UberGuy

Heh. I submit that the players you played them with were not that interested in breaking them.

I don't deny that this particular divide exists, but I think it's much too exclusive of other complaints people have. There are plenty of people who don't mention anything about disliking the market mini-game as such who hate the prices and irrationally blame all "high" prices on flippers. It's much more than possible for such people to hate marketeers without directly disliking that there's a market in the game at all.

After all, if I remember correctly, you don't like the market mini-game's presence in this overall game, but you understand it pretty well and don't make a habit of blaming its users irrationally for every perceived ill of the "casual" player's market woes.

Except it didn't break it at all. They still regularly sell for 50k or so. Your aversion to spending that kind of money on them isn't universal, because for a lot of people who play at level 50, 50k isn't very much money.

It's not meant to facilitate people moving inf between their own characters. I mean, sure, you can use it for that, but you lose 10% of the wealth - if you can get a friend to help you, it works out a lot better.

Rather, it's meant in the general sense to move inf from the more wealthy to the less wealthy. Broadly speaking, that means from high-level to low-level characters. High level characters don't have a lot of attractive ways to generate, say, Luck Charms, but low-level ones get them just for playing (assuming they fight certain foe categories). So the lowbies end up with something the highbies want, and for which the highbies can pay a premium compared to what the lowbies can ever earn fighting mobs.

The same thing happens with purples. And their price has been on the rise for a while.

Yeah, I am not seeing how this supports your point.

You also don't account factors such as increased demand. Over the past few months, awareness of these IOs and their benefits in builds - including PvE builds - has been on the rise. That drives up interest, which drives up competition, which drives up price.

Most of the last 5 sales for the enhancements are from last month.

Ironically, despite real inflationary pressures since I16 (solodoubling the average inf that 50s get for defeating a mob) the price of LotGs and Miracles have been fairly steady since around issue 14. Of course, unlike PvPOs, you can buy LotGs and Miracles with merits, giving them a price valve that PvPOs lack.

Well, it does go away on the market, 10% per transaction. Certainly a lot of people currently think that's not enough ways to get rid of it. And off-market trades like happen with these IOs literally just shuffle the money around - nothing is lost/destroyed.

I've got over 10B inf on hand across multiple characters, and I basically never farm.

It's not that hard. If you both play at 50 a couple ours a day and sell stuff on the market, you're going to earn 50-100M inf a week, easy, and that's assuming no big-ticket drops. It doesn't take long to hit 2B at that rate. Hell, you can hit 10M/hour just running missions on an 8-man team.

If you use the market to earn inf, you're concentrating the billions of inf/hour that people are churning out into yourself (by selling them stuff). You can concentrate a lot of other people's money on yourself a lot faster than you can earn it yourself.

The cap isn't very high compared to our earning rates.

When both supply/demand and inflation are at play, you can't single one out as the sole cause.

Also, it's naive of the devs to consider the inf cap as the maximum of individual wealth. We can have multiple characters and effectively pool their wealth. We can also measure wealth in ways other than inf. If I have 10 Apocalypse procs in my enhancement tray, I have effective wealth well over the "cap", and can conceivable use that to trade off-market for goods.

If you want to prevent things like that, drop rate is the primary tool for addressing it. Of course that has other knock on effects, such as ensuring that more people have access to them. Such are the vagaries of tying character power to random drops and relying on a market to distribute them efficiently.

That's because the devs didn't create the balance that exists in PvP the way they do in PvE. In PvE, the devs set the power of mobs, and know that some players will be above that and some below. The devs don't set the power level of your foes in PvP - other players do, with their builds. All the devs can do is set the limits of power - the maximum dynamic range of power players can achieve. Then, we can expect the players to always strive to the top end of that range.

As you say, this game revolves around PvE. That means that the devs are perfectly within their place to expect PvPers to spend time rooting around in PvE for their PvP gear. Do I think that's the best idea in practice? No, I really don't. Of course I think addressing it requires the creation of PvP-specific supply mechanisms that just don't exist today. Without those, PvP has no choice but to default to the PvE mechanisms - random drops and the market.

I believe those assumptions need to be questioned.

On the first bullet, even assuming zero market profits, the prices of goods on the market would be defined primarily by the earnings of level 50 characters. This has no reasonably normative relationship to the earnings of, say, a level 15 character trying to buy set IOs. Yet the new player has no particular means to know this.

