More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
Any Zen on the exchange is already paid for.
So we're told, yes.
We don't have a lot of evidence that it's true though. In fact, we only have Cryptic's claim that this is the case.
I find it hard to believe because - as many people keep pointing out - there are no effective dilithium sinks.
So why in the world would people keep buying Zen to offer it for (constantly devaluing) dilithium?
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
Any Zen on the exchange is already paid for.
So we're told, yes.
We don't have a lot of evidence that it's true though. In fact, we only have Cryptic's claim that this is the case.
I find it hard to believe because - as many people keep pointing out - there are no effective dilithium sinks.
So why in the world would people keep buying Zen to offer it for (constantly devaluing) dilithium?
It just makes no sense to me.
I use my Zen to buy Dilithium. 🤷🏼♀️
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
Any Zen on the exchange is already paid for.
So we're told, yes.
We don't have a lot of evidence that it's true though. In fact, we only have Cryptic's claim that this is the case.
I find it hard to believe because - as many people keep pointing out - there are no effective dilithium sinks.
So why in the world would people keep buying Zen to offer it for (constantly devaluing) dilithium?
It just makes no sense to me.
Solo fleet owners.
Whales who want an epic phoenix prize pack ship (buy those 1,000+ boxes now!)
Anyone who cares more about time than money who wants upgrade tokens, re-engineering, any of the existing dil sinks.
I don't buy dil, but I also don't farm dil. If I got it into my head that I wanted to start a solo fleet then I could easily afford to spend a molehill of zen for a mountain of dil to level it.
Now do they still say you can earn in game assets or whatever to exchange for zen to buy things from the cstore? If so that needs to be removed in light of the situation.
Someone said buy zen. Well not all of us are exactly sitting on a fat wallet with cash hanging out that we need to spend it on something. Some of us are in very desperate states where money spent on Star Trek Online could mean a huge difference in real life. I am on SSDI, I have to live off what money my mom left me when she passed away a year ago this October. My brother and sister are giving up their share to help me live. NO I don't want pity just trying to state when people think players are too lazy to use real money that it is not true, not all of us have access to free flowing cash.
I am sure those who are being impacted by the current economic situation, for example the cost of the basics, food, gas, rent, and other things are also probably not able to tell their family hey I spent $20 on Zen and got a 10% bonus so we need $20 for gas this month because I wanted that new thing in STO.
I am absolutely dependent on the exchange. Without it I will slowly and continually fall behind in the race to keep up with others.
Yes I know as a f2p game, it does require real monetary input to pay the bills. That getting 20,000 dil doesn't help pay for the server maintenance or the electric bill or employee salaries. However at times there are many of us who want to support the game but no longer have the means to do so.
I play another online game, World of Tanks, and it is f2p but in many ways also pay to win and you think farming dil here is time sink, go play that game and trying to get things that allow you to keep up with other players requires a huge amount of time and so those who are the best skilled continue to get rewards while those less skilled come up short and so their tank choices are more limited. Yes if you suck don't complain.
Just trying to point out how f2p has a cost and unlike Star Trek Online most games didn't or don't offer a way to take assets you can reasonably work to get and then exchange it to buy items and there is always the exchange and that is if you are farming credits massively.
So just remember those of us who play the game want to support the company but we simply don't have real assets that are discretionary to just feed into the machine. Reason I am not bothering with the new diablo that was created.
I don't believe anyone said anything about anyone being "too lazy" to buy Zen to support the game. We're all aware that everyone's situation is different, and that not everyone can monetarily support the game.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
I will gladly spend money on the game once again, if they dial back the gambling economy and offer a reasonably priced alternative to overinflated $200 ship bundles.
"Reasonably priced" is subjective to the individual. 🤷🏼♀️
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
I will gladly spend money on the game once again, if they dial back the gambling economy and offer a reasonably priced alternative to overinflated $200 ship bundles.
On what though?
I mean, if they are going to reduce prices from 200 to, say, 40 dollars that'd mean they'd either have to sell 5 times as many of the same item - or sell more different items to make up the lost revenue.
As much as I'd like to see the C-store being expanded with other things (species, alien generator parts, maybe things like more customisation options) I doubt that it's feasible for them to easily make this switch. Not least because it would likely require replacing Devs of a certain specialisation with people trained to do other things.
