I'll agree with end the bonus dil weekends, and I'll even go to the bonus dil after you finish a grind.. that needs to go away. unless and until they get the demand problem under control they need to turn off the faucet. pumping water out of the leaking boat does no good until you patch the holes
It's not the amount of dilithium ORE coming IN to the game. No matter how much ore comes in, there's a hard per character limit on how much can be refined. The problem is that what gets refined isn't coming OUT of the game. There are no IFs ANDs or BUTs about it. Cryptic MUST actually do some real work on playable content and add RD price tags to desirable elements. When RD starts flowing out of the game regularly again, an equilibrium between it and Zen will be achievable, and the DilEx will move both ways.
They need to start putting RD pricetags on things they will not put a Zen price tag on.
Not sure that's entirely correct as part of the problem is the shear volume increase of dilithium ore coming in to the gam. The devs have ballooned the amount up so much in recent years that I no longer do daily doffing, no longer do daily Admiralty and I still hit the daily cap while being at my smallest amount of play time. I have reduced my playtime by 80% daily and still hit the cap.
Players are being bombarded with dilithium in recent years. When players are being swamped in dilithium due to the changes the devs made it very much is a problem with the amount of dilithium coming in as well as going out. A big part of the problem are the constant events that run pretty much 100% now giving a none stop large flow of dilithium.
Again... It doesn't matter how much ORE...
ORE
ORE
If I can only get 8000 ore in a day, I can only refine 8000 that day,
If I got 800,000 ore in a day, I can still only refine 8000 that day
But what about people with a bunch of characters?
Whether they have to grind like hell all day to get at least 8000 ore per toon, or if they manage to get 800,000 ore per toon, they still can only refine 8000 per toon.
So what if they have a massive stockpile of ORE? It's even more worthless than RD itself until its refined.
And its never been hard to hit 8000 ore if people just play the game and understood where to get it, back before Cryptic increased the rate at which ore comes into the game.
RD is flooding the market not because of the ore, but because RD has no long-term and continuing use. People with Zen to trade would rather than hold onto it than trade it away for something that has no use.
Only Cryptic can give it a use. And it can't be just one-off uses. It needs to be long-term and ongoing, and it needs to be attached to things that matter to players. Playable content, or access to end-game mechanics need to have an RD pricetag. For every way ore comes into the game, there simply needs to be something that takes RD out of the game.
For a long time, I've talked about how this game needs a big metagame that starts at the rank of Captain, and includes every possible gameplay mechanic with events seeded throught the game world just waiting to be triggered by whatever governing conditions hitting a threshold. Or untriggered by a different set of conditions. Each one of these would have as a condition a global value of contributed RD to a specific application related to what the event entails. IF that application does not receive the minimum RD for X number of days, the event triggers.
These things need to be scattered everywhere. Any location that has a space or ground zone needs to have some potential role in the metagame.
Thgis is a live world. Cryptic needs to start treating it as such. Mission content is great, but there needs to be meaningful and compelling reasons to engage with the gameworld even in the absence of new missions. Only Cryptic can make that happen. But no... They'll churn out ship after ship but can't be bothered to put serious effort into the existing gameworld and what players have to do in it. And hell, they could achieve this by taking the repetitive content people run and roll it into the metagame.
Geez your really out of touch with the games current Pylon status. lol
As an example... I don't consider myself your standard farmer. I have 39 toons all of which have lockbox ship collections and are well geared. I had a ton of toons before zen existed back in the days of having to spec for specific ships I had a toon for everything... when the game changed I kept playing my alts while most people focused on a few toons. Anyway point is this.
I earn 8k per day on my toons with very minimal work. I'll play a few toons for a few days for real backlog and swap to other toons... mostly cause I personally get board of "Beams" or "cannons" or "torps" or "EPG" and when I do I just switch to another toon. Anyway point is 312,000 Dill PER DAY. Means every month I have 9,360,000 REFINED dill... or if I sell it all to other players 18,720 zen. Now really I don't pull a full 312k every day but I probably average 250 at least which is still 15k zen worth.
