Bad_Dog

For my 2 inf worth of opinion, the game was never more fun than before ED. And as much as I'd like to play the game the way it was versus the way it is, I can also see that it is just not practical. Mostly, for farming reasons. Farming was far easier back before ED. I remember the glory days of my fire-ice tank rounding up a mission of ninjas and systematically dispensing with said group. Heroic feeling? Yes! Fun? Hell yes! Practical? No.

• Unless you limit the access to pre-ED mission(s) to only level 50's there will be a group of people who will take their second build and build with no-caps in mind and the farming community will explode again.
  
• If it's limited to only level 50's then 50's will farm it for influence or tickets, etc
  
• If you remove all rewards from it, there is no reason for anyone to do it more than a couple times. Then one has to ask, why would the devs invest any time in something that people would use a couple times?

Me personally, I doubt if I would have stuck with this game if I hadn't been completely hooked by the gameplay and power you could obtain that I experienced in beta. Things were so much easier to understand for a new player and it didn't take long to understand concepts like blasters need accuracy and damage in their powers, so I'll go 1 accuracy enhancement and then 5 damage. If I would have started now, I might feel puzzled when someone tried to explain to me that putting 5 damage enhancements in one power is a bad idea. Or totally lost when someone tried to explain to me auctions/IO's/crafting and set bonuses to do what I was trying to do with enhancements.

But, things being what they are, I understand why it can never be. *sniff sniff*

I'd just like to point out that at no point does Ocho mention that they (the devs) plan on doing anything other than supporting whatever the committee is doing. AKA base contests, listing concerns or bugs, etc..

Neither was a mention that they plan on addressing fixes/updates or have anything in the works for bases.

It is possible he/they want to remain non-committal, which just means we all shouldn't get our hopes up that this is a major breakthrough.

I don't doubt they were weaker than normal destroyers. And I agree a little xp is better than no xp. Otherwise, if there is no xp inside the mission, why do the mission?

Hmmm... should I auto complete the mission for the reward, or...
should I waste a half hour of my play time and maybe rack up some debt... and then get the reward?

Base contests? Seriously? Is that part of your pitch to the devs? Our sg base is great, it may be contest worthy but who cares? Base contests to get the devs interested in bases is a dumb idea. A contest serves no real purpose other than showcasing the amazing things we can do with a crappy system. It does not/will not move the ball forward in a quest to get changes made. Sure it may draw attention from the devs, who will applaud the winners, but how does that transfer into action? It doesn't. They already know who we are as a base building community and the level of our frustration.

If you want to do something constructive with your chat with devs then make the business case that was mentioned earlier or find a way that makes base building tie into the projects they are constantly working on. If you can get them to envision a positive cash flow with bases or have them envision it intertwined with their pet-projects things will change.

Microtransactions
This was mentioned earlier. While I resist asking the devs to charge us more $$$ for base upgrades, I can see this being a foot in the door. They created a booster pack out of nothing but emotes, why not an occasional booster of base items? You might say the Party Pack was designed for everyone while a potential base items booster would not. But I suggest that only a certain group bought the Party Pack ---- those that have the most serious fixation on emotes, which most of us do not share that affliction. Therefore, I see no difference between the two.

Charging us $7 or so and getting a Magic themed group of base items, then a Tech, Science, Mutant, Natural themes, etc. I think that would sell to almost all of us serious base builders and if they make them considered "personal items" in-game then all members of the sg could potentially be buyers, since all sg members can add personal items. And then they could repeat the entire booster series with different items/upgrades the next year.

Game Tie-In
It seems pretty obvious to me that the devs are a little frustrated with the now neutered AE. They clearly seem to trying to find ways to encourage us to invest our time in it. Why not make our bases available as a map in AE? If that was to get their attention then I could foresee potential base love to get the base editor more compatible with AE.

Base Raids
Obviously, player base raids have been completely nixed by the devs, or at least appears that way. But my idea is different and I believe I had posted this before. Why not have a new option for sg leaders? A on/off switch more or less to allow random enemy groups to attack your sg base. Either scheduled or at random times with no permanent damage to your base, (like totally repaired within 15 mins of the end of the raid). They already have triggered invasions of random zones, what if your sg could randomly trigger a base raid? A sg alert could be sent to your sg and possibly your coalitions warning of the raid allowing you to respond. And what if you could add your custom AE enemy groups to the random raiders group?

