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Fixing the Dil Exchange (No, Really!)
lokharno
Member Posts: 56 Arc User
I've been reading through the threads on new dil sinks and the dil exchange in general, and I wanted to put together some "meta-level" thoughts that might help guide thinking about the future of dil, zen, and the exchange.
The first question is, "Are we exclusively committed to a player-to-player exchange with a market-set exchange rate?" If not, there are some easy answers. Cryptic can simply "sell" some amount of zen directly to players for whatever quantity of dil they like, based on their business model. "You can buy up to 500 zen per day per account for 1,000 dil per zen." Or whatever. Boom. Done.
But let's assume that we are committed exclusively to player-to-player exchange and market exchange rates.
The next question is, "Do we care about the exchange rate?" "Real" markets don't. Currency exchange rates, stock prices, and commodity prices can go as high as the market demands (with some weird edge cases involving technical limitations of trading software). If we don't care about the exchange rate, again, there's a simple solution: remove the arbitrary 500 dil/zen price cap and, presumably, orderly trading will resume at some price or another.
But, again, let's assume that we do care. For some reason, we don't want the market exchange rate to rise above X dil / zen. Now, X might be 500 or 10,000, but at some level, we think the exchange rate is telling us that the in-game economy is "out of balance," in some sense. In that case, we need to think about how to "rebalance" the in-game economy... but what does that even mean?
Think of it this way. The game economy includes, basically, two sets of goods: things you can only by from Cryptic with real money (zen-goods) and things you can only buy from Cryptic with dilithium (dil-goods). Now, some of these things can be traded between players for other currencies or simply bartered. But new things only enter the game when purchased from Cryptic. And Cryptic sells things for real money or for dil. (Or for EC... you can buy an unlimited quantity of batteries and not-very-good equipment from EC vendors...but nobody cares very much, so we'll ignore them for now.)
At any point in time, the zen/dil market exchange rate reflects both the relative supplies of the currencies (i.e. the willingness of players to spend money on the game and the ability of players to obtain and refine dilithium) and the relative desirability of the the two sets of commodities (zen-goods and dil-goods). So the balance of the game economy boils down to whether the relative desirability of the commodity sets is commensurate with the relative supplies of the currencies.
That gives us four "dials" we can turn to fine-tune the balance of the economy. Or, actually, just three -- for present purposes, we should probably consider the willingness of players to spend money on the game to be outside of our direct control. (We're assuming we've already optimized the amount of "monetized cool stuff" in the game, so player spending is mainly a function of external, real-life economics.) But that leaves (1) desirability of dil-goods, (2) desirability of zen-goods, and (3) availability of refined dilithium. Real life gets to twiddle dial #4, the willingness to spend on the game. For now, let's hold dial 4 constant, but, as time goes on, twiddling the other dials to respond to changes in dial 4 will be the key to keeping the in-game economy balanced.
Now, as I write this, there is almost five hundred million unsold dilithium on offer at the maximum price of 500 dil/zen. So let's assume that (a) we want player-to-player exchange at market rates and (b) we want that rate to be below 500 dil/zen, so that (c) the current situation is a problem we want to solve. Our definition of economic balance gives us three strategies: (1) reduce the supply (i.e. the ability of players to refine) dilithium; (2) increase the desirability of dil-goods; or (3) reduce the desirability of zen-goods. Any solution will fall into one of these categories or be a combination of them.
What kind of solutions does our framework suggest?
Category 1: Reducing Dilithium Production. Easiest option would probably be to cut the daily dil refining cap. Harder to implement, but far better for the players, would be to implement an account-level cap, allowing players with one or a small number of characters to go about their business unaffected, but nerfing the dedicated dil farmers out of existence. (As a dedicated dil farmer myself, I'll just mention that I'm 100% OK with this option. Nerf away! I'll live!) Making it harder to earn unrefined dil is also an option, but I think most long-term players would agree that the real choke-point is the refinement cap.
