“Why though?
Phoenix upgrades are not free. They still cost dilithium. Even if it's less than you'd spend per upgraded item by using crafted upgrades, that still doesn't mean that you can't be spending more overall.
Once again: people can't claim that Phoenix tokens reduced the amount of dilithium spent on upgrades if you don't know how it affected the amount of items upgraded. For me at least, that number significantly increased once the Phoenix thing made upgrading much more worthwhile and less troublesome.”
How significantly are you talking? Have you tripled the amount of items you upgrade and those are items that you wouldn’t have upgraded otherwise? While I agree it’s possible someone is now spending more there is no evidence of that across the wider player base. What little data I have seen is a decrease in dilithium being spent on upgrades so its not a worthwhile dilithium sink. Even if you are doubling your item upgrades it looks like its not really getting to be a good sink unless you triple the amount of items upgraded and even then I am not convinced that makes up for all the players that are only upgrading the same amount of items only for less dilithium.
“Simply put, you can't claim that Phoenix tokens aren't a sink. There's no evidence to back that up - unless you're ignoring the bigger picture and only look at the dil cost per upgrade - and even those calculations that already drastically reduce the complexity of the issue, still have some inherent problems.”
There is some evidence when Phoenix tokens went 24/7 there was something like an 80% drop in R&D upgrades usage as people swapped to Phoenix tokens. That means there was a majority swap from R&D to Phoenix and that Phoenix majority are now upgrading from approx. half the amount of dilithium that they used to. On average Phoenix takes half the amount of dilithium to upgrade an item which I believe gets even better when stacked with an upgrade weekend.
Using my own account as an example I have saved an estimated 3 million dilithium that otherwise would have been spent due to Phoenix. So that is an extra 3 million dilithium in game. 3 million extra dilithium is the opposite to a successful dilithium sink.
Which is a major part of the problem. The amount of dilithium drain/sinks has plummeted while the amount of incoming dilithium for little effort has massively ballooned. The devs have completely messed up the dilithium market and its 100% there fault not the players.
for me, the phoenix box is a dil sink. I like to create new builds, and try a lot of stuff. Without the phoenix upgrades, i would stop to do it. So, it was a good decision to make them available all the time.
the R&D system wasn't a good dil sink, because a punishment can't be incentive: excessive costs, cooldown too long etc
“Why though?
Phoenix upgrades are not free. They still cost dilithium. Even if it's less than you'd spend per upgraded item by using crafted upgrades, that still doesn't mean that you can't be spending more overall.
Once again: people can't claim that Phoenix tokens reduced the amount of dilithium spent on upgrades if you don't know how it affected the amount of items upgraded. For me at least, that number significantly increased once the Phoenix thing made upgrading much more worthwhile and less troublesome.”
How significantly are you talking? Have you tripled the amount of items you upgrade and those are items that you wouldn’t have upgraded otherwise? While I agree it’s possible someone is now spending more there is no evidence of that across the wider player base. What little data I have seen is a decrease in dilithium being spent on upgrades so its not a worthwhile dilithium sink. Even if you are doubling your item upgrades it looks like its not really getting to be a good sink unless you triple the amount of items upgraded and even then I am not convinced that makes up for all the players that are only upgrading the same amount of items only for less dilithium.
“Simply put, you can't claim that Phoenix tokens aren't a sink. There's no evidence to back that up - unless you're ignoring the bigger picture and only look at the dil cost per upgrade - and even those calculations that already drastically reduce the complexity of the issue, still have some inherent problems.”
There is some evidence when Phoenix tokens went 24/7 there was something like an 80% drop in R&D upgrades usage as people swapped to Phoenix tokens. That means there was a majority swap from R&D to Phoenix and that Phoenix majority are now upgrading from approx. half the amount of dilithium that they used to. On average Phoenix takes half the amount of dilithium to upgrade an item which I believe gets even better when stacked with an upgrade weekend.
Using my own account as an example I have saved an estimated 3 million dilithium that otherwise would have been spent due to Phoenix. So that is an extra 3 million dilithium in game. 3 million extra dilithium is the opposite to a successful dilithium sink.
Which is a major part of the problem. The amount of dilithium drain/sinks has plummeted while the amount of incoming dilithium for little effort has massively ballooned. The devs have completely messed up the dilithium market and its 100% there fault not the players.
Hard to say, to be honest.