For people really honestly running maximum pylons. They can have as many as 50 toons.... or 24,000 zen a month worth of Dill. Sure not many people are really running 50 toon farms... but far too many are running 30+ toon farms.
Anyone saying the exchange issues aren't mainly oversupply issues... well they simply are incorrect.
I'm not saying things to spend Dillithium on are unneeded. Both supply and demand are issues. But yes the supply is a massive issue. Cryptic has not helped anything with all the Dill and admiralty weekends... and constant streams of mini events like Red alerts ect. What that does is allow people to us events to top up their Pylon toons. I have enough unrefined dill backed up that if I don't have time one day I can do a speed log through and just hit refine and be off. Oversupply is a massive issue... and I say that admitting I am oversupplied myself.
With people saying unrefined dill is NOT an issue... you are dead wrong. Its a massive issue. It makes it easy to skip days. OH I don't have an hour today to click Admiralty missions on 50 toons... but its ok I have a 50k backlog right now I can just speed click for 10 min and then leave. Oh I have 4 hours today and I'm bored... lets make some unrefined dill. Giving away so much dill sure people hit the 8k daily backlog... but having a ton waiting means you can keep the dill mill going even when you don't really have the time.
Anyone saying the exchange issues aren't mainly oversupply issues... well they simply are incorrect.
What I was trying to say is, that dilithium - whether it is oversupplied or scarce - when it is in the hands of most (generally newer) players, who are trying to use it for things OTHER than buying Zen... or in other words, players who have not yet reached the logical limits of all the existing ways to spend dilithium (including whatever fleet projects and gearing up characters that they care about, whether that's no projects and one character, or building a fleet singlehanded and gearing up over a dozen characters).... has no effect at all on the exchange. Because those players, and their dilithium, aren't interacting with the exchange.
(The same is true for people who are buying Zen and using it as Zen, but I don't really have more to say on that.)
What does have an effect on the exchange, is players who have already done the logical limits of those other things, and so put all of their dilithium into the exchange. Or simply have no demand for dilithium and so stop trying to get it (and this includes players who were formerly Zen-sellers).
Right now, we have too many dilithium-sellers and not enough dilithium-buyers.
Attacking earnings MIGHT have a SMALL effect on that, but it would be hard because, as you said, there's so many ways to earn dilithium that even if a good portion of them were attacked, people could still farm about as much as they are now if they know how. And in the long term, it might slow people down from entering that category (players who have already done the logical limits of those other things)... but it doesn't do much about people that are already there.
But to fundamentally change the dynamic of the exchange, what needs to happen is to change the behavior of a large portion of the players who are either currently active (as dilithium sellers) in the exchange, or have Zen and are not active (as dilithium buyers) due to lack of use for the dilithium.
And the ONLY way to do that, is to change what the "logical limits of those other things" are, or in other words, create new dilithium (spending) demand.
Notice... since we hit cap... the most effective thing that has happened (judging by fluctuations in the backlog)... was the Temporal Recruit event. Probably because it hadn't run in five years and so a lot of players created new characters for it... which meant they had a whole new character to gear up.
Understood and I agree with you I believe west. The sinks for long time players are very few. Whatever Cryptic thinks up to try and help it has to focus on long time players that don't need a ton of stuff anymore. I prefer they try to find a way to involve old players in the new player game. By that I mean new gear... or changes to rep stand bys or frankly better +1 versions of them.
Powercreep like it or not is one of the biggest tools developers have to keep long time players involved and spending in systems. IMO one issue STO has is many of us are using the same items (weapons ship sets ect) that we golded way back when the upgrade system was new. Sure a few new lockbox weapons here and there have got people making new sets. But I think if we all look at our main builds we will see more or less the same gear that has been there for years at this point. We aren't participating in the standard sinks anymore.
New fleet holdings aren't in the cards as I understand it... but as others have mentioned, the idea of tier 4 levels for some holdings could do both sink some dill with fleet upgrades. While also offering some new gear worth burning resources upgrading. New Embassy consoles, or research or new spire consoles... ect could work as a sink for both new and old players.
