Driver 8
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Posts
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Joined
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Best. Thread. Ever.
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Quote:Wait... so 'mathematician' is a kind of philosopher now? ;pOriginally Posted by seebs
I can't even establish convincingly that the planet exists, let alone that it existed in the past. However, I can argue reasonably persuasively that I have found explanatory and predictive power in a series of assumptions as a result of which I can accept, at least provisionally, a series of methodologies and ways of interpreting sensory experience that allow us to draw more definite conclusions about the planet's age, and that at the very least, it appears that using these methodologies leads to more pleasant experiences than disregarding them does.
(Someone is supposed to say "I bet you're a blast at parties", to which I respond with a single-sentence post using vaguely Germanic word orderings, which has to be broken into two parts to get around the forum software's length limits, the upshot of which is "people love a philosopher, or at least, will pretend to if the philosopher sticks dollar bills in their thongs.") -
Quote:Mm, tasty databurger, gracias! And handy guides in your sig also.Originally Posted by Fulmens
Driver 8, two points:
1. I want to emphasize that the "what to vendor" rule that you were given for level 10-14 is ONLY for low levels.
There are three "groups" of salvage: low level [1-25], medium [20-40] and high [35-50]. If you're beating guys that are, say, level 22 you will get 50/50 salvage, half low level and half medium level.
There's almost nothing really shiny in the 1-20 range, and so there's not that much crafting that goes on using that salvage. This is why you vendor so much of it. Once you get to midlevel salvage, most of the orange salvage is worth millions.
2. Seebs' question points out a very good way to make money in the low level game. (I made billions on a character who was at level 17 and living in the market at one point.) Craft stuff for high level characters. If the recipe is the slightest bit desireable [details TBD] you can generally sell the crafted IO for at least a million more than the recipe, crafting costs and ingredients. Why? Some people want it now, and don't mind paying.
And now, as I am clearly slap-happy from sleep deprivation, I must go faceplant. Thanks again everyone who helped fill up my brain with information goodness. -
Quote:Allow me to add that in my experience, the people who say that in other games are usually:Originally Posted by Maniac_Raid
That should have been the moment you hit the quit team button. Not because it is his job, but because he's obviously not willing to work as a member of the team.
In Warcraft 3 you could hit Alt+QQ to quit a match. If someone complained to much they were told to "Stop complaining or QQ". Eventually it became a taunt by the uber-L337, when they'd win a match saying the loser is unskilled and should just quit. As with Emoticons, the QQ could look like a big pair of eyes with tears, it became more of a "Cry more noob" type of thing. And like was said before "Less QQ more pew pew" basically means stop crying, and fight.
a) PvPers who are being scolded for ganking lowbies,
b) DPS who don't want to wait for the tank,
c) raiders who didn't listen to the raid boss, or
d) some combination of the above.
In other words, this species has already been identified, and it is invasive. Do not feed it.
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Quote:My bad; now that I think about it, I was looking for accuracy for a passive power that does to-hit debuffs or something like that, and couldn't take those. So I shouldn't have spoken generally. On reflection, that's probably more specialized and thus not made as often.Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
Is this redside or blue? I just did a quick check of WW to confirm, but there are huge amounts of yellow (uncommon) set IO recipes on the market with accuracy, at low prices.
Two examples:
Melee Damage: Bone Snap: Acc/Dam. Between lvl 15 and 25, the range is 5k to about 15k influence.
Ranged Damage: Far Strike: Acc/End. Same levels as above. Anywhere from a low of 111 to 40k or so. Averaging about 10K though.
And thanks for your other advice too.
At this point I can't even afford to craft the ones I've got, but I think I can get some friends to give me a bump as long as I've got a goal to work toward. Just don't wanna be the mooching 'twink me twink me' friend, yaknow?Quote:Originally Posted by SwellGuy
Each one varies. I tend to see how much the enhancement sells for versus the recipe since usually people pay a lot more to buy the enhancement. For example a Steadfast Protection: KB Protection can go for many millions more than the recipe but the salvage to craft it are cheap.
Typically I cannot afford the listing fee on my first one without twinking so I list if for as much as I can and take what I can get because I just don't feel like wasting more time than I have to at the markets.
Okay, now it's starting to make sense! So it's still gonna be a gamble, but given that I've got so much common salvage in my pockets that my pants are falling down, I can afford to bet on the occasional impulse buy coming around, especially if I've got a few more levels to do this in. Which I do, since store-boughts will keep me afloat longer than I thought.Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
I can probably explain what's going on there as the aforementioned impatient and rich people buying things by rote price entry. We see it a lot, and some of the regulars here (some in this thread I think) bid that way regularly. The price is so seemingly volatile because there are people paying anywhere from 1-4 orders of magnitude more than they needed to.