Or course that new player has little way to understand how set IOs themselves function. Things like the "rule of 5", special rules pertaining to procs and globals, rules about uniques, rules about exemplar behavior - gaining understanding of all of those things requires the player to seek out knowledge that's not readily available in the game interface or its on-line help. I think it's rather artificial for us to decide it's OK for someone to be able to learn all that stuff about IOs but not learn some extremely basic things about the market - such as that their "normal" market income pre-50 is intended to be based on buying things from 50s or other rich characters.

That intent was actually stated by the devs in I9 beta. The market, presumably in conjunction with things like the level bands for salvage and certain sets, and the exmplar rules for enhancements, is intended, at least in part, to serve as a vehicle for moving inf from those with more money ("near 50" characters) to those with less.

On the 2nd and 3rd bullets, I think these assumptions are a mistake. Bullet 3 is quite debatable. When you can combine IOs with the right powersets and go solo spawns meant for 8-man teams set to +4 levels over your own, I think it's fair to say that overwhelms the performance of SOs. Given that, I think bullet 2 has to be brought into question - why would something that allows such increases in performance have the same price as the ostensible baseline in performance.

That doesn't even touch on the notion that there is an infinite supply of SOs and the like. No matter how many you buy, there will always be more to have. At any given time, the same is not true of IOs - even if they are created with merits or commons crafted from memory, eventutally people will run out of merits or common salvage to use to create them. Shortages mean people will pay more to obtain things. So as soon as there's more demand for IOs than supply, that immediately breaks the price relationship between SOs and IOs, because you can never run out of SOs.

Here's a question for you. Do you consider having to get to 50 something you're forced to do in order to do what you enjoy (PvP)? If so, you wouldn't be alone. And yet it's something you have to put up with in this game. I'm not saying that as it should be - this topic is often discussed and almost certainly better served by having its own thread. But if the devs' approach to PvP includes having to get the best characters "the old fashioned way," they probably lump getting the best gear in the same view.

I think there may be another reason not to do this.

Purples will clearly have very high merit costs. A conservative guess on my part is that they would cost easily 10x as many merits as what any current items cost. If you want a taste of what the devs think "special" enhancements that perform unusually high order functions should cost, compare the merit costs for the "Blessing of the Zephyr" set to comparable pieces in other sets. Then consider all the things purples do that a BotZ set doesn't. Massive enhancement boost scales, outsized set bonuses, higher proc rates with higher magnitude effects, and the nearly unique ability to exemplar without penalty. Then consider that their merit cost will also try to factor in their low drop probability, and that only level 47+ mobs are supposed to drop them.

Such high costs for such an in-demand item is almost certain to cause a decrease in current merit expenditures on random rolls and even direct purchases for other IOs. Total market volumes of pool C/D items would almost certainly drop, meaning their prices would increase.

I view this is an incredibly undesirable slippery slope. Giving people whatever they want so we don't risk making them mad is a recipe for societal chaos in the real world and instant gratification in a video game.

There's more at stake here than the ability of marketeers to work margins and of everyday players to get shinies they want in game. The invention system is intended to be an additional, layered time sink in the game, above and beyond that of leveling characters to 50. Giving the players instant gratification in attaining the best of the best IOs is no different than giving them level 50s at will. Just because they are insistent that they should have either one does not mean they should get it for the sake of the game's ongoing subscriptions.

Failure to understand this is, in my opinion, one of the most fundamental causes of people's angst about the market and the availability of goods. For better or worse, this nature of the invention system can feel at odds with the game's alt-friendly nature. As Arcanaville mentioned, in I9 the game changed. People can choose to change with it or not, but they should not demand that it always change in a way that they need not adjust to.

If I were you, I wouldn't quote that person's thesis to anyone, and I certainly wouldn't credit anything he produced as "great". I think his manner of information gathering was outrageously flawed (it was essentially designed to produce the outcome he expected) and that thus his conclusions are similarly bogus. No one I know who was familiar with this individual in game gives what he wrote an ounce of credit, and maintain that some of what he wrote as the underpinning of his thesis were outright lies.

As others have said, there is no indication that this is happening. "The community" at large is not even clearly using the market, and we cannot clearly lay all of that at the feet of how the market and its regular actors work. For example, some people simply find the inventions system too arcane, or dislike crafting, or just feel they alt too frequently to merit the time investment.

If the players at large aren't using the market, then the "community" in question has to be the subset of the broader player base that does use the market. There's no clear indication that people using the market have a broad movement in the manner you mention. The very fact that the market does what it does (and that we get such bitter complaints about here from time to time) suggests the contrary.

