UberGuy

Oh, I am well aware. The difference in Recon's recharge is under one second. The difference in Dull Pain is noticable, but I can make the difference up by sticking an extra slot of pure recharge in that power. (Since my build doesn't have perma Hasten, I always look at the differences with Hasten off. Obviously when it's on, the differences are smaller.) Meanwhile, both powers slotted up nets 5% more global recharge, which is a modest benefit on all other powers, including Hasten.

Is it worth it overall? That depends on how important inf is, as well the cost of moving slot around.

Overall, it's probably cheaper to buy the Gladiator's unique than two sets of Panacea to 5 pieces.

Yes, but that isn't "cornering the market". That's increasing the price. Someone who actually corners the market on something usually does so with the intention to increase the price, but not everyone who increases the price actually corners the market. This is true even if they manage to make a profit off the price increase. As the wikipedia/wiktionary quote says, "cornering" is about taking a position where you own enough of the stock of something that you can manipulate the price. In CoH, you manipulate the price just by virtue of bidding high. It doesn't actually matter how much of the inventory you buy - you just have to raise the floor, then get out at a higher price before the floor collapses or you buy too much to sell off higher.

Do you really think that the only way to buy things in the real world makes it wildly apparent that one entity (or coalition of entities) is trying to corner it?

Why would it be abusable?

You equated them in one of your posts. In fact, I quoted you on it in my 2nd post before this one.

That same definition is on Wikipedia, verbatim, and I read it before I posted.

In CoH, you can only control the part of the inventory which you buy, and you can only by the part of the supply for which you outbid others. If the ongoing supply of the item is sold below your sale price, or if others buy above your purchase point, you achieve neither.

Edit: To try and be more clear... In the more "real world" examples, the price goes up because the parties who corner the market for a good establish sufficient control the good's supply. In CoH, the price goes up because the parties who "corner" the market are bidding higher, and thus increasing the price which others must bid to win against them. A significant part of the price manipulation comes from the increased price floor, and not specifically from the control of inventory. People have to pay more to outbid you, not specifically so they can buy the goods you have in stock (at a price you set).

I still consider it a misuse of the term.

Anything with a 7 figure price I will carefully bid creep for in something like 1-5M increments, and I really don't care how long it takes. It can mean I can can get anywhere between 10 and 50% purchasing efficiency, and I always consider that worth my time.

My 2-3 bid creep example was for dirt cheap junk, like uncommon salvage.

Except it's never a monopoly. Setting a price floor is not a monopoly. A monopoly is when you are the sole supplier of a good. Setting a price floor means you're trying to out bid everyone else who wants to buy something. Not only does this not guarantee that you're the only buyer for all goods, it doesn't guarantee that you're the sole seller at whatever price you choose to sell.

Nearly every "real world" version of cornering a market relies on buying up the stock of something that, while perhaps not finite in supply, has supply that is heavily "bursty". For example, buying up some crop commodities, the buyer can be fairly certain that no significant new supply can be produced locally after the fall harvest. Only the most low-supply goods in CoH are like that - typically certain low-level recipes that see little exposure as popular random roll ranges. When operating in these ranges, the person cornering the market is simply setting a high competitive price bid - they can't actually ensure they buy everything.

Essentially I consider the examples we have a misuse of the phrase "corner the market".

I guess its worth asking how much time you think bid creeping takes. I might spend 20 seconds throwing out 4-5 bids on something low price - usually if it's a cheap item I only try a maximum of like 2 bids before I just offer the "last five" price for it. For something in the 10s of millions, I'll spend more time searching around other levels for it.

There are situations in CoH, typically related to large numbers of entities on a map (be it a zone or a mission), where the server is "lagging". That's why people experience it even when playing on good gaming PCs.

Think about the server as having book keeping to do, where it has to look at every player and NPC and update where they are and what their powers are doing. It has to do this in an eternal loop, checking constantly to update everything fast enough that the players experience a "smooth" reality. But in situations like old Hami raids, there is too much book keeping to do, and the server starts having to take longer on each update pass than it's supposed to. Players experience this as a dilation of "game time" - things move around slower than normal, and powers take longer than they're supposed to to recharge.

