first scenario is possible, the latter is not so my whole point is moot. Cryptic has made it clear that holding off on events even temporarily is not on the table.