The bolded part is critical. We have not established any foundation for what comparable goods are in this context. What non purple set is a purple set comparable to? A Miracle? A LotG:Recharge? They do different things. If a purple used to "cost" the same as 1 LotG, but now it costs 5, should we be upset, or realize that they aren't really comparable and only used to have similar prices by a variety of unrelated reasons?

On that note, people who complain about price increases on the CoH market and almost never account for actual economic justifications for price shifts between goods or even absolute price shifts. Level 50s are now earning more than double the inf/hour they did before I16, but I've yet to see someone complaining about the rising price of IOs account for that. Similarly with shifts in supply, such as AE exploits (which are active currently). If purples actually become 5 times more rare than they were before, are price increases unjustified?

As can righteous indignation of more level heads at their immaturity and ignorance. We cannot expect the devs simply acquiesce any time an uninformed, emotionally-charged persons decide they're unhappy with a lot in (game) life their own ignorance and emotional state help reinforce. When there is a clear impact to the game's viability due to broad-based player dissatisfaction with something, then I think the devs should (and often do) take some action to correct it. In this context, the tool in the dev's hands are drop rates. If they really believe that a broad base of players are sufficiently dissatisfied with the game because IOs are too hard to obtain, the correct change is to increase the ease with which they are produced. The market will correct in accordance with such changes.

Ah, my apologies. I misunderstood your direction.

I can't accept this. People need to be reminded of the context in which they are making their statements and forming their opinions. When people express how pissed they get at the behavior of other players over market activity in a video game is, in my opinion, the place where they need to be reminded how unreasonable they are being.

As Arcanaville points out, if lacking these goods made the core game unassailable, then I believe this would have merit. Instead, people are trying to cast these goods as necessary for their enjoyment of the core game. Because of this, I view this as allowing jealousy of "haves" to overshadow what they actually think is worth playing. Just because such behavior is common does not mean I accept that concessions should be made for it.

I think it's worth noting that getting one or two fairly transforming IOs - the ones that give you +recovery, should be within reach of nearly every player. Thanks to merits they can be had outright even if the player can't drum up 200M or so to buy them (that's for both) on the market.

Just to be clear, I didn't think you were dramtizing it. I did think Heraclea was, but I now know she wasn't.

Yes, I very much agree. I get uppity when people effectively declare that their subjective opinion on what the ethics and/or price should trump all other consideration, including those of raw market forces, such as the inf supply in the system.

As has been discussed many times in these forums, appeal to those concepts break down severely in a virtual environment. Moral economic customs and laws exist because, without them, people in distressed situations might be denied fundamental necessities of survival, and thereby, denied the ability to survive or avoid severe injury or distress.

That is, by definition, impossible in a video game. Denying someone a Hecatomb proc will never deny the player at the keyboard their ability to exist, or risk that they suffer real life debilitation or injury except in the most outré of edge cases.

Seriously, I just can't accept the notion of applying moral economics to luxury goods in an environment that is, itself, a luxury to its players. I can't imagine what people in, say, Haiti would think of the comparison right now.

Bear in mind, I am not an active flipper (what I figure is the the most general category of "marketeer").

That said, I see a potential value for the flippers. Whether it's actually useful to any given player is extremely conditional and highly subject to that player's current perspective.

Flippers convert something that would be quickly taken off of the market due to low list price and keep it on the market by increasing the price required to buy it, presumably to a value closer to the current equilibrium price. This denies the item in question from later bidders who aren't willing to pay that higher price. This can be seen as reserving the item for people willing to pay the higher price. (Note that any bidders competing with the flipper to buy the item initially only have to beat the flipper's own bid price, not the flipper's higher list price.)

Now, the later bidders who are unwilling to pay the new, higher price probably aren't going to think this is so hot.

The people willing to pay more for the item either may like this "service" or not care, depending on supply of the item in question. If the item is rare enough to mean that a rich-blooded bidder might have to wait for a new listing had the flipper not re-listed the item, the rich-blooded buyer probably likes the flipper, because the flipper helped ensure something was there to buy "right nao". If, on the other hand, the flipper is just scraping low-ball listings and merging them into an existing stable oversupply of the item, the rich-blooded bidder probably doesn't care, because there were some there to buy anyway.