Admittedly, this idea is less of an incentive for the devs and more or less just generates interest in being in sg's and coalitions. But, pvp is still one of their pet projects. If things like this generate interest in our long lost player base raids, then base raids may come back and that does generate interest in pvp.

Incoming cash, pvp and AE are interests of the devs and efforts to sway them are going to be more effective by finding a way to bridge the gap between our desires and the elements they are interested in. Anyway, it's more or less only my opinion.

And since no one else posed the question I may as well. We want to know if we are justified in getting our hopes up. To what extent is your Dev contact interested in what you proposed? What exactly did they commit to? If it is no more than the same old responses then your work however well intentioned is doomed. I'll just leap right over the "hope" step at that point.

Fan: It's obviously they are doing to you what they were doing to me. You aren't allowed to have a dissenting OPINION with or without facts, unless you are part of the club. They will gladly take an opinion and turn it into a debate over minutia and try to turn you into a clown in the process. This has morphed into a meaningless debate over whether or not you said or meant "all" in a sentence.

It's no wonder the majority of people who come to the boards won't post. It's obvious their opinions will be clobbered immediately with a handful of regulars spouting fiction as fact. If that doesn't work then come the insults and sarcasm followed closely by bulldozing the conversation off topic into a debate over something that has little to do with the original post.

Everyone here needs to put their big boy underpants on and realize however "right" you think you are does not mean you are. And that is regardless of how many people agree with you. You aren't omniscient. Unless you can produce undeniable FACTS, your opinion is THEORY or OPINION and therefore it is no better than anyone else.

Being this is a public forum for all players, and not your own personal website, you can either accept the fact that people will not always agree with you or you can go post somewhere else like a Republican or Democratic website where everyone thinks exactly the same. People are allowed to post opinions that don't agree with a so-called "peer-review" of forum regulars. You don't have to like other people's opinion nor agree with them but you do have to accept them and without sarcasm and insults.

Using insults and sarcasm in an attempt to stop a challenging opinion or make a clown out of a poster for his opposing opinion to the "peer-review" is not only childish, but that's how things get out of hand like the majority of this thread. And putting people on ignore because they won't agree with you is no different then putting fingers in your ears and humming to yourself..... that's what toddlers do.

Until some of you realize this and practice it, we can only assume you boys want to play it like a school yard, then so be it. But for as long as dissenting opinions are attacked, you'll only find people who won't agree with you even if/when you are right.

Au contraire, mon frere. "Peer review", (as you call it), is meaningless because it is not fact. It is a group of people who BELIEVE they understand it well enough to come to a consensus among themselves. Oh you certainly may have had some people who did different experiments, but a handful of experiments does not make a theory, a fact. It does not matter how many times you posted your opinion. Facts are facts and theories, regardless of how many agree with you, are only theories.

If I don't farm, but I say I know someone who farms, does that mean it's not happening or not a fact because you and 10 other people may deny it's happening?

I stated market manipulation as a fact since I have personal knowledge of people doing it. And you may rightly challenge that as a fact if you like, but you are not disproving it if you can not show contrary evidence, like FACTS. For instance, you can say "I know no one that can do it" and that may be a FACT. To say "It is impossible" is a THEORY that you believe. A theory is an explanation of facts, without any facts your theory doesn't hold water. That's where you, mac and a couple others are off base. You think you don't need facts because some others agree with you. That's nonsense. Your Peer Review claim is entirely a consensus OPINION, or at best a THEORY. Your peer review is not fact nor contrary evidence.

Since you obviously can't produce FACTS and have no proof to support your assertion that market manipulation is impossible, I will lower the bar for you. Show me some post by a red name that says market manipulation is impossible.

Right after you show me some sort of verifiable proof that someone can not change the price of something on the market.

Speaking of people who don't have a vague idea of what they are talking about...

I never said someone can take a common salvage and put a price of $1 mill on it and keep there for as long as they liked. That's unrealistic. Which, apparently, you and Mac (who think only in extremes) seem to be suggesting I am saying. However, I did say I know people who are jacking up prices and they spend hours just sitting at WW to do it. Obviously they do not sit there 24/7. But they do it.

