Season 7 Dev Blog #17 (Updated)
By PWE_BranFlakes @ November 13, 2012 at 6:15pm
Season 7 Launch Dilithium Changes
EDITOR'S NOTE (11/14/2012): Some information in this blog has been updated. Changes are denoted with a "*".
Hi Captains,
We’ve been seeing many questions today regarding the Dilithium changes that went live with Season 7 — this blog will answer your questions and provide some insight into the changes.
Where Did All the Dilithium Go?*
Short answer – Dilithium Ore is available as a reward directly from STFs and Fleet Action runs, and indirectly from Reputation projects. If you want to know more, then please read on.
But first, before we get to the changes in Season 7, let me take the opportunity to give some details about Dilithium.
What is Dilithium?
Dilithium Ore is an in-game currency that is given out as a reward for completing missions of Cryptic’s choosing. Dilithium Ore may be converted to Refined Dilithium – the currency needed to obtain premium gear or starships.
Refined Dilithium differs from energy credits because there is a maximum cap that can be obtained by any character per day of 8000 Refined Dilithium (8500 for 800 day subscription veterans or lifetime subscribers) . This cap serves two purposes: to keep players on equal footing in the acquisition of Refined Dilithium (vital to the player-to-player trade economy) and to prevent or catch potential exploits.
What is the purpose behind Dilithium?
In our game design, Dilithium represents time invested in playing a variety of select missions in STO. By setting the max cap per day, obtaining large amounts of Refined Dilithium requires logging in regularly and engaging with missions and systems that the STO team has designated. The STO team has consistently ensured that there is enough missions and systems in the game that any player should be able to earn 8000 Dilithium per day if they focus on Dilithium based missions for about 4 hours. By the way, the average level 50 player plays approximately 3.5 hours on a given day.
This is why we often refer to Dilithium as a time currency – because all it takes to acquire Refined Dilithium is time. If characters are willing to invest time to obtain Dilithium, then they will be able to acquire some of the best rewards in the game. So play the game and you can earn these rewards. It really just takes time. This is an intentional part of our free-to-play game design. Anything in the game or even the C-Store can be earned if you simply play the game and earn enough Dilithium.
How much Dilithium should a character need?
This all depends on the quality of the gear you want your character to have. Another way to look at it is – the better the gear, the more Dilithium it will cost, and thus the more time it will take to earn.
End game gear prices range depending on the mark quality and exclusivity of the piece. For example, Ground Armor ranges from 6,300 Refined Dilithium up to about 16,800 Dilithium for Mk 12 Premium Set Ground Armor. More critical gear such as Space Impulse Engines can range from 37,900 Refined Dilithium all the way up to about 84,000 Refined Dilithium for a Mk 12 Premium Set Impulse Engine.
When measured against the max refining cap of 8000 Dilithium per day, it means that a player may need to invest about 5 days at 4 hours per session for the best MK 10 Purple item, and well over 10 days for the best Mk 12 Purple item (even more if you the item is part of the Fleet or Reputation tiers).
The only other reason that players may need more Dilithium is if they are in a Fleet as nearly all Fleet Projects require a significant amount of Dilithium that is meant to be a shared cost across all Fleet Members. The gear and starships offered as rewards from Fleet Projects are intended to take significantly more time due to the time involved in leveling up the Starbase. The reason why some top end Fleet gear costs less Dilithium in the store is because of the inferred Dilithium cost in leveling up the Fleet Holding.
So how much Dilithium do you need? It all depends on the quality of the gear you want and how much time you are willing to invest to get it. It is our design goal that players who spend the most time earning and refining Dilithium in the game will have the best gear and access to Dilithium ships. This is the reward for the investment of Time.
To sum it up – we expect it to take several months of playing the game regularly for several hours per session in order to outfit a captain and crew with the best gear in the game.
Pre-Season 7 Dilithium Concerns
As we approached Season 7, we spent a lot of time reviewing the Dilithium economy and evaluating changes that needed to be made based on the following concerns:
Concern 1 – Active level 50 players are refining far less Dilithium than we expect them to.
Prior to Season 7, the average amount of Dilithium refined by an active level 50 player was 3100 per session or 13,250 per week. That is far less than the cap of 8000 per day when you consider that most level 50 players play multiple days per week and slightly more than the average hours per session.
Concern 2 – Several missions were rewarding far more Dilithium than they should have.
We have a guideline for how much Dilithium should be earned based on effort and time spent, and there were several missions that were clearly outside of our guidelines and players were using these missions to earn more Dilithium than we intended.
