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I don't even pay attention to lock boxes anymore. I make note of the ship being offered (hard to be ignorant of that since they plaster it on the launcher) but all the other gear I don't even look at. Last time I cared about Master Keys they were
This last yearly event, I took the Excelsior 2, and just bought 2 100% off C-store ship coupons off of people for 700M. Saved me some credits compared to buying a promo ship off the Exchange for >1B. 😉
So, rather than growing the game, they just add more ships that for people to pour money into. You would think that the Star Trek dream, and its fans, deserve better.
Yep, I use it on my main too. I find a majority of other ships in the game to just be meh or boring. Its also one of the best looking ships on the lobi too.
I bought 30 keys, my plan was to sell them but I used 20 to open Infinity lockboxes. I was extremely lucky to get a Starship Infinity Prize Pack - T6 Ship. I know the odds are very low and I am very happy that my leap of faith paid off. After 2 months I still don't know what ship to get from it or if I will sell it I'm going crazy,
Agreed. And I think Spencer has also said the pity point resets. And we all know Cryptic believes that .0000000000000000000001 percent is still a chance.
It does seem like lobi is an abandoned currency pretty much by Cryptic, dang no new lobi ship since 2020, I hadn't realized it'd been that long. Good for you for sticking to your rule about not reviewing the "gambling" ships.
6 years of this game and I've still never seen 1 billion EC (I'm about halfway there though) let alone 2 to afford a lock box ship. I know the methods to get that much, but I don't have the patience and time necessary to grind that hard.
I assume all the bots and gold farmers considered lobi to be 'trash' so they just buy whatever ships they think will be a quick turnaround for some easy EC.
I think since basic lockbox ships have been going for over 1bil things have been insane on the exchange. heck I bought a Na'hkul battlecruiser when it came out at 800Mil. that was crazy but that's a lot more respectable of a pricetag compared to how much ships are going for now.
My Na'kuhl Battlecruiser Was 300 Mio Ec i play side 2012. By Lockboxes have i am alive all win by one ten twenty.... from one with 400 key can you have luck or not thats the problem. The best is buy keys make little bit open the Rest sell or all keys sell.
And the worst part about is you used to be able to get EC at a somewhat reasonable rate. The exchange just isn't what it used to be and a lot of that comes down to the lack of new players that are sticking with the game. Cryptic needs to address this quickly or else STO won't be able to keep attracting new people and that's the end of a game like this.
i wonder if they regret allowing players to use their tribble sandbox? one would think they'd want to hide the stats unless there's some law that it's covering
You know, i always thought in my head canon, only bot farmers and gold sellers open enough lock boxes to get the T6 ships, not for one second i thought gambling addicts might be at play too. Hell, now i feel bad owning lock box ships knowing i just enable someone's unhealthy habit.
Why? Their habit is not your fault. If you did not have lock box ships, they would still have their habit. Those ships are really rare, and some of them are canon vessels that anyone would want to fly and own. You should not miss out on that because gamblers are active in the game. The other alternative, is playing the campaign each year, if the lock boxes are not your thing, since you get three choices. Which, I still think the campaign should include the phoenix ships as well as a prize.
Just as many people will get 2 ships as no ships. Hence people sell their second one for the ec. I'm sure gambling plays a part but there is more to this equation.
@@gausssto570 True but that doesn't stop people from trying to get a second one if they won one after only a few boxes. I just think there are all kinds of different explanations when talking about large groups of people. Some people just don't know any better and post it on the exchange, some people change their minds about wanting the ship even after winning it etc.
I have roughly 16K Lobi saved up over a few years of random boxes, events, and promos I have opened. I convert dil and use LTS stipends of 500 Z a month instead of buying Zen. Good video, let the whales keep the game afloat.
Um, I can tell you, is because you GET the rare ship and you don't want that ship, but you want some other rare ship - so you sell the one you don't want to buy the one you do. I did this ages ago when I sold a Kelvin dreadnought to buy a Husnock. Remember, you can WIN on your FIRST key. I won on my third.