But to give an impression:
I have toons that already had one set of weapons, consoles and so on and that would likely have been it if there were no Phoenix upgrades. Now, I've bought and upgraded at least four other full sets of weapons for him as I chose to alternate phasers with polaron dual beam banks and then cannons, and then later switched back to phasers - for which I also bought two sets of new types. I've also bought some extra engines on several toons that already had at least one fully upgraded engine as new ones were released, which I probably wouldn't have done otherwise either.
Same for new episode rewards.
In my case, since I already had equipped most of my older toons and upgraded their stuff with R&D upgrades, all of this acted as an additional sink on my dilithium stock. So did the levelling of new toons, as I probably wouldn't have bothered with that if we hadn't had these Phoenix upgrades.
I'm sure that Phoenix upgrades had a large, negative effect on R&D upgrades and yes, that fact by itself probably led to a decrease in dilithium spent per upgrade. But again, I would likely have stopped upgrading gear altogether if it weren't for those Phoenix upgrades. Whereas I spend much more freely on upgrades now, if only because I'm currently levelling three new toons at the same time - which I most certainly wouldn't have even thought of before. So I know that I at least am actually spending more than I otherwise would have.
Of course I don't have the slightest idea whether this is true for the playerbase at large. But that's exactly my point: we don't know that, and neither does the OP. So none of us can draw conclusions like in the thread title.
[4:46] [Combat {self}] Your Haymaker deals 23337 (9049) Physical Damage(Critical) to Spawnmother
Even more so when long time players have nearly everything they want, even on alts.
not necessarely true mate. beta/lifer here and im not even close to having everything i want. (yes i took about 2.5 - 3 yrs off)
but i also delete toons as i notice im not playing them anymore, or dislike the direction they are going, etc.
so no...not all of us do. but i also dont think they are a huge dil sink, but a decent one to use dil on (the phx boxes)
I agree, I play since 2013 or 2014, I have created a lof of characters, deleted a lot of them too and each time i try to make them differents; that means new builds, new ground stuff etc. Like i said without the phoenix upgrade, I would stop to create new characters. The dps race is not my way of playing, so i don't care if I do x damage, i just want to try new stuff (space and ground -ground is funnier)
the phoenix store is not a huge dil sink, but it does its job.
Maybe if they continued to update them, but no...the devs were more concerned with making money so they put that kind of stuff that would normally go to the phoenix store on Mudd's market
This ignores that Cryptic made Mudd's Store because everyone hated the Phoenix Box, and said they would gladly pay for getting account wide versions of these items. Cryptic just gave people what they wanted.
Except the Mudd's story is vastly cheaper then the original means of sale of these ships.
On average it costs anywhere from $200-$250 to pull a single, unreclaimable, character bound, ship from a lockbox. R&D ships are even more expensive. A fully priced single Mudd store ship, which is reclaimable, and account wide, is $140-$170. But the full price isn't the real price, and even at a 50% off sale thats $70-$85 for something that was previously $200-$250.
The Kelvin timeline pack would be anywhere from $1,400-$1,750 for unreclaimable, character bound, ships. If you pulled them from a lockbox. In Mudd's that same pack is only $600 dollars at full price. $300 at 50% off. So anywhere from 57-82% off(depending on how much it would have originally cost you from lockboxes, and what sales you took advantage of.)
And this is just comparing prices for a single character. If you wanted to get these ships on multiple characters you would save even more. They are saving the STO community rather large sums of money putting these things in the Mudd's store.
(Emphasis added.)
Well that, or it means they've charged unreasonable sums for years.
If you first
- Sell an item a much higher prices than any other item
- Put in place a restriction on its use (1 per character)
Then removing that restriction - which apparently wasn't necessary anyway - and selling them at lower prices could just as well mean that your prices weren't reasonable to begin with.
You're not saving the STO community money by lowering prices that were stupidly high to begin with, given all the restrictions involved previously.
It's like saying that I'm saving you money by first trying to sell you a blank CD for $400 that you're only allowed to use once before asking a single dollar for a rewritable one.
I'm not actually saving you anything, I've just stopped trying to rip you off.
[4:46] [Combat {self}] Your Haymaker deals 23337 (9049) Physical Damage(Critical) to Spawnmother
Well that, or it means they've charged unreasonable sums for years.
Value is subjective.
