Wing_Leader

I'm also somewhat inclined to wait for Titan Weapons to go on sale, simply because right now I only have one toon that would use the set, and it isn't even an alt I would play very often (it would be a re-rolled version of an existing alt that would have had a TW sword had the power set been available to me when I originally made her).

I like this sentiment in general. But I'd be curious to see some statistics that show how many toons sell vs. buy (or do both in equal measure). I wouldn't be surprised to find that the vast majority of players use the market merely to buy things, not to sell things. Which, if true, would mean that more players are sensitive to purchase price, than they are to profit potential as a seller. If so, having buyers willing to overpay only helps the minority who sell, and sorta hurts the majority who only use the market to find affordable recipes and salvage (hurts in the sense that sellers may raise their minimum selling prices in an attempt to capitalize on what they think is a trend of overpayment behavior). I think if you really want to help folks out, do what I've seen some forum members do (or say they do), and buy up stacks of stuff that is already kinda expensive (overpay for it if you want to help those sellers out as part of this), and then put them back on the market for 1 inf.

BTW, does anyone know the algorithm used to match up bids with items for sale? I don't think I've ever seen it described.

Ah. You only mentioned grinding for salvage in the "first option," which seemed to ignore or dismiss the astral/empyrean merits, which I consider the "fastlane" to incarnate component acquisition (except, maybe, for the Very Rares).

This has been the lightning fast way for me.

In one day (i.e., several hours during a single Sunday) of running iTrials, I had enough threads and astral/empyrean merits to go from only having Alpha slotted at tier 1, to having Alpha, Judgement, and Interface slotted to tier 3. Just last night, in only two hours of iTrial runs, I unlocked Lore and had enough threads and merits to slot it up to tier 3 immediately, and I still have lots of threads and merits to spare. How can this possibly be called the "long, long way around?"

Most IOs make "an immediate improvement", but that's not really saying much besides the obvious. The question, I think, is whether or not the improvement is so significant that getting it NOW versus getting it a little later (even a day or three later) has any serious gameplay impact in the mean time. I believe the rational case for GETTING IT NAO is vastly overstated, merely to make it sound logical and reasonable.

Instant Gratification is at the core of this, I think. And it is an expensive vice, in real life or anywhere else. Just because it is common doesn't mean it makes good sense or is worth endorsing as a "reasonable" philosophy. And before you ask what that has to do with this thread, I'll point out that the OP is basically asking if anyone thinks these unnaturally high spikes in common salvage prices are reasonable. I think they are not, no matter what commonplace psychological motivator is behind it, and especially not if said price spikes are due to the Instant Gratification crowd competing for (momentarily) scant resources.

"But I don't want to wait, and if I have the inf, why should I?" No reason you should, but for the players who don't have billions of inf to throw around (or who simply can't abide personal conspicuous consumption even when it is only virtual), it is useful, I think, to point out that they really aren't missing out on anything vital by simply waiting a little while for sanity to return to the salvage market. It's not like their toons will starve to death and be deleted from the servers if they don't slot the next IO in their latest build experiment RIGHT NAO.

But why would he be talking about DOs or SOs in a thread about IO salvage and the cost of creating IOs (both in terms of inf and ancillary playing time)?

Word.

It wouldn't let me join the channel.

Apparently it is a deprecated channel and will be going away, so it's kinda moot at this point. I am, now, joined to Virtue LFG Beta, Virtue TFs, and LFG Beta.

Um, how does one outlevel an IO?

I'm not sure what you mean by "holding up the group". Surely you don't mean running off to play marketeer or fill or upgrade enh slots while the team is still running missions. I thought proper team etiquette was to wait until the team was disbanded, or you are done for the day/night to do all one's toon management. The simplest way to not hold up the group is to, well, not do anything that will hold up the group, right?

Having a patient and capable "guide" in the league can make a huge difference to a newbie (like me). I spent most of Sunday running iTrials for the first time. League/Team leadership ranged from pretty good to virtually non-existant. The best was a BAF run in which we had a leader who graciously explained what needed to be done, though to be honest much of it didn't sink it until after I'd been through it. The worst was a Keyes Reactor run in which nobody seemed to know what to do, including myself. Having been through each of them 3 or 4 times at this point, I am able to muddle through Lambda and Keyes without doing too much damage to the overall effort, but I am still a bit lost on the details of what needs to happen when, where, in what order, and by whom.

I am grateful that the player community in COH continues to open its proverbial doors of participation to newbies, without reservation (I've heard tales in this forum of league-formers trying to weed out "undesireables", but thankfully that has not happened to me yet), but I wish someone out there would create some tutorial videos explaining (and showing) each stage of these things, so guys like me would know what is expected of them before diving in. Some folks may feel that the process of learning-as-you-go is exciting and "part of the game," but I assure you that the rest of my leaguemates who have done these things a hundred times already don't see it that way, and as a result, neither do I.

On bright side, however, I did manage to take my little L50 toon who, before I started on Sunday, only had her tier 1 alpha slotted, and open both interface and judgement, get all three slots up to tier 3, and even get some decent progress on unlocking lore and destiny. All of this in just one day of running iTrials (I have yet to go through UG though). The one benefit of running with highly experienced teams is that the astral merits drop like crazy, and you're in and out and on to the next run in fairly short order. It made for a somewhat dizzying first experience (with iTrials), but the resulting Incarnate progression was impressive. The Incarnate system and the Trials are just as fun and cool as I hoped they would be, but I still think a more illustrative body of tutorial material would go a long way towards converting frustration (for us newbies) into fun.

Same thing, in my view. There isn't an IO in the game that I need so badly that I can't wait an hour or a day or a week to put into my build. My gaming time doesn't get "consumed" with waiting; I just go on with doing my missions/TFs/Trials/whatever while the market system plays itself out. Eventually my buy orders get filled, and eventually I craft the new IOs, and eventually my build gets better by a percent or two. *shrug*

Just wanted to mention that I joined these channels, but the first one listed, Virtue TFs 2010, is a "private" chat channel and not available to me apparently.

I will grant you all of your points. However, they rather contradict the notion of controlled leveling speed and restricted leveling methods, which the devs seem oddly attached to.

No, they won't ban you. However, that is merely the most severe mechanism available to the devs to curb farming. MARTy, AE nerfs, etc. are the preferred methods instead. The devs seem to have an arbitrary and unpredictable view of farming (and levelling), so who knows what view--and methods--they'll resort to? I would rather they either get out of the way entirely or just disallow it all together, and I say this as someone who has no particular interest in farming myself.

And here is perhaps where the (apparently unalterable) architecture of the game code has painted the devs into a bit of a corner. They still use "leveling speed" as a metric and tool for keeping players playing the same toon. The Incarnate system is, IMO, a far better solution, giving players something fun and exciting to do/strive for, rather than trying to put some kind of internal governance on leveling speed. But increasing the level cap is not available as a way for the devs to extend the end game for players. At some point, these somewhat clunky attempts at providing rough equivalents to level extension (E.g., Incarnate "level shifts") will just collapse under their own conceptual, if not implementational, weight.

Yeah, this is what I figured was the case, and I understand how it gets this way. But it is kind of disappointing, that's all. And it's not just that it is intimidating, it simply isn't fun.

It feels like the options for newbies who make their way to 50 and decide to try Incarnates are slim, and this state of affairs might very well just turn F2P players off to such an extent that they never bother subscribing and getting into the Incarnate system at all.