I picked 1500 Lobies every year so far, and I still have left over Lobi to buy out about four or five summer / winter events if necessary. I grew so tired of playing these events that I keep my Lobies aside for the rare case that one of those ships is actually Worf getting.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for breaking it down. So not only is Cryptic taking advantage of addicted gamblers, so are other players. Ouch. Glad I stay away from selling keys and only rarely open up one of those blasted boxes. I've got so many boxes built up in my inventories that I'm gonna have to start getting rid of them soon.
It just seems to me like the whole game revolves around milking whales and they don't even pretend otherwise anymore. It's like the only people on-staff are the lockbox/promo department because it's virtually the only content that gets made. It's such a turnoff.
o7 to all the gambling addicts and whales keeping this game alive because I've not given them a dime for 6-7 years now. 😆 _(And no... I don't even buy Zen off the Dilex.)_
The exchange is full of idiots lol. Just look at the isomags. There are a lot of players who make their ec by playing elite games before they're ready in the hope of getting isomags to sell on the exchange, but for less and less money. A month ago they were over 4M ec each, now they're below 3, and before long they'll be less than 1 million if they continue at the same speed. I do also think it's the gambling itch. They get an "I win" when something sells, and it doesn't matter to them that they're having to play twice as many missions to win twice as many isomags to get the same money they got last month. It sold, so "I win", and they do a victory lap of the garden. I have to say, this is my first winter event, and I'm really enjoying it. It shows how good the dev team that started this game where, the imagination, the skill, but it's just not there anymore. All that matters now is that they wring as much money out of this game because they can't afford the good devs to write a new one. Expect more of the same.
So... They either need to remove the credit cap of 1.5B and allow the market to self correct... Or... They need to automatically grant the grand prize after 150 attempts.
I don’t think this is the whole story. A large part of the market is from bot farmers and gold sellers. They are set up in such a way that it only costs them time to get the resources, which they can sell for real money. They can afford to sell at a theoretical 70% loss. Remember it’s not just ships they sell. It’s EC too, so that’s something they have to stock up on from time to time.
That's not quite right. The central fact at play here is that keys are worth significantly more on the exchange than the ships they produce. Any conversion of keys into ships which are sold on the exchange is going to result in a massive loss in value compared to just selling the keys. If a farmer or a botter has Zen from the dilex, then unless they are selling the ship directly for cash it is always a loss to use them open boxes compared with selling the keys for cash or selling the keys for EC and then selling the EC.
@@gausssto570 and yet we know that they sell on the exchange because when the purge happened, a lot of listings simply vanished. I’m not disputing that there’s a huge disparity between key value and ship value. But I don’t think that it’s completely accurate to imply that the cause is just gambling addicts looking for their next hit.
Assuming the botters aren't stupid (which is always a possibility), I would suspect that those ships were being flipped for a profit rather than being opened by the botters, sort of like the way banks make interest on your deposits. If they have a huge slush fund of EC waiting to sell for cash on third party sites, they may as well flip things to make more. I will admit that I don't have evidence of either hypothesis though.
While I don't gamble real money in games, I absolutely feel a compulsive need to log in to every single game I own that gives me a free daily crate/chest/ect.
Might be a bit of a whale, but I don't bother with lootbox ships. The odds are... well stacked against me. Might buy stuff off the Exchange but I rarely have that much EC. And by the time the event that allows you to buy a lootbox ship rolls around, meh, which ship to choose? If I'm a whale, I've curbed my appetite.
I know people who already have so many ressources, that they can affors to gamble, then sell and do it again if they did not get what they wanted. They dont even sweat from losing 1.5 billion. They will have it back in less than two weeks.
