Adeon Hawkwood

The problem with last 5 on high volume items is that it only really tells you what it's going for now. You don't necessarily want to read all the sales over the past 24hours but a summary with things like high price, low price and average price over the last 24hours would be very useful.

I think that would make the situation significantly worse. I think that a total lack of information would result in people giving up on the market entirely and either do trades off-market or simply not bother trading at all.

Unless the devs specifically implement some way to read in a build during a respec there isn't anything the Titan team could do to implement this feature (except possibly making a bot program which would violate the EULA).

That is true, from the point of view of player time it is technically an Inf sink but from the point of view of market prices it's inf neutral. Market prices are primarily impacted by the quantity of items in the game relative to the quantity of Inf chasing those items. A character who is played but generates neither inf nor items is not affecting that ratio, it does slightly impact the demographics of what items are available and what are demanded (specifically a person power leveling a character would presumably then take a level 50 our to farm up some influence to equip them).

For a human using poison I could see two explanations for it being Natural:
1. The poisons readily available to any member of society and the character's skill is in using the poisons effectively
2. The poisons are extracted from various plants and animals and the extraction process requires personal skill.

The overlap between Tech and Natural is higher than most of the other combinations (the closest is Magic/Natural) since Natural characters often use Gadgets (or magic items) and the question becomes at once point does the power provided by their gear outweigh their personal power.

It's also worth pointing out that different groups are very different difficulty to different characters. I used to wonder why people complained about Carnies so much because my Blaster found them to be one of the easier high level groups as long as I turned off bosses so I could mez the MIs. Trying them on other characters (especially melee characters) made me realize why people dislike them.

Technically that would be inf neutral, neither a sink nor a source since it doesn't create inf but doesn't create tickets either. This also doesn't address the problem that level 50s generate an abnormally large portion of the total inf created (both due to hours played and higher rate of earnings).

More generally, a random idea:
Currently the "No XP" option (which is effectively on for all level 50s) turns all of your XP into Inf. What about a "No Inf" option which reduces your Inf generation (or possibly just prevents XP being converted to Inf) but increases you chance of getting drops. Obviously this is problematic with teams but it would be one way to increase the amount of items relative to Inf ont he market.

Yes you will. In general most teams aim to go quickly with little to no regard for the story (mostly because experienced players have already read it multiple times). As such you will oftne times end up skipping the story as you out-level contacts (you can counter this somewhat by forming the team and then running your contacts so you at least get the story). Another option is to turn off XP every 5 levels and remain that level until you've done all of the story arcs.

Teaming works poorly in regard to story (as described above) unless you are in a situation where you force the team to work to the story (some people will form a static team and always play together so they can experience the story). It is, however a lot faster in terms of leveling and, in my opinion at least, a lot more fun.

Every 5 levels your existing contacts will stop giving you missions and the other contacts in that level range will not talk to you (there is an exception if you're halfway through a story arc though). However, once you hit level 25 you can use Ouroborus to do Flashbacks. In a Flashback you can run (or rerun) a story arc you've outleveled with the following conditions:
1. Once you've started you can't add people to your team or join other teams until you finish or give up.
2. While on a Flashback you can't talk to your other contacts.
3. Your effective level is reduced tot he maximum for the contact if you were doing it normally

There are a few way to get to Ouroborus. The easiest is to go to a populated area with lots of high level characters (Talos Island is good for Heroes) and politely ask in local or broadcast chat if someone would mind opening an Ouroboros Portal for you. Generally someone will (it's a yellow portal thingy). Thank them and click on it to go to Ouroboros. Once there jump up to the highest point and find the Exploration badge, this will give you a power that allows you to open your own Ouroboros Portal (remember to pay it forward by opening one when you see someone ask ).

SOs work when you're their level +/-3. Since the stores sell levels that are multiples of five you can buy them every 5 levels and have overlap. Basically you buy them at the following levels (or the following levels +1 which is slightly better since you can combine your old enhancements):
2
7
12
17
22
27
32
37
42
47

There are plenty of cheap sets that have useful bonuses, in many cases they are cheap because a different set offers more of the same bonus. Using the examples Gavin gave, Smashing Haymaker sill offers S/L Defense it just doesn't give as much as Kinetic Combat (hence why it's cheap). Similarly Multi-Strike is a cheaper alternative to Obliteration for someone looking to build melee defense. Sure the values are lower and you generally wouldn't use them in a top of the line build but in terms of performance/cost they are much better value.

