Another_Fan
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Quote:I am sorry but that is flat out wrong and I can cite examples.Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
As has been pointed out to you multiple times before, you don't need "loot" at all to play this game. All the freebie accounts are doing without just fine and judging from the Justice server where I spend most of my time there are a plethora of new freebies playing. Loot is entirely transparent to them and judging from the enjoyment I am seeing from them, not missed in the least, quite a bit like it was for me back in I8.
1. You can't advance your character beyond SO/HO levels of power without access to lewt be it incarnate pieces or inventions.
2. The ability to solo parts of the game becomes nearly nonexistent for many ATs and less than optimal powersets.
This use of "Need" has always struck me as a meme that was initially promulgated by people that liked the market and wanted to silence people that didn't.
Batman would be Would be a more combative Sherlock Holmes , and Iron Man would be Steel or any of the other legion of characters that created a set of incredible powered armor, with the parts in their garage and bits and pieces from the local junkyard.Quote:A bit of hyperbole there. Where would Batman be without the Batmobile? All the money he spent on his high tech gadgets? He'd be a pretty plain SJ/Invul scrapper.
Ironman would be absolutely nothing without his high tech toys.
Much of this is easily replicable with IO set bonuses.
This is hardly a point of disagreement between us. The bypasses and escape valves, that tickets and all the various merits are, were needed fixes to what were big problems with the game. The real question is would have been better to fix the market mechanism instead of tinkering around the edges and introduce all kinds of new problems.Quote:I like more options. A excellent example for me is prices on Rare salvage. If they are at or above a certain level and stay that way then I use tickets to buy the salvage instead. Its actually a valid economic force. It prevents the market from being a monopoly much like in the real world. Think food prices are too high? Plant a garden.
Not following your reasoning. There are very clear efficient reward paths. TFS trump Story Arcs, Tips trump TFs, Sig Story Arcs trump TFs, Incarnate Trials sat at the top of the heap by an enormous margin before converters were introduced. More of the that tinkering in the hope of fixing a problem that could have been avoided in the first place.Quote:Not really, the very above thing that you are complaining about is a safety valve for that kind of behavior. Certain things are more efficient in certain areas. Since you need components from all those activities you diversify your time or, if one of those activities is something you don't care to do you can go back to the market and avoid it. It just gives you more options.
Once again where are we diverging ?Quote:Preposterous. People who don't want to deal with the market simply don't. Anyone I sell something to OFFERED the amount of influence I received when I sold something, even if I only asked for 1 inf for it.
I am not speaking of just common anything. Nearly everything on the market is being listed at 1 inf.Quote:Also there are lots of reasons people list things for 1 inf. I do it with common salvage. I can use /auctionhouse between missions and list all of the common salvage I have for 1 inf. I don't have to take it to a store, I don't have to simply delete something that someone else might want to make room in my salvage bag, I usually (but not always) make more than I would selling it to a vendor, and it usually is all sold by the time I finish my next mission. -
Quote:Well there is a bit of merging of ideas in there. Separating them out we have wealth in the game vs perceived wealthy and poor characters in the comics.Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
There are several comic book characters that are exceedingly wealthy (Bruce Wayne, Reed Richards [in a good year], Tony Stark, etc.) There is absolutely no reason wealth shouldn't be in the game and the market mini-game is an excellent tool to use for characters that have the "rich playboy" concept.
I know many people that started playing the game because unlike other MMOs it didn't have "LEWT" the way other MMOs did. This was a selling point for them. Whether it should or should not be in the game isn't important, its here, and for the people that didn't want it, its not a plus.
As to the comic book characters of immense wealth, their wealth unlike wealth in the game is really unrelated to how powerful their characters are. Spiderman the poor reporter is every bit as effective as Iron Man the multibillionaire, Superman the poor reporter, easily outclasses, Bruce Wayne the billionaire. The wealth or poverty of comic book characters is usually little more than window dressing.
Well judging by their actions neither do the devs. At least that is what I take away from them taking so many steps to let people bypass the market. A market that was the most complained about feature of the game for a very substantial period.Quote:We've been told that the CoH loot system is time based. That's why story arcs and TFs have different numbers of merits awarded on their completion. I have absolutely no qualms with the players that spend their time earning their loot from the market instead of from running missions. If that floats their boat who am I to tell them they are doing it wrong and what's the chances they will listen anyway?