I don’t know why it wasted me like 20 minutes to form the habit of not collecting boxes in dropped items. And even not talking about blind boxes, the legendary ships are so expensive 😢 like the price all of my zen ships adds together are still not enough to buy one $300 legendary
I think the simplest answer is they are desperate to sell the ship for more money to continue gambling and it doesn't matter about the market cap. Some people will refuse to sell those ships on the market and yell about how they want to sell one in public channels instead.
Understand the logic, I don't think this will apply to me since I am starting my first account free to play later today on xbox s. Don't have the extra money to be one of these whales, may turn out to be a minnow at best just to get a few things to make gameplay a little better.
I think the boxes are put up there by the company, or bot farms are spamming yearly events . I dont understand why Gambling addicts just dont go to tribble and endless spawn free keys to gamble for free and unlock ships in the game for free.
you mentioned this ship in one of your last vids and I had the science ship wich I did not like but I had the Lobi so I got it cool ship thanks this ship Son'a Intel Battlecruiser
that why I do it for the stuff for my to many alts and for a litle side cash because I am not luck enuf to win all thou I do hit fives instead after three years I think I hit only 2
Players are buying the keys ahead of time, so they could open them all up at one time. That's all I ended up with two protostars, I was also working on getting the rest of the crew members set. And it's easy to get caught up in all of the hype for this new ship. Personally I bought no keys this time. Not interested. Flying around in a shoe box.
STO has one of the worst lockboxes in the industry that I've seen, look at other games with them they arent nearly as bad, genshin has a guarantee pity for example.
No, hold on you're missing quite a bit here. First off, a lot of the keys you see posted are keys that got bought during sales and bought outside of the US and the UK. Prices are stupid cheap if you use VPN and go to other places. You can get stuff half or even less than what you find in the States and that makes the value of the keys go up. Second, where you do think all that dil on the exchange is coming from? It's being flooded by people with tons of characters farming Dil to sell it to buy keys to sell the keys to then sell either the keys or the EC the keys make on the exchange. This isn't all about gambling. If that was the case then you would see a lot more instability in the price of things like keys. Third, you can't use a new ship as your benchmark. People want it right now because it's the newest thing so the price is going to be higher. It happens to be lower on this particular ship because it's useless outside of space Barbi. As far as the buyout for the events, the summer and winter have been Lobi for quite some time. It's there for people that miss a few days, it's not there for people to dump a 1000 lobi into it right away. It's there for someone who gets 18 days done and runs out of time. Only the most hardcore players are going to spend the full lobi to get the ship when it drops. I'm not trying to insult you here but its a lot more complicated than 'gambling addicts'. The economy of STO is a freaking mess and it's making things more expensive than they need to be. With all due respect, you should look into all the causes before pushing a video like this. You're kind of offering up only one tiny piece of the pie and a lot of people are running with it. Gambling in games is an issue but it's the issue you see here. I would love to see a video on the state of the whole economy of STO and how it is harming player retention.
The real life prices are irrelevent, as are the different pices in different regions, because what matters is that it's 125:1 ratio of EC cost to a ship. The only thing of value the keys can produce is the ships, so I do think it's fair to make this comparison.
Do you think that an EC tax of even just 1% on market listings would help to drive prices down and remove a lot of the items that just keep getting re-listed at the highest possible prices for months and years?
@@gausssto570 You're not looking at the entire economy. You're trying to blame gambling for the price of ships when the price of ships is set based on a return. It does matter how much the real value is. If I can pull a bunch of keys from say Venezuela at half price and then turn around and sell the EC I make off of them for a profit that affects the price of the market. And ships aren't the only thing of value. Weapons still sell, just not as much, and some traits still sell. If you know what you're doing and buy 200 keys when they are on sale you can make that money back if you're goal is to sell the EC you earn and have some extra. Look, you're videos are fun but you try to blame one thing for all the issues and you're not even covering the real problem with STO and the EC economy or the long-term effect it is going to have on players, mainly new players trying to get all the neat stuff without forking over paycheck after paycheck to get it. The issue is right now there is no good way to get EC at all. The exchange is frozen on everything you can reasonably farm and there is no way to actually farm EC that won't take a lifetime. If this was a real economy that would see prices starting to drop but we don't see that in-game. I have no idea how to fix this but I know that gambling isn't the issue causing this problem. Gambling in games is an issue and needs to be regulated but this isn't an example of it.