And as far as stepping to mac, who says I started this? I posted an opinion that drop rates should be higher and he replied by insults and sarcasm. He rolled the dice, I did not. I don't care who he is or you are. It's a forum for all of us players and we are all entitled to opinions. You may not like that concept, you may not like dissenting opinions, you might have already come to some sort of regular-forum-poster agreement on how you think something works, but none of that matters. You all need to deal with it and chill out.

Great, another one who wants to restart the entire conversation.

Market manipulation exists, deal with it. Although I have no way of knowing if they are as successful as they claim or not, I know people who do it. They have done so for a long time, which leads me to believe they are successful enough to continue doing it. It still remains a fact that people do it, which completely eradicates your theory that it is impossible. Which makes you completely wrong.

I don't like the fact that it happens, but I accept that it does. Which is entirely different than saying it "cannot" happen.

You mean like Arachnos VEATs? I just dont see the griefing aspect. I mean without any work it is easy to spot a player - they have names above their heads where NPCs do not unless you click on them.

NPC costume parts for players have more than 1 use.

First, it can be fun from a thematic point of view to have your characters backstory tie to some existing group in the game. For flavor or just something different to do from 1-50. Having some of the pieces greatly reinforces the character story.

Second, some people want them just to creatively add to characters that already exist or inspire them next time they're in the character creator.

Third, with AE, creating custom members of an enemy group is not pretty without some of the easily identifiable pieces that make a certain enemy group look like they belong together. A Skulls boss without the mask looks rather out of place. The same could be said for creating a custom Carnie character and not having any of the costume pieces.

I guess, my 2 inf worth of opinion is that there is a lot of people who would love use these costume pieces. It is possible a couple people will pull something that could be considered griefing, but I believe it is more likely that players are more interested in being creative with these costume pieces. And those of us with current alts that have a back story rooted in existing factions will love them to death.

This coming from the same guy who responded last time that:

"We already know it's not possible, and we've got three years' worth of time and an entire subsection of these forums behind us."

Make up your mind.

This may be entirely true. It is also possible the people I know who brag about market manipulation maybe aren't always as successful as they claim. I am aware of what they do and I know they've been working on this a very long time, but I only know what they claim and I can observe.

I am not going to devalue anything you posted here as you are at least open to the possibility that it happens. That makes us at least in the same ballpark.

baddog "Market manipulation exists"

macskull "it's not possible"

uberguy "So is nothing on the market ever manipulated? I know better. Is manipulation ongoing and rampant? I don't believe it's likely at all."

This more or less summarizes the points of view, and I doubt anything is going to change this, so let's leave it there.

Then there is no hope for you. Market manipulation exists, you denying it does not make it non-existent. Period.

I don't know if you were in CoH Beta or not, but back in Beta we had the full spectrum of colors available for skin for a while. At that time the female toons still had... um... "pokies" we shall call them. Unfortunately for the rest of us, people started making toons with identical pink skin and pink tight colors and naming them along the line of "Playmate", "Playboy Bunny", "Ms September", etc.

I don't know exactly why all the skin colors options were pulled for sure, but I strongly suspect the two events were related.

First, thank you for the civilized post and the previous one as well.

I don't totally disagree with your point of view. My original post was not about market economy but since that's where we are, so be it.

First, I understand the concept of knocking over a 7-11 but that doesn't mean I can walk into a 7-11 and pull it off like people who do it for a living.

Second, I am a casual player and my only serious time to play is a Saturday, I am not going to waste my playtime to learn how the guys in my sg do this for simple reasons:
1) I have no interest in it, I have plenty of inf,
2) I already know to be true and
3) I can post screenshots and some of you would outright reject it as being true.

Since, you and mac are the skeptics YOU two should journey into the market and play with it. You can independently make a conclusion whether its possible or not, you don't need me for that.

After reading Quatermain's post a thought passed my mind. It's possible the two people I know who use the markets for inf might be working together when they are doing it. I don't really know, I don't really care, I know they are doing it and it has absolutely no bearing on the opinion I originally posted.

Is it just you and mac that have trouble with reading comprehension? I am not manipulating the markets, but I know people who do. You might have missed that part of the post. It was between the top and the bottom line.

This coming from someone who offers only a sling of mud. Allow me to point out how useless your post was and if you wish to contribute something to the discussion how about posting something useful like contrary facts, evidence or information? Or don't you have any of your own?

Take off the "and keep it there" part of your sentence. Your challenge suggests a permanent fixed price which isn't possible. You ever consider maybe that's why no one takes you up on your offer?

