Another_Fan

Originally Posted by Eldorado

And we DO need more influence sinks in this game to fight inflation. I'm still not sure why they took out the nominal charge to speak to a Hero Corps rep and change mission difficulties, but that was one change they probably never should have implemented. While I can't prove it, I really don't think any of the designers/developers have a very firm grasp of how things work in the closed ecosystem of the CoX economy, and wish a couple of them would read this forum regularly and perhaps learn from the knowledge here. (I mean, we all KNOW how the poor villains have suffered now that the markets are merged, right? )



I just hope they implement some sort of change before rare salvage hits the 2 billion inf ceiling and everything else gets traded off-market -- which is still a LONG way off, obviously, but it looks like a possible outcome with the current "INF gets generated, INF never disappears" model.

Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon

I REALLY doubt that. 0.65 damage with no Fury would not survive very long, even with a Brute's HP. Heck even a Tanker with 0.65 damage wouldn't be capable of soloing.

Of course you might mean "The damage output of defenders" as in "A team of Repeat Offenders steamrollering over everything in sight."

Originally Posted by MrHassenpheffer

So, in short it has been both nerfed and buffed.

I don't like the nerf part but I can certainly understand why.

I guess one thing that is being overlooked is the actual damage potential of a brute.

That's one thing mid's doesn't cover: the use of reds

I have some macros setup to convert inspirations into reds. When I am mobbed up insp drops regularly, showering the reds upon my brutecake of destruction.

It's the use of those reds for that damage potential that makes the "nerf" not so noticeable.

I think it's an even trade.

Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon

That's incredibly rude.

But it's true.

The truth is, there were many factors that could interfere with Fury building besides player skill. But for the highest performance Brutes, for the most synergistic power sets, it was a nerf.

Brutes still work fine even with the nerf, though, and it's only about a 13% reduction in DPS, solo. And that's if you assume your Fury has fallen from 90% to 65%. (The so-called "30% reduction in +damage from Fury") I personally have no problem running around 75%.

Originally Posted by je_saist

buff.

Major buff.

That's pretty much all you need to know. Brute's got buffed.

Originally Posted by Lothic

I'd suggest to anyone reading this thread that if you want to get this going you'd better do it now before it's nerfed. The Devs already nerfed this very mission in the last patch and they nerfed the CoP Trial to stop people from using nukes in similar ways. Seems pretty likely the same might happen here...

Originally Posted by Ironblade

Personally, I'm not civil when someone posts something that is demonstrably false. I will immediately jump down their throat so that a newcomer is not misinformed. (I'm not referring to your post. I'm just saying that I'm well aware of when I will be 'not civil'.)

What most of the "market forum regulars" have in common is that they are well-informed about the market. Imagine that.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

As crazy as the debate with Max_Zero has been, I think he's been pretty civil. Same thing with Blue_Centurion over in the other recent epic thread. Saintly? No, but better than some of the regulars. No one should claim that everyone here is open-minded. Some people see stuff they disagree with and shut their brains off.

It's possible (likely?) this thread will do what the one with B_C did - spin around a lot and not really convince anyone participating of anything new. I still think a lot of good information gets posted. If these threads teach anyone reading them something they didn't know, or get them to think about something they never considered before, I think they were worth having.

What people need to learn to do is disagree without pissing on each other personally. That's what gets people bent out of shape, and for some folks creates grudges. Sadly, this is the internet, and wishing for non-pissy, non-bent-out-of-shape people who don't hold grudges is like hoping your driveway will turn into 24 karat gold. It'd be sweet, but we shouldn't hold our breath.

Originally Posted by SwellGuy

Then he throws out the tired example where someone points out that you can mess with prices, for a short time, and he ignores that people post they lose money when this is done and it is done purely for entertainment. This is not flipping. Flippers don't flip for losses.


Of course then this poster would say I am lying, which I am not.



Meanwhile the pro-flipper posters are forthright and honest about their self interests when asked. So who's the liar again?

Originally Posted by Max_zero

Low ball listings do exist whether flippers are there or not. Or do people specifically provide low ball bids just for flippers?



This quote equals flippers lower inflation? Do the words "higher price" or "IO costs more" mean anything to you?

It's true they add an extra set of listing fees. It's also true that every IO they flip costs more. In fact the increase of price of flipped must be higher then the listing fees otherwise the flipper wouldn't do it.