@@tenalpoen A tax won't do anything. The issue is right now there is no good way to farm EC. There just isn't. The old tricks don't work like they used to and there is no good way to farm EC in the normal game. What's happened is STO has created an EC economy that is almost solely driven by gold sellers that are using some kind of botting system (don't know what and yes I've looked). I do know that gambling isn't the main issue although I would very much like it if they figured out a way to make money without the stupid master keys.
Gamblers definitely play a part but I don't think that's the majority of whales. Firstly as another commentor pointed out the whales of STO are farmers not gambling addicts. Secondly the people buying the keys off the exchange are majority whales who have large surplus of this imaginary EC currency they've farmed up, doesn't actually cost them a penny. In fact its beneficial for players that these whales exist exactly for the reason the players can pick up premium ships for 30% of the price that cryptic is charging for them. If you're a gambling addict you're going to be putting money into the game to buy your keys and open the boxes, not be selling the keys on the exchange. A gambler wouldn't get the ship they were gambling for and then sell it for such a low ball just so they could regamble for it with a third of the amount of keys, doesn't make any sense. Whale Farmers turn mass amounts of farmed dil into Zen to buy keys and open boxes, they can then sell those things irl or on the exchange and repeat the process but it doesn't cost them a penny and if anything they make money out of doing it. Some farmers do the opposite and sell the keys instead of opening the boxes, this then allows keys to be bought by the opening farmers, the key seller farmers with their large amounts of EC probably play the market, controlling the supply and demand to maximise their gains, eventually they'll be so rich in EC they can just buy whatever they want and sell it that way. There are gambling addicts out there but they put money in and open boxes, the keys and premium ships in the Exchange won't be coming from them.
By definition, whales are people who spend a lot of real life money on the game, they are not dilithium farmers. I think you have some of your concepts mixed up.
We want to thank you for continuing to support our game! When STO 2.0 releases next February we will have to option to buy premium ships as well as open lockboxes if you choose!
@@gausssto570 Yes, but also no. People are farming tons of dil on basically farming accounts and dumping that into the exchange to sell for zen. That's how we get the backlog we have now. The bot issue or at least the 'gold seller' issue in this game is stupid and crypic needs to figure out a way to address it.
I don't even pay attention to lock boxes anymore. I make note of the ship being offered (hard to be ignorant of that since they plaster it on the launcher) but all the other gear I don't even look at. Last time I cared about Master Keys they were
This last yearly event, I took the Excelsior 2, and just bought 2 100% off C-store ship coupons off of people for 700M. Saved me some credits compared to buying a promo ship off the Exchange for >1B. 😉
So, rather than growing the game, they just add more ships that for people to pour money into. You would think that the Star Trek dream, and its fans, deserve better.
Occam’s razor says that the developer hosts the ships on the exchange, not whales.
The Vengeance Intel Dreadnought is still one of the best values for a lobi ship. Last I looked at the Exchange it's still under 250M.
Yep, I use it on my main too. I find a majority of other ships in the game to just be meh or boring. Its also one of the best looking ships on the lobi too.
I bought 30 keys, my plan was to sell them but I used 20 to open Infinity lockboxes. I was extremely lucky to get a Starship Infinity Prize Pack - T6 Ship. I know the odds are very low and I am very happy that my leap of faith paid off. After 2 months I still don't know what ship to get from it or if I will sell it I'm going crazy,
Agreed. And I think Spencer has also said the pity point resets. And we all know Cryptic believes that .0000000000000000000001 percent is still a chance.