We see this kind of pricing all over the place, but the more expensive something is, the less frequently it happens and/or the smaller the overpayment. (It's very common to see someone pay 100,000 for something they could have gotten for 100, but you can probably guess it's extremely rare to see someone pay 1,000,000,000 for something they could have gotten for 1,000,000.)
So, in summary, what you're seeing is that the item in question is basically worthless, but people are paying a lot for it anyway, because they are rich enough compared to the cost that they don't care.
Of course, if they looked at the price/bid/list info, they'd probably see they could pay less and still get it, but for some folks, it's just more convenient to throw the inf at it and be done.
Seriously, y'all, I am so grateful for all this help, you have no idea. I've gone from 'pulling my hair out' to 'eager to get back in the game'. This is a great community.
Sorry for the derail! We now return you to your regularly scheduled simulated capitalism.
(EDIT: And more good info from UberGuy while I was posting this. Thanks again, makes lots of sense.) -
Quote:Gracias! That's a rule that even my leaky memory can retain.Originally Posted by SwellGuy
Unfortunately until Aug 17 (M-Day) comes out the answer is "it depends". Currently from levels 4-20 a hero smacking Hellions and Circle of Thorns can get some common arcane salvage and do well enough to afford their DOs.
Few recipes in the 10-14 range are worth anything so many rolls using AE tickets for bronze rolls in that range can work on both sides (hero/villain) once you get a KB Prot or some other valued recipe.
Simplest rule of thumb I can give for 10-14 is:
recipes unless they do something special : vendor
uncommon salvage : vendor
rare salvage : vendor
common salvage: if anyone is bidding list for 300, else vendor
There's no reason to buy set IOs at 10-14 unless you have more inf than sense (like me).
What about the recipes that do something special? Is there a ballpark price for those, or do I just need to sit on them and watch the market? -
UberGuy: rather than quote your whole post, I'll just say -- thanks, this is exactly the kind of info I was looking for and not finding. You are indeed Uber.
It's especially comforting to know that if I can't afford one of those wacky hexagonal doodads for a particular slot, the ones from the store will do me. Huge relief. Some people have been telling me otherwise, which was making me nervous.
Any advice for the confusing (and in my experience so far, common) case where there are thousands selling, none buying, and the last listed prices look like a bomb-test seismograph? That's the kind of thing that makes me pull my hair out. -
Quote:I've been trying several different types and builds, so I can't give you a short answer. But I did get a crash course in frankenslotting from some friends who've been playing a while, and I priced it out, and it leaves me with a lot of empty slots. I don't even know if that's typical. Random-checking over the past couple-three days, I haven't yet seen set IO's with accuracy in the name going for less than 2m. And none of my toons have more than about 200k in pocket. So I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to do some smart selling.Originally Posted by SwellGuy
I can't give you a good answer without knowing what level you are, what AT and primary/secondary.
The reason is because you mention all the bonuses you can get. Bonuses are mostly worthless at lower levels. Frankenslotting will generally be far more beneficial.
I don't do the market games but I am careful about what I target to do (enemies/missions) for maximum benefit. I either go the insane IO route or the get enough inf to buy my DOs/SOs route depending on how much I plan to play and how fast I expect to level but even within that it depends greatly on the character.
For example, my pets do all the work for my mastermind so at the lower levels I want them having as much Accuracy as I can get for them. I boost my secondary set to help my pets keep me alive. None of this requires much in the way of IOs. But on a brute I want to keep my endurance bar going so I want Accuracy on the attacks and +Recovery and -End on the attacks and armors. Though now the temp power Recovey Serum is taking the place of that work.
So I guess what I'm asking is, is there a simple rule of thumb a newbie can use to sell the kind of drops he's getting in the 10-14 range for enough to buy these items?
If the answer is, "No, do your math homework or buy the vendor ones," and if the vendor ones are considered adequate, then I'm content with that. I just wanna know.
EDIT: UberGuy says the vendor ones should be adequate. Do you concur? -
Quote:http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...Id=11119&sid=1Originally Posted by UberGuy
How many WoW servers are there? There are something like 10 million WoW subscribers, while CoH has something like 100,000 subscribers.
Ummm... you count 'em, my eyes are crossing. ;p Lots and lots? -
Quote:Originally Posted by SwellGuy
I'd guess common or uncommon salvage that has 0 bidding and tons for sale with numbers like those and lacking the other two data points.Yep, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. The sort of thing a confused newbie most wants to get out of his bags.Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
Based on the presence of 1, 5 and 100 inf sales in that list, I am guessing you are looking at common salvage.