Another way to go would be to expand rep weapon options. They did this once with tier 6... and I'm not suggesting tier 7. Just that they add even more versions of reputation get to tier 6. They added new damage types to rep weapons last time. Why not add new stat versions of ship sets... and even ground gear. Its really easy to copy and past stats from one set onto a copy of another.
One thing many people want is the ability to reclaim lockbox/promopack ships on other characters on their accounts without having to get the ship again, however, it is very clear that specifically will not happen. My idea however, will give a little bit more accessibility regarding their traits, hanger pets, consoles, experimental weapons, or anything else special on them. My idea, is that once a player has acquired a lockbox ship on a character on their account, the consoles, traits, ect, will be unlocked in a dilithium store for their account, allowing for them to spend dil to get those traits, consoles, ect on other characters without having to get that lockbox ship for said character. Items bought via this store would be character unlocks, so if you wanted it on yet another character, they too would have to purchase it. This store could be further expanded to also have traits for account unlock ships at a cheaper price then the character unlock ones as to allow players to skip grinding out the traits.
Considering 99% of lockbox ships are purchased only for the trait or console. I imagine this is still a no go. Or the dill cost would have to be so high no one would do it anyway.
Letting us account unlock reclaimable ships traits though would for sure sink tons of dill. Also its just a time gate skip... which is exactly what all the buy outs are. If they could pull it off technically without breaking anything its a good idea.
Considering 99% of lockbox ships are purchased only for the trait or console. I imagine this is still a no go. Or the dill cost would have to be so high no one would do it anyway.
Letting us account unlock reclaimable ships traits though would for sure sink tons of dill. Also its just a time gate skip... which is exactly what all the buy outs are. If they could pull it off technically without breaking anything its a good idea.
Do you think there are a lot of people who would buy the same lockbox/promo ship for more than one character?
Considering 99% of lockbox ships are purchased only for the trait or console. I imagine this is still a no go. Or the dill cost would have to be so high no one would do it anyway.
Letting us account unlock reclaimable ships traits though would for sure sink tons of dill. Also its just a time gate skip... which is exactly what all the buy outs are. If they could pull it off technically without breaking anything its a good idea.
Do you think there are a lot of people who would buy the same lockbox/promo ship for more than one character?
At $200+ on average for one lockbox/promo ship, it doesn't take very many doing it for it to be worth a very large amount of money to Cryptic.
I have been a LTS since 2013. More than 98% of my stipend plus any extra leftover Zen I added was sold on the exchange for that time-up until about the last 8 months or so. I always just outright bought Zen for whatever I wanted that was released.
I am dilithium poor and still have plenty of use for dilithium. I don't have the time to grind dilithium. I'm still not going to sell even at cap. I agree that there is way too much dilithium and we need more sinks. I also am not opposed to removing the 500:1 cap on the exchange. If the demand is out there, let people pay what they are willing to.
So far from my perspective, all the fixes have just hindered my play experience. I spent dilithium from sales on 2 things; fleet projects and pheonix upgrades. We see that pheonix upgrades are getting nerfed now. As for fleets, I own one and and admin about 12 others. I know lots of fleets are finished with their projects, but not everyone is. Most of these fleets have been around since 2012. Even to this day almost all fleet project dilithium requirements have to be filled by leaders. We have a couple of other good people that donate. All my Zen went to that over the years. Dilithium requirements need to be increased in fleet mark rewards. Of so much dilithium is out there, why are these still not helped?
With the way Cryptic has been with the greed, they have just priced me out of the game. I have spent thousands over the years. $30 for a ship I want, no problem. I'd even pay up to $40-45 if it was something I really wanted. These packs of fluff with 1-2 things desirable for the cost of my rent. No thanks. I'll keep my stipend and just save it for a sale. I won't spend any more money into it.
No matter what sink they add at this point do I think I would ever go back to selling Zen and spending real money. I know I am probably not the majority, but I know several long time players similar to me that feel the same way.
I think that's what Mudd's Market addresses, just got to wait for a 50% off sale on those items.
Still I think they would resist the idea of unlocking Promo/Lockbox Ships for the entire account, as I said their compromise was Mudd's Market Bundles.