Regarding the lewt system being time based that is its own can of worms. I would love to know what drugs were involved in designing the metrics. As things stand the system herds people into a narrow band of activities that are likely to burn them out on the game.
None of my post was commentary on how difficult or easy it was to use the market or is to use. It is a statement about what people want from their entertainment and how they approach the game.Quote:I have completely outfitted a toon without using the market. It took me almost 4 times as long to do it that way.
The CoH market is extremely easy to use. You can get good at it WAY faster than you can learn how to play a blaster well. The people that want IOs without expending any effort have an entitlement mentality I have no responsibility to them what so ever.
Do what ever work that comes natural to you to earn your rewards or do without. That's what it boils down to.
Anyone who actively markets has to be aware of the fact they are taking advantage of people that don't want to deal with the market. The immense amount of salvage on the market listed for 1 inf, the recipes listed for next to nothing aren't being put their by people looking to work the market, or maximize their profits. That is the behavior of people that don't want to deal with the market. -
Quote:/ForeheadslamOriginally Posted by Arcanaville
Then there's that, which is at least for me synergistic.
Oh silly me I forgot what motivated you on this. You thought you were going to be one of the first trillionaires in the game. Of course you are looking for a lower number. -
Quote:Well how ironic especially looking at just this thread. You are up to what 5 tries of justifying your initial estimate by skewing data and trying to discredit patterns of distribution that hold just about everywhere ?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Your consistent level of certainty would greatly simplify discussions, if it was contagious.
Do you always just pick your conclusion and work backwards or do you occasionally let the facts dictate the conclusion ? -
Quote:Originally Posted by Lohenien
The only problem with the market is that it doesn't work for people who feel entitled to IOs. The market is not a store but people don't understand that concept and / or the concept of supply and demand so therefor they complain about the supposed hardship of making enough to afford IOs.
This entitled group of people has been less vocal in the last couple years. The reasons for this include but are not limited to : increased knowledge of how the market works, increased desire to participate in the market, alternate paths to getting loot in game and alternate paths to getting loot "out of game" ("out" only because the PM is in fact accessible in game).
I really doubt that a great percentage of people all of a sudden read the market boards and said "Why yes I am going to play a superhero game so I can be a bookkeeper", let me roll up Bob from Accounting right now.
The entitlement sword is one that cuts at least three ways. People who can work the market feel entitled to enhancement because they can work the market, people who play the game, in the simple manner of running missions with their friends feel entitled because they do that, people who farm and generate the resources everyone else uses feel entitled for doing that. Everyone feels entitled. Back when everyone was complaining the market was the only game in town, unfortunately the devs were looking at the people screaming loudly against a better more efficient market and went "OKEY DOKEY" we won't change the market but you aren't getting your grubby hands on new stuff. Now we have all this bind on acquire crud.
The inclusion of tickets, and merits are undoubtedly what has had the greatest impact on quelling the dislike of the market. These days it is relatively doable to outfit a character completely bypassing the market -
Quote:ROFLMAOOriginally Posted by Arcanaville
It may be even more direct than that. It may be that the vast overwhelming majority of players do not want to spend any time marketeering at all, but do use the markets for two things: they dump stuff to sell at low prices and buy what they want at the minimum execute-now price. In other words, they treat the markets like a store and execute at the prices that will execute instantly, which makes them high buyers and low sellers. Which means the markets for the majority of players may actually act as a very efficient influence leech.
Sorry, but of course most players can't stand the market. The devs are certainly aware of this, almost all their market related changes since I12 have been directed at letting people avoid it.
Merits
Tickets
Alignment Merits
Sig Story Arcs
Astral Merits
Empyrean Merits
Converters
Resetting the market in I18, may or may not have been primary purpose
You can see the thought process playing itself. Pre I9 they were thinking a competitive PvP oriented market would open new vistas for the game, completely ignoring the fact that many people came to the game because it didn't have "LEWT" or "LEWT GRINDS". Guess what as wealth got concentrated, the few people who actually enjoyed the market game got to control the bulk of the wealth, and everyone who came to play a superhero game got ticked off.
The only people I have ever seen defend our market system as a good idea are people who were defending their ability to benefit from it or people that were too foolish to understand what people could and did do with it.