And just pumping out even more ships will likely lead to decreasing marginal benefits - each new ship only has so much use after all.
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
I will gladly spend money on the game once again, if they dial back the gambling economy and offer a reasonably priced alternative to overinflated $200 ship bundles.
On what though?
I mean, if they are going to reduce prices from 200 to, say, 40 dollars that'd mean they'd either have to sell 5 times as many of the same item - or sell more different items to make up the lost revenue.
As much as I'd like to see the C-store being expanded with other things (species, alien generator parts, maybe things like more customisation options) I doubt that it's feasible for them to easily make this switch. Not least because it would likely require replacing Devs of a certain specialisation with people trained to do other things.
And just pumping out even more ships will likely lead to decreasing marginal benefits - each new ship only has so much use after all.
I can only speak for myself. But I would have bought each bundle-exclusive ship like the new Vesta, Shenzhou, D7, and Romulan BoP if they were sold seperately. The 10th anniversary pack came in two variants, one with lots of fluff, the other with ships only. Why was this policy abandoned? If they were struggling financially I could understand. But they themselves told us that 2021(or was it 2020?) was their most sucessful year yet. There's not need for this.
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
Any Zen on the exchange is already paid for.
So we're told, yes.
We don't have a lot of evidence that it's true though. In fact, we only have Cryptic's claim that this is the case.
I find it hard to believe because - as many people keep pointing out - there are no effective dilithium sinks.
So why in the world would people keep buying Zen to offer it for (constantly devaluing) dilithium?
It just makes no sense to me.
If no one bought Dil for Zen; the Exchange (as slow as it moves now) would not move at all. Yes, the situation is ridiculous, but there is NO 'free Zen' anywhere in the game. Even ten 500 Zen Lifetime subs get per month was PAID FOR to some degree by the LTS fee. (After 5 years or so they're paying less then someone buying Zen directly; but its still not 'Free Zen').
Of course UNTIL Cryptic decides to put some new Dil sinks in the game that longtime players sitting on mountains of refined Dil actually find attractive...no, the current Exchange situation won't change.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
Any Zen on the exchange is already paid for.
So we're told, yes.
We don't have a lot of evidence that it's true though. In fact, we only have Cryptic's claim that this is the case.
I find it hard to believe because - as many people keep pointing out - there are no effective dilithium sinks.
So why in the world would people keep buying Zen to offer it for (constantly devaluing) dilithium?
It just makes no sense to me.
Solo fleet owners.
Whales who want an epic phoenix prize pack ship (buy those 1,000+ boxes now!)
Anyone who cares more about time than money who wants upgrade tokens, re-engineering, any of the existing dil sinks.
I don't buy dil, but I also don't farm dil. If I got it into my head that I wanted to start a solo fleet then I could easily afford to spend a molehill of zen for a mountain of dil to level it.
Given that the Epic level ships are usually past event ships, the whales supporting the game would either have to have never done any of those events in order to need those ships or be new to the game & are supporting the game because it's a Star Trek property.
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
Any Zen on the exchange is already paid for.
So we're told, yes.
We don't have a lot of evidence that it's true though. In fact, we only have Cryptic's claim that this is the case.
I find it hard to believe because - as many people keep pointing out - there are no effective dilithium sinks.
So why in the world would people keep buying Zen to offer it for (constantly devaluing) dilithium?
It just makes no sense to me.
Solo fleet owners.
Whales who want an epic phoenix prize pack ship (buy those 1,000+ boxes now!)
Anyone who cares more about time than money who wants upgrade tokens, re-engineering, any of the existing dil sinks.
I don't buy dil, but I also don't farm dil. If I got it into my head that I wanted to start a solo fleet then I could easily afford to spend a molehill of zen for a mountain of dil to level it.
Given that the Epic level ships are usually past event ships, the whales supporting the game would either have to have never done any of those events in order to need those ships or be new to the game & are supporting the game because it's a Star Trek property.
Yes, new whales do swim into the STO ocean now and then, and some old whales swim away.
You can still buy Zen with Dil - technically. May take a couple of weeks for the transaction to clear the exchange, but...
Last one which went though for me took about 6 weeks.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
I will gladly spend money on the game once again, if they dial back the gambling economy and offer a reasonably priced alternative to overinflated $200 ship bundles.
On what though?