As Kinrad said you probably need to run it in administrator mode. Assuming that doesn't work (and that you aren't using an incompatible operating system) I recommend asking on the Mids' forums. Trying to design builds by hand really, really sucks.
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/board,59.0.html

Well in general for buy bids if it doesn't fill in 24 hours I tend to redo it at a higher price.

Selling is risky and the market is deliberately setup that way to drive prices down. Yes, it can be hard learning it (and I think that is a problem) but in the long run it discourages sellers from making risky "just in case" bids. Similarly the limitation on market slots is intended to encourage fast turnover on the parts of bother buyers and sellers which helps keep the market active.

I do agree with you on the problems with just showing the "last 5". Personally I would much prefer the option to see prices over the last 24 hours or last 7 days. I think this would give less experienced players a much better idea as to an item's true value but I know there are people who disagree.

I'm not aware of one. As for why, I think you touched on the reason in your post. The nature of the market system (double blind bids) is designed to favor people who are patient over those who are not and provides little incentive for people to spend lots of time at the market looking for bargains instead of going out and beating on bad guys. Personally I love this, I can get gear I want at a good price without having to check the market every 5 minutes to see if someone listed an item I want at a good price. However the downside is that the market is a lot more opaque until you learn how to read it.

This means there is a learning curve to the market that a lot of people are not interested in surmounting. There are other MMOs that have similarly complex markets but in those the market is generally a more important feature of the game so people who play the game expect that they will have to learn to use the market for success. Other games have a market which is easier to understand at a superficial level but requires significantly more effort to avoid getting a poor deal.

Suppose I want to buy a stack of 10 widgets. In a classic market system I go to the market and see what widgets are being offered at what prices. My options are then to buy the widgets at the offered price or not to buy them. If I want a better deal my only option is to come back later and hope I can get some cheaper then. Here if they aren't selling at the price I'm willing to pay I can simply leave my bid in place and the game will take care of buying them for me at that price leaving me free to do other things.

Given that the primary thread was deleted (presumably by a mod) I would advise against continuing it here.

I think the special IO needs to change. I can't see the devs wanting us to stack that with the Kismet one. Also a unique means you can only 5-slot the set once which is counter to the idea of increasing slotting variety for TAoEs, people are unlikely to 4-slot the set for the accuracy bonus so it becomes something you slot at most once and then use for Frankenslotting. I'd say a simple damage proc would be fine.

Itemization on the other IOs is fine. Damage is on the low side but it's a 5-piece set so it's not unreasonable for someone to make it up with a Damage/Something from another set.

A damage bonus for the 5 piece seems rather stingy, most sets get that as the 4 piece bonus. I'd say drop the Accuracy, move the damage to the 4 piece bonus and make the 5th bonus a Moderate defense bonus. Ranged would be popular since these sets are mostly used by ranged characters and it would give them a nice trade-off between defense and recharge (plus making it Moderate means you've got a trade-off between this set and Thunderstrike due to Rule of Five). TAoE already ahs a set with AoE defense and Melee defense is probably not useful enough to make the set popular. S/L defense might be a good choice, it's not a "no-brainer" for ranged characters but it does appeal to the Blapper crowd and some melee characters would take a TAoE power from their epic to use it.

Yeah, this is the reason I would like to see more TAoE sets. With other powers you can choose which set bonus you want to go for (or skip them all and Frankenslot) but with TAoE Positron's Blast is the only decent non-purple non-PvPIO set. I guess maybe Detonation might be worth slotting if it got you to the AoE Soft Cap but it's a pretty small bonus compared to most equivalent sets for other types.

Check the link I posted. I think Dumple is ashamed of thinking "If I hadn't joined the 88ers I could beat Arbegla's bid"

He is referring to this thread:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=244851

EDIT: Thread was apparently deleted.

Realistically there is absolutely no reason that the same character with the same build could not be both helpful or harmful depending on the circumstances. Storm in particular is an EXCELLENT example.

Helpful:
Use Gale and Hurricane to push enemies into walls and then stand their debuffing their to hit. Bounce lose enemies away from squishy people and back into range of melee characters or debuff patches.

Harmful:
Jump into the middle of a pack of enemies with Hurricane turned on, proceed to use Gale once on each enemy you can see. Wait until the Trick Arrow Defender casts Oil Slick Arrow then proceed to bounce all enemies out of the patch. Let the Tanker gather up a group of enemies then cast bonfire underneath him.

The problem with knockback and repel has never really been the mechanic itself but how people use it. It's an excellent form of damage mitigation but, used poorly, it can result in lowering the damage mitigation efforts of others by more than it mitigates.