Im never going to reach someone that refuses to live on the same planet where reality exists. You obviously can't grasp the fact that market manipulation of the prices is done - and every day. You denying market manipulation because it doesn't fit a text book scenario doesn't make a fact untrue.

Manipulators know how many hours = how much profit. They know which items are the easiest to run up the price on. They obviously also have a good idea people will pay. They jack with prices until it reaches the level they want it - then they keep it there until they reach their desired profit - then they call it a day. Does that mean someone doesn't sneak occasional lower bids in while they are doing it? Of course not. Does it mean that they can put a price of $1 mill on common salvage, of course not. Manipulators aren't retarded.

I know market manipulation exists because I know people in my sg that do it. And if you think these two guys are the only ones in the game doing it, you are being naive. Whenever there is a reward to be made from an in-game element, there will always be creative people who will find a method to exploit it.

You sure spend a lot of time trying to convince me your economic theory is a fact. It is not, it's your theory of how it works. It's how you believe it to work and you support it by selective and semi-related "evidence". That still does not make it fact.

A lot of this I don't dispute, because in a round about way you are making my case for me that they drop rate should be higher. If you want to make it an economics debate then yes the cap should be lowered. It is obscene that anything in the game sells for $2 bill.

If the cap was lowered, I don't dispute that people will hoard that item for a unknown amount of time. Which I stated in my last post. Certainly not forever, and only for as long as others are willing to buy at off the market prices. It will not last forever, the selling price will eventually be no more than market cap. Will there be shortages? You bet, I don't disagree with that. If the shortage is that high then obviously the supply is too low. Therefore, drop rates need to be higher. Which is exactly what I said in my first post.

You can continue to work yourself up into a frenzy all you want about supply and demand and fluctuating prices, it doesn't change the point of my post or the fact that this situation is the way it is because it was allowed to happen. That makes it a design, whether it is intentional or not, who is to say. But it can be resolved simply. As I stated in my last post, "either drastically increase the drops, drastically lower the cap, or to a degree do both."

Does the buyer have some of the blame, sure he does. But its hard to completely blame the buyer when the sellers are only posting the 3% def pvp IO at $2 bill.

And as for this quote: "seller can't get any more for their item than the buyer is willing to pay", that's not entirely true. It would be true if no one was "playing" the market. I personally know people who periodically go to the markets with the intention of spending a Saturday to make a fortune. Not by buying recipes and crafting them, but by systematically jacking up the prices.

You show your ignorance of the market by assuming that the law of supply and demand is setting the prices and that buyers and sellers are balancing the prices by their honest transactions. The majority of players are using the market honestly, but they are the prey. The minority are there to make as much inf as possible. It is not that difficult to manipulate prices. The longer you want to sit at WW's the higher you can get a selling price, if that is ones intention.

I have nothing against people becoming rich in this game, I am. I already have my billions and I run out of things to spend it on since I finished IOing out my 50s. If I can do it as a casual player then others can. But that doesn't mean I side with those that believe the markets should be the wild west where the sky's the limit. Grow up and give up the psuedo-economics lessons.

My point: The drop rates should be higher for PVP IO's and purple IOs.

The game is balanced around SOs, so what? Once you are 50 and you got purples how does that ruin the game and require "huge buffs to NPCs" and "global nerfs"? Only level 50's have purple IOs. It's not like you can slot purples at level 10 and blow through the game.

You can get far more from IO sets than you can purple IOs and that you can do this very effectively after 32 or so. And many, many players are using "plain" IOs (which are better than SOs after lvl 40) to max out their effectiveness without IO sets. Both are superceding SOs and neither of these has required massive NPC buffs and sweeping nerfs.

Your argument that purples somehow ruin the game is your opinion and I would guess thats mirroring some statement by a dev somewhere. Thats fine, but its still an opinion, not a fact. The idea that life should still be "work" at 50 is silly. We are all supposed to be superheroes and we all want to feel like a superhero at level 50, which is not the case if you happen to be a squishy and find routine deaths to 3 minion ambushes because macskull says you should be happy with SOs.

I'm not saying everyone should be +4/x8 and I know that not every AT should be solo friendly but what is the problem having level 50s that are super? Does it makes the game easier for level 50's, sure it does, your 50 and it should be easier. If you want it to be more work, then don't use the purple IO sets, skip the plain IOs and stick with SOs for your 50.

