Adeon Hawkwood

Actually an unsigned integer can go up to 4,294,967,295, a signed integer (which is probably what they are using) can go from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. It seems likely that they selected a signed integer to store a character's inf since it is generally convenient not to have to worry about converting from unsigned to signed and it also left open the possibility of a person having negative influence should they ever decide that was necessary (unlikely but you never know).

So in reality it's probably a little bit of both, a signed integer was a convenient data type to store the value and the maximum it can store was more than they figured anyone would be likely to need (very true with the game at release) so it wasn't worth considering other options.

If you had asked me that when PvPIOs first came out I would have told you "I doubt it". However when they released A-Merits they set the price 50% higher than purples which seems to imply that they want them to be rarer, especially when you consider that significantly more player time is spent on activities that earn purples than activities that earn PvPIOs so the non-AMerit generation rate of purples is almost certainly a lot higher than the rate of PvPIOs.

My point is the devs already HAVE that tool, they are called Alignment Merits. Alignment Merits are limited in supply to prevent farming and can't be traded to prevent Marketeers. If they wanted to decrease the market prices of these items they wouldn't need to add an inf store for them they would simply need to lower the Alignment Merit cost.

In fact adding an Inf store would HELP Farmers and Marketeers a lot more than the players you claim to champion. What is the resource both Farmers and Marketeers can easily generate in huge quantities? Inf.

Conversely Alignment Merits favor the non-Farmers and non-Marketeers. Farmers can't generate them significantly faster than non-Farmers and Marketeers can't get them at all through the market. If the devs really wanted to increase the availability of high end recipes adding an inf store would simply aid Farmers and marketeers, lowering the alignment merit prices would aid the mythical casual player.

I disagree (and presumably the devs do to for the reasons detailed above). It's always nice to have more people playing the game but CoX has always been more about the path than the goal. Purples were introduced primarily to give a time sink for people who want to primarily play their 50s, which makes up a minority of the player base compared to the groups who enjoy other activities (such as leveling alts). Making purples and PvPIOs easier to get risks alienating the first group (who become bored and leave) without increasing the membership of the second group (who probably don't care). Back when the EATs were dropped to level 20 the devs quoted some statistics about how many people had at least one level 50. I forget what the number was but it was ridiculously low (anyone remember where it was?).

Ok, here's my question to you:

When the Devs implemented Alignment merits they were effectively saying "we believe a purple/PvPIO should be worth between 10 and 15 times a top-end rare recipe". Given that and the fact that the markets seem to be tending towards supporting that exchange rate (at least for the desirable PvPIOs, less so for purples) why do you believe that (using your previous example) a Purple/PvPIO is only worth about 3.5 times a rare recipe (using your suggestion of selling them for 500 million and current market prices on high end rares)?

And to answer your questions:
The Devs have set the relative rates that they believe are fair. The market is currently offering better rates than that on at least some items which suggests that there aren't any problems with the market itself. While I personally wouldn't object to the devs opening up the supply of high end gear I recognize the reasons they don't (which other people enumerated earlier in this thread) and consider them valid from the point of view of the devs (or at least from the POV of NCSoft which is, after all, in it to make money).

To me origin has never been "this is what makes all of your powers work" but "this is what makes you special". As an example, lets say you have two Broadsword Scrappers.

The first one has a magical sword that makes him faster, stronger and more skillful than he would be without it.
The second has a perfectly normal sword but works out a lot to become an excellent swordsman.

Obviously the first one is magic origin while the second is natural. Now suppose the second scrapper finds a magic sword that shoots fire (an explanation for picking up the Blaze Mastery APP). Does that suddenly make him Magic Origin? IMHO not really, the sword is a magical item but it's his skill that makes him a hero, the sword merely grants him a few abilities that he wouldn't have otherwise.

A characters origin will generally describe where a large portion of his powers come from (at the very least it should probably explain the powers in either your primary or secondary set) but it doesn't encapsulate all of a character's power. Magic and Technology function very well as "bolt on" powers to an existing Origin since they can be easily used to explain artifacts or gadgets that grant specific abilities. Science and Mutation can also work, a character finds out he has a minor mutation that he manages to harness giving him new powers or exposure to radiation changes his DNA for a similar effect (comic book physics, obviously ). Even Natural can explain new powers for otherwise non-natural characters, using the example of the Magic Sword Wielding Scrapper above, he discovers early in his career that although the sword enhances his abilities he tires quickly and starts working out to increase his ability to wield the sword (i.e. he takes the Fitness pool).

Another way of looking at it is that the Origin is what starts the character on the path to being a hero. Powers he picks up later could conceivably be from any origin but they don't fundamentally change who he is and his origin remains unchanged.

How did SwellGuy imply that casual = no skill? As you say, Casual versus Hardcore is more about attitude than anything else. Purples are not required for any sort of standard game play. The things they are important for are things that require a significant investment of time. The moment someone decides to set themselves a goal such as soloing AVs/GMs, soloing Pylons or the RWZ Challenge they are no longer a casual player.

No one has argued that that would not work, simply that price caps alone will not work (which was your first "suggestion"). In response to this claim the response (which several people already made) is that based on the observable evidence the devs do not want these recipes to be more common than they are now.