I've seen online games charge 40 bucks just to get blue paint on a set of weapons. I would rather spend $200-$250 for a playable ship, then for 5-6 different color schemes for my weapons(though I haven't on either). The ship is far more tangible of content then the paint jobs are.
The fact that people were willing to spend all this money on keys to get these ships for years would indicate people didn't care about the price. So saying they were "ripped off" is debatable if they felt it was worth it. Which in turn would make Mudd's be a good savings, not just "we stopped ripping you off".
But OFC claiming that anything higher in value then what you wish it was being a "rip off" or "price gouging" or "companies being greedy" is one of the most overused buzzword arguments on the internet. Its just a hollow, and vapid, argument used to try to cast shade on companies without actually having to take into acocunt any sort of subjectivity, or deal with the fact that just because you believe X, doesn't mean other people believe the same thing. And I tend to ignore it because of that.
The fact that people were willing to spend all this money on keys to get these ships for years would indicate people didn't care about the price.
Problem is, this kind of analysis isn't really possible when you have an unique product that's sold by only one seller.
People might well feel they've been ripped off, but still buy the product because they have no other options.
So that only leaves Cryptic's actions as something worthy of investigation. And apparently they also realised that they had to provide some incentive (lower prices, removal of limitations) to make their product attractive. Which by itself shows that at least some people with access to the relevant data thought the price was too high...
[4:46] [Combat {self}] Your Haymaker deals 23337 (9049) Physical Damage(Critical) to Spawnmother
Here's a second look at the phoenix boxes and the campaign III box rewards idea:
If each tier takes 5 tokens to upgrade:
1 epic token = 625 uncommon green tokens.
I averaged 20 green tokens per 10xbox on average.
625/20 = 31.25 x10boxes * 40,000 dil = 1.25m dill per epic. = 200 mil ec.
I set the price of a T6 premium box at 10,000,000 dil.
The price of two coupons is 6,000zen x 500 = 3,000,000 dil.
T6 Premium ship box = 10m dil = 8 epic tokens.
x2 T6 coupons = 6000 zenx500 dil = 3 m dil = 2.4 epic tokens = 2 - 3 epic tokens.
1500 lobi = 1key/4or10 = 125 zenx 500dil=62,500 dil / 4 15,625 dil = 23,437,500 dil or /10 6250 dil = 9,375,000 dil = 18.75 or 7.5 epic tokens.
If you did a combined package with all 3 gifts instead of a choice you could sell it for 18 or 30 epic phoenix tokens just to raise the price of access. That makes it worth the package at 18 tokens = 3.6 bill ec and 30 tokens = 6 bill ec.
It would basically become the ultimate account upgrade. And be good for each character individually. It would be massively worth saving up for. Not sure how it effects zen sales though. It would also make those lucky rolls very worth while.
I would think access to that much would make 30 tokens the reasonable price. 32 tokens to make it an even 40,000,000 dil. That is 800,000 dil across 50 characters. That makes it more than the return or each character. So, that helps make it a longer goal outside of really good luck.
TLDR: 32 epic tokens = 40 mill dil = 6.4 bill ec for all three campaign III rewards @ 5 tokens per upgrade. This adding the ability to upgrade phoenix tokens and not just downgrade them.
So, if you recycled 50 characters at 400,000 dil each you would need 2 of these at 100 characters to buy one box upgrade.
I set the bar high assuming lucky rolls.
Edit: Or to be nice and half it to one account max. You could do it so for 10 tokens you can gain the 2 lesser rewards and for 16 you can get all three rewards. IE. for 10 tokens you can get the x2T6coupons and 1500 lobi and the entire x3 campaign III box for 16 tokens with all 3 rewards.
If you price lobi based on the 10 token reward and zen ships are worth 240 mill each that means it's worth 2 billion for the package - 480 million for the two zen ships for 1.52 bill ec. Lobi is worth 1.013... million ec each(the new old key price.) and lobi ships for 900 lobi are worth 912 million ec on average. This also makes T6 premium ships worth around 1.2 billion each average.
It was at one time, because many of the items you could get from R&D were best in slot.
STILL has one of the absolute best Anti Borg weapons in the game.