Don't assume you know how I play because of my opinion. Your assuming I don't have my favorite characters all decorated out, I do. But I see things as a casual player because I am one. Right now I'm thinking your an elitist, does it make it so? You obviously have no concept of fair.

I said nothing about everyone should have everything without working for it. There is nothing wrong with making them easier to obtain.


So anybody who is casual should not WANT purples. Sorry to burst your bubble, that's not reality. Casual players dont become hardcore players simply by desiring purple IOs. They just end up skipping "play" time with friends or family members for "the work".

You somehow think there is only two ways 1) the current system or 2) give everything to everyone free. I am not saying people shouldn't have to work for items, but I am saying that they need to be dropping more often. It harms no one to have casual players join the club of 50's with benefits.

If you blew through the content, got bored and left the game that's neither the devs fault nor my problem, that's a personal issue. If the devs keep rewarding those players with more and more time sinks then no one will play but the easily bored. It is naive to think that everyone leaves the game if you aren't constantly feeding the bored in the game. It also reflects on the devs feelings about the game, if they always worried about time sinks to counteract boredom in the game, then they must believe the game boring.

If the game is "FUN" then people will play, it is as simple as that. When it ceases to be fun and crosses the line into "work" then people will move on.

Since you want to make this a financial discussion too, take this into consideration. Carrots on sticks for the bored are a double edged sword. Why? Because when DCUO gets here, (or the next major game title) the first to leave will be the easily bored. It therefor makes more financial sense to not alienate the casual ones while you are showering the bored with gifts. The casual players, as long as they are enjoying the game, are those that will still be here playing.

So essentially you can- 1) keep giving pinatas filled with cool stuff to the bored while telling the casual players sorry, you cant have anything new, or 2) You can increase the overall enjoyment of the game by, heaven forbid, including casual players in accessing content/access to better loot. I never said, 'we should give everything away'. I am saying, if their financial strategy is tied to keeping the easily bored playing this game, then we are all doomed.

Using your "clarification" of what I should think, inventions entered the game in May 2007, so lets say its been an even three years, if I've killed 300,000 enemies in three years, probably conservative, then I should have had 200 opportunities. So then what's the ratio of chance to drop if I only got 6, among all my alts? It is .03 every 1500 kills. That average, you speak of, is not working correctly. Besides it doesn't explain the incident where I put a level 1 on a PI team for an hour and got a purple drop.


Oh how silly, a logic where you cap a price on something and it makes it more expensive. What planet does that happen on?

I do understand game economics, you are the one that's being naive. Currently, there is "very little" to "none at all" supply of PvP IOs at the market, so I can't possibly see how supply gets any worse. But since you are confused, I'll explain how changes would work in reality for you.

If they raise the cap to $3 bil inf then that +3% PvP IO is going to sell for more than $2 bil. That $2 bil IO got MORE expensive. That's a fact. I'll predict if they raise the cap to $10 bil you will find the selling price of something is going to be $10 bil. The only ways to fight this spiral of greed is either drastically increase the drops, drastically lower the cap, or to a degree do both.

If they lower the cap to, (just picking a drastic arbitrary number), let's say $100 mil then the selling price of that IO is going to be $100 mil. Not at first. Price caps do not affect the price of what players will attempt to get out of other players, it also will not stop those people who will hoard them for a while. In reality, players don't sit on something that has market value forever. Those not hoarding are selling theirs on the market for $100 mil. Eventually there will be no other outlets for the hoarders but the market and then they too will accept the selling price is no more than $100 mil. The prices got out of hand because they were allowed to. That is a fact.

Who says? Oh yeah, you do. You can wish it so, but that doesn't make it a fact. Most casual players face the game reality that they can't realistically can't get purple and pvp IOs and give up on them. If you asked any of them "do you want a free purple IO?", they jump at the chance. They do prefer to have them, only a minority does not.

I have stated my opinion, and it's pretty clear you would rather differing opinions not post here, well get over yourself. You may be a fanboy, you may enjoy the way things are, you may have the luxury of playing all week long, or maybe some combination of these, none are right or wrong. Don't kid yourself that your opinion is better than mine. Don't try to convince me with non-logic, facts that are really opinions, or reasoning that doesn't originate from yourself. Your fake facts, illogical reasoning and holier-than-thou attitude, combined with your insults and/or sarcasm reveals your limited intelligence.