Concern 3 – New gear being created was not in line with other pricing
With all the new gear in the game, gear pricing needed a balance pass to ensure that the amount of Dilithium required for similar gear was consistent across the game.
Season 7 Dilithium Goals*
With those concerns in mind – here are the goals we set out to accomplish in Season 7.
- Make Dilithium more available to all level 50 players – not just those playing on elite – by increasing the average amount of Dilithium earned. We want the average amount of Dilithium earned by all level 50 players to exceed 13,250 per week and will be monitoring and adjusting Dilithium rates to ensure this happens. This also means moving additional Dilithium rewards to missions that are more accessible to the average player (Normal Fleet Actions) and away from Elite only STFs. STFs will still reward Dilithium but at a lesser rate than before. Both STFs and Fleet Actions reward Dilithium each run.
- Make Dilithium rewards balanced and consistent. No specific content should be aberrantly more efficient than others. We will be removing or adjusting reward tables anytime we find missions that are allowing players to earn Dilithium at an aberrant rate.
- Ensure that the costs for obtaining similar types of gear from the Fleet System, Reputation Systems or Dilithium Stores are balanced and consistent within our expectations for how long it should take to obtain the best gear in the game. We will continue to monitor and adjust store prices as necessary to keep this balance as new items are added to the game.
How Dilithium rewards changed in Season 7 to meet these goals
We reduced the amount of Dilithium required for Fleet Holding progression.
Dilithium requirements were reduced by 10% for Tier 4 Advancement Projects and 20% for Tier 5 Advancement Projects. While not many Fleets had yet to obtain a Tier 4 Starbase, this is a significant adjustment from Season 6 project Dilithium requirements to help Fleets complete the last two tiers of their Starbases. We will continue to monitor Fleet progression and adjust if we feel further changes are necessary.
Fleet Actions now reward Dilithium in addition to Better Gear*
Fleet Actions (such as Starbase 24, Gorn Minefield, etc) now award between 480 and 640 Dilithium (this will be in flux as we adjust rates) to ensure that the average level 50 player is earning more Dilithium by playing missions more accessible to the average player. In addition, Blue and Purple gear is now more reliably earned in Fleet Actions.
Smaller Dilithium rewards per STF runs and now indirectly via Omega Fleet Reputation projects*
After reviewing our data and goals for Season 7, we’ve made the decision to reduce the amount of Dilithium that is direct reward from STFs. While we initially removed it altogether, the Omega Fleet predates the Reputation system and so we’ve reinstated Dilithium as a reward per run, albeit at a lesser rate. We’ve agreed that it is ok for Omega Fleet related missions to grants Dilithium whereas other Reputation related missions may not. In addition, STFs will reward Dilithium indirectly via Omega Marks and Borg Neural Processors (Elite only) through repeatable projects in the Omega Fleet Reputation system.
Normal STFs*:
- 480 Dilithium
- Approx. 20 Omega Mark per STF (Varies per STF)
- Bonus Objective: +25% more Omega Marks
Elite STF Runs*:
- 960 Dilithium
- Approx. 60 Omega Mark per STF (Varies per STF)
- Bonus Objective: +25% more Omega Marks
- 1 Borg Neural Processors
Conversion Rates:
- Once you have finished Tier 5 in a Reputation systems, you can convert Omega or Romulan Marks into Dilithium by running Reputation projects:
- 50 Marks = 500 Dilithium
- At any tier in the Omega Reputation system, you can convert Borg Neural Processors into Dilithium by running Reputation projects:
- 10 Borg Neural Processors = 1000 Dilithium
The Double Dilithium Reward for B’Tran Exploration has been removed
The B’Tran Exploration Daily no longer awards Dilithium, but the Explore Strange New Worlds daily still awards 1440 Dilithium.
This is a case where there ended up being two nearly identical missions in the game that were both rewarding Dilithium for the same mission. We have finally fixed this. You can still earn 1440 Dilithium at B’Tran by taking the Explore Strange New Worlds daily and running the B’Tran cluster.
Increased The Dilithium Earned in the Dilithium Mine Event
Asteroid Dilithium Mine daily now awards more Dilithium. Base rewards were increased by 25%. Bonus hour rewards were increased by 33%.