Mostly, I don't think marketeers need a justified existence in the market. They're players making good use of opportunities presented to them. This is not different to me than people who build their characters for maximum performance. Marketeers are, mostly just doing the same thing with a different mini-game. However, for reasons listed in this thread, the fact that they "got there first", "got reward easier", or denied someone else a theoretical opportunity (to buy something cheap), they are often reviled.

I just got a new character to 50 last night. It's a Regen Scrapper with 20-22% defense to all 3 positions and 50% global recharge. I have 650M inf, and 900 merits. (I had more merits but spent a bunch on low-level globals.) My build is shy one set of Hecatombs, one set of Obliterations, and one set of Blessing of the Zephyr to be "done", and I expect to have all of those by this coming weekend. (For those keeping track, that'll be 23-25% def to all and 60% recharge.)

I didn't farm. I didn't marketeer. All of my contact bars except a couple in Galaxy City, Striga and Croatoa are all full. Other than running the Task Force Commander TFs and a few ITF or Lady Grey TFs, I soloed the whole way.

This is the 2nd character I've played up to 50 since XP smoothing, and the 1st since the I16 difficulty changes. I'm amazed how easy it is to level solo now. I went from 40-44 before I'd finsihed the arcs from two contacts, playing at +2/x2/yes/no.

So I think it isn't hard to get to 50 without PLing, and I think it isn't hard to make money and thus think it isn't hard to get lots of IOs. Do I think it is easy? Let's say I don't think it's automatic. Maybe, just maybe, you're radically less patient than I am. But I think my experience again suggests that there's just a wee bit of hyperbole in these claims one has to farm their eyes out or rake their fellow players over some sort of virtual market coals to get a tricked out build.

Yes, it absolutely means there shouldn't be pieces for them on the market. Do you understand that people playing the game is how those pieces get there to begin with? People like you are a big part why there are no low-level goods for sale. You want to race to 50 and consume the things others have produced, and you wonder why people are paying 500M inf for one purple. You and all your buds who race to 50 are inflating the number of people with 50s competing for those items. If you're PLing in the AE you're making it even worse, because you aren't producing any purples while you're in there.

Purples are only slottable by level 50s. That tells me that they are intended to be a carrot you chase mostly once you are already 50. If everyone tries to get the carrot before they get to the end of the stick, we run out of carrots real fast, and that means the price of carrots gets really high.

My god.

They bought inf to convert to prestige to create their SG base?

And you think these people are good indicators of anything?

These people are indescribable morons. Like to the extent that we need to make sure they don't breed, to save the gene pool from them.

Except we covered this in the other thread. You don't have to do those things. I don't do them. I just play some every day, usually 2-3 hours though sometimes real life means I can't play. I solo some, I TF some, and I am IOing out character number nine, who started getting goodies at level 37, and is now nearly fully outfitted except for a set of purples. (The characters' still not 50, so I can't slot purps yet.)

If I can do this, it disproves your claims. If I can do it, why can't you?

What server do you talk to all these people on? Because I have never seen the people I traffic with say that. A lot of them use purples and even PvPOs. They do lots of things to get that money. Some of them farm, some of them play a lot, some of them run TFs a lot, some of them marketeer... but none of them buy RMT, and whenever it has come up they usually poo-poo those people as dumb.

So I'm curious about the context of this.

The impetus behind that statement is that anyone who really gets into the guts of the Invention System is no longer "casual". There are degrees, but fundamentally, spending the time to learn how Inventions work strongly implies some tendency towards power-gaming, because the Invention system is, frankly, fairly arcane.

Edit: this gets back to the joke about the casual player with purples slotted in their Warshade. Anyone who even aspires to that sort of thing is, historically, not a casual player.

We have to remember, the store isn't just there to make sure we can get what we want as fast as possible. I'm absolutely convinced that obtaining IOs is intended to be a time sink above and beyond the standard time sink of getting to max level (50). The thing is that a store with these kinds of prices would ultimately be less of a time sink than the current system unless continuously maintained. The market is actually sort of a self-correcting time sink in the sense that prices tend to rise with people's ability to earn inf.

I'm fairly sure the market exists to facilitate our ability to actually get things given a time sink defined by random drops. Without the market, we'd all have to either wait until we got the drops we personally need or barter for what we wanted with a smaller audience (or resort to out-of-game tools, like these forums). We'd also only be able to trade with people on the same server.

An outright store is a time sink too, but it's far less dynamic. The devs created an outright store with the merit system, and we can see what they did with it - in a broad sense, it takes more time to earn merits to buy a whole build than it does to earn the money needed to buy that build on the market.