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Quote:Prestige is going to provide a very poor proxy because of the way prestige is generated below 50. Going from 1->30 in supergroup mode generates roughly 120K prestige or 60 million inf equivalent and something on the order of 6 million inf.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I was thinking about another potential data point, but I haven't had the time to really collect it like I wanted to. Supposedly there are about 300,000 super groups in the game. The total prestige they contain could provide an estimate for a lower bound limit on the amount of influence that has been generated in the game. But that's a much trickier analysis for two reasons. First, you can't trivially list all the supergroups to find their prestige counts, and even if you could, tallying 300,000 would be crazy even for me. Second, there's two ways to generate prestige, one by *earning* influence at the same time, and the second by *destroying* influence converting it to prestige.
You also have pressure to exit supergroup mode as you increase in level. The cost to the character to stay in SG mode is greater and the demands for inf to equip the character are greater as well. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
It would be extremely difficult to balance. On the other hand, there's a new mechanic in the game that would theoretically allow the devs to make blasters' vulnerability hard hitters while making them far less vulnerable to smaller amount of burst damage. In other words, they could still be killed but they would be much harder to simply whittle down. Just a thought.
Do they actually want to improve blasters at this point ? -
LOL
Rain of fire, firebreath, fireball are all better places to put it.
Unless you just don't care about the hit your endurance use is going to take in blaze. -
Quote:What is the ATs intent ?Originally Posted by VKhaun
I like it as long as it goes along with the AT's intent instead of turning them into another melee character. It should only give Ranged/AoE defense in addition to the damage, not typed defense or any melee.
The only thing you can say is defining for the at is low survivability. Anything that increases their survivability pretty much goes against that.
Anyway blasters don't need little tweaks that don't do very much for them either they need the damage they gave up for survivability and everything else for or they need the "Least survivable" taken out of their intent. -
Quote:The Pareto principle is about population distribution. The 80% is a straight 80% of the population, the 20% is a straight 20% of the population.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Some percentage of the 50s are part of the 80%, and some are part of the 20%. It doesn't seem currently possible to know what that percentage is so it seems currently impossible to to know how large the 20% is and how much influence they have.
Edit: I thought about working it in the reverse but I have no idea how large the number of trillionaires is, the data is also shakier in that direction -
Quote:The statement by the devs was 500k accounts had achieved level 50. Inf generation below 50 from direct play is very small, and the destruction is offset by a very short length of play at 50.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Some percentage of the 50s are part of the 80%, and some are part of the 20%. It doesn't seem currently possible to know what that percentage is so it seems currently impossible to to know how large the 20% is and how much influence they have.
The absolute worst pure inf earners can make 2 million+ inf per hour solo, so for the 40 million to be invalid they would have to play less than 20 hrs at 50.
Generating inf with a single alt below 50 and few market slots is something that can be done but not something you would really want to, so I wouldn't consider the below 50 high earning noobs as a very significant percentage of the total. To the extent they are there they would just make the estimated inf larger.
Edit: Am I reading this wrong ? and you are trying to say that out of the 500k accounts that hit 50 you can't know what 80% of them are or 20% of them are ? -
Quote:I was only using the population of 50sOriginally Posted by Arcanaville
I don't think you can get there directly, because you can't automatically call that calculation the 80% even if the 80/20 rule holds. And its unlikely to hold strongly for the specific case where there is a variable driver: there is a driver for influence generation from level 1 to level 50 that vanishes at level 50. The 80/20 rule, if it applies at all, is far more likely to apply to all influence generated at level 50, but there's no current way I can see to estimate the proportion between leveling generated influence and level capo generated influence.
edit to be precise accounts that had made it to 50 -
Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That generates a lower bound limit for influence *generated* at 20 trillion. That's an inconsequential number compared to the hundreds of trillions conjectured to be in circulation, and doesn't factor in any influence destruction due to market activities. In fact, when I did that calculation myself it sounded to me to be of comparable magnitude to the estimated influence destruction likely over time from market activities: tens of trillions of inf.
On the generation side, all I get are estimates of tens of trillions of inf generated and tens of trillions of inf destroyed, which makes the lower figure of merit estimate tens of trillions of inf.
My guess is that farming or just plain playing at level 50 is more likely to generate more influence than leveling to produce the numbers the devs have given. But while its possible for the playerbase to generate hundreds of trillions of inf in theory, I still don't see compelling evidence that the activity required is likely to be happening. Its not unlikely either: there's just no strong evidence either way. But before I looked at the markets I believe everyone including myself assumed that if large amounts of influence existed, the markets would be one large reservoir of it. At the moment, I don't see enough bids to make that likely.