I find 2 gamble box ships and a Lobi buyout for the event at Christmas very predatory!
Always has been *pointing gun at you*
@@alternative915 Not a good shot then as I will never pay real money for gamble boxes.
@@necronix9947 Hold on, my gun had this unskippable ads i need to watch in order to use ;p
@@alternative915 That explains how I can dodge such a fiendish device ;0)
You have opened my eyes
Somtimes selling lock box key for few M cheaper, they usually gone in 10 sec flat. Its actually sad.
Yep. I gambled 70 keys since I kinda liked the build out of the ship.
Most keys I will ever do. Totally regret it.
Did you get the ship?
@@peterchasten2790 nope
It does seem like lobi is an abandoned currency pretty much by Cryptic, dang no new lobi ship since 2020, I hadn't realized it'd been that long. Good for you for sticking to your rule about not reviewing the "gambling" ships.
6 years of this game and I've still never seen 1 billion EC (I'm about halfway there though) let alone 2 to afford a lock box ship. I know the methods to get that much, but I don't have the patience and time necessary to grind that hard.
I assume all the bots and gold farmers considered lobi to be 'trash' so they just buy whatever ships they think will be a quick turnaround for some easy EC.
Lockbox keys have been overpriced on the exchange for years
I think since basic lockbox ships have been going for over 1bil things have been insane on the exchange. heck I bought a Na'hkul battlecruiser when it came out at 800Mil. that was crazy but that's a lot more respectable of a pricetag compared to how much ships are going for now.
My Na'kuhl Battlecruiser Was 300 Mio Ec i play side 2012. By Lockboxes have i am alive all win by one ten twenty.... from one with 400 key can you have luck or not thats the problem. The best is buy keys make little bit open the Rest sell or all keys sell.
And the worst part about is you used to be able to get EC at a somewhat reasonable rate. The exchange just isn't what it used to be and a lot of that comes down to the lack of new players that are sticking with the game. Cryptic needs to address this quickly or else STO won't be able to keep attracting new people and that's the end of a game like this.
I was thinking the same thing. Maybe some of the whales work for STO or Cryptic and get a key discount?
i wonder if they regret allowing players to use their tribble sandbox? one would think they'd want to hide the stats unless there's some law that it's covering
I got a Risian Pilot Corvette ages ago and I don't really want anything else.
I have about 1600 lobi. Because the last two events i claimed lobi.
I also have 13,000 zen. All from refining dilithium
You know, i always thought in my head canon, only bot farmers and gold sellers open enough lock boxes to get the T6 ships, not for one second i thought gambling addicts might be at play too. Hell, now i feel bad owning lock box ships knowing i just enable someone's unhealthy habit.
Why? Their habit is not your fault.
If you did not have lock box ships, they would still have their habit. Those ships are really rare, and some of them are canon vessels that anyone would want to fly and own.
You should not miss out on that because gamblers are active in the game. The other alternative, is playing the campaign each year, if the lock boxes are not your thing, since you get three choices.
Which, I still think the campaign should include the phoenix ships as well as a prize.
@@shauntempley9757 yeah, good point. i really enjoy my deimos.
Then the options are worth it.@@S1337theoddoneout-ip9xc
one thought i had was it was admins selling the ships for EC but im not sure on that one.
Just as many people will get 2 ships as no ships. Hence people sell their second one for the ec. I'm sure gambling plays a part but there is more to this equation.
Opening a box only ever gives one ship, so if you win more than one ship it's because you kept opening boxes after you already won.
@@gausssto570 True but that doesn't stop people from trying to get a second one if they won one after only a few boxes. I just think there are all kinds of different explanations when talking about large groups of people. Some people just don't know any better and post it on the exchange, some people change their minds about wanting the ship even after winning it etc.
I have roughly 16K Lobi saved up over a few years of random boxes, events, and promos I have opened. I convert dil and use LTS stipends of 500 Z a month instead of buying Zen. Good video, let the whales keep the game afloat.