If I vendor it all, I can't afford the enhancements I need -- keep in mind, I'm not a good player yet, I'm still just kinda walking into walls and facerolling, trying to figure it out, so I need all the bonuses I can get. With that in mind (and if folks don't mind me threadjacking like this), can you suggest a simple rule of thumb for making an adequate profit without having to sit on full bags?
I'm not looking to make millions fast. Just slot up to the point where I can play at level and not have to be carried. This is with normal play, no farming. (I like AE missions, they're fun, but I'm playing each interesting story once, not finding a lucrative one and doing it over and over, which is what I believe is meant by AE farming.) -
Quote:I think we're in agreement here. As I said, I don't know how much effect auction length has on market stability. But that short history you're talking about is exactly the lack of data I was bemoaning.Originally Posted by UberGuy
I'm not at all sure why you feel that those attributes are what create a stable market in WoW. In fact, long-standing bids have a tendancy to stabilize prices, so 48-hour maximums actually is a force against price stability.
CoH's market has high price volatility for a few reasons. Possibly the most strong influence on this is the short price history. People who do not spend time tracking long- and medium-term price trends base their bid and/or list prices on that history. But because that history is so short, it is subject to perturbation by even just one sale price that varies significantly from the other four. Some people will speculatively bid on low deviations and speculatively list on high deviations, and this can cause drift or even sudden shifts in the short-term trend.
Another contributor for CoH's price volatility is that there is a lot of currency in the system. I can't really compare this with WoW, as I don't play it, but I can see what happens here. Imagine you are have just huge piles of cash on hand, and want to buy a Paragon Widget: Bonus to Ego. You want one right now, and you want it crafted, and you have more money than you know what to do with, so you bid 3x the going rate. Then combine that with what I described above about the short history and its impact on price volatility, and consider what might happen.
Add in all of this that we also have some people selling things for much less than they are worth. This too is a potential shock to the price trend, though for popular or high-demand items this shock tends to be absorbed by flippers or other folks with low-ball but still "reasonable" price bids.
Finally, WoW has a much larger playerbase - closing on two orders of magnitude larger. That creates much more market activity, and more market activity (buyers and sellers) improves how well a market converges on stable prices.
If limited auction slots have an effect, it may well be influencing those very low prices you mention. If you can only sell, say, 9 things at a time, and your inventory is full -- and since there's no bank in this game, unless you have a SG with space in its salvage racks, you have to sell things to get them out of your bag -- then you're going to try to get rid of them fast. I think it's very tempting to post things for 1 inf, because that way if anyone's bidding at all, the item's gone and your slot's free. And once you figure out that lowest price gets highest bid, it looks like a gamble worth taking. So maybe you end up with a fat wallet, or maybe the sale history of the item fills up with 1's, which pretty much wipes out any useful data they might get on what the thing's worth. That's my theory, anyway.
I don't think WoW's larger playerbase is a significant factor, though, because its markets are per-faction per-server, whereas CoX's are per-faction cross-server. Is that correct? If so -- I don't have numbers handy, but I think the population on one WoW server doesn't exceed the playerbase of CoX. -
Quote:I've noticed that, and oh man do I like it.Originally Posted by Frogfather
For the record, you dont sound hostile, you sound reasonable. One thing about CoH forums, thoughtful polite questions will beget thoughtful polite answers
Yeah, I tend to do that...Quote:I think youre trying to learn too much at one time.
I think what bothers me is that there seems to be so much to learn -- and memorize, which I'm terrible at -- simply to get started. At level 13, my recipe slots are full of things I can't afford to craft, and this is after I've been vendoring all common recipes up to this point. My salvage slots are full of the things I didn't try to sell because whenever I looked at the market snapshot it showed these bizarre enormous price swings, so I had no idea where to begin.
By 'bizarre enormous price swings' I mean something like this:
10,500
5
100
222,222
1
This is not what I would call useful market data.
Now, I've found the guides that tell you how to calculate your minimum price. I'm beginning to accept that I'm going to have to either print out the formulas and play with a pad and pencil to hand, or vendor everything and play at -1 level to avoid getting stomped (due to lack of useful enhancements). I guess what I just can't get past is this nagging feeling that there ought to be a better way. :|
Anyway, I'm totally threadjacking here, and I didn't mean to. All I wanted to do was point out that a moving average would be more useful than the last 5 sales (it's 5, right?), and that such a change in the interface would probably smooth out the market a bit and make it more accessible to new players.
Cuz I'm willing to bet most new players aren't rabid datavores like I am. Though most of them are probably better at math, because it's hard to be worse.
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Quote:Yes, I'm a new player. I thing I said so in my post? Or did I forget to? I've been awake a long time.Originally Posted by Frogfather
Im not going to argue with you or tell you you're wrong. I see your forum date is Jul 10. Maybe youve been playing for 3 years and just now registered, but I suspect youre relatively new and are approaching the market with your WOW experiences as your guide.