Our game clients don't seem to deal with this very well - they tell us our powers are recharged, but the server disagrees. The client tell us something has moved somewhere based on a prediction for smooth movement, but then the server tells it that it's actually back somewhere else, and we see things warping around or fading out of existence.

Justice raiding is nothing like that. We post it in the two most widely known general-purpose global channels on the server (both of which people try to actively advertise to new players so they can find out about events.) It is usually posted at least one day in advance, and 3 days in advance is quite common. Often, but not always, a post is made on the forums. All these things are given extra advance notice for villain raids, because the lower population means that less notice may cause insufficient attendance.

Absolutely no preparation or planning is required for the vast majority of attendees. Instructions about how the leaders are planning the tactics are given at the beginning of every raid. (Most of the leaders have macros for this and they are readily passed around.) The instructions are terribly simple if you just focus on the instructions for your team.

The zone size limit is and remains a problem. Sadly, I just don't see what can be done about it with respect to getting significantly more people involved in a given raid.

That only matters if you only ever fight things where one blow ends the fight. Otherwise, you end up needing multiple blows, and the percentage time you miss averages into a percentage decrease in DPS. Viewed in this way, the percentage time that you miss also worsens your average DPE, because you spend the (reduced) endurance for the missed attack, and still have to deliver another attack (and spend the attendant endurance) to make up the loss.

They are. And damage enhancers also increase DPS.

Yes, but a raid is quite a few more merits, and it only takes 7 other people to form an SSTF, as opposed to a very conservative 34 raiders.

Either way, unless you're running the raid insanely faster, the STF/RSF are a lower opportunity cost per time you choose a Hami. This probably wouldn't matter as much except for the serious weighting Hamis have towards just a few types, with several of them being seriously rare.

>.>

The best part is when he macro "sings" that at raids.

People start to ask for it if he hasn't been to one for a while.

No foes in the AE give more than a 1.0 XP modifier, even if they do outside the AE. If they give more than 1.0 outside the AE, they give 1.0 in the AE.

Foes who have a less than 1.0 XP modifier outside the AE still have that modifer in the AE.

This was an unannounced change. It is not recent. I believe it happened in I15.

Also, very well played to the OP!

No, they won't, because heroes generally pay less than villains do. A villain trying to make a killing will be undercut by a larger body of heroes listing at lower prices.

At the same time some heroes will try to make a killing by selling at higher prices trying to sell to villains who are used to paying more, but few villains would pay more than they used to knowing hero prices are lower, and some will only bid lower knowing they can get a bargain.

Net result, prices end up somewhere between the two previous points. No one makes a killing except for the few people who have the wit and luck to ride any initial price disruptions due to abrupt shifts in purchasing. For example, hero-produced pet sets might see a surge in value.

So what? Assuming that happens (and I personally seriously doubt it will, because I do not believe the majority of active players hold immense hoards of money from ancient times before there was a CoV), they will be throwing some of that money at goods sold by villains.

The people who have huge gouts of money got it in one of two ways. They got it off the market, which everyone can do with equal alacrity in a merged same market, or they got it through farming or other activities. Come back when you can prove to me that villains can't farm up immense piles of raw inf. I'll be a long wait, since I've done it myself. Somebody produced all that inf villains are using to pay higher prices on the black market.


Heroes and villains never act as a collective. They act as individuals who sometimes have aligned market interests. Assuming equivalent production capabilities on the two sides, the collective is all-encompasing - villains and heroes do not compete as sides, they compete as individuals against all other heroes and villains. What matters is per-capita productivity, not collective productivity. The only time this model seriously breaks down is when one side or the other has a serious deficiency in what they can produce and nothing else they can do to make up for that. In a world of merits and tickets and especially with crossover characters, I cannot see such a concern as realistic.

Also, your example is unrealistic because it's backwards. Vilains would always be paying more for that kind of item.

Before the AE, prices for rare salvage was as high as 7M on both tech and salvage items. What's caused major price drops in rare salvage is the ease with which tickets can be used to buy exactly the rare salvage you need.

I really think your understanding of the forces behind the markets and how they interact is seriously flawed.

Cool. Thanks for that bit of historical info.