Um, I can tell you, is because you GET the rare ship and you don't want that ship, but you want some other rare ship - so you sell the one you don't want to buy the one you do. I did this ages ago when I sold a Kelvin dreadnought to buy a Husnock. Remember, you can WIN on your FIRST key. I won on my third.
I picked 1500 Lobies every year so far, and I still have left over Lobi to buy out about four or five summer / winter events if necessary. I grew so tired of playing these events that I keep my Lobies aside for the rare case that one of those ships is actually Worf getting.
Other option, cryptic drops a few to market themselves.
ITS SPENCER. We all know it.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for breaking it down. So not only is Cryptic taking advantage of addicted gamblers, so are other players. Ouch. Glad I stay away from selling keys and only rarely open up one of those blasted boxes. I've got so many boxes built up in my inventories that I'm gonna have to start getting rid of them soon.
great vid glad you are back💯👍
Thank you for this video!
It just seems to me like the whole game revolves around milking whales and they don't even pretend otherwise anymore. It's like the only people on-staff are the lockbox/promo department because it's virtually the only content that gets made. It's such a turnoff.
o7 to all the gambling addicts and whales keeping this game alive because I've not given them a dime for 6-7 years now. 😆 _(And no... I don't even buy Zen off the Dilex.)_
"Bite my shiny metal BORG ASS!"
The exchange is full of idiots lol. Just look at the isomags. There are a lot of players who make their ec by playing elite games before they're ready in the hope of getting isomags to sell on the exchange, but for less and less money. A month ago they were over 4M ec each, now they're below 3, and before long they'll be less than 1 million if they continue at the same speed.
I do also think it's the gambling itch. They get an "I win" when something sells, and it doesn't matter to them that they're having to play twice as many missions to win twice as many isomags to get the same money they got last month. It sold, so "I win", and they do a victory lap of the garden.
I have to say, this is my first winter event, and I'm really enjoying it. It shows how good the dev team that started this game where, the imagination, the skill, but it's just not there anymore. All that matters now is that they wring as much money out of this game because they can't afford the good devs to write a new one. Expect more of the same.
So... They either need to remove the credit cap of 1.5B and allow the market to self correct... Or... They need to automatically grant the grand prize after 150 attempts.
I don’t think this is the whole story. A large part of the market is from bot farmers and gold sellers. They are set up in such a way that it only costs them time to get the resources, which they can sell for real money. They can afford to sell at a theoretical 70% loss. Remember it’s not just ships they sell. It’s EC too, so that’s something they have to stock up on from time to time.
That's not quite right. The central fact at play here is that keys are worth significantly more on the exchange than the ships they produce. Any conversion of keys into ships which are sold on the exchange is going to result in a massive loss in value compared to just selling the keys.
If a farmer or a botter has Zen from the dilex, then unless they are selling the ship directly for cash it is always a loss to use them open boxes compared with selling the keys for cash or selling the keys for EC and then selling the EC.
@@gausssto570 and yet we know that they sell on the exchange because when the purge happened, a lot of listings simply vanished.
I’m not disputing that there’s a huge disparity between key value and ship value. But I don’t think that it’s completely accurate to imply that the cause is just gambling addicts looking for their next hit.
Assuming the botters aren't stupid (which is always a possibility), I would suspect that those ships were being flipped for a profit rather than being opened by the botters, sort of like the way banks make interest on your deposits. If they have a huge slush fund of EC waiting to sell for cash on third party sites, they may as well flip things to make more. I will admit that I don't have evidence of either hypothesis though.
While I don't gamble real money in games, I absolutely feel a compulsive need to log in to every single game I own that gives me a free daily crate/chest/ect.