TR-116
now you no longer need this weapon to fight the borg, they are so weak right now that any weapon is good against them, + there are all the kit modules that instantly kill everyone.
the borg in space and on ground are the most ridiculous foe, that we can encounter, in fact they are pathetic.
phoenix boxes on their own are not meant to be the perfect dilithium sink, but to give something that in theory will be a steady downward pull on the dilithium market. However as stated above, once you've obtained the items you want from the boxes, upgraded all the stuff you want to upgrade, there's nothing further to draw folks to that box unless they're going for an Experimental Ship upgrade, which even then still falls under upgrade.
Phoenix boxes failed then as overall they didn’t create a steady downward pull on the Dilithium market. They had the opposite effect and massively reduced the amount of dilithium leaving the game making the situating worse.
One off, if not the biggest Dilithium sinks in game was upgrading gear and Phoenix boxes reduced the amount of Dilithium needed to upgrade gear to something like half. What was a large downward pull on the Dilithium market got cut in half.
Phoenix boxes are making some players spend many millions less in dilithium.
And making other players spend more - I know that for myself, I only bothered to upgrade with Omega upgrades and Phoenix ones. The 'standard' upgrades that cost Dil to use? I couldn't bring myself to use them, because they cost too much to use. And I can't imagine I'm the only 'casual'-ish player who felt the same way. /shrug
The first few times the Phoenix boxes happened, they did their job - the exchange shifted nicely. But yeah, once most everyone had done their upgrading and/or stockpiled stacks of Phoenix Upgrades for future use (and they stopped being limited-time/FOMO offers), the boxes lost their effectiveness as a sink.
now you no longer need this weapon to fight the borg, they are so weak right now that any weapon is good against them, + there are all the kit modules that instantly kill everyone.
the borg in space and on ground are the most ridiculous foe, that we can encounter, in fact they are pathetic.
They don't adapt to Kinetic. So you don't need a remodulator at all. The only other weapons in game that do that besides regular swords is Lek's Knives, the Cochraine Shotgun, and the Tommygun.
True. And most of the level 15 special-project items are also still useful... but, my fed armada knows I have eight toons fully maxed on crafting and will make stuff for people at cost... and yet the only thing anyone has asked me to craft for them in months that wasn't a level-15 special project?
Beam arrays with [Pen] mods.
That's it. Everything else has basically been superseded in one way or another.
Yea... I got one character with maxed crafting and... nothing to craft. Tech upgrades used to be profitable, as there's pretty much always a need. I never really got into the other markets because of the random nature of the mods.
I actually get thrilled when I get asked if I can craft something. But as much as I wanna say it happens once in a blue moon... blue moons happen far more often than that.
True. And most of the level 15 special-project items are also still useful... but, my fed armada knows I have eight toons fully maxed on crafting and will make stuff for people at cost... and yet the only thing anyone has asked me to craft for them in months that wasn't a level-15 special project?
Beam arrays with [Pen] mods.
That's it. Everything else has basically been superseded in one way or another.
Yea... I got one character with maxed crafting and... nothing to craft. Tech upgrades used to be profitable, as there's pretty much always a need. I never really got into the other markets because of the random nature of the mods.
I actually get thrilled when I get asked if I can craft something. But as much as I wanna say it happens once in a blue moon... blue moons happen far more often than that.
Maybe if they added crafting upgrades to make the crafted upgrades use less dill so they are competitive again. That would be a good reason to craft above lvl 15. maybe each level from 15-20 lowers the dil use of crafted upgrades.
As interesting as that sounds... I don't think anything can really compete with Phoenix Upgrades, since they take 0 DL and are much easier to spam for quality upgrades if you have the Dilithium for Phoenix boxes. Not only that... the chance of getting MORE than just one from a phoenix box is there. Don't forget that when you mill down a higher tier token to a lower tier, you get two of the next tier down. The higher the tier, the more you get.
1 Purple > 2 Blue > 4 Green = 4 upgrades.
And that's just if you got 1 purple. Imagine if you were very lucky on 10 boxes to get mostly blue with a purple.
And all it costs is DL. No timegated crafting, no crafting mats... just insta DL.
Honestly I think tech upgrades aren't the way to go for crafting. Its the items themselves. And that is what needs a revamp. Something to make crafting viable again. While we can make TR-116 rifles, reengineering kinda made most of the "desirable" mods less desirable because you can pretty much reroll them except for the crafting specific mods like [Pen]. And I think for a long time the crafting meta was things with [Pen] at mk II because of maximum chance of quality upgrades.
