Update: The dilithium store’s overpriced costume wear (already 9 times higher than anything else) got a small 15% discount when the changes were pushed live to holodeck this morning.

Update 2: Well so much for that – the discount came from our dilithium min discount. Grrr. Thanks to

[sarcasm] Yeah, NOW I’m going to buy something [/sarcasm]

If vanity items are the next ‘big thing’ in dilithium expenditures, why not move the Disco Balls to the dil store as well. Starting price 5 million dilithium. Now THAT would be a good dil sink. I know of one fleet that would stabilize the economy in a single day.

Original post below..

Tribble’s patch notes dropped with what seemed to be good news – some costumes have been added to the dilithium store. Given the volatility of the exchange, and the current dilithium glut in the game holding at 400:1 exchange rate, another dilithium sink would be nice.

But not this:

This has GOT to be WRONG.

To give some context, account-wide costumes have been given away for free a few times a year, simply for logging into the game. The new 23rd Century EV suit – that glitzy 1960’s tech – goes for 550 Zen. It actually does something and is account wide, albeit for Starfleet members only. Other costumes run – again – 550 Zen each and are account wide unlocks.

550 Zen (at 405 dil per Zen) = 222, 750 dilithium each.

This character-bound costume will cost you 1.2 to 2 million dilithium each, or 2963 to 4938 Zen each. Basically $29 to $50 dollars for EACH CHARACTER -or basically 6-10x the cost of any other costume.

This is more than the cost of a ship, and even a ship is account-frakking-wide.

Did Donald Trump take over the pricing model?

Yes, I might have a few million work of dil kicking around. But there is no way in hell I’d pay that rate even if the costumes had a +20 to all my ground melee skills. Wait, maybe I might…

Dilithium is too abundant, a far cry from two years ago when it really felt like someone was cutting off the dil in just about everything. Star Trek Online responded by slowly adding bigger rewards and dil to mission rewards. While the bulk of the active Star Trek Online player-base was over indulging in an orgy of ‘EPIC’ upgrades (ok, that was an overstatement. It was more like a smorgasbord of upgrading.) it would seem the dil sources needed to feed that went a little too far.

As a dilithium buyer, I’m happy with higher exchange rates. As an F2P player, I hate them. There has to be a happy medium. Creating ridiculous prices for ‘super sinks’ will never work. Just look at the miner’s EV suits. Have you ever seen one of those used in the game?

Couple of suggestions:

If you keep them character bound, drop the prices to a relevant 250K dilithium. Even if the market stabilizes, people might actually use them and it’s close to the 550 Zen rate. BTW – even at these prices they’d be exclusive enough that not everyone could afford them. For the EPIC quality garb, 500K is cool too – but add something like a unique MACO weapon and a couple of free Experimental Upgrades. Make it worthwhile. Admiralty Cards (this is a no-brainer):

VR rare packs containing 5 random 1x use VR cards plus a 4% chance for an EPIC 1x use starship card. for 50K dilithium. That rate won’t upset the rewards for admiralty, but it would add options for players.

Add Science Booster packs, with 5 random VR cards for 1x use Science ships, with a random selection of VR and R materials. for 50K dilithium. Research Boosts. 5x +50 Rare Research Boosts for 100K dilithium.

Massaging an economy is done by small edits in many places; not ham fisting single solutions in the hopes of making a course change.

My Two Bits

Lootcritter