[Jestersmith]

In our ongoing efforts to provide players with sources for their stockpiles of Dilithium, we have decided to introduce a new permanent way to spend Dilithium into Star Trek Online that will modify the behavior of existing gameplay in a low-impact manner. Our hope is that by providing more of this type of permanent way to spend Dilithium, the long-term health of the game’s economy can come closer to a stabilizing point.

Beginning with this update, we have modified the method of acquiring the following tokens:

Personal Endeavor Reroll Tokens
Admiralty Assignment Pass Tokens



Starting on 8/24/2021, players on PC may purchase these Tokens directly using Dilithium, at a price of 2,500 Dilithium apiece. This change is intended to appear on Console platforms on 9/8/2021.

Previously, players had a chance to earn these resources by engaging with their respective systems, as randomized rewards that were sometimes included with other earnings. This method of earning will be disabled as of the date that the new purchase method goes live.

Existing inventories of these tokens already owned by players will not be changed – you keep what you already have, and continue using them as intended!

Obtaining additional tokens will be as simple as pressing the associated “Buy” buttons that have been newly added to the interface of these two systems, directly next to or above the existing display of a player’s current token count.




We will continue to offer additional outlets for players’ Dilithium as well as keeping an eye on the impact this change may have on the game’s economy, while also developing additional options for future release.

[Jestersmith]

Been saying this week that the next Dil sink would be linked to the Endeavors didnt think that it would be this though imo thats pretty pricey for a single token this would have been better as a use Dil to bu a perk adding a daily purchase limit would have stopped it being bought out day one also.

[Phoenix]

ffs he was right, we're never going to hear the end of it

[darthnovawave]

What a terrible idea.... I guess it is something to maybe dissuade admiralty farming, though I never use those tokens any more anyway. All this is really going to do is annoy people by making the years-long endeavor grind even longer....

[Sul-Matuul]

ffs he was right, we're never going to hear the end of it

Oh Lord….

Tbh I’d prefer to just buy the endeavour points direct as some days I don’t have the time to grind them out. Though they are not really needed admittedly and I guess that would be too fast a way for people to mess out and burn past the whole point of the sink.

At least it’s something I guess.

[Jestersmith]

ffs he was right, we're never going to hear the end of it

[darthnovawave]

Oh Lord….

Tbh I’d prefer to just buy the endeavour points direct as some days I don’t have the time to grind them out. Though they are not really needed admittedly and I guess that would be too fast a way for people to mess out and burn past the whole point of the sink.

At least it’s something I guess.

Straight out endeavor buyouts would have honestly been way more appealing I think. All a token is going to do is roll the RNG again, so you could very easily need 2, 3, or even more tokens to get past the tedious endeavors like "heal ###### damage" or something similarly tedious and get something that is reasonably palatable. Do I really want to spend maybe 10k dilithium to not have to fuss with standing in an acid pool in Nukara next to a medical generator for half an hour? I'd personally rather skip it entirely.

For the dilithium farmers who have backlogs of millions of dilithium on their accounts, the thought of dumping up to 125,000 refined dilithium on a full stack of 50 tokens might not be a big deal. For the rest of us though that don't have massive pools of the stuff backlogged, that's 2 weeks worth of grinding and refining on a toon for a daily convenience, which also means delaying the purchase of up to 30 Phoenix boxes if you are grinding Phoenix upgrades (the market for crafted items with favored upgraded mods is gonna get a bit more expensive I suspect...) or for chasing Epic tokens for things like the D.O.M.I.N.O. console if you missed out on the event.

[Miles]

Well, at least is a start. Let's see how it will continue.

[darthnovawave]

The pitchforks and torches are out like there is no tomorrow on this one on Twitter and Reddit. Time to pop some popcorn....

[Taku]

So unless I go nuts RIGHT NOW, all 246 of those Endeavor boxes I have stored will never give me another reroll token. Which is why I saved them. I have 21 and a half levels to go. Do I need 50 reroll tokens? I'm down to two, and had planned to get them as I needed them once I ran out. Then there are the Rep Mark boxes. I'm sitting on 42 of the 50 Mark boxes and 12 of the 100 Mark boxes. It's so that any new Temporal Recruit has a jump start. If I go opening all 246 Endeavor boxes, I am going to be FLOODED with Rep Mark boxes. Ain't nobody got storage space for that!

Oh well. I guess I'll just open a few dozen to get the reroll token stock up to about 20.

Still, it's a crappy way to (try to) create a DIL sink.

[Petrarch]

The meeting this was decided in:

[Jestersmith]

1st post updated tweeted response to player fallout added

[Taku]

I think they're going to have to change it.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE! RAWR!

[Arno12]

Don't know the train of thought behind this, I just don't get it.

[darthnovawave]

Don't know the train of thought behind this, I just don't get it.

This was the Cryptic team trying (badly) to change the economy of the game. The idea of just letting players use dilithium to buy tokens when they ran low is one that was actually somewhat popular, particularly for those like Taku above that don't immediately pop open the endeavor reward boxes to get the random freebie tokens. What really set people off though was the part about disabling the existing freebie token mechanics, forcing the people to either grind unpleasant endeavors or admiralty mission, or to simply skip the missions entirely for the day.

Since the endeavor system was originally intended to get players to do more than run borg TFOs all day long, encouraging people to not play just undermined the core purpose of the system in the first place. In the case of admiralty missions, a lot of people immediately started talking about just using shuttles as token fails on undesirable missions instead of buying tokens. Basically removing the freebies not only undermined the original intent to have a dilithium sink, it was actually encouraging really undesirable player behaviors, which is why Kael said they were reviewing that part of this decision. The question really is whether they'll leave the freebies as is, leave it but maybe at a lower drop rate, or keep with the original plan and let the player base continue to be angry.