Category 2: Increasing Desirability of Dil-Goods. This is where the "dil sink" proposals fit. Basically, these fit into two sub-categories. First, the game could add entirely new goods to the dil-goods category. That could be new fleet holdings, new dil-only ships, new upgrades purchasable only in dil, and so on. The other sub-category is, basically, adding a dil-tax -- that is, some kind of new consumable or service to the game, purchasable only with dil, and more-or-less compulsory. This is where ideas like "pay dil to transwarp" fit. Drawbacks: new systems and items are costly to create, and nobody likes arbitrary taxes.
Category 3: Reduce Desirability of Zen-Goods. This category tends to be overlooked, mainly because it sounds suspiciously like "Give people less reason to spend money on the game," which is a lot like Game Company Suicide. However...
Category 2/3 Combo: Transfer Some Desirable Goods From Zen-Goods to Dil-Goods. If we move some items from the zen-goods category to the dil-goods category, the quantity of "cool stuff in the game that I'd spend money on" does not change. All that changes is that some of the worth-paying-for stuff requires the extra step of buying dil on the exchange. Which is what we are trying to achieve in the first place. The easiest example is probably lockbox keys. Step 1: remove lockbox keys from the zen store altogether. Step 2: add lockbox keys to the dil store for, say, 60-70k each. Not only do folks no longer need to sell dil on the exchange to buy keys, they have to sell zen on the exchange to buy keys. Now, Cryptic presumably has the data to estimate how much that would swing the dil/zen exchange rate. It might be more than they want. (It also might not be enough, but that seems unlikely to me.) But the concept -- recategorizing some popular bit of zen-goods as dil-goods instead -- is sound. And this works without introducing any new items or systems into the game, keeping implementation costs pretty minimal.
TL;DR I think the path to a reasonable dil/zen market exchange rate will be (a) nerfing dil refining caps, (b) moving certain items out of the zen store and into the dil store, or (c) some combination of both. These approaches directly address the underlying problems -- without the expense of inventing a new dil sink or the player rage of imposing some kind of dil tax.
The first question is, "Are we exclusively committed to a player-to-player exchange with a market-set exchange rate?" If not, there are some easy answers. Cryptic can simply "sell" some amount of zen directly to players for whatever quantity of dil they like, based on their business model. "You can buy up to 500 zen per day per account for 1,000 dil per zen." Or whatever. Boom. Done.
But let's assume that we are committed exclusively to player-to-player exchange and market exchange rates.
The next question is, "Do we care about the exchange rate?" "Real" markets don't. Currency exchange rates, stock prices, and commodity prices can go as high as the market demands (with some weird edge cases involving technical limitations of trading software). If we don't care about the exchange rate, again, there's a simple solution: remove the arbitrary 500 dil/zen price cap and, presumably, orderly trading will resume at some price or another.
But, again, let's assume that we do care. For some reason, we don't want the market exchange rate to rise above X dil / zen. Now, X might be 500 or 10,000, but at some level, we think the exchange rate is telling us that the in-game economy is "out of balance," in some sense. In that case, we need to think about how to "rebalance" the in-game economy... but what does that even mean?
Think of it this way. The game economy includes, basically, two sets of goods: things you can only by from Cryptic with real money (zen-goods) and things you can only buy from Cryptic with dilithium (dil-goods). Now, some of these things can be traded between players for other currencies or simply bartered. But new things only enter the game when purchased from Cryptic. And Cryptic sells things for real money or for dil. (Or for EC... you can buy an unlimited quantity of batteries and not-very-good equipment from EC vendors...but nobody cares very much, so we'll ignore them for now.)
At any point in time, the zen/dil market exchange rate reflects both the relative supplies of the currencies (i.e. the willingness of players to spend money on the game and the ability of players to obtain and refine dilithium) and the relative desirability of the the two sets of commodities (zen-goods and dil-goods). So the balance of the game economy boils down to whether the relative desirability of the commodity sets is commensurate with the relative supplies of the currencies.