Unlike in real world economies the devs are fully in control of the rarity of each and every item in the game. When they recently introduced the Alignment Merits system they were basically saying "this is what we believe the relative values of items should be". Alignment merits function as an effective soft cap for prices, if the price of an item on the market gets to high relative to other items then is becomes cost effective to buy that item with Alignment merits and sell it for profit.

In fact this is exactly what we are seeing happening at the moment. Take a look at the cost of a level 25 LotG 7.5% on the market at the moment (this serves as a good indicator of the value of using A-Merits in a direct buy since it is popular and produced almost exclusively by direct buys). It costs 2 Alignment Merits generally goes for between 110million and 150million.

Now take a look at the Gladiator's Armor +3% Defense IO. It costs 30 Alignment Merits and sells for 2billion on the market or between 2.1 billion and 2.5 billion off market (based on recent auction threads).

So compare the market value of the 15 LOTG 7.5s you could buy for the cost of 1 Gladiators Armor +3%. It works out to between 1.65 billion and 2.25 billion. So using the relative pricing scale set by the devs the Gladiator's Armor IO has about the value you would expect compared to other IOs people could spend the same rewards on. It is a little on the high end but there are a few factors to explain that:
1. Commitment. It takes a lot more effort to get the alignment merits for one Glad Armor than 15 LOTGs since you have to do it on a single character over the course of at least 20 days whereas the LOTGs can be split up on different characters
2. Lack of existing supply. LOTGs have been supplied by reward merit direct buys for some time so the relative increase in supply was small whereas before A-Merits the only source for Glad Armors was PvP random drops which trickled them onto the market in very small amounts, as the existing demand is sated they will probably drop in price to closer to the middle of the range.

If the devs want to drop the price of them they don't need to muck around with setting fixed prices, they can simply adjust the alignment merit price to increase the supply generated by players. The fact that they have not done so would seem to indicate that they are happy with the relative supply of items.

See, I would say the opposite, flying in the shard is slow as molasses. The geysers are so much faster I find it puzzling that anybody bothers to use anything else. I keep a Raptor Pack around but it's mostly for the handful of places where the geyser route is inconvenient and the islands to far to jump even with the GvE Jump Pack thing.

There is a lot of truth to that, the only major inf sink in game is the 10% WW fee. The problem with introducing new Inf sinks is what to do with them. Most games offer "prestige" items which serve no in-game benefit but look cool (like motorbikes). The problem here is that we have entire communities built around things that serve no in-game benefit but look cool (specifically the costumers and the badgers). If we introduced inf sinks in their bailiwick they would be upset (and somewhat justified IMHO). In a game based around character customization adding cool options (like a cape made out of dollar bills) that can only be obtained by spending extremely large quantities of in-game currency seems rather unfair.

Well his secondary is Ice Blast. Against anything except an AV that should provide sufficient -rech to floor their recharge anyway. AVs have 85% resistance to -rech so it's a bit more useful against them but the large resistance makes it a 7.5% debuff which isn't as useful (and it's even less against higher con AVs.

I think he is basically proposing an Inf store for all items (even if he's not actually phrasing it that way). Essentially it sets a soft cap on market prices since above that price there is no point in buying it versus going to the store.

Not quite starvation causing but a recent example from Venezuela:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4599260.stm

A minimum price on raw coffee beans and a price cap on coffee sold at retail meant that the roasters no longer made enough profit to make it worth operating. This is a slightly unusual case in that there was a price cap on the final output and a price floor on the raw materials so it was the middleman getting squeezed rather than the raw producers but I think it still illustrates the basic point. When price caps drop below the market value of a good the suppliers stop or reduce the quantity supplied to the market and since the quantity demanded goes up not everyone who wants it can buy it at the market price.

There have been examples which did cause starvation but I can't recall them off the top of my head. Someone with a better knowledge of history than me might be able to help you.

For the Pet Damage sets Blood Manadate is pretty much the only one with decent set higher set bonuses. I can see slotting a few from the other sets for the 2 and 3 piece bonuses but I can't see slotting the entire set. It would be nice to get some pet sets with a wider variety of useful set bonuses (or at least some recharge). The recharge intensive pet sets are much better since they both have a recharge bonus for 4 pieces and a defense bonus for 6 but of course the core MM pets can't slot them.

That's not a bad idea. I need to finish planning my builds so I can see if that's worth doing for my characters.

Caltrops provides a -80% run speed debuff out the door (both PvE and PvP). A single -slow enhancement in it will floor another players speed even if they have the winter's gift IO. No need to use two copies of the power. You might get some benefit against players with lots of -speed resistance above and beyond Winter's Gift, how common is that in PvP?

If you don't have any Fitness powers you will automatically get the inherent ones without a respec (according to the devs). What I don't know is what will happen if you, for example, have Hurdle and Health but not Stamina.

This isn't really equivalent. The Leadership powers do the same thing as the TT powers but are a lot weaker. The devs don't mind people duplicating powers with similar effects they just don't like people duplicating identical powers.

I can't see any reason it would be. Caltrops is a nice power to have but it's not that great. As you noted slotting a slow enhancement or two (depending on the difficulty setting) is enough to floor the mob's speed anyway so the only real advantages to taking it twice are covering a larger area (a marginal benefit since it's a pretty big patch) or doubling the damage if you like using it as a proc bomb (which I can't see a Scrapper being patient enough to do). Honestly I have a hard time imagining WHY a Scrapper would want to take it twice.