UberGuy

The breakdown screen makes me wonder if there won't be ways to get uncommon components as drops. Right now, you can only craft them from common components and shards. Breaking them down would be a loss of 1-2 shards. I suppose that could be handy if you've created an uncommon component you decide you will never actually use, but otherwise I can't see ever making use of that particular breakdown.

I should go look and see if there's a breakdown option for common components.

Edit: The same logic applies to the Favor of the Well, which currently has to be crafted from Notices (which do drop).

I couldn't imagine using Ice Blast without it. The AoE is just incredibly useful. Sure, it takes a bit more time than some other powers, but those other powers aren't in Ice Blast.

In the real world, most of us make a certain range of Dollars (or Euro, or Pounds or Renminbi). Sure, there's a huge range of possible incomes that people make, but, for example, something like 95% of the people in the US make less than $100k per year (according to tax software, anyway). We all have to take that income and spend it on things like food, a place to live, and other "basic necessities".

In the real world we might sit and think whether we can afford to spend $1000, because if we spend it, we may not be able to pay rent, buy food, or fix our car. In CoH, if we spend 10M inf on some set IO, we can't buy... some other set IOs. But set IOs are a luxury. We don't have to have them. Lots of us want them, sure, but we won't die of malnutrition or go to jail if we don't get them, or if we get cheaper, less powerful versions instead.

The cost of "basic necessities" in CoH is very low compared to what I expect the 95% income range is. Our characters don't need homes, or food. They don't have kids to care for, they never need a car. They never get sick, but if they get injured, they not only get free health care, they get teleported and resurrected to perfect health.

When people talk about equating Dollars and Inf, they mean someone looks at a price tag of 1B Inf and thinks, "my God, $1B is more money than many corporations earn in a year - how can I ever earn 1B Inf?" They're talking about translating Dollar sticker shock directly into Inf terms. Yes, Dollars and Inf are both used to buy stuff, but any true exchange rate between them cannot be used to decide what's out of reach for an in-game buyer.

Builds on the forums are extremely frequently builds that have no price ceiling. They are "dream" builds in that sense.

Even for players who have no intention of building such things, those builds are informative. You can go a long way replacing the gold-plated platinum pieces of those builds with, say, copper, and still have a pretty damn effective build.

That said, I see plenty of build requests with stipulations like "no purples" or some other way of saying "don't make it too rich for my blood", and I've never seen a thread with reasonable traffic not comply.

I guess in order to "fix" it, I'd need a definition of how it's broken.

What do you think is broken about it? The level of the prices? The rate at which prices change? The fact that the change is usually an increase? The fact that prices vary widely with time and product level?

(Those are all examples of things I can see someone thinking are broken. I am not saying at this point that I think they are broken or that I think they're OK.)

Yeah, something like that could work. I'd still be surprised, but less so.

Causes of true, technical market inflation can be defined as anything that increases the ratio of the rate of inf production of relative to the rate of production of stuff we pay inf for. That's what inflation is - an increase in the money we pay per item.

Some changes in the game aren't market-wide inflation. For example, it seems likely that Alignment Merits increased the supply of "Pool C" recipes, causing a decrease in price, but they don't seem likely to have dramatically increased the supply of purples. One interpretation of the result is that money no longer spent on valuable Pool C recipes shifted to purchasing purples, leading to a price increase for purples as the price for things like LotGs went down. More money chasing the same number of goods is inflation, but it's only inflation in a specific market segment.

Most sources of market-wide inflation are things that increase the earning potential of the game's highest earners across the board. Examples would be pure increases in reward for high-level mobs (XP "smoothing", I16's inf doubling for L50 characters), ease-of-access to large spawns (I16's difficulty settings), and increases in character power (probable increased adoption of IO builds, Incarnate abilities).

Some (almost all) of these things also increase rates at which players produce drops like purples, or the speed with which they can run TFs or tip missions. But consider that Alignment Merits have a hard limit on how many you can both earn and spend per day. Reward Merits are theoretically based on the time it takes to complete a TF, and the time it takes to defeat foes is not always the primary throttle on those completion times. Eventually, increased inf earning rates from increased combat efficiency probably outpace rate of earning any other rewards that don't also tie directly to rate of mob defeats. (Like purples or "Pool A" recipes.)

So will inflation continue forever? That really depends on how much further our combat efficiency is allowed to increase without some corresponding decrease in reward for defeating the same foes with greater alacrity. As far as we know, the future will bring more combat effectiveness in terms of Incarnate abilities, but also as far as we know, there's nothing about that increase that will make, say, level 52 mobs worth less per defeat. That suggests that market-wide inflation still has some wind in its wings, with a rate that will depend on how fast we can earn new incarnate abilities. I'm not sure inflation will be allowed to continue forever, but if it continues at its pace from the last year or so too much longer, I think the devs might be forced to concede that either the aggregate rate of per-capita reward or the inf cap need review.

Yellow Mitos at least can miss with their blasts. However, they have 300% +toHit and the blast has 150% accuracy, meaning that they basically only miss because they are forced to miss on any attack roll of 5% of less.

I've had the blast from a yellow chase me out into the hills and not actually strike me on several occasions.

Hami's own attack is, indeed, auto-hit.

Meh, I don't see the hate. I do think the view that this is that awesome that it shouldn't be given out as an exclusive is only because we are such frequent market-heads. I know people that are going to consider this one on par with new boxers.

Then again, I don't have significant pity for people who can't deal with the physical markets, so take the above with whatever amount of salt is required.

I know one who'll get this in a few months. He was here at pre-release, but had a few months lapse in his sub relatively early on.

He's one of those folks who finds it a mindless way to relax.

After seeing that it came with large inspiration buffs, I was guessing 1 hour. Honestly, that's about perfect for how often I actually die. (I actually die a lot less than once/hour.) Now, it's true that sometimes I die multiple times in a short timeframe. The buffs attached to this will help prevent that, however. I'm pleased with it.

The 84 month one is hawtsauce.

What Aett said.