That gives us four "dials" we can turn to fine-tune the balance of the economy. Or, actually, just three -- for present purposes, we should probably consider the willingness of players to spend money on the game to be outside of our direct control. (We're assuming we've already optimized the amount of "monetized cool stuff" in the game, so player spending is mainly a function of external, real-life economics.) But that leaves (1) desirability of dil-goods, (2) desirability of zen-goods, and (3) availability of refined dilithium. Real life gets to twiddle dial #4, the willingness to spend on the game. For now, let's hold dial 4 constant, but, as time goes on, twiddling the other dials to respond to changes in dial 4 will be the key to keeping the in-game economy balanced.
Now, as I write this, there is almost five hundred million unsold dilithium on offer at the maximum price of 500 dil/zen. So let's assume that (a) we want player-to-player exchange at market rates and (b) we want that rate to be below 500 dil/zen, so that (c) the current situation is a problem we want to solve. Our definition of economic balance gives us three strategies: (1) reduce the supply (i.e. the ability of players to refine) dilithium; (2) increase the desirability of dil-goods; or (3) reduce the desirability of zen-goods. Any solution will fall into one of these categories or be a combination of them.
What kind of solutions does our framework suggest?
Category 1: Reducing Dilithium Production. Easiest option would probably be to cut the daily dil refining cap. Harder to implement, but far better for the players, would be to implement an account-level cap, allowing players with one or a small number of characters to go about their business unaffected, but nerfing the dedicated dil farmers out of existence. (As a dedicated dil farmer myself, I'll just mention that I'm 100% OK with this option. Nerf away! I'll live!) Making it harder to earn unrefined dil is also an option, but I think most long-term players would agree that the real choke-point is the refinement cap.
Category 2: Increasing Desirability of Dil-Goods. This is where the "dil sink" proposals fit. Basically, these fit into two sub-categories. First, the game could add entirely new goods to the dil-goods category. That could be new fleet holdings, new dil-only ships, new upgrades purchasable only in dil, and so on. The other sub-category is, basically, adding a dil-tax -- that is, some kind of new consumable or service to the game, purchasable only with dil, and more-or-less compulsory. This is where ideas like "pay dil to transwarp" fit. Drawbacks: new systems and items are costly to create, and nobody likes arbitrary taxes.
Category 3: Reduce Desirability of Zen-Goods. This category tends to be overlooked, mainly because it sounds suspiciously like "Give people less reason to spend money on the game," which is a lot like Game Company Suicide. However...
Category 2/3 Combo: Transfer Some Desirable Goods From Zen-Goods to Dil-Goods. If we move some items from the zen-goods category to the dil-goods category, the quantity of "cool stuff in the game that I'd spend money on" does not change. All that changes is that some of the worth-paying-for stuff requires the extra step of buying dil on the exchange. Which is what we are trying to achieve in the first place. The easiest example is probably lockbox keys. Step 1: remove lockbox keys from the zen store altogether. Step 2: add lockbox keys to the dil store for, say, 60-70k each. Not only do folks no longer need to sell dil on the exchange to buy keys, they have to sell zen on the exchange to buy keys. Now, Cryptic presumably has the data to estimate how much that would swing the dil/zen exchange rate. It might be more than they want. (It also might not be enough, but that seems unlikely to me.) But the concept -- recategorizing some popular bit of zen-goods as dil-goods instead -- is sound. And this works without introducing any new items or systems into the game, keeping implementation costs pretty minimal.
TL;DR I think the path to a reasonable dil/zen market exchange rate will be (a) nerfing dil refining caps, (b) moving certain items out of the zen store and into the dil store, or (c) some combination of both. These approaches directly address the underlying problems -- without the expense of inventing a new dil sink or the player rage of imposing some kind of dil tax.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
Cryptic did this when they temporarily made vanity shield available for dil, and it worked pretty well to soak up a huge amount of dil.
The main problem with this is it means less zen sales, which means less real-world money goes to Cryptic, so Cryptic can't do too much of it before it becomes another "game company suicide." That's why many of the dil sink suggestions have been for new things to spend dil on.
Spot on. Its not the amount of dil people have it is the demand Cryptic have generated for Zen with their barrage of sales.