If you a IO cost 30 mil your not going to flip it to 31 or 32 mil are you? The increase price you put it at must be worth your time.

As this must be my last post for tonight it's 12.30am and I'm tired.

See you all tomorrow.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

I don't know if they'd limit it by account, since no other merit stuff is. But if they were looking to be particularly draconian, just to be safe, I suppose it makes some sense. You can't create Inf on multiple accounts at the same time, but I do suppose you can collect it on multiple characters simultaneously, using the market. Of course, that case becomes a pretty good inf sink.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

Well, let's look at this Reward Merit rates we know of today. The only reference I know of is still recorded on ParagonWiki here. It lists the target rate of minutes per Merit produced during merit-producing activity as 3.7. The devs apply a bunch of fudge factors to modify how many merits/minute specific tasks are actually worth. I'm sure we could have lively, many-party debate about how valid those fudge factors are, but at least we have a base target rate number to work with.

Some of the top end farming numbers I've seen are 30 million inf/hour. I'm pretty sure those numbers were from before the devs doubled the inf reward rate that 50s get, but lets stick with the 30 number, since I doubt everyone who farms is "top-end". (As a point of reference, my more tricked out level 50 characters can earn from 5-10M inf/hour running things like paper and scanner missions, with that range depending primarily on how high I can set their team size and have them survive.)

So using that 30M inf/hour number, we get 500k inf/minute. At a target rate of 3.7 minute/merit, that works out to 1.85M inf/merit.

At a merit purchase rate of 1.5k inf/merit, we'd have a rough equivalent of 333.3 merits per minute. I'm going to guess exceeding the Dev's stated target by a factor of 90 or so is probably too gracious. That sounds to me like it would radically flood the system with non-purple, non-PvPO stuff.

Enyalios' number of 2M inf/merit is a lot close to my guestimate, and works out to an equivalent of 4 minutes per merit - a lot more like the Dev's target number.

My guess, though, is that they would hedge even higher, because elapsed time isn't the only constraint on Reward Merit production. There's also something of a barrier to entry, at least for stuff with the best peak Reward Merit rates, which are TF/SFs and trials. Not everyone has access to a team that can form up fast or run anything like the best completion times, so not everyone is churning out fast Reward Merits. I'm thinking that's why there's such a firm time constraint on Alignment Merits - they're the "common man's" substitute for Reward Merits in the sense that they really don't have any more strings attached than regular missions and arcs do. (Edit: Well, they do have to own GR and stay hero or villain. I don't know what that does to production rates.) Thus I'm betting way more people can produce them , and so (my thinking goes) the Devs put more firm limits on how fast any character can produce them.

So since anyone (at least anyone with a 50) can produce boatloads of inf with no comparable rate limits, I'm betting the devs would fudge any inf->merit conversion rates upwards from the ~1.85M inf/merit I got above. I have no idea what fudge factor they'd use, but I'm thinking at least a factor of 2.5 or so. So using that and the 1.85M inf/merit number, get 4.625M inf/merit. I'll fudge down to something "round" and call that 4.5M inf/merit, which would be 9 minutes per merit.

Whether that's high or low from what they might do is probably most heavily dependent on the number used as the estimate on inf farming rates. I have the sense that they would hedge high on this number to mitigate the impact of things like AE exploits.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

So I don't believe that Alignment Merits increase the rate anything like allowing inf to create recipes directly (or, indirectly, by allowing inf to create merits) would.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

Yeah, I think the dev's implementations of Reward and now Alignment Merits shows they are very interested in putting greater reward/time constraints on the ability to create new items for use or sale than exist on the creation of inf.

Not to suggest at all that there's not variability in rates at which Reward Merits can be produced, but they are more restricted than Inf. The rate limits on Alignment Merit production are even stronger. (In that light, I find it interesting that the only available way to increase the rate of a character's production of Alignment Merits is to burn both Inf and Reward Merits.)

I agree that, if one is worried about Inf-flation, an Inf recipe store would do wonders. I just think the merit situation may be a hint that the devs don't want recipe creation rates to be subject to the wild (compared to merits) production swings we see in Inf today.

Originally Posted by Enyalios

Human beings by nature look for people to "Other" and exclude from their groups. Membership in the us (non-othered) group provides some sort of satisfaction to them. Its just how people are structured.