I think you get an average of 20 greens per x10 box of pheonix when you downgrade. That is around 40k/20 = 2k per phoenix upgrade from buying the boxes. So if you can get them below that average per the upgrade points it would be equal.
that is 25.6 upgrade points per dil. That should make them competitive.
Comments
There is some evidence when Phoenix tokens went 24/7 there was something like an 80% drop in R&D upgrades usage as people swapped to Phoenix tokens. That means there was a majority swap from R&D to Phoenix and that Phoenix majority are now upgrading from approx. half the amount of dilithium that they used to. On average Phoenix takes half the amount of dilithium to upgrade an item which I believe gets even better when stacked with an upgrade weekend.
Using my own account as an example I have saved an estimated 3 million dilithium that otherwise would have been spent due to Phoenix. So that is an extra 3 million dilithium in game. 3 million extra dilithium is the opposite to a successful dilithium sink.
Which is a major part of the problem. The amount of dilithium drain/sinks has plummeted while the amount of incoming dilithium for little effort has massively ballooned. The devs have completely messed up the dilithium market and its 100% there fault not the players.
the R&D system wasn't a good dil sink, because a punishment can't be incentive: excessive costs, cooldown too long etc
Hard to say, to be honest.
But to give an impression:
I have toons that already had one set of weapons, consoles and so on and that would likely have been it if there were no Phoenix upgrades. Now, I've bought and upgraded at least four other full sets of weapons for him as I chose to alternate phasers with polaron dual beam banks and then cannons, and then later switched back to phasers - for which I also bought two sets of new types. I've also bought some extra engines on several toons that already had at least one fully upgraded engine as new ones were released, which I probably wouldn't have done otherwise either.
Same for new episode rewards.
In my case, since I already had equipped most of my older toons and upgraded their stuff with R&D upgrades, all of this acted as an additional sink on my dilithium stock. So did the levelling of new toons, as I probably wouldn't have bothered with that if we hadn't had these Phoenix upgrades.
I'm sure that Phoenix upgrades had a large, negative effect on R&D upgrades and yes, that fact by itself probably led to a decrease in dilithium spent per upgrade. But again, I would likely have stopped upgrading gear altogether if it weren't for those Phoenix upgrades. Whereas I spend much more freely on upgrades now, if only because I'm currently levelling three new toons at the same time - which I most certainly wouldn't have even thought of before. So I know that I at least am actually spending more than I otherwise would have.
Of course I don't have the slightest idea whether this is true for the playerbase at large. But that's exactly my point: we don't know that, and neither does the OP. So none of us can draw conclusions like in the thread title.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
I agree, I play since 2013 or 2014, I have created a lof of characters, deleted a lot of them too and each time i try to make them differents; that means new builds, new ground stuff etc. Like i said without the phoenix upgrade, I would stop to create new characters. The dps race is not my way of playing, so i don't care if I do x damage, i just want to try new stuff (space and ground -ground is funnier)
the phoenix store is not a huge dil sink, but it does its job.
Yeah, at prices 17x higher than elsewhere.
(Emphasis added.)
Well that, or it means they've charged unreasonable sums for years.
If you first
- Sell an item a much higher prices than any other item
- Put in place a restriction on its use (1 per character)
Then removing that restriction - which apparently wasn't necessary anyway - and selling them at lower prices could just as well mean that your prices weren't reasonable to begin with.
You're not saving the STO community money by lowering prices that were stupidly high to begin with, given all the restrictions involved previously.
It's like saying that I'm saving you money by first trying to sell you a blank CD for $400 that you're only allowed to use once before asking a single dollar for a rewritable one.
I'm not actually saving you anything, I've just stopped trying to rip you off.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
Problem is, this kind of analysis isn't really possible when you have an unique product that's sold by only one seller.
People might well feel they've been ripped off, but still buy the product because they have no other options.
So that only leaves Cryptic's actions as something worthy of investigation. And apparently they also realised that they had to provide some incentive (lower prices, removal of limitations) to make their product attractive. Which by itself shows that at least some people with access to the relevant data thought the price was too high...
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
STILL has one of the absolute best Anti Borg weapons in the game.
If each tier takes 5 tokens to upgrade:
1 epic token = 625 uncommon green tokens.
I averaged 20 green tokens per 10xbox on average.
625/20 = 31.25 x10boxes * 40,000 dil = 1.25m dill per epic. = 200 mil ec.
I set the price of a T6 premium box at 10,000,000 dil.
