Whisper wrote:
I think as a casual that a decent dil sink would be the allowance of endeavor point purchase. Charge 100k dil and it would be a fix. ... It would pull in newer players and would be a nice thing for older players to catch up.
New player: I don't think that would pull us in given our limited rate of 8k-8500 per day refining rate. Consider the time it takes to accumulate 100k dil - assuming no other dil expenditures - almost 2 weeks. It takes about 2 days of endeavors to get a point.
As a relative newbie (still under two months) the one thing that makes me feel a push to Zen is the limit in the low rate of refining. It has the same feel of the mobile games where you either play/wait for days for something or spend some money (buy zen, use it to buy dil).
Sure, the current exchange rate for dil purchasers is as good as it gets, but that doesn't help the overall health of the in-game economy. In my view Cryptic has to come at the problem from two, perhaps three angles:
1. Make it easier for newish players to get usable dilithium
2. Make it easier for all players to spend more dilithium
3. Possible: make it possible to earn zen
Clearly a balance needs to be struck in how those are implemented, but the fundamental problem is not that everyone is sitting on millions of dil - even though many are. From everything I've heard and read, people are basically complaining about not having things to spend their stockpile on AND the exchange rate being essentially one sided.
This exchange rate is so one sided because one side is an ever-growing internal supply that stays in the economy while the other is one that mostly leaves the economy an only comes in from external sources. Think of it as an international trade comparison.
We players create Dil by simply playing the game and refining. Thus it will always have a large supply of it. However, it is rather distributed among the playerbase. Dilithium has multiple uses for us to spend it. Zen, however, is only created by someone purchasing it from the store, and the only use for it is to either 1) exchange for dil, and 2) sink it in the cstore. Outside of purchasing things from the store Zen has only one purpose in-game: redistributing dil.
As long as the above remains true, it will be impossible to achieve any sort of balance in order to get a decent trade ratio. But how would my suggestions alter things?
Increasing the ease of getting dil earlier lowers the perceived value of dil to newer players. On its own that is only a quality of life improvement for new players. However, when combined with more ways of spending it - not necessarily more expensive ways - it reduces dil spending resistance. Consider the new player's rate of income again. If I can only get a maximum of 8.5k (if in a fleet) per day, I will be more hesitant about spending that dil. Most of the expenditures we have are comparatively large.
Consider the simple single Phoenix box. That is half of a day's income for one item. This is what I mean by making it easier to spend it. Some possibilities that as a newer player I'd be inclined to spend on:
1. Slots
2. Admiralty cards (single use)
3. Boosters
Those would need to be priced accordingly for newer players to help them get "caught up" economically. I could throw out random numbers but I think y'all get the direction there. Combining that with *some* larger expenditures for the dil-wealthy could go well to aiding the dil market. Perhaps a few more items such as a means to convert dil to energy credits.
Now to the third item: addressing Zen itself. In-game Zen is the highest value commodity and there is nothing that reduces its value - this no moderation of said value. There are two ways to alter this: 1) in-game zen generation and 2) lower real world pricing - and the former somewhat necessitates the latter.
Now I'm not talking huge amounts. Perhaps the ability to create up to 25-50 zen per day, possibly per-account. Indeed it would only take a small amount to have a large effect, but it also needs another outlet. We need an in-game distribution method for Zen and, clearly, dil isn't working for that. Currently our only in-game way to get Zen is the dil-exchange, which doesn't alter the supply of either. Again I call back to the 8.5k/day income cap; at 500:1 a day's refining is 17 dil. Newer players are more likely to feel a push to buy Zen, and we're not going to get any real value from putting that dil on the market for zen. A 12 slot inventory goes for what, 300z? That is 18 days of refining. Not happening.
This is where perhaps switching those types of things to dil can help. It feels less ... greedy(?). It frees us up to save/buy zen for the larger purchases. This is one of the ways creating small amounts of zen daily helps. Even if inventory slots remained zen, but I could earn a slot pack in, say 6 days of gametime, I'm more likely to do that.
Perhaps allowing certain items to be sold on the Exchange for Zen might help - provided there is a way to get Zen from in-game items, ie. to "create" it in-game.
I've seen it be the case that lowering the perceived value of the paid currency of the game while allowing to be used for more things more easily, actually leads to more spending on the game. I don't think any of us have a real problem with buying virtual ships. But its the little things. As a new player I've had no problem with buying ships. I resent having to spend money to make my inventory usable, or especially spending more money to actually have room for those ships I spent money on. Side note: all zen ships should come with a ship slot, just saying. Don't nickel-and-dime your customers.
Ultimately, the underlying problem isn't as simple as "too much dil", therefor more dil sinks simply wont work. At best every sink will have a small and temporary effect. The underlying economy is fundamentally broken and until that is addressed, it will remain so. Further, we will get ill-conceived changes like this dil for reroll and pass tokens one; it exemplifies the problems above quite well.
_________________
I am the terror that cloaks in the void. I am the glitch in your unimatrix.