Might be a bit of a whale, but I don't bother with lootbox ships. The odds are... well stacked against me. Might buy stuff off the Exchange but I rarely have that much EC. And by the time the event that allows you to buy a lootbox ship rolls around, meh, which ship to choose? If I'm a whale, I've curbed my appetite.
I know people who already have so many ressources, that they can affors to gamble, then sell and do it again if they did not get what they wanted. They dont even sweat from losing 1.5 billion. They will have it back in less than two weeks.
I don’t know why it wasted me like 20 minutes to form the habit of not collecting boxes in dropped items.
And even not talking about blind boxes, the legendary ships are so expensive 😢 like the price all of my zen ships adds together are still not enough to buy one $300 legendary
I think the simplest answer is they are desperate to sell the ship for more money to continue gambling and it doesn't matter about the market cap. Some people will refuse to sell those ships on the market and yell about how they want to sell one in public channels instead.
very concise explanation even I got it 😀💯👍
I haven't checked them recently, but historically Lobi ships have always been very underpriced relative to the cost of getting the Lobi for them.
Don't even get started on the money I have spent on the DPS side,🤢
Understand the logic, I don't think this will apply to me since I am starting my first account free to play later today on xbox s. Don't have the extra money to be one of these whales, may turn out to be a minnow at best just to get a few things to make gameplay a little better.
I’d rather save up the energy credits for the borg ship
I think the boxes are put up there by the company, or bot farms are spamming yearly events . I dont understand why Gambling addicts just dont go to tribble and endless spawn free keys to gamble for free and unlock ships in the game for free.
you mentioned this ship in one of your last vids and I had the science ship wich I did not like but I had the Lobi so I got it cool ship thanks this ship Son'a Intel Battlecruiser
that why I do it for the stuff for my to many alts and for a litle side cash because I am not luck enuf to win all thou I do hit fives instead after three years I think I hit only 2
Players are buying the keys ahead of time, so they could open them all up at one time. That's all I ended up with two protostars, I was also working on getting the rest of the crew members set. And it's easy to get caught up in all of the hype for this new ship. Personally I bought no keys this time. Not interested. Flying around in a shoe box.
I thought console (Xbox was crazy at 7-8mil ec
STO has one of the worst lockboxes in the industry that I've seen, look at other games with them they arent nearly as bad, genshin has a guarantee pity for example.
Exactly! He already discovered (To no ones surprise) that its a fucking scam!
No, hold on you're missing quite a bit here. First off, a lot of the keys you see posted are keys that got bought during sales and bought outside of the US and the UK. Prices are stupid cheap if you use VPN and go to other places. You can get stuff half or even less than what you find in the States and that makes the value of the keys go up. Second, where you do think all that dil on the exchange is coming from? It's being flooded by people with tons of characters farming Dil to sell it to buy keys to sell the keys to then sell either the keys or the EC the keys make on the exchange. This isn't all about gambling. If that was the case then you would see a lot more instability in the price of things like keys. Third, you can't use a new ship as your benchmark. People want it right now because it's the newest thing so the price is going to be higher. It happens to be lower on this particular ship because it's useless outside of space Barbi.
As far as the buyout for the events, the summer and winter have been Lobi for quite some time. It's there for people that miss a few days, it's not there for people to dump a 1000 lobi into it right away. It's there for someone who gets 18 days done and runs out of time. Only the most hardcore players are going to spend the full lobi to get the ship when it drops.
I'm not trying to insult you here but its a lot more complicated than 'gambling addicts'. The economy of STO is a freaking mess and it's making things more expensive than they need to be. With all due respect, you should look into all the causes before pushing a video like this. You're kind of offering up only one tiny piece of the pie and a lot of people are running with it. Gambling in games is an issue but it's the issue you see here.
I would love to see a video on the state of the whole economy of STO and how it is harming player retention.
The real life prices are irrelevent, as are the different pices in different regions, because what matters is that it's 125:1 ratio of EC cost to a ship. The only thing of value the keys can produce is the ships, so I do think it's fair to make this comparison.