Allowing a Lockbox/Promo ship to even be repackaged, even if for just a single toon on the Account; I don't think they will ever do.
Considering 99% of lockbox ships are purchased only for the trait or console. I imagine this is still a no go. Or the dill cost would have to be so high no one would do it anyway.
Letting us account unlock reclaimable ships traits though would for sure sink tons of dill. Also its just a time gate skip... which is exactly what all the buy outs are. If they could pull it off technically without breaking anything its a good idea.
Do you think there are a lot of people who would buy the same lockbox/promo ship for more than one character?
At $200+ on average for one lockbox/promo ship, it doesn't take very many doing it for it to be worth a very large amount of money to Cryptic.
Yes I agree, even if I'm not one of those Whales; more just a Dolphin. I try to spend a little every now and then, and do what I can.
Considering 99% of lockbox ships are purchased only for the trait or console. I imagine this is still a no go. Or the dill cost would have to be so high no one would do it anyway.
Letting us account unlock reclaimable ships traits though would for sure sink tons of dill. Also its just a time gate skip... which is exactly what all the buy outs are. If they could pull it off technically without breaking anything its a good idea.
Do you think there are a lot of people who would buy the same lockbox/promo ship for more than one character?
Sure many of us have. Yes it happens often.... if it didn't Cryptic would have made them account unlocks. Yes people buy many many lockbox ships. I have 100s... many are the same one. Heck I have even unlocked some in mudds where I had already bought 4 or 5 previously.
I'd be happy with a Dill fee to repackage a lockbox ship. so i could repackage a JH Dread carrier and send it to a tac officer, since the sci officer that has it flys an Evil I now
There's a number of Episodes that have been removed from the game. For some of us who lament that and would like to play the content/get the accolades, we'd certainly be willing to give extra support to the dev team to make it happen.
Therefore I'd suggest as a way to generate funds and fix the dil backlog, to create a global community goal where people can donate dil for a proposed episode to be renovated/brought back (even just with old content but bug fixed).
Perhaps zen could be added in too.. but I'd note if enough dil is used it effectively frees up zen to be actually purchased, as is the devs goal.
I know this a bit of a danger to some... asking players to donate for things they didn't think they would, but I'd suggest its better than the alternative.. being asked to pay for things the community is more mixed about like box gambling/power creep ships. It's gotta come form somewhere and this could be a way for us to support the devs and push the game to its best form yet.
apply the 'Andorian rule' to all ships whose default weapons are some special flavor. Specifically: a character with such a ship commissioned would be able to purchase those weapons from the dil store (this is, I recall, already the case for Cardassian ships, and a couple of others). In other words, did you just get a Manasa or 'Juggernaut'? Now you can outfit them with their proper DEWs.
similar to the above: ships with quad cannons would unlock the ability to purchase other flavors thereof. Tetryon quads? Sure. Antiproton? No problem. Extra credit if this also 'stacks' - i.e. having an Undine ship as well makes fluidic-AP quads available.
certain mission reward items are specific to certain factions. Here, I would add that completing the missions makes the item available to otherwise-ineligible characters on the account via the dil store, Example: you have a KDF character who completed 'Alpha'; now, your Starfleet/RRN/Vanguard characters can requisition the Hirogen blast rifle.
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There's a number of Episodes that have been removed from the game. For some of us who lament that and would like to play the content/get the accolades, we'd certainly be willing to give extra support to the dev team to make it happen.
Therefore I'd suggest as a way to generate funds and fix the dil backlog, to create a global community goal where people can donate dil for a proposed episode to be renovated/brought back (even just with old content but bug fixed).
Since dilithium is a currency based on activity, it makes sense for it to be used for community goals. Also, there's currently not much reason for devs to focus on cleaning up old content over launching new content, both in terms of player appreciation and currency sinks.
It makes sense, though. Because they are getting lost in the math (see the comments on the number of tokens vs. the experimental ship upgrades) and not realizing that a big piece of this is actually psychology.