That automatically means that prior dev reporting errors aside, the assumptions players have made appear more shaky than they originally appeared to be. Its not a question of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that hundreds of trillions of inf don't exist in circulation, its a question of whether the analysis that suggested that amount is solid. I think its much more questionable without a gigantic influence reservoir in the markets.
Actually the exact opposite.
Its incredibly unlikely the wealth distribution is going to be linear. If it obeys the 20/80 rule the way real world wealth distributions do
80 % of the pop = 16 trillion inf (assumes 80% have the very minimum)
20% of the pop = 64 trillion inf
So we are talking about 80 trillion as a minimum.
Now seeing as we are talking about 100,000 accounts in that 20% and we know at the top end there at least 4 trillionaires, it suggests that the size of curve is considerably larger. -
Quote:Looking at the information that was posted, we have 500,000 accounts hit 50. Getting to 50 generates roughly 40,000,000 inf. So if you use 40 million and 1 alt as the low end of the wealth distribution curve across that number its pretty easy to have that much inf in the game. If the wealth distribution obeys the 20/80 rule it does in real life it's more likelyOriginally Posted by Arcanaville
The numbers are there in theory, but they require huge participation by the entire playerbase which seems unlikely. The original presumptions were that only a fraction of the playerbase could be responsible for a huge amount of influence. But if that assumption is faulty, there is no missing influence to account for. In that case, the question becomes why is it reasonable to assume, with no other evidence to support it, that hundreds of trillions of influence exist within a hundreds of thousands of alts collectively storing a huge amount of influence.
Edit: The real question is which numbers or assumptions are wrong ? The 12 trillion held by scrappers, 500,000 accounts to 50, behavior of the "average player". I favor the 12 trillion being off seeing as the last time the devs gave us an inf number it was 56 billion. -
Quote:Your summarized position and your arguments are not in accord. You keep bringing up exclusivity as an excuse why paragon shouldn't do this. If you don't care about exclusivity you have absolutely nothing to complain about.Originally Posted by Hopeling
I summarized my position a whole six posts ago. I'm not advocating that anything should not be sold, as I said there. I don't care about exclusivity. This will be less annoying for both of us if you will please read my posts before you quote and reply to them.
As it stands Paragon would be better served coming up with more interesting tier 9 premiums to entice people into spending their money. I seriously doubt that the percentage of people who buy points just to get a token is anything but minuscule, but the people that buy points sooner because they get what they want and a token could be quite significant indeed. -
Quote:These situations are more uncommon than a "Good Player" can actually manage. The teamed situation only works when the team is playing up to snuff. The tank isn't continuously over aggroed. The support characters are actually throwing useful buffs out there, etc etc. When that does come together it reflects well on everyone else but the blaster who's only contribution was to get on a good team.Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
What I mean by contrived, is intentionally creating the situation. We do that several ways as blasters, combining Stealth and Super Speed for PvE invisibility, teaming with a Brute or Tank, pulling, slotting for mitigation through IO set bonuses, using PFF/hibernate/phase shift to splash the Alpha, munching inspirations like candy and using an inspiration cascade, Sizing up the battlefield before opening to identify the most serious threats, etc.
All these things are very useful and helpful to blasters while simultaneously being virtually unneeded by all the other damage dealing ATs.
Trying to maintain an insp cascade on a blaster that is fighting enemies with any damage type they are weak to or let alone a mez is a plan to fail. -
Quote:If you would like to be convincing you should actually get your facts right.Originally Posted by Hopeling
Right, they clearly won't be, which is yet another reason it's a very poor analogy to make, since that IS what CoH has done.
Seriously, if you want to even attempt to be convincing, you're going to have to do something other than make increasingly bad analogies. Discuss the actual topic.
All you advocate is that paragon studios not sell to the vast bulk of its customers and instead cater to people who have no incentive to make further purchases. Your business acumen is astounding. -
Quote:You fail so completely words escape me.Originally Posted by Hopeling
Really? I really have to point out that you're using yet another incredibly bad analogy, after I've pointed out multiple times that incredibly bad analogies are unconvincing? Talk about the actual topic, not another thing that looks kind of vaguely like the topic if you squint and ignore the multiple crucial ways in which it is different.
