Hello, all, and welcome to Joe and STO! I hope you’ve all had a great Upgrade Weekend and got many items up to Mk XV and hopefully up in rarity so you can be more effective on the same gear you had before the weekend hit.
While I’m working on my “Buying into STO: The Bad” post (you can read part 1 about the good aspects here), we got news of a new feature/Buyout coming to STO this week.
Cryptic announced you’ll be able to Buyout any Reputation to auto-complete to Tier 5 on any character.
Good news for sure!
The cost of this will be 3,000 Zen, prorated based on completion (which is based on how much XP you’ve earned by the time you decide to Buyout). This is on a per-character, per-Reputation basis (eg: 2 Reputations at “Tier 0” will require 3,000 x 2 = 6,000 total Zen to Buyout, but 2 Reputations at 50,000 XP each [out of 100,000] will require 1,500 x 2 = 3,000 total Zen).
That’s bad!
…I guess. It seems high to me, so I’ll admit some negativity toward buying this Buyout. It seems bad: 3,000 Zen to get a single character a single Reputation up to Tier 5. A ship at Tier 6 alone goes for 3,000 Zen, and it’s account-unlocked (faction-dependent for Federation and KDF designs).
Is this as bad as it seems? Let’s run some numbers and see.
Note that the numbers below are for unsponsored Reputations. “Sponsored” Reputations are those that have their Reputation XP gains doubled because another character has that Reputation up to at least Tier 5.
MARK My Words
Let’s look at how many Marks it takes a fresh account (or one that’s lapsed since new Reputations released and that player needs to build up a Reputation from scratch) to get from Tier 0 (0 XP) to Tier 5 (100,000 XP) using a combination of Daily and Hourly (3 per day but refresh once per hour) Projects.
The minimum is 1,225 Marks if you’re willing to do 40 days’ worth of dailies (30 Marks each x 40 runs [100,000 XP / 2,500 XP per run] = 1,200 Marks) plus the mandatory upgrades at each Tier (5 Marks each upgrade for 25 Marks total).
The optimal speed route, best I can figure with some help from Stargate_Wars takes 33 days’ worth of daily project filling and 32 days’ worth of hourly projects, of which you can do 3 a day. That route takes 2455 Marks. It costs twice as much in Marks to cut a week off the grind, but if you’re up for it, more power to you. 🙂
That’s a lot of Marks!…or is it?
When we have a Featured TFO Event, you tend to get at least 100 Marks of whatever Mark types you want once per day (then it’s closer to 50-60 for that Reputation the rest of the 20 hours’ cooldown thanks to a once-per-day bonus on Marks earned per Reputation). The math then is as follows:
- Featured TFO rewards, minimum marks: 12.25 = 13 daily runs
- Featured TFO rewards, optimal for speed: 24.55 = 25 daily runs.
If you focus on only doing the dailies, you can get enough Marks to get from Tier 0 to Tier 5 as a fresh account (or fresh to getting to Tier 5 on a Reputation on your account) after 13 daily runs of a Featured TFO. If you can do the TFO twice a day and choose two different reputations, your 40-day grind is really more a 13-day grind with 27 extra days of slotting and filling daily XP projects.
If you focus on the quickest route, you’d need more runs than you’d have days of the Featured TFO (though maybe if you time the 20-hour timers correctly, you could do it inside the 21-day timeframe). You’d need to run TFOs or do Battlezones (depending on what Reputation you’re trying to fill) to fill in the gaps. As well, you’d need to log into the game 3 times a day on that character at least an hour apart to slot those hourlies. It’s a lot of time and effort, but again, if getting done about a week ahead of schedule is worth that to you, go for it.
TIME and Time Again…
Let’s look at how much time that takes. Some older Reptuations’ queues take under 5 minutes; newer queues can take as many as 15 minutes. I’ll use a rough (and admittedly math-friendly) 10 minutes as the guide. Just be aware that individual Reputations’ calculations may take longer or shorter depending on actual average queue length.
- Optimal for Number of Marks
- 13 runs to fill your fresh Reputation run from Tier 0 to Tier 5 means you spend 130 minutes per Reputation (again, some taking longer and others shorter) to get enough Marks. Converting that to hours, that’s 2 hours 10 minutes.
- Optimal for Time
- Since Featured TFO events tend to run back-to-back (except 3 times a year: December, February/March, and July), getting 25 runs isn’t a problem, it just has to be split among 2 Events. This takes 250 minutes, or 4 hours 10 minutes per Reputation.
“TIME IS MONEY!”, or, Your Time vs. Your Money
I’ll admit, my view is kinda sorta changing on this buyout as I’m doing the math for it.