Such as: yes there's players with a lot of dilithium, (something like 3 billion sitting in uncompleted Zen exchange offers right now!) but a big chunk of that is because they have nothing else to spend it on, because they (individually) have already exhausted all the existing ways to spend it that they care about. And similarly, players who have Zen but aren't putting it on the exchange.... because they have nothing to spend dilithium on, because they (individually) have already exhausted all the ways to spend it that they care about, so their demand for dilithium is literally zero.
Such as: all those unspent low-level Phoenix tokens people supposedly have/had? So people were trying to get something high level, were defeated by the RNG, but in the meantime were generating low-level tokens they had no use for. Giving those players something to use those tokens for would probably increase their future spending.
And as for the "sales" stats on the epic-level Phoenix ships? If players had a guaranteed way to reach those (a way that is not entirely subject to the RNG), demand for them might actually increase. There have been players who have posted on the forum, within the last month, saying they WANT the Bajoran Interceptor, the Breen Raider, and/or the Kobali Samsar, but have "given up" on getting them because of the drop rate of the epic tokens and the fact that there is no way to bypass it and/or they have no use for the lower level tokens. (At some point, you don't even want tech upgrades anymore.... I've upgraded all my space gear and some ground gear on over 20 characters, including in some cases space gear for weapons AND science builds, and in that time have only generated 5 epics.) This is why I was suggesting a trade-upward option... the numbers don't even really matter, it's the capability that matters, because it gives people a way to bypass the RNG (by spending all their unspent low-level tokens).
But the devs are looking at game-wide statistics of people's current behaviors, and expecting those behaviors to remain the same.
If I may use a real-world example, it's like those surveys that ask: "How high do gas prices need to go before you will change your driving habits?"
The question assumes that you CAN change your driving habits... and that you don't own an electric car.
Yup. It's a fundamental disconnect with stats-driven decision making. Stats only ever capture the 'what.' It never captures the why, and the *why* is far more important, because to change or harness the 'what,' you *HAVE* to understand the why. There is simply no getting around that.
Similar problem in qualitative vs quantitative research.
I agree with a few points you both made, still I don't think Phoenix upgrades are wise; we'd see just a bit too many even if upgraded ones were bound to account. People start with Ultra's, and then Very Rare. Still I do greatly appreciate the slightly increased drop chance for Epic tokens.
I do agree with you they need to expand options for things to get with DIL, or to spend it on and largely Holdings fulfilled that requirement for a decade or more. I know in last weeks stream, a New Holding would focus the whole team (without content or new ships) maybe +5 months or more; being all hands on deck.
Yet also I don't know they need a new Holding either, why not expand Tier III out to IV, could do one every 1-2.5 years at maybe 15-25% of the effort; as maps only need a few updates, or revisions and how big would be up to them. Also it could include far more items that cost more Fleet Credit, &/or DIL; these are but examples...
They just want you to spend your hard earned income and buy it which at the time goes against everything PWE stood for .When you have spent 80 dollars that is enough if you check the games on steam they are far cheaper then what you pay for 3000zen .
PW or now Gearbox needs to move out of San Francisco and California as it far to expensive to live there .now.
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PW or now Gearbox needs to move out of San Francisco and California as it far to expensive to live there .now.
The living expense there is misleading since the wages are higher too, and totally irrelevant anyway.
The reason so many game companies are headquartered or at least have their main servers out on the west coast is that overenthusiastic companies in the 1990s laid so much fiberoptic cable out there that even today a significant amount of that glass is still dark (or at least far underutilized) which makes it cheaper to place their main servers there than in other, less overbuilt, backbone hubs like Atlanta.
They are in California because it makes sound business sense for online gaming companies to be there.
Furthermore, another reason the living expense is irrelevant is because Cryptic has gone to telecommuting since the pandemic, just like a lot of other companies have, and at least some of the devs live in other states (one mentioned their local weather in Texas in one of the streams for instance) and some of them probably telecommuted even before the pandemic.
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Geez your really out of touch with the games current Pylon status. lol
As an example... I don't consider myself your standard farmer. I have 39 toons all of which have lockbox ship collections and are well geared. I had a ton of toons before zen existed back in the days of having to spec for specific ships I had a toon for everything... when the game changed I kept playing my alts while most people focused on a few toons. Anyway point is this.