Dilithium for Foundry Play requires you play qualified missions
The Foundry Daily that rewarded Dilithium was not checking if the mission was “qualified” with an average completion time between 15-20 minutes. You can no longer play short and exploitable Foundry missions to earn the 1440 Dilithium reward. The Foundry mission must first qualify to award the daily Dilithium reward. The reward was not changed.
The Academy Anomaly Mission Must Now Be Played as Intended
Previously a player could scan an anomaly, and if an enemy emerged, they could stun or simply run away from that enemy and scan another anomaly. This would allow players to collect more anomalies, which are turned in for Dilithium, at an unintended aberrant rate. You must now first defeat an enemy target before scanning another anomaly as was intended.
Omega Force gear now costs Dilithium similar to other Premium Gear
Omega Force gear now costs Dilithium similar to the new Romulan Reputation Mark 12 gear. The Dilithium costs is still significant less than Mark 11 gear in the Dilithium store(about half of Mark 11 gear) because cost is mitigated by the requirements of other currencies such as Marks. This brings this gear in line with the cost of other end game gear and in line with our expectations for how much time should be involved to obtain it.
Duty Officers Obtained through Reassignment were undervalued
The Duty Officers that could be purchased through Reassignment were greatly undervalued when compared to their true value as dictated by the price of a Duty Officer pack or their need in Fleet Holdings. In order to make these officer a fair comparison to officers obtained by players purchasing Duty Officers via C-Store packs, we increased the amount of Dilithium needed to reassign.
We Will Continue to Adjust the Dilithium Economy as Needed to Hit These Goals
We take the changes we are making to Season 7 very seriously and we will continue to adjust as needed. We are committed to ensuring that all players have better access to end game rewards while maintaining our expectations for the amount of time and effort required to obtain them. If we find other missions that are rewarding Dilithium at an aberrant rate or if we find players exploiting bugs to earn Dilithium, we will take action.
How does Dilithium Trade factor into all of this?
While the Dilithium Trading economy is entirely the realm of players trading with other players, our goal with the Dilithium changes in Season 7 is to stay out of the way as much as possible while increasing the amount of Dilithium earned on average by level 50 players.
We expect the market to fluctuate as players find the new balance, but in general we want players earning Dilithium to get a decent amount of Zen for their trade so that players who are putting in the most effort to earn Dilithium can find a market to trade the time they’ve spent in the game for Zen.
Our expectation is that the Season 7 Dilithium changes will have minimal impact once the changes are fully realized and players are understanding of how things have shifted. We will continue to monitor the Trade data to ensure that the Trade market stays solid, but ultimately we leave it up to players to determine the trade values.
Thank you and I look forward to seeing you in-game.
Daniel Stahl
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
treking2 @ Dec 29th, 2012 12:40AM
So... Season 7 ... the year of the Grind. [Or just pay us all your money to buy zen to buy your dili for this F2P game!] Really, the number of ways to make dili ore has greatly increased, and the exploits have been plugged ... BUT ... Everything now requires a ton more REFINED dili than it used to, and the cap per day on refining has not changed at all ... so the reality is ... Spend much more time grinding to get the same stuff as before, or pay money. This is made even worse by the fact that dili demands do not scale with small fleets, and you now need to grind Dili, Rom Marks, Omega Marks, Neural Procs, AND Energy Credits. I really just do not know what STO Management was thinking. *shakes head*
valigrad @ Dec 10th, 2012 4:51AM
haha..so funny ! reading comments. understand people! , dilithium is just a tiny in game reward....you want to spend a lot of time earning loads of dilithium and convert it to zen, or buy all the gear possible..:)))))) .. spend the money Cryptic wants ! have fun , enjoy life, enjoy cgi !!!
britewolf @ Nov 22nd, 2012 9:58AM
Gods! To 'hear' the way some of the people on here complain about something as petty as free stuff! It's about time that some changes have begun to filter in on Dilithium. Okay, so I might have to work a little harder, who cares? Well I don't; free stuff is free stuff after all. I play about 5 hours a day, two days a week and it took me just over a week of not putting a lot of effort in to acquire enough Dilithium to make the whole Aegis Kit just before S7 launch, and it's taken my fiancé about the same effort and time (over all) to get enough to make his too, so I honestly can't see what everybody's problem is. FREE stuff for playing a FREE game. You'd think it was a case of life or death, but then maybe for some, with no life outside of STO or whatever other games they play, it kinda is. Keep up the good work guys.
damudkipz @ Nov 22nd, 2012 8:23AM
How dare we have to work for our Dilithium. NO I PROTEST. give us back our free Dilithium for sitting around.
rahmkota19 @ Nov 20th, 2012 10:07AM
Dear PWE. I am a grat fan of Star Trek Online. I love to play this game and the new content released in season 7 was great. Taking away so much dilithium isnt great, though. I know we earn too much, but to leave us with virtually nothing is just a little too far. And about the Foundry missions: i understand why you did that. But could you also have taken away that daily mission instead of the Foundry myself? I want to work on some missions there, and I get a lot of requests from my fleet to play a mission I created. Its great for your daily the way you like it (15-20 mins) cause its a 3 parter lasting of an average of 60-120 minutes. People want to play it. Please bring it back.
leeloo5thelement @ Nov 19th, 2012 2:34AM
The most ironic is that the reputation system actually damage the reputation of STO. Cryptic you are making players not happy and it is very hard to gain back reputation now, players just don't trust you anymore. You might return some dilithium, but last week my fleet lost 14 active friends, they all said they never want to play Star Trek Online anymore and it makes me want to quit now. YOU MIGHT GIVE US SOME DILITHIUM FROM TIME CONSUMMING BORING MISSIONS, BUT YOU CAN'T GET BACK MY FRIENDS, my Fleet is dead now, thanks to your stupid act. Bye. NEVER RETURN TO STO. Daniel Stahl you SUCK.
lirdek @ Nov 18th, 2012 6:04PM
Why have you nerfed the loot on STFs as well ? I cannot understand.
thehatch @ Nov 18th, 2012 5:24AM
Haha, and at the same time you make STFs harder … Whatever you smoked, I want it.
lordgabe @ Nov 17th, 2012 10:00PM
God people QQ alot. Well anyohw fairly string logic behind what your donig good job opening up the dilithium system and trying to make it easier and fairer to distrubut. I loose out on elite stf's but I guess i'll live, its still easy enough now to just farm the easier ones - only thing is some people will never do the harder borg ones now - just infected as its the easiest. Think thats the only real problem taking away the set items from them means the risk of dead content. Good season so far thanks.
thehatch @ Nov 17th, 2012 8:47PM
I am so f** pissed! Were you misleading us on purpose? What Dilithium guidelines are you refering to? Were those in effect when you reworked the STFs for S5? Or is it just another case of “publish first, think later?” Had I known about this when S6 launched, I would never have started our fleet’s starbase! But allright, now that you have all our Dilithium (and EC), you can stop giving it to the players in the proper amounts… Seriously? Think first, then publish!
ajhallonline @ Nov 16th, 2012 7:32PM
I: I: (: <: E: let me stop
sciencekeeper @ Nov 16th, 2012 10:28AM
I have read the comment that we shoud not play STO on the weekend 11/24 and 11/25. My whole fleet is going to support that. The loss of the Daily Officer Report Mission is the dead to small fleets. The Duty Officer System is total crap. The prices are to extreme. I can only hope this Protest works and many people support it.....
naz4 @ Nov 16th, 2012 10:15AM
Season 7 has definately gone to Plan A - Screw the customers with money grabbing tactics - D Sthal, pick your head up out of the sand and realise you have pretty much alienated all your customers in one patch - Awesome executive production.
naz4 @ Nov 16th, 2012 10:12AM
This guy has screwed this game up so much, I really do believe CBS need to revoke Craptics rights to the Stat Trek fanchise. It has become such a farse now with the blatant money grabbing tactics employed and DSthal lieing through his teeth to his customers. Season 7 has been such a flop, i hope that PWE strip his position and give it to someone who doesn't have his face in the sand oblivious to
marctraiderz @ Nov 16th, 2012 10:11AM
What a bunch of bs season, no real in game fixes, just more PVE, no PvP at all. The new sector block a simple copy/paste job there is really nothing they did there to make it actually feel like a newly added sector in the game either. More grinding, although i like a reputation system, its a months time of grind more grind grind, this will all ruin the last PvP'ers even more. Godforsaken developers.
comrademoco @ Nov 15th, 2012 2:57PM
This is a rip off, 10 Borg Neural Processors = 1000 Dilithium, WHAT, 10 STF's for only 1K Delithium when it use to be more the 15K, Shame Cryptic... I love everything else but this, I can take it! :(
theindefatigable
Interesting...I logged on and it still seems to be 5 BNP for 1000 dilithium. Hopefully it stays that way...
taizithunder
It's 5 for 1000 dilithoums. Without the drops kind of suck doing the Elite STFs. Specially with so much less dilithiums.
