Great they added Dilithium back into the STFs when it should never have been removed.

But did you have really have to nerf the Dilithium everywhere else.

Just when I thought it was getting fun playing a variety of missions.

Wam there goes the Dilithium!!!

This was done to reduce Dilithium in the game and increase the need to buy it.

If Cryptic can make the amount of Dilithium you get per ZEN smaller, than what it is now.

Players will need to buy more ZEN to get more Dilithium or grind it over time for free.

But just like the STFs they are not listening to what the community wants.

They can make money from many things but dont and feel free to post your idea.

Retrait token
New pay to play missions
More costumes
More Bridge officers
Pay to replay episodes to get the unique loot, Boffs, Cane and etc.
Buy bank access for your ship
Buy exchange access for your ship
Buy Email access for your ship
Buy a shuttle bay for your ship
Buy a house, condo or villa on a planet
Sell DOFF packs by color

Or

Cryptic just be creative break the mold stop looking for grind or save time(reduce grinding) and buy (pay for dilithium)revenue.

Sounds interesting.
Mind me asking two things:

1) Is buying Zen more attractive, if you get more or less Dilithium for it?

2) Does the Zen cost more if there is more or less Dilithium?

I can never get to figure this one out
I myself am a Free-to-play guy, but I got a few of my friends to play and pay... The idea of my previous speaker sounds worth a look. Just saying.


Best,
D

PS: Fun is obligatory!

I was really pointing out there is other ways to make money outside of Dilithium.

This change was to get more money out of the casual Free players.

Cryptic's thinking (educated Guess) is that Casual players will not have the time to grind for Dilithium.

Making this a way to grab more revenue from the larger F2P casual player base.

Its obvious that people rather pay(think fast food)and get it now than grind for weeks.

Example: If a player has unlocked the entire reputation system and has no Dilithium.

Will the player buy 96,000 Dilithium now to get a full set of MK12 or grind for 12 days or more.

1) In a vacuum? Less. But if you can make people as eager or more eager to buy it for less, you make things fairer and more fun for fully F2P players who populate your game and it can be read as an economic vote of confidence in the value of your gameplay.

Whereas you could make buying Zen more attractive by giving it more buying power against dilithium. But there are a few problems with this. It can outstrip your players' ability to farm dilithium and then the price either rebounds or you have to mint dilithium to put on the exchange. It also results in a massive need for people to have things to spend dilithium on, which eats up more developer work.

Whereas dilithium being more valuable/expensive reduces the need for developers to develop lots of dilithium sink rewards and allows them to focus on making fewer good/expensive ones.

2) Zen costs less if there is more dilithium. The value of dilithium goes down if there is more dilithium. The less of something there is, the more valuable it is.

I'll add that there is already a ton of free ZEN floating in the economy due to stipends. Some of which I'm certain has to be on Cryptic's books for a year or two even if you have a lifer who has never logged in since F2P. It depends on how Cryptic's books work, whether they ever get to write that ZEN off... and they may actually write it off after one fiscal year and then have to retroactively adjust their books to re-recognize the liability if a player comes back and starts spending it.

It works in Cryptic's favor, most likely, to treat lifer/subber/promotional ZEN as an expense that they have to make up for to break even, including ZEN being accrued on inactive accounts.

It's really a matter of how you look at it, and how far people are willing to go along with it.

If the value of Dilithium goes up so it takes more Zen to buy X amount of dilithium, more Zen would have to be sold for people to buy that X amount of dilithium. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who might consider buying Dilithium with Zen aren't happy with the exchange rate as it is, and so they don't spend any at all.

In order to get to them, by making dilithium more common, Cryptic creates a surplus in the hands of the players who have too much free time in their days. If they sell off the excess, the cost of dilithium drops as the supply goes up, requiring less zen to be spent on getting the X amount, and the ones who previously thought it was too expensive will (hopefully) start buying dilithium with zen in sufficiently great numbers to offset the amount of revenue lost from the ones who already did this, and now have to spend less on zen to meet their dilithium goals.

I haven't checked in today yet, but so far the effect seems to have been the exact reverse. A fairly steady 160 D/Z before launch, to 156 D/Z yesterday. (Edit: Yikes. 151. I guess the demand for dilithium's up a lot more than the supply. I just don't understand what anyone is spending that dilithium on. People buying Zen for the Vesta really should've pushed it up, shouldn't it? I'm not sure anymore.)

I find everything not commented otherwise to be acceptable.

Also, break the mold?

You guys really don't want too much dilithium.
It will ruin the ecomony big time.
Cryptic will look at the metrics.

Really ? You don't ?? Or did I just missed the /sarcasm@ ?

Because , some (quite many actually) are still struggling with the likes of 200.000 Dil for a set of curtains or a Morn Hologram .

See the thing is this :
In S.5 the Devs created a Starbase system based on the influx/output of Dil per that time period .
Now , in S7 , the Devs re-imagined the economy mixed in with their future plans (*(which apparently either include a whole lot less need for Dilithium , or A LOT more need to grind) .

Either way , the Starbases (with which we are still struggling) are based on old S.5 math .
S.7 math and S.5 math do not mix , and once the Dill in the economy that players have accumulated dries up ... , you're gonna see Dill prices skyrocket .


Totally agreed .
But it'll take a little longer (1-2 months) before the whole of the playerbase will wake up stripped of Dil as they knew it .

This game has very little in the Z-Store compared to other MMOs stores.

So why doesnt PWE add more instead trying change the dilithium market so much .



Plan and Simple

Less in game Dilithium = less Dilithium per Zen = Buy more Zen to get more dilithium.


Players buy more ZEN = More money for PWE

or


Add more store items = equals more sales = More money for PWE

This is what way too many people just don't get, there is no such thing as "too much dilithium" when we can only refine 8,000 per day per character. Making it a massive grind to get that 8000 per day for even ONE character when it was stated that S7 would be making it easier to get dilithium is both a slap in the face and a step in the wrong direction.

The only way we'd be getting "too much dilithium" is if someone at cryptic does something silly like change FA or STFs to give 4,000 for one run, and even that wouldn't be such a huge deal because, again, we can only refine 8,000 per day per character.