I earn 8k per day on my toons with very minimal work. I'll play a few toons for a few days for real backlog and swap to other toons... mostly cause I personally get board of "Beams" or "cannons" or "torps" or "EPG" and when I do I just switch to another toon. Anyway point is 312,000 Dill PER DAY. Means every month I have 9,360,000 REFINED dill... or if I sell it all to other players 18,720 zen. Now really I don't pull a full 312k every day but I probably average 250 at least which is still 15k zen worth.
For people really honestly running maximum pylons. They can have as many as 50 toons.... or 24,000 zen a month worth of Dill. Sure not many people are really running 50 toon farms... but far too many are running 30+ toon farms.
Anyone saying the exchange issues aren't mainly oversupply issues... well they simply are incorrect.
I'm not saying things to spend Dillithium on are unneeded. Both supply and demand are issues. But yes the supply is a massive issue. Cryptic has not helped anything with all the Dill and admiralty weekends... and constant streams of mini events like Red alerts ect. What that does is allow people to us events to top up their Pylon toons. I have enough unrefined dill backed up that if I don't have time one day I can do a speed log through and just hit refine and be off. Oversupply is a massive issue... and I say that admitting I am oversupplied myself.
With people saying unrefined dill is NOT an issue... you are dead wrong. Its a massive issue. It makes it easy to skip days. OH I don't have an hour today to click Admiralty missions on 50 toons... but its ok I have a 50k backlog right now I can just speed click for 10 min and then leave. Oh I have 4 hours today and I'm bored... lets make some unrefined dill. Giving away so much dill sure people hit the 8k daily backlog... but having a ton waiting means you can keep the dill mill going even when you don't really have the time.
Understood and I agree with you I believe west. The sinks for long time players are very few. Whatever Cryptic thinks up to try and help it has to focus on long time players that don't need a ton of stuff anymore. I prefer they try to find a way to involve old players in the new player game. By that I mean new gear... or changes to rep stand bys or frankly better +1 versions of them.
Powercreep like it or not is one of the biggest tools developers have to keep long time players involved and spending in systems. IMO one issue STO has is many of us are using the same items (weapons ship sets ect) that we golded way back when the upgrade system was new. Sure a few new lockbox weapons here and there have got people making new sets. But I think if we all look at our main builds we will see more or less the same gear that has been there for years at this point. We aren't participating in the standard sinks anymore.
New fleet holdings aren't in the cards as I understand it... but as others have mentioned, the idea of tier 4 levels for some holdings could do both sink some dill with fleet upgrades. While also offering some new gear worth burning resources upgrading. New Embassy consoles, or research or new spire consoles... ect could work as a sink for both new and old players.
Another way to go would be to expand rep weapon options. They did this once with tier 6... and I'm not suggesting tier 7. Just that they add even more versions of reputation get to tier 6. They added new damage types to rep weapons last time. Why not add new stat versions of ship sets... and even ground gear. Its really easy to copy and past stats from one set onto a copy of another.
Powercreep is the answer. lol
Letting us account unlock reclaimable ships traits though would for sure sink tons of dill. Also its just a time gate skip... which is exactly what all the buy outs are. If they could pull it off technically without breaking anything its a good idea.
Do you think there are a lot of people who would buy the same lockbox/promo ship for more than one character?
At $200+ on average for one lockbox/promo ship, it doesn't take very many doing it for it to be worth a very large amount of money to Cryptic.
I have been a LTS since 2013. More than 98% of my stipend plus any extra leftover Zen I added was sold on the exchange for that time-up until about the last 8 months or so. I always just outright bought Zen for whatever I wanted that was released.
I am dilithium poor and still have plenty of use for dilithium. I don't have the time to grind dilithium. I'm still not going to sell even at cap. I agree that there is way too much dilithium and we need more sinks. I also am not opposed to removing the 500:1 cap on the exchange. If the demand is out there, let people pay what they are willing to.