Be honest.....you're walking down a cruddy street in New York City (lets assume you're white and middle or upper-middle class) on the way back to your car. Your brain will cause you in this mildly dangerous situation to react to otherness as bad to the degree of otheriness someone else has.

For example, under these circumstances if a spanish speaking, dark-skinned person and a silent dark-skinned person walk past -- most people will perceive the spanish speaking person as more of a threat by moving out of their way, avoiding, etc. If a scuzzy-looking white person and a silent dark-skinned person walk past most people will perceive the dark-skinned person as more of a threat. Its pretty much degrees of otherness barring something outstanding like the white guy acting crazy or doing something offensive (mostly this is a judgement call othering the person anyhows).

I've even caught myself doing it, even to the point once where I crossed the street (dangerous in NYC than the risk of not crossing all things considered) in order to avoid passing someone who had done nothing wrong but was coded as othered in my mind by his garb and general look.

So why do some players seek to declare that marketeers are reducing their fun? Honestly its because they don't marketeer and we're a convenient if not disadvantaged minority of players which are easy to scapegoat for their own inability to have everything they want all the time. Of course marketeers (myself included) often do the same back by calling purchasers of their items the BUY IT NAO! crowd rather than simply people who value their time a bit more than their inf.

Welcome to being an imperfect being who is pulled as much by hormones and instinct as reason. We call ourselves humanity (which is derived from latin roots which meant the same as me).

Originally Posted by UberGuy

Ad homenim by third party. But fair enough - I happen to think the people you know are wasting time and game money bothering to build specialized exemplar builds. Buy hey, if they're having fun doing it, who cares, right?

I suspect I know what you mean, but from my perspective, it's literally impossible to remove the purples and have the build come out ahead for recharge. Set bonuses do nothing to decrease bonuses from Incarnate powers, so removing the purple set is a straight up reduction in the recharge of every power over having both the purples and the Incarnate buffs.

Moreover, if you remove the purples, the build becomes less viable at lower levels, when you could just keep the purples and retain their bonuses at any level. The only reason to do that becomes the cost.

No disagreement. Of course, that has something to do with why I don't bother with second builds if I've invested heavily in the main one, which I typically do.

I think you're trying to subtly overstate your case by using the word "marginalize". I have very few builds where I would not benefit from both the global recharge benefit of the incarnate slot power in question and the purple set's recharge bonus. However, I also tend to favor very click-happy powersets and worry about optimal DPS chains.

More exemplar friendly in what way? The purple set never loses its bonuses. Unless you're worried about the total enhancement of the Stun power (one of the last things I'd have any concern about in that build at any level), the purple set is more exemplar friendly than anything you could add to it. Or did you not mean in reference to the purple set at all? If so, it was unclear given the conjunction with the first part of the sentence.

Personally, my version of that build would have more purples in it, not less. I would not be six slotting the +defense powers, likely investing saved slots in my primary attacks to improve my DPS. Also, I probably would not choose the +recharge as my Incarnate power. (But I might.)

Originally Posted by Lohenien

I'll give you a real world example of you. Mr. Car repair shop manager likes shiny things. Mr. CRSM sees Jay Leno rolling around in his shiny expensive car and says "I want!" .

Problem : Shiny expensive car costs 1.5 million dollars , Mr. CRSM only makes 45k a year.

Your solution : Put price caps on shiny expensive car so anyone can afford it.

Real viable solution : Earn more money so that shiny expensive car is within your spending range.

The issue is that the real viable solution requires effort that many people aren't willing to put in to achieve their goal.

The market is not supposed to look friendly to every casual joe because the market is 1) PvP and 2) not a store.

Complaining that you want to own a garage comparable to Jay Leno when you only make a fraction of what he does is complete and utter non sense driven entitlement issues. There is no logical argument you can successfully use to justify that kind of a position.

Showing up at a new car dealer and asking to buy a new Mazeratti or some such with only 10k in hand doesn't work.

PvP and purple IOs are the shiny expensive cars of CoH and no, not everyone should get 5 for creating a new character .

Originally Posted by UberGuy

I don't know of anyone anyone I play with that's ever used a second build on more that one character, and I can only think of two people who did that. Both were VEAT builds. I don't know anyone who's ever gone to the expense of making a 2nd build for purposes of exemplaring. The reason is that a high-end IO build usually exemplars fine unless you're highly optimizing for farming at a low level or something. I typically build with max-level sets, and all my builds work fine down to Positron levels.