I mean, if they are going to reduce prices from 200 to, say, 40 dollars that'd mean they'd either have to sell 5 times as many of the same item - or sell more different items to make up the lost revenue.
As much as I'd like to see the C-store being expanded with other things (species, alien generator parts, maybe things like more customisation options) I doubt that it's feasible for them to easily make this switch. Not least because it would likely require replacing Devs of a certain specialisation with people trained to do other things.
And just pumping out even more ships will likely lead to decreasing marginal benefits - each new ship only has so much use after all.
I can only speak for myself. But I would have bought each bundle-exclusive ship like the new Vesta, Shenzhou, D7, and Romulan BoP if they were sold seperately. The 10th anniversary pack came in two variants, one with lots of fluff, the other with ships only. Why was this policy abandoned? If they were struggling financially I could understand. But they themselves told us that 2021(or was it 2020?) was their most sucessful year yet. There's not need for this.
You're right that the 10th anniversary Legendary ship bundle DID come in two different bundle variants. The next year that they did legendary ships, they did ONE pack altogether & started making Legendary ships bundled with level boosts.
I think the reason they don't sell the ships separately from the pack is because of how the ships are overall:
- Legendary ships are fleet grade & come with their own unique skin & stats.
- Legendary ships unlock with every console, trait & skin that existed when that ship was made. As a result of this, the ship doesn't come with its own console but it does come with an account unlocked trait.
Let's look at the last Legendary ship they released, the Legendary Vesta. It was originally released in a 3 pack of Tier 5 ships and then received a Tier 6 three pack on top of it. Since these come in as part of the pack & from the C-store, that means that the ship is permanently unlocked with all consoles & skins for all characters on your account. You're paying just a little more than the cost of buying the two packs separately, plus getting some extras that go along with it.
The way I see it, the Level boosts are what they were really trying to sell so they threw in the Legendary ship as a bonus.
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
Zen sold on the dilithium exchanged WAS purchased directly.
Not necessarily. LTS players are a source of of zen that does not generate revenue for Cryptic. And we have no numbers on how many LTS accounts there are, so we can't say just how much zen is coming into the game that way nor what amount of the zen going onto the dilex is from the same source.
I paid $200 for my LTS so that zen isn't free either, just discounted once your sub is ~3.5 years old (compared to buying $200 of zen with charge bonus). All zen has been generated by giving Cryptic real-world money.
No further money changes hands after that initial purchase. They gain *zero* revenue from that point on for all the zen they give to LTS accounts.
$5 worth of Zen a month to pay off about $200-$300 purchase of an LTS depending if you got it on sale or not. Or are you trying to say that that lifer stipend is ALL free from day one? Because until that $5 a month hits the $200-$300 point, its all covered by said LTS purchase. After that its profit for the player. Not before.
No further money changes hands after that initial purchase. They gain *zero* revenue from that point on for all the zen they give to LTS accounts.
$5 worth of Zen a month to pay off about $200-$300 purchase of an LTS depending if you got it on sale or not. Or are you trying to say that that lifer stipend is ALL free from day one? Because until that $5 a month hits the $200-$300 point, its all covered by said LTS purchase. After that its profit for the player. Not before.
Even longer if you consider buying zen on sale, and/or the growth you'd get from investing that money in an index fund. $200 today is worth more to a company than $200 paid as $5 a month over 3+ years.
So let my try to understand the situation, we've got too much Zen chasing too little Dil? So if we consider Zen the Dollar and Dilithium is the product, then the economy in STO is Zenflationary? Am I understanding this right? I'm just trying to transpose it to a realworld scenario in my head so I understand it.
So let my try to understand the situation, we've got too much Zen chasing too little Dil? So if we consider Zen the Dollar and Dilithium is the product, then the economy in STO is Zenflationary? Am I understanding this right? I'm just trying to transpose it to a realworld scenario in my head so I understand it.
Wrong way 'round. It's too much Dilithium chasing too little Zen.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
More people should buy Zen directly. That's better for the game.
I will gladly spend money on the game once again, if they dial back the gambling economy and offer a reasonably priced alternative to overinflated $200 ship bundles.
Those overinflated ship bundles and Mudd's Market ARE their alternative to the gambling economy. That is why I ignore the gambleboxes and consider them to be a necessary evil to get whales to spend big bucks yet give a tiny sliver of chance to casuals, who may or may not spend a bit now and then, to get an exceptional ship.