When you spend time to earn something, you’re valuing keeping your money over keeping the time to do something else; if you spend money rather than time, you’re valuing the time to do something else than the money you’re tossing at the game to speed up your progress, acquire gear, etc.
Average Minimum Wage
Let’s assume your minimum wage is $9.10 per hour (rounded down a cent from the average minimum wages of all 50 states plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.). Let’s also assume you keep every penny of that (I know, you don’t, but so much of that varies on how you get paid and what Federal and local mandates are for what gets withheld or if you get paid strictly in cash).
- Optimal for Number of Marks
- 2 hours 10 minutes = $18.20 + $1.51 = $19.71 per Reputation
- Optimal for Speed
- 4 hours 10 minutes = $36.40 + $1.51 = $37.91 per Reputation
Oh my…oh dear…I’m not joking, I’m only just now doing the numbers and I see something.
If you were to focus purely on speed in getting the Reputations done, you pay $7.91 less than your time is worth to auto-T5 a fresh Reputation!
BUT…but…this comes down purely to what your intention was starting out.
If you were to focus on minimizing the number of marks, it’s different. You’re overpaying by $10.29 compared to the average minimum wage.
U.S. Federal Minimum Wage
Let’s instead assume you’re at the Federally-mandated minimum wage of $7.25.
- Optimal for Number of Marks
- 2 hours 10 minutes = $14.50 + $1.20 = $15.70 per Reputation
- Optimal for Speed
- 4 hours 10 minutes = $29 + $1.20 = $30.20 per Reputation
So the math is slightly different from the average minimum wage, but one thing remained constant: Paying for a Reputation is cheaper than the time it’d take is worth to grind out the Marks for optimizing Speed. It’s not cheaper by much, only $.20, but it’s still a discount.
Sponsorship is Expensive!
I’d re-run the numbers, but it’s late at night and I’m ready to go for some easy math.
Sponsorship doubles the XP gains, so you need half the Marks and run half the XP projects to get the same XP (you still need 25 Marks for T1-T5 upgrades). Using that very basic math, here are the “costs” of the time needed to get any Reputation to Tier 5:
- Optimizing for Marks
- Now takes 600 Marks for projects + 25 Marks for upgrades = 625 Marks.
- This would take 7 daily runs of a Featured TFO.
- That takes 70 minutes, or 1 hour 10 minutes.
- Average Minimum Wage = $9.10 + $1.51 = $10.61 per Reputation
- Federal Minimum Wage = $7.10 + $1.20 = $8.30 per Reputation
- Optimizing for Time
- (Without re-running the numbers, so this is an estimate) Now takes 1,215 Marks for projects + 25 Marks for T1-T5 Upgrades = 1,240 Marks.
- This would take 13 daily runs of a Featured TFO.
- That takes 130 minutes, or 2 hours 10 minutes.
- Average Minimum Wage = $18.20 + $1.51 = $19.71 per Reputation
- Federal Minimum Wage = $14.20 + $1.20 = $15.40 per Reputation
After a Reputation is Sponsored, a Tier 5 Buyout is not worth it from a Time vs. Money perspective. You’re trading $30 of actual cash to save anywhere from $8.30 to $19.71 worth of time.
Subjective Value of Time
People have a funny way of valuing their time. The money may mean so much to them (like for groceries, medications, the power bill, etc.) that they’re willing to do work for the things they need rather than to pay for those things. Vice-versa, money may mean so little compared to a person’s time (time to spend with family, time spent on pursuits to better one’s self) that they’re willing to throw cash at some things they’d otherwise spend time to grind out.
If you view your time as being more valuable than your money (that is, you’d rather free up the time to do something else, whether in-game or with family or for whatever tickles your fancy), perhaps to you that $10.61 per Reputation after the Reputation is sponsored is truly worth $30 because you can use that time…writing a blog, maybe? Or something more worth it like a college education. Yeah…yeah, college pursuits beat casual blog writing any day of the week, no joke. So in this example, perhaps you’d normally balk at $30 to fill a Reputation but because of your situation, all of a sudden, $30 doesn’t seem so bad if it gets one of the worst Reputations in the game done.
Conversely, you reason it’s super easy to grind out a Reputation to Tier 5. To you, the money is more valuable than your time; take your time to get that Reputation to Tier 5 and perhaps put that $30 on a Tier 6 ship (or much less for a bit under a week as of my typing this post) or save it toward a theoretical Legendary KDF Bundle.
The Pro(rated)s Of This System
Regardless of how you think about this system, there is one positive to it: Protation!