In fact, this analogy is especially bad for you to make, because it is completely contrary to what you're trying to argue. There is a considerable contingent of people who wait to rent the movie or watch it on TV, rather than go to the theater. So yes, that is hurting ticket sales. Not just a little bit, either - the entire theater industry is slowly being replaced by people watching at home, and theaters are terrified and reaching for any gimmick they can think of (like 3D) to try to convince people to buy tickets rather than watch at home. And if Avengers was advertised as being available only in theaters, never to be sold on DVD or shown on TV, and people spent money on tickets for that reason, and then they decided to show it on TV after all, people would indeed be upset, and trust in theaters would be undermined, and their future business damaged.
Television has been around for 60 years for a dieing industry the theater business somehow manages to make more money than ever.
Don't take my word for it
http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/
But really I suggest you take your customer loyalty plan to the Studio Heads
I am sure they will be jumping over themselves to increase their revenue and control of the market by putting exclusives in theaters and never offering movies outside of theatrical distributionQuote:And if Avengers was advertised as being available only in theaters, never to be sold on DVD or shown on TV, and people spent money on tickets for that reason, and then they decided to show it on TV after all, people would indeed be upset, and trust in theaters would be undermined, and their future business damaged -
Quote:I understand the Avengers movie opened on Friday. Right now its exclusive in movie theaters but some time down the road its going to be on free TV.Originally Posted by Hopeling
It's not even about other people getting my shiny thing, it's why should a player want the special shiny thing from subbing when they can get the same thing, at a fraction of the cost, just by waiting. Would some still want it immediately? Oh yes, definitely. But it loses some appeal by being an early adopter's fee rather than an awesome special benefit.
Somehow I don't think the fact everyone knows they will be able to see the movie for free is going to hurt ticket sales -
Quote:Any analogy is going to be "incredibly poor" for someone bound and determined not to understand it.Originally Posted by Hopeling
And again with the incredibly poor analogies. There aren't multiple competing CoH "gas stations" offering different car wash packages. There's just the one game.
If you have to spend money to get it - which you do - it isn't free. By definition. The car washes in your example aren't free, either, by the way. They're included in the cost of the purchase, which yes, means that the station not offering car washes but selling gas at the same price is a worse deal.
Here let me help you. The gas = CoH, The stations the various ways you can buy CoH time. You can still use your car if you don't buy gas you just have to get out and push.
Complaining that bonus costume sets cost you a fortune is like the guy who pushes his car around complaining he had to buy gas to get a car wash. -
Quote:If you have two gas stations both selling gas at the same price. One offers a free car wash with a fill up and the other doesn't, How much did you pay for the car wash ?Originally Posted by Aggelakis
....wwwhhhhich you have to pay cash for. (Or, well, credit or something.)
Now same two stations but this time the second one offers a wash with a $40 purchase. How much more does the car wash cost at the second station ?
Now there is a third station opening up, this one sells you gas at the same price, tosses in a car wash for cumulative purchases over $40 and has a gas subscription plan that gives you the same amount of gas, a car wash, and and $5 bucks credit at their mini market if you pre buy your gas for the month ahead.
How much are you paying for the car wash this time ?
Now lets say the Gas Stations start selling the car washes. Are you going to go bonkers and buy gas from someplace else because you have been betrayed ? Because you had to spend $40 to get your car wash ? -
Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
well, except that you have to pay cash for them.
but otherwise, yeah, totally.
Except that you don't, and they give them to you for just being subbed.
And this business model that depends on people buying their way up ?
How many are left that didn't already spend their money to get them ? Or do you expect the revenue from new players that are willing to spend 400 bucks to get just the costumes to overwhelm the sales from everyone else at 5 or 10 buck price point.
Yeah this thread delivers the funny the way Pagliacci does. -
To be completely fair.
I was certain they rolled dice to get those numbers. -
Quote:HmmOriginally Posted by Fulmens
Email doesn't help that much; you'd need 5000 accounts full to the top to store 100 trillion. I don't know a large percentage of "big money" people, but nobody I know does that.
100,000 accounts in the game
For the sake of argument
100 mil on average in email/ account
An average of 3 alts per account
an average of 100 mill stored on each alt
There is 40 trillion right there.
Now if we assume an average of 1 scrapper/account we know the devs pegged the number at 12 trillion inf on scrappers. That gives us 120 million per scrapper and they are the most popular AT so that jibes with the 100 mil average per alt.
All you would need to get higher numbers of inf out there would be more Alts.