Personally, I have never used a key yet even though the key cost to buy a premium ship on the exchange is so high that for me it is useless to try and save enough for that from the few that come in for free in the game (so they sit in the bank), and the event campaigns mean that even a premium ship a year is in reach without spending anything but time anyway. While there are plenty of ships I would like from those boxes, it does not bother me too much that they go to the whales who keep the lights on instead, it is just the way most F2P games work.
One possible dil sink that could have added benefit of keeping the EC inflation down a bit too would be a small dil percentage tax on placing items for sale in the EC market. Nothing big (it could round down so minor items could be listed for free) or it would depress the market too much, but even a relatively trivial amount would be long-term minor dil sink that could be significant in total on the game-wide scale. And it might keep parasitic buy-then-flip price-fixing down a bit which would slow the inflation a bit.
Comments
It's better for the accounting department, not the game.
Any Zen on the exchange is already paid for.
So we're told, yes.
We don't have a lot of evidence that it's true though. In fact, we only have Cryptic's claim that this is the case.
I find it hard to believe because - as many people keep pointing out - there are no effective dilithium sinks.
So why in the world would people keep buying Zen to offer it for (constantly devaluing) dilithium?
It just makes no sense to me.
I use my Zen to buy Dilithium. 🤷🏼♀️
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Moderation Problems/Issues? Please contact the Community Manager
Terms of Service / Community Rules and Policies / FCT
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Solo fleet owners.
Whales who want an epic phoenix prize pack ship (buy those 1,000+ boxes now!)
Anyone who cares more about time than money who wants upgrade tokens, re-engineering, any of the existing dil sinks.
I don't buy dil, but I also don't farm dil. If I got it into my head that I wanted to start a solo fleet then I could easily afford to spend a molehill of zen for a mountain of dil to level it.
Someone said buy zen. Well not all of us are exactly sitting on a fat wallet with cash hanging out that we need to spend it on something. Some of us are in very desperate states where money spent on Star Trek Online could mean a huge difference in real life. I am on SSDI, I have to live off what money my mom left me when she passed away a year ago this October. My brother and sister are giving up their share to help me live. NO I don't want pity just trying to state when people think players are too lazy to use real money that it is not true, not all of us have access to free flowing cash.
I am sure those who are being impacted by the current economic situation, for example the cost of the basics, food, gas, rent, and other things are also probably not able to tell their family hey I spent $20 on Zen and got a 10% bonus so we need $20 for gas this month because I wanted that new thing in STO.
I am absolutely dependent on the exchange. Without it I will slowly and continually fall behind in the race to keep up with others.
Yes I know as a f2p game, it does require real monetary input to pay the bills. That getting 20,000 dil doesn't help pay for the server maintenance or the electric bill or employee salaries. However at times there are many of us who want to support the game but no longer have the means to do so.
I play another online game, World of Tanks, and it is f2p but in many ways also pay to win and you think farming dil here is time sink, go play that game and trying to get things that allow you to keep up with other players requires a huge amount of time and so those who are the best skilled continue to get rewards while those less skilled come up short and so their tank choices are more limited. Yes if you suck don't complain.
Just trying to point out how f2p has a cost and unlike Star Trek Online most games didn't or don't offer a way to take assets you can reasonably work to get and then exchange it to buy items and there is always the exchange and that is if you are farming credits massively.
So just remember those of us who play the game want to support the company but we simply don't have real assets that are discretionary to just feed into the machine. Reason I am not bothering with the new diablo that was created.
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Moderation Problems/Issues? Please contact the Community Manager
Terms of Service / Community Rules and Policies / FCT
Facebook / Twitter / Twitch
I will gladly spend money on the game once again, if they dial back the gambling economy and offer a reasonably priced alternative to overinflated $200 ship bundles.
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Moderation Problems/Issues? Please contact the Community Manager
Terms of Service / Community Rules and Policies / FCT
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On what though?
I mean, if they are going to reduce prices from 200 to, say, 40 dollars that'd mean they'd either have to sell 5 times as many of the same item - or sell more different items to make up the lost revenue.
As much as I'd like to see the C-store being expanded with other things (species, alien generator parts, maybe things like more customisation options) I doubt that it's feasible for them to easily make this switch. Not least because it would likely require replacing Devs of a certain specialisation with people trained to do other things.