The problem here is simple as westmetals already described: Dilithium has poor value because of a lack of things to buy with it. The supply really doesn't matter here if there were things people old and new were eager to spend Dil on, with comparative value to converting it to zen.
The other aspect of this is that it may take some time for the stick to be felt. I try to keep my refined under 20 million but it's crept up to 30 lately with nothing to do with it. I'm sure others have much more.
The stick would have to nerf dil production past the stone age and past the time of the Voth.
"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'm not sure what point you're arguing against here. The fundamental problem here is dilithium is not useful for buying things most people want. The ever increasing stockpile of dil is only a symptom of that problem. Zen sales don't affect those issues either.
Obviously people who get their zen via dilithium want to convert it for a sale they want to take advantage of, and in normal times that would cause a spike in the price of zen as people sell dil cheaper to sell it faster, which is currently impossible. Yet removing zen sales won't magically give dilithium any new value. It is still a largely useless currency because of the neglect of introducing things to spend it on.
If there is never another sale, the dilex is still not going to drop significantly. Again, there needs to be value to dilithium and that means giving us something to spend it on that people would really want, and at prices that aren't absurd, like we saw with certain costumes.
The problem with that is that it makes no sense. Zen is not being "generated" by Dilithium. Its being TRADED. Cryptic's still getting money from the people who buy Zen and post it on the exchange. Doesn't matter who spends the Zen as long as Cryptic got the money for said Zen. The ONLY people "generating" Zen are lifers, but that's 500 a month. NOWHERE near enough to make a dent on its own.
So I disagree with that person on Reddit. They're making it sound like there's a conspiracy or something when the truth is this is not a situation that you can wave a magic wand over and fix in a short amount of time. They already learned from mistakes made in Neverwinter, and they're trying to find a way to solve this without hurting both themselves and players. There is no magic bullet instafix. But that's the trap people are falling for. They expect a quick fix, and when it doesn't happen they come up with theories as to why, ranging from incompetence to outright malice. In the case of the Reddit poster... malice. And they're focusing too much on the supply of Dilithium and not the DEMAND for it. Hitting the supply won't solve anything as there's still the already existing supply. You need DEMAND to balance the economy. And currently there is none.
Maybe it's time to make dilithium more useful now? I saw few problems, first phenix box update, all items from event moved to madd's market, second, no more new fleet's holdings. This new game economy based on copy-past new ships for zen. So it's not a surprise that dilex so fast die. What's next? all promo ships about 1.7-1.8b EC with char cap 2b EC. So. EC will be next?
I won't dispute that we need to make DL desirable, thus influence Demand for it. But I'm not gonna go off on a tangent regarding other aspects and manufacture problems to address related to the current issue at hand.
ECs aren't the issue here, although admittedly some items have risen in price a bit due to the fact we have more access to ECs. That's the nature of a Player driven economy. Players set the prices, and react to in game events. The same with the DL Exchange. It always fluctuated based on the desirability of things in either Zen or Dilithium.
But yea... we need a demand for Dilithium.
After the vanity shields appeared in the Dil Store, I wondered if that was on the cards. It takes either a lot of grinding, or selling a lot of Zen...but SELLING Zen isn't the problem at the moment.
I just don't understand why Dilithium is even a reward, if there's nothing to buy with it and you can't exchange it for Zen.
Dilithium is pretty much the Universal Mark. The only thing you can't do with it is convert it into specific Rep marks.
The Vanity Shields did get people trading again because people wanted access to them without needing to chance the lockbox weapon packs. They were a super rare commodity that became a lot more attainable for a while via DL. And that got the DL Exchange working again for a bit.
I may have only gotten one of the vanity shields, but I do like the fact that it is account bound so I can pass it around if I wanted. But honestly having the Kelvin Divergence shield on a Discovery D7 looks pretty good.
And this is where we find ourselves today. We have a game that is filled with old timers that have been playing the game for 8,9 10 plus years, they buy Zen to buy new ships but they don't really need dilithium. This represents the majority of the player base that is more interested in "space barbie" that the game itself. They really don't care what Cryptic does because it doesn't effect them. They just want a rainbow build, a vanity shield that they like and use whatever is new to the game whether the items are any good or not they don't care. They are casual participants.