Well said Matt, this video was fairly obtuse.
Do you think that an EC tax of even just 1% on market listings would help to drive prices down and remove a lot of the items that just keep getting re-listed at the highest possible prices for months and years?
@@gausssto570 You're not looking at the entire economy. You're trying to blame gambling for the price of ships when the price of ships is set based on a return. It does matter how much the real value is. If I can pull a bunch of keys from say Venezuela at half price and then turn around and sell the EC I make off of them for a profit that affects the price of the market. And ships aren't the only thing of value. Weapons still sell, just not as much, and some traits still sell. If you know what you're doing and buy 200 keys when they are on sale you can make that money back if you're goal is to sell the EC you earn and have some extra.
Look, you're videos are fun but you try to blame one thing for all the issues and you're not even covering the real problem with STO and the EC economy or the long-term effect it is going to have on players, mainly new players trying to get all the neat stuff without forking over paycheck after paycheck to get it. The issue is right now there is no good way to get EC at all. The exchange is frozen on everything you can reasonably farm and there is no way to actually farm EC that won't take a lifetime. If this was a real economy that would see prices starting to drop but we don't see that in-game. I have no idea how to fix this but I know that gambling isn't the issue causing this problem. Gambling in games is an issue and needs to be regulated but this isn't an example of it.
@@tenalpoen A tax won't do anything. The issue is right now there is no good way to farm EC. There just isn't. The old tricks don't work like they used to and there is no good way to farm EC in the normal game. What's happened is STO has created an EC economy that is almost solely driven by gold sellers that are using some kind of botting system (don't know what and yes I've looked). I do know that gambling isn't the main issue although I would very much like it if they figured out a way to make money without the stupid master keys.
Gamblers definitely play a part but I don't think that's the majority of whales. Firstly as another commentor pointed out the whales of STO are farmers not gambling addicts. Secondly the people buying the keys off the exchange are majority whales who have large surplus of this imaginary EC currency they've farmed up, doesn't actually cost them a penny. In fact its beneficial for players that these whales exist exactly for the reason the players can pick up premium ships for 30% of the price that cryptic is charging for them. If you're a gambling addict you're going to be putting money into the game to buy your keys and open the boxes, not be selling the keys on the exchange. A gambler wouldn't get the ship they were gambling for and then sell it for such a low ball just so they could regamble for it with a third of the amount of keys, doesn't make any sense. Whale Farmers turn mass amounts of farmed dil into Zen to buy keys and open boxes, they can then sell those things irl or on the exchange and repeat the process but it doesn't cost them a penny and if anything they make money out of doing it.
Some farmers do the opposite and sell the keys instead of opening the boxes, this then allows keys to be bought by the opening farmers, the key seller farmers with their large amounts of EC probably play the market, controlling the supply and demand to maximise their gains, eventually they'll be so rich in EC they can just buy whatever they want and sell it that way. There are gambling addicts out there but they put money in and open boxes, the keys and premium ships in the Exchange won't be coming from them.
By definition, whales are people who spend a lot of real life money on the game, they are not dilithium farmers. I think you have some of your concepts mixed up.
I'd really like to know how the hell someone is farming up billions of EC given the state of the exchange these days.
Dilithium > ZEN > to stuff that can be sold on the Exchange be that keys or stuff from lockboxes etc. EC has never been easier to get @@mattsmith1859
We want to thank you for continuing to support our game! When STO 2.0 releases next February we will have to option to buy premium ships as well as open lockboxes if you choose!
@@gausssto570 Yes, but also no. People are farming tons of dil on basically farming accounts and dumping that into the exchange to sell for zen. That's how we get the backlog we have now. The bot issue or at least the 'gold seller' issue in this game is stupid and crypic needs to figure out a way to address it.
Fascinating 🤨
got to be some one rich not me 🙁I put only 50 and I am out
nice video Gauss
😜 "Promosm"