So far from my perspective, all the fixes have just hindered my play experience. I spent dilithium from sales on 2 things; fleet projects and pheonix upgrades. We see that pheonix upgrades are getting nerfed now. As for fleets, I own one and and admin about 12 others. I know lots of fleets are finished with their projects, but not everyone is. Most of these fleets have been around since 2012. Even to this day almost all fleet project dilithium requirements have to be filled by leaders. We have a couple of other good people that donate. All my Zen went to that over the years. Dilithium requirements need to be increased in fleet mark rewards. Of so much dilithium is out there, why are these still not helped?
With the way Cryptic has been with the greed, they have just priced me out of the game. I have spent thousands over the years. $30 for a ship I want, no problem. I'd even pay up to $40-45 if it was something I really wanted. These packs of fluff with 1-2 things desirable for the cost of my rent. No thanks. I'll keep my stipend and just save it for a sale. I won't spend any more money into it.
No matter what sink they add at this point do I think I would ever go back to selling Zen and spending real money. I know I am probably not the majority, but I know several long time players similar to me that feel the same way.
Still I think they would resist the idea of unlocking Promo/Lockbox Ships for the entire account, as I said their compromise was Mudd's Market Bundles.
Allowing a Lockbox/Promo ship to even be repackaged, even if for just a single toon on the Account; I don't think they will ever do.
Yes I agree, even if I'm not one of those Whales; more just a Dolphin. I try to spend a little every now and then, and do what I can.
Sure many of us have. Yes it happens often.... if it didn't Cryptic would have made them account unlocks. Yes people buy many many lockbox ships. I have 100s... many are the same one. Heck I have even unlocked some in mudds where I had already bought 4 or 5 previously.
Therefore I'd suggest as a way to generate funds and fix the dil backlog, to create a global community goal where people can donate dil for a proposed episode to be renovated/brought back (even just with old content but bug fixed).
Perhaps zen could be added in too.. but I'd note if enough dil is used it effectively frees up zen to be actually purchased, as is the devs goal.
I know this a bit of a danger to some... asking players to donate for things they didn't think they would, but I'd suggest its better than the alternative.. being asked to pay for things the community is more mixed about like box gambling/power creep ships. It's gotta come form somewhere and this could be a way for us to support the devs and push the game to its best form yet.
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Since dilithium is a currency based on activity, it makes sense for it to be used for community goals. Also, there's currently not much reason for devs to focus on cleaning up old content over launching new content, both in terms of player appreciation and currency sinks.
I agree with a few points you both made, still I don't think Phoenix upgrades are wise; we'd see just a bit too many even if upgraded ones were bound to account. People start with Ultra's, and then Very Rare. Still I do greatly appreciate the slightly increased drop chance for Epic tokens.
I do agree with you they need to expand options for things to get with DIL, or to spend it on and largely Holdings fulfilled that requirement for a decade or more. I know in last weeks stream, a New Holding would focus the whole team (without content or new ships) maybe +5 months or more; being all hands on deck.
Yet also I don't know they need a new Holding either, why not expand Tier III out to IV, could do one every 1-2.5 years at maybe 15-25% of the effort; as maps only need a few updates, or revisions and how big would be up to them. Also it could include far more items that cost more Fleet Credit, &/or DIL; these are but examples...
PW or now Gearbox needs to move out of San Francisco and California as it far to expensive to live there .now.
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer
Star Trek Gamers
The living expense there is misleading since the wages are higher too, and totally irrelevant anyway.
The reason so many game companies are headquartered or at least have their main servers out on the west coast is that overenthusiastic companies in the 1990s laid so much fiberoptic cable out there that even today a significant amount of that glass is still dark (or at least far underutilized) which makes it cheaper to place their main servers there than in other, less overbuilt, backbone hubs like Atlanta.
They are in California because it makes sound business sense for online gaming companies to be there.
Furthermore, another reason the living expense is irrelevant is because Cryptic has gone to telecommuting since the pandemic, just like a lot of other companies have, and at least some of the devs live in other states (one mentioned their local weather in Texas in one of the streams for instance) and some of them probably telecommuted even before the pandemic.