Let’s say you get halfway through a Reputation (based on being at 50,000 XP out of 100,000 XP). You’re tired, you don’t want to continue grinding Marks just to “waste” them on progress rather than gear. So you get tempted to hit that button:
(PIC FROM ANNOUNCEMENT BLOG)
There’s good news for you! The amount you need to spend is cut in half since you’re halfway through! Instead of 3,000 Zen, it’s now 1,500 Zen to Buyout the rest of the Reputation.
Let’s say instead you get to 95,000 XP out of 100,000 XP. On a fresh character, that’s 2 more daily projects. 3,000 * (.95) = 2,850 Zen saved, so you’d only spend 150 Zen. At the current Dil-to-Zen rates (roughly 430:1), that’s 53,730 Dilithium. You can earn that elsewhere in the game to cut those last couple projects, and you’ll get some of that back anyway! Ambassador Kael, the game’s Community Manager, says you’ll still get the Tier 5 Claim rewards for the Reputations. For most of them (Task Force Omega I believe is the only exception), that includes 32,500 Dilithium, 750 Marks, and 5 “Elite Marks.” If we convert the Elite and regular Marks to Dilithium, that’s a bit over 40,000 Dilithium if I’m doing my mental math correctly. That’s a net spend of around 14,000 Dilithium to finish off 1-2 days’ worth of Reputation progress. Again, value is somewhat subjective, so if you feel you need the final Active Trait of the Reputation ASAP, it may be worth buying out the last couple day or two at the prorated amount.
Additional Perspective: Tharryn
While I was mentally ranting about the 3,000 Zen buyout cost, another Twitter user, Tharryn, had their own numbers to consider. I’ll embed the thread here:
So if I’m analyzing this correctly, Tharryn has a similar cost analysis I do: If you value your time more than your money, you’ll essentially save money by buying out the Reputation to Tier 5 rather than taking the time to grind Marks for both Dailies and Hourlies and slotting all those projects to hit Tier 5. However, you’re not saving much and it’s essentially almost break-even (you’ll spend almost as much in cash as you would have spent in time to get the Marks and slot the projects).
(MY) MONEY MEANS MORE
Sorry, guys, but I’ll have to side with those who say 3,000 Zen is too much…if you have the time to grind.
If you have the time (the Reputation is an easy one to get Marks for, or you plan on re-running the Featured TFO beyond your once-per-day to get multiple Reputations about 100 Marks per day), you’ll want to hold onto your cash.
If you don’t have the time, 3,000 Zen is worth it…on the initial, unsponsored run. If you’re a veteran player who’s got all their Reputations up to Tier 5 (even if it’s spread among multiple characters), doing this for an alt character really will come down to if you value the time it would have taken to hit Tier 5 over the money you’re spending to get there ASAP. Perhaps on some, it is (Competitive, Gamma, maybe Temporal if you don’t like the Badlands Battlezone). Perhaps on others, it’s not (Nukara, Borg, and Undine are extremely easy thanks to quick queues that award more Marks than they probably should).
Even then, watch our wallet…3,000 Zen per Reputation adds up quickly. There are 13 Reputations. 3,000 x 13 = 39,000 Zen. Without Zen Charge Bonuses factoring in (really, guys, there’s a limit to the math I’ll do for these!), that’s nearly $400 to max out all Reputations with 0 effort!
This is a game. Play it. You’ll enjoy it! Part of the fun is making the progress to get what you want. At that point, you’ll feel you’ve earned whatever has come your way, and it’ll feel wonderful to know you earned it instead of your wallet (except in cases where time really is so limited you need to Buyout to keep progress moving on your build).
Once your Reputation(s) become Sponsored, the value prospect is gone. 3,000 Zen per Reputation is too high if you value your money over your time. That being said, you’re not me. You may want that time and are willing to spend the 3,000 Zen even if the Reputation you want to auto-fill is super easy on effort.
I’m surprised there is at least one circumstance where this Buyout is worth the price they’re asking. However, “value” and “worth” are totally different things. It may be right in line on worth but it sucks horribly on value. It’s a per-character per-Reputation purchase; per-character purchases are usually the lowest value you can get, even if the item is worth what you pay for (eg: Lockbox/Lobi/Promo ships: great on worth in a number of cases but a horrible value as they’re not account-wide unlocks).
You do you. All I know is, if you have the time, don’t spend on this. If you don’t have the time, watch your wallet as the convenience is expensive and adds up quickly. I can’t support it, but I’m also not in your specific situation.
That’s all I have on the Buyout. It’s not as bad as I figured it’d be when it was first announced, but I think most players will value their cash over their time and withhold on buying out any Reputations unless they need the saved time for other pursuits.
This blog post will be added to my eventual “Buying into STO in 2020: The Bad” initial post. Yes, it’s still coming, just with a few delays. Until then, take care and enjoy some of the other things that are great about the game. 🙂
Joe and STO 