The price of two coupons is 6,000zen x 500 = 3,000,000 dil.
T6 Premium ship box = 10m dil = 8 epic tokens.
x2 T6 coupons = 6000 zenx500 dil = 3 m dil = 2.4 epic tokens = 2 - 3 epic tokens.
1500 lobi = 1key/4or10 = 125 zenx 500dil=62,500 dil / 4 15,625 dil = 23,437,500 dil or /10 6250 dil = 9,375,000 dil = 18.75 or 7.5 epic tokens.
If you did a combined package with all 3 gifts instead of a choice you could sell it for 18 or 30 epic phoenix tokens just to raise the price of access. That makes it worth the package at 18 tokens = 3.6 bill ec and 30 tokens = 6 bill ec.
It would basically become the ultimate account upgrade. And be good for each character individually. It would be massively worth saving up for. Not sure how it effects zen sales though. It would also make those lucky rolls very worth while.
I would think access to that much would make 30 tokens the reasonable price. 32 tokens to make it an even 40,000,000 dil. That is 800,000 dil across 50 characters. That makes it more than the return or each character. So, that helps make it a longer goal outside of really good luck.
TLDR: 32 epic tokens = 40 mill dil = 6.4 bill ec for all three campaign III rewards @ 5 tokens per upgrade. This adding the ability to upgrade phoenix tokens and not just downgrade them.
So, if you recycled 50 characters at 400,000 dil each you would need 2 of these at 100 characters to buy one box upgrade.
I set the bar high assuming lucky rolls.
Edit: Or to be nice and half it to one account max. You could do it so for 10 tokens you can gain the 2 lesser rewards and for 16 you can get all three rewards. IE. for 10 tokens you can get the x2T6coupons and 1500 lobi and the entire x3 campaign III box for 16 tokens with all 3 rewards.
If you price lobi based on the 10 token reward and zen ships are worth 240 mill each that means it's worth 2 billion for the package - 480 million for the two zen ships for 1.52 bill ec. Lobi is worth 1.013... million ec each(the new old key price.) and lobi ships for 900 lobi are worth 912 million ec on average. This also makes T6 premium ships worth around 1.2 billion each average.
now you no longer need this weapon to fight the borg, they are so weak right now that any weapon is good against them, + there are all the kit modules that instantly kill everyone.
the borg in space and on ground are the most ridiculous foe, that we can encounter, in fact they are pathetic.
And making other players spend more - I know that for myself, I only bothered to upgrade with Omega upgrades and Phoenix ones. The 'standard' upgrades that cost Dil to use? I couldn't bring myself to use them, because they cost too much to use. And I can't imagine I'm the only 'casual'-ish player who felt the same way. /shrug
The first few times the Phoenix boxes happened, they did their job - the exchange shifted nicely. But yeah, once most everyone had done their upgrading and/or stockpiled stacks of Phoenix Upgrades for future use (and they stopped being limited-time/FOMO offers), the boxes lost their effectiveness as a sink.
They don't adapt to Kinetic. So you don't need a remodulator at all. The only other weapons in game that do that besides regular swords is Lek's Knives, the Cochraine Shotgun, and the Tommygun.
Yea... I got one character with maxed crafting and... nothing to craft. Tech upgrades used to be profitable, as there's pretty much always a need. I never really got into the other markets because of the random nature of the mods.
I actually get thrilled when I get asked if I can craft something. But as much as I wanna say it happens once in a blue moon... blue moons happen far more often than that.
Maybe if they added crafting upgrades to make the crafted upgrades use less dill so they are competitive again. That would be a good reason to craft above lvl 15. maybe each level from 15-20 lowers the dil use of crafted upgrades.
1 Purple > 2 Blue > 4 Green = 4 upgrades.
And that's just if you got 1 purple. Imagine if you were very lucky on 10 boxes to get mostly blue with a purple.
And all it costs is DL. No timegated crafting, no crafting mats... just insta DL.
Honestly I think tech upgrades aren't the way to go for crafting. Its the items themselves. And that is what needs a revamp. Something to make crafting viable again. While we can make TR-116 rifles, reengineering kinda made most of the "desirable" mods less desirable because you can pretty much reroll them except for the crafting specific mods like [Pen]. And I think for a long time the crafting meta was things with [Pen] at mk II because of maximum chance of quality upgrades.
that is 25.6 upgrade points per dil. That should make them competitive.