Im going to make a suggestion, the market is fairly predictable. The things that are expensive are the things you want to slot, the levels that sell are the max, the min, somewhere in the 30s for any particular IO that isnt a global or proc. Every other level doesnt move as well. IO sets that offer defense or recharge or both are the big sellers.
So to determine whats valuable in your inventory figure out what you want to slot if you had no budget concerns....
As for the market itself, the trends are predictable as well. Every night common salvage goes for a tenth of what it does during the day, rare salvage about half....
What Im saying is dont judge the market based on first glance, Ill bet the WOW market was intimidating when you first looked at it. Take a long-term patient position with everything and limit your initial scope to interest and observe....youll see the trends Anyway, been playing a couple weeks, and I was presenting a new player's perspective.
The WoW market was intimidating on my first day. I'd never seen an in-game market before. I had no idea what was going on. I asked a few people, had a look at the forums, went back and looked at the items for sale, and slept on the idea. The next day I went back and it started to make sense. A few days later I got one of the auction addons, and was able to make informed decisions about what to sell, when, for how much.
Here, I've been asking around, talking it over with some very smart people, reading the forums like I'm studying for some kind of exam, doing controlled experiments, and I'm still baffled.
From what I've read on these forums, people take handwritten notes, they keep databases, they try to memorize things, or they just plain guess. It's either a lot of fiddly work, or it's an art.
Now, I'm not saying that's unfair or wrong. It's certainly a type of minigame you can play. It's one I'm guaranteed to be totally pants at, because my memory's full of holes, but that's my personal problem.
All I'm saying is that lack of data is what causes the market to fluctuate the way it does. In a stable market, an item wouldn't sell for 200k at 5pm and 20 at 3am. It would be worth roughly the same amount no matter the time of day.
...I hope I'm not coming off as hostile here. I'm a bit dismayed by the nature of the market, but I'm not trying to pick fights with those who claim to understand how it works. On the contrary, I need to learn from you guys, because it's pretty obvious I'm not going to figure it out on my own.
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I may be jumping into a shark tank here, but I'm gonna trust you guys not to dogpile me if I say something stupid...
I absolutely loved the market 'minigame' in WoW. The one in CoX... I won't say I hate it, but it's not fun. After thinking about it a bit and reading this thread, I think I can articulate why.
The market in WoW has what I see as two crucial differences. First, rather than a limited number of slots and an unlimited auction time, it has an unlimited number of slots and a limited auction time. You could post a kersquillion items or bids, but none would ever last longer than 48 hours. Second, the game engine allows (even encourages) addons which can get/store auction data and enrich your auction house interface.
These things combine to create an extremely stable market. Although it differs from server to server (as the market isn't linked between servers), on an established server it's possible to post on the forum and ask what something should be selling for, and people who use the auction data addons can tell you quite specifically what a fair price for the item would be.
What I'm seeing in CoX, on the other hand, is a wildly volatile, unpredictable market, in which a new player like myself can't even begin to guess how to buy or sell anything. The only data one is able to obtain is a recent snapshot of sale prices; even within that snapshot, the price may vary hugely, and over the course of a day or two the same item might sell instantly for millions or languish unsold for double digits. Although I gather that certain high-ticket items have nearly fixed values, and that an experienced player may know what these values are, from the perspective of a new player, the market is a slot machine. I make a bet, I pull the handle; maybe I get rich, or maybe I just lose my quarter.
It's confusing, it's frustrating, my inventory's full and I have no clue whether it's junk or gold. I just want to play the dang game.
So in conclusion! (Yes, I have a point.) Market caps are obviously silly. But it is possible for a game market to function freely without becoming random. I'm not sure how significant the effect of limited auction time versus limited auction slots is, but it seems clear that the availability of accumulated market data over time is extremely significant to market stability.
I don't think CoX would have to change to allow user-created addons. (In fact, I gather that would be ridiculously hard to do.) All they'd have to do would be to provide, say, a 7-day moving average rather than the last handful of sales. I believe prices would smooth out a lot, and new players would be less likely to burst into tears and vendor everything in a fit of depression.
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Okay, I apologize for thread necromancy, and also for being a noob, but I must try my hand:
Q: How many controllers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Only one, as long as there are two lightbulbs, so he can make them change each other. -
The 'all-same-ugly' problem nearly kept me from playing this game.
I got a free trial account a few months ago, loved the character editor to bits, then got into the tutorial zone and went, ".... oh." But hey, give it a chance. So then I got to Atlas Park, and my first impression was, "So it's a Soviet Brutalist version of Des Moines, filled with pusher robots. