Sam on Maui

Another quiet week of numbers, it seems. Massively has been doing a nice bit of interviews with Dan Stahl (part one and two ), which has some nice food for thought about the future. I've been working a little on my Romulan character, getting Lockboxes opened up for Lobi, and all has been pretty nice, really. Now, that said, the number seem pretty good to me.

Greetings one and all! By now I hope you've heard about the Dilithium Mine Outpost . I've personally not had a chance to check it out, but it should be an interesting new addition to the game. Looks like we can all read up together, perhaps :) I should also mention I'm debating the value of the By The Day chart. Right now its so cluttered its really hard to glean a whole lot of insight! Reducing it from 8 weeks to 4 weeks, however, doesn't seem to provide enough. I'll be pondering this, but if any of you Excel fiends out there have some advice, I'd love to hear it. Any now for the charts!

Steady as she goes! The Legacy of Romulus has launched over a week ago, and folks seem to be enjoying themselves. My friends are thrilled with the new content, but it seems the post-update jitters are still there with the servers. Hopefully they'll be fixed soon, so it'll be smooth sailing from here on out

   And we have Romulans! First off, I'd like to welcome anybody who is getting into Star Trek Online with the launch of The Legacy of Romulus. Its a great game, a fun community, and one of the best MMOs out there if you're looking for something different than the norm. Secondly, I'd like to apologize! For whatever reason I didn't log yesterday's data! Eeek! I think I did, but either I forgot to save or my brain stopped working. Regardless, here comes the data!

You can read all about it here . Massively usually does a top-notch job, so I'm glad they're covering this. I'm also glad Cryptic is handling this swiftly. However, this is both causing me to restart my Astral Diamond tracking and giving me a reason to restart my Astral Diamond tracking. The vast gaps between rates means that the methodology I used for Star Trek Online is insufficient for Neverwinter right now. Maybe it'll be okay when things settle down, but for now? Its simply too volatile. I'm not sure how I'll deal with it just yet, but we'll see!

Cryptic’s newest game, Neverwinter, is currently in open beta. Based on Dungeons & Dragons, it takes place in a fantastic fantasy world, with an action-based combat system, a mix of overworld and instancing, and is currently diverting my gameplay time away from Star Trek Online. One of the similarities between Neverwinter and its siblings is that it has a time-based currency that can be bought and sold with Zen. Much like Questionite and Dilithium, Astral Diamonds are awarded in-game and can be used to purchase things, including Zen. Of course, right now the economy is just starting, there’s precious little in the shop, and the number of people playing is relatively low.

Won't be long until The Legacy of Romulus is upon us. Moreover, Star Trek: Into Darkness is staring down upon us. All in all, I'd say its great month for Star Trek fans. In the meantime, Star Trek Online is continuing on, the economy is still going along, and Neverwinter (now in open beta) is showing a brand new economy as it tries to find its legs.

Game Dev Tycoon is available for a variety of platforms, and is just a great little game. No DRM, even! I’ll be posting impressions later on, but for now? A little something to help you along! When you make a new combination of game type and genre, you get a  New Combo x.2 bonus for it. But, if it’s a Great Combo? Add in another .2. You’ll go from x1 to x1.2 to x1.4! To help you out, I sat down and went through the first six genres and available combinations I’ve found so far. Use the garage studio to experiment; each genre and game style has things they like during development. As such, go through the various combinations, figure them out, regardless of whether they're a one-time bonus or not. It'll help in the long run. Fantasy + Action = Great Combo Fantasy + Adventure = Great Combo Fantasy + RPG = Great Combo Fantasy + Simulation = no bonus Fantasy + Strategy = Great Combo Fantasy + Casual = no bonus Racing + Action = no bonus Racing + Adventure = no bonus Racing +...

Greetings and hello! Just a friendly reminder that today will be the last day you'll be able to run the Crystalline Catastrophe event (10am, PDT)! Its pretty short, so even folks in Hawai'i can squeeze one last attempt. Provided they're up early and eating breakfast at the same time, mind you. Speaking of which, many people have already completed the special Reputation project, receiving 50,000 Unrefined Dilithium, 1,000 Fleet Marks, and a non-combat Crystalline Shard pet. Speaking of which...

Another eventful week. If you've been in the market to buy Dilithium with your Zen, this has probably been a fantastic time for you, relatively speaking. While we've not hit the same levels seen last year, its definitely a possibility at this point. If you're selling Dilithium? Its still a pro-Dilithium market, in my opinion, and I've been cheerfully selling at current prices. The Z:D rate has been steadily climbing, while the top 10 offers remain relatively low in volume. I'm still holding to the theory that the big Zen spenders who are willing to pay a premium on their Dilithium are not active in the market right now, opting to wait for The Legacy of Romulus. There was a massive drop in trading after the announcement on March 21st. It did start to recover, but then something else happened.

Onward and upward, I reckon? It seems there’s a lot more Dilithium and Zen trading hands than I’ve seen in a while. That said, it also seems that the Z:D ratio' of being under 1:100 is pretty much the new norm. I figure with people getting to where they want to be in the Reputation system, they’re using their Omega and Romulan Marks to buy Dilithium to sell or use for Fleet projects. So, why is the price not really going adjusting much? Seems that people are willing to pay the higher prices for Dilithium, and sellers are more than happy to sell at that price per Zen.

On the official boards I've seen a number of requests to make life easier for small fleets to advance in the Fleet system. Now, looking at the fact that the size of a fleet doesn't directly correlate to the amount of people (the fleet I'm in is small, has a high number of contributors, and is pretty high up there, or so I'm told)? The problem isn't the size of the fleet! Its the number of people pitching in. Anyhow, this is my suggestion from off the boards.   If you look at Dave Ramsey's recommendation for getting rid of debt, he uses what is called the Snowball Method.  He admits it isn't ideal mathematically, however, its easy to understand and it works for people mentally. This idea, this mentality, works for exercise and fitness goals, weight loss, etc. Have a plan, go one step at a time, and you'll get there.  That's the problem with the current system - you're presented with these large, gargantuan projects that can be summed up wi...

The Windows 8/Windows RT marketplace is still pretty young. There’s a lot of room for growth, niches to be filled, and things to be made. As a long-time table-top gamer, there are a few apps that can really make things easier on me, especially if I’m the GM for a given game. One such app is DiceGod .

Well, as an encouraging sign, the total volume seems to be doing pretty well these days!  In fact, it looks like we had a high point just a few days ago, but it didn’t seem to be a fluke so much as just a high point. Certainly, its not anomalously high. Offers to buy sell Dilithium seem to be up as well, but I don’t know if that’s because there’s more Dilithium to go around, or because folks are trying to get the price back down.

Sadly, I missed Sunday, January 6th. So, there’s a data point missing. I do apologize for that! Anyhow, school is presumably back in session, the holidays are over, and there’s a little rise in the Z:D rate. Anyhow, here’s the data!

Another week, and there seems to be a significant increase in offers being made.  Its certainly been rising. However, the Z:D Exchange rate is still very low. Will it get better as time goes on? Hopefully. Maybe its different where you’re at, but as of last Friday, the K-12 students here have gotten on winter/Christmas break. I think college students have been off a bit longer. Myself? Between moving, attempting to try EVE Online and Playdom’s Marvel: Avenger’s Alliance (silly Facebook game), I’ve been having fun. Haven’t done much in the way of fleet events, STFs, etc., simply because I prefer to do those on my desktop computer which is currently boxed away. Of course, when I’m set back up on there, I’ll be installing The Secret World, check out Guild Wars 2’s winter event, etc. Anyhow, more charts! As always, make of it what you will!

Onward and upward? And downward? And up again? We’ve had some ups and downs since last week, when Q’s Winter Wonderland began. Zen:Dilithium prices reached the lowest I’ve ever seen, and the volume on the market has been going back up. It’s a little odd there is so much volume buying Dilithium at current pricing, though. At least, right now and at these prices. I would’ve imagined heavy Dilithium buyers would prefer to try and force the price back to being more pro-Zen (right now its very pro-Dilithium)! Now, that said, I’ve heard at least one person claim there are groups of people/players trying to lower the exchange rate of Zen to Dilithium. Which is an interesting though, and really something I would more associate with EVE Online than anything else. But, it is plausible, I guess. I’m not sure what the mechanics of currency manipulation would be in this case, but if you are good at farming Dilithium, a low Z:D rate really is in your favor.

EDIT: I got the date wrong. How did I think it was 11/21 when it was 11/29? *sigh* Its almost the end of the month! Practically the end of the month, really. And, what a month its been! Without further ado… Now, this is two graphs in one. The Blue area is the Zen|Dilithium Exchange as normal. The other lines are just a snapshot of the volumes of Zen being offered/traded on the Exchange, using the Buying and Selling pools. While this does not measure total amount of traffic throughout the day, nor does it show successful transactions, hopefully it’ll still be able to offer us some insight. Important dates include: November 13th (Season 7 launched), and November 23th (first set of adjustments to increase Dilithium availability). Next week, we’ll want to keep an eye on how November 30th as there’ll be another adjustment. Now, for the rest.

Update: Chart revised! Took out period where I wasn’t tracking everything, and managed to add the Z:D price chart into it. Its showing the trends/movement of the price, and is there for reference. Season 7 has been out for a while now, and I felt it was a good idea to bring out another chart. What is it this time? The overall volume of the market! What is this? When I get the daily Z:D prices, I also record the top 5 buying and selling lots. Now, this does not show the value of the Z:D market, just how much is flowing through it. For instance, Tuesday, October 30th had a tremendous spike in traffic, with prices around 1:158. Thursday, September 27, was a incredibly low volume day when prices were 1:165. The obvious question is, is this due to price?

On Tuesday Dan Stahl said that the devs would be monitoring the Dilithium economy . More to the point: Not everything is sunshine and roses, though. As we mentioned in previous posts, we continue to monitor the Dilithium economy reaction to the changes in Season 7 and as previously stated, we will be making some additional adjustments which we feel will address issues that have been discussed. Some of those changes are going to happen in an update tomorrow (Wednesday Nov 21) and some of them are going to happen in the following week's update on Nov 29. If we feel more changes are necessary after that, we will certainly make them because our goal is to keep the game balanced while ensuring that players are having fun. Even though we've managed to get more Dilithium into more players hands, we agree that STF runs and Dilithium have been a challenging change that needs to be addressed and we are going to continue to do so .  Hopefully the changes for November 29 will have a po...