Then we have a much smaller portion (this would actually be the smallest group of players) of the player base that still actually play the game at an elite level, building ships that cost 2 thousand dollars for DPS/PvP. There are still many DPS/PvP players but not many who are building ships. Most of the ones that are left are old timers that just offer advice but don't really play anymore.
Then the second largest group of players are the new "Window Shoppers". They come to the game, play awhile. They now usually buy a ship early on (spend money on zen to buy a ship from C store) and play through the game. They may buy a second ship but they don't stay in the game. The leave. There is nothing keeping them here. Once the story missions are complete there is nothing left for them to do. They game is way too easy now and there is really no reason to up grade any weapons or gear. Fleet quality gear is more than good enough to play the endgame. In fact you can even play all the advanced queues (TFOs) with any T4, T5, T6 ship with a fleet and it takes a minimal amount of dilithium to upgrade the items to MK15. So the game is in a constant state of rebuilding it's player base. These type of players never need the Dilithium Exchange. There is no reason for them to need it. *This is where Cryptic needs to focus their attention.* How do they keep players interested in the game long enough so they want and need dilithium?
The final death stroke to the Dil Market was the introduction of the Mudd's store basically announcing to the player base that the Phoenix box would be retired. So Cryptic left it to die. Ships that used to go into the box were now being sold for zen. So they kinda shot themselves in their own foot. We all knew there was a serious problem when the exchange reached climbed from 375 to 450 within a couple months.
My answer is the Phoenix Box. The Phoenix Box needs to be re-invented. It needs some major love and needs to be much more attractive than it is now. The Phoenix Box was already useless 3 years ago. The purpose of the Phoenix Box was for players to dump Dilithium into it. In my opinion they need to focus on it and make it a lot more attractive.
Yes @rattler2 said "Dilithium is supposed to be basically the endgame currency. Use it to upgrade gear, get rep gear... various fleet stuff...". BUT we already got this, all of it, few year ago. No new "fleet stuff", No new "rep gear". Most "upgrade gear" needs 500k dilth if you interested of them. Cos most of new stuff not useable. Most old players have 1-3m dilth per month (I have 1m and I'm not even farmer of this). So 500-1m it's not so much for upgrade.
And again, we start from same point. NO new stuff, NO needs dilth NO content, dead dilex.
P.s. all promo ships start from 1.3b no matter "desirability and rarity". infinity about 0.9-1b. and this grows from last year. so with this tamp we got ECex appoc too. EC's ship price depend on key price (from 4m last few years ago to 9-10m for now). Keys depend on dilth\zen. So ECex didn't depend on players choice, this is how sto economy work. And we close to 2b ladge EC, believe. Ok maybe you don't understand me. I'm talk about inflation of EC. We'll get once time when you'll need few char with 2b cap EC to buy 1 promo ship
not entirely true? hahaha but yet true enough
You don't buy c store ships so you don't spend much money in this game
you say you need dilithium but don't say for what? what do you need it for? My guess is that you want it to get phoenix upgrades because there is really no other use for dilithium other than the phoenix box and the dilithium store which since you are not an elite player there is really nothing in there for you. But it has been pointed out in another thread reply that it is easy to make dilithium in this game so for a casual player like yourself this conversation regarding the dilithium exchange will really have no effect on you
you repeated that you don't like bundles, yes we got that
you have some lobi but not enough to buy anything...
sigh so YES you do fall into the category of, "Casual Participants"
just based on what you posted it really makes no difference what cryptic does with the Dilithium exchange since it won't have a big effect on you since you don't really spend much money in the game
You are part of the majority, a casual player. Any changes to the game are not really going to have a major effect to you either way.
I pretty much look at it from when they first released that legendary pack that it was going to be their final cash grab before sailing off into the sunset. Mostly because legislative bodies around the world were almost about to vote on making virtual gambling illegal just about everywhere. So this means the whole lockbox business model would be over with so I am assuming that is the reason why Cryptic still has plans for the future but why PWE has started a legendary liquidation sale.