theindefatigable @ Nov 15th, 2012 11:46AM
I greatly appreciate that y'all listened to the outcry from STF junkies, which includes many of your most active players from what I see, and put back dilithium rewards. It might seem fair in abstraction not to have dilithium AND mark rewards for the same type of event, but remember that in the past we earned dilithium, EDC's, tech, and salvage and everything was convertible into dilithium or really good gear. However, I noticed that the blog now says it takes 10 BNP to get 1000 dil instead of 5, and there's no red asterisk. Intentional? I strongly suggest a return to 5. Keep in mind what we were used to earning from STF's compared both to what we will be getting on average now AND how much anti-Borg ship and ground gear is going to cost us now.
fyathyrio @ Nov 15th, 2012 10:05AM
Feedback: Ran the STF's last night. All of them and garnered 192 dil total. Was there a patch happening soon? Got a boatload of Omega Marks though... but need more tasks to use them though.
torakofgorkon @ Nov 15th, 2012 9:54AM
Thanks for listening. Btw, did you notice that the dil. cap now seems to be 8500 for veterans? I'm none of those but yesterday Dan said 9000 here and there's no red asterisk at that topic :)
theindefatigable
Yeah there's that doff mission at the Academy where you can refine another 1K dilithium but it's a 2-day mission...basically meaning it's a hassle to do it and you really don't get more than 500 extra capacity per day. I never even bothered doing it because I was so disappointed when I reached 800 days and found out how useless it is...I just swap toons and try to earn more than 8000 a day by doing missions on multiple characters. I do wish they'd change that perk to be more useful!
pwethielvan @ Nov 15th, 2012 9:48AM
I think the new sector and all romulan stuff is really great (tested it allready on tribble the day it came). I also very much like the Rep-system. It's a very interesting approach to 'modell' your character. BUT: I didn't care about STF's nor will I ever. I simply hate grinding (therefore I'm not doing it - I'm not here for work, I'm here for having fun.) So I'm very sad about you don't get rewarded for these broken console missions via foundry daily because: 1. We are a very small fleet (4 actve player, only one is VA) and this was a good possibillity to get the stuff you need for your fleet projects (NO, we don't have the time to play STO 4h/d, and NO we don't want to become part of a big fleet! We just want to do it our way and have fun). 2. There where lots of these missions that were great fun to just look at what happens - I f.e. very much liked this floating thing :).
kartimoz2 @ Nov 15th, 2012 8:42AM
Hey Daniel, are you serious? We need MORE Dil. for all the assignments and "earning" less??? Where is the sense?? It´s a huge disadvantage for players who don´t have 5-12 hours/day for farming... I was shocked about B´Tran but understand the situation on the academy (foundrymission). We played S S 7 on Tribble and noticed you need a lot of Dil. for buying MACO/OF-Weapons and stuff - where to get it from in the same time now?? I am defenitelity happy about S 7 but also cannot agree with that ideas. Instead I wish to obtain 10k Dil a day and be able to "earn" it in within 2 - 3 hours.. PLEASE RETHINK THIS CONCEPT!
darthpostal @ Nov 15th, 2012 8:17AM
Good to see that Cryptic hears us. Thank you for brining back Di to STFs.
nightshift2 @ Nov 15th, 2012 8:10AM
yeah the game comes to be more and more commercial...this is a fake post, allmoast everything needs from now on more delithium to buy (e.g. duty officers), and you reduce delithium income from many missions like stf or foundry....this is absolutly unfair for players which paid money to get zen points, and from now on they have to pay often much more real money to get delithium (via zen exchange)
imadoctornota @ Nov 15th, 2012 7:18AM
"In order to make these officer a fair comparison to officers obtained by players purchasing Duty Officers via C-Store packs, we increased the amount of Dilithium needed to reassign." People who buy doff packs are the same people who use the reassignment officer, there is nothing unfair about that. That's just silly. I'm not one to complain, but I just have trouble seeing how this is going to make us get more dilithium. From what I see, it's been decreased for the most part.
darthpostal
I agree. In fact, Z-store DOff packs can't possibly be challenged by recruitment packs because a) Z-store packs contain bonus loot like Tuffli and such; b) Z-Store DOffs have unique powers unavailable through recruitment.
aquitaine985 @ Nov 15th, 2012 4:23AM
Hurray! This was certainly a quick and well recieved turnaround so THANK YOU! Also, will the dilithium we get for fleetmarks be ore, or refined?
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