And just pumping out even more ships will likely lead to decreasing marginal benefits - each new ship only has so much use after all.
Zen is still bought, obviously or it wouldn't be on the Exchange as Rattler pointed out indeed.
I can only speak for myself. But I would have bought each bundle-exclusive ship like the new Vesta, Shenzhou, D7, and Romulan BoP if they were sold seperately. The 10th anniversary pack came in two variants, one with lots of fluff, the other with ships only. Why was this policy abandoned? If they were struggling financially I could understand. But they themselves told us that 2021(or was it 2020?) was their most sucessful year yet. There's not need for this.
If no one bought Dil for Zen; the Exchange (as slow as it moves now) would not move at all. Yes, the situation is ridiculous, but there is NO 'free Zen' anywhere in the game. Even ten 500 Zen Lifetime subs get per month was PAID FOR to some degree by the LTS fee. (After 5 years or so they're paying less then someone buying Zen directly; but its still not 'Free Zen').
Of course UNTIL Cryptic decides to put some new Dil sinks in the game that longtime players sitting on mountains of refined Dil actually find attractive...no, the current Exchange situation won't change.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Given that the Epic level ships are usually past event ships, the whales supporting the game would either have to have never done any of those events in order to need those ships or be new to the game & are supporting the game because it's a Star Trek property.
Yes, new whales do swim into the STO ocean now and then, and some old whales swim away.
Last one which went though for me took about 6 weeks.
You're right that the 10th anniversary Legendary ship bundle DID come in two different bundle variants. The next year that they did legendary ships, they did ONE pack altogether & started making Legendary ships bundled with level boosts.
I think the reason they don't sell the ships separately from the pack is because of how the ships are overall:
- Legendary ships are fleet grade & come with their own unique skin & stats.
- Legendary ships unlock with every console, trait & skin that existed when that ship was made. As a result of this, the ship doesn't come with its own console but it does come with an account unlocked trait.
Let's look at the last Legendary ship they released, the Legendary Vesta. It was originally released in a 3 pack of Tier 5 ships and then received a Tier 6 three pack on top of it. Since these come in as part of the pack & from the C-store, that means that the ship is permanently unlocked with all consoles & skins for all characters on your account. You're paying just a little more than the cost of buying the two packs separately, plus getting some extras that go along with it.
The way I see it, the Level boosts are what they were really trying to sell so they threw in the Legendary ship as a bonus.
I paid $200 for my LTS so that zen isn't free either, just discounted once your sub is ~3.5 years old (compared to buying $200 of zen with charge bonus). All zen has been generated by giving Cryptic real-world money.
$5 worth of Zen a month to pay off about $200-$300 purchase of an LTS depending if you got it on sale or not. Or are you trying to say that that lifer stipend is ALL free from day one? Because until that $5 a month hits the $200-$300 point, its all covered by said LTS purchase. After that its profit for the player. Not before.
Even longer if you consider buying zen on sale, and/or the growth you'd get from investing that money in an index fund. $200 today is worth more to a company than $200 paid as $5 a month over 3+ years.
Wrong way 'round. It's too much Dilithium chasing too little Zen.
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Moderation Problems/Issues? Please contact the Community Manager
Terms of Service / Community Rules and Policies / FCT
Facebook / Twitter / Twitch
Those overinflated ship bundles and Mudd's Market ARE their alternative to the gambling economy. That is why I ignore the gambleboxes and consider them to be a necessary evil to get whales to spend big bucks yet give a tiny sliver of chance to casuals, who may or may not spend a bit now and then, to get an exceptional ship.
Personally, I have never used a key yet even though the key cost to buy a premium ship on the exchange is so high that for me it is useless to try and save enough for that from the few that come in for free in the game (so they sit in the bank), and the event campaigns mean that even a premium ship a year is in reach without spending anything but time anyway. While there are plenty of ships I would like from those boxes, it does not bother me too much that they go to the whales who keep the lights on instead, it is just the way most F2P games work.
One possible dil sink that could have added benefit of keeping the EC inflation down a bit too would be a small dil percentage tax on placing items for sale in the EC market. Nothing big (it could round down so minor items could be listed for free) or it would depress the market too much, but even a relatively trivial amount would be long-term minor dil sink that could be significant in total on the game-wide scale. And it might keep parasitic buy-then-flip price-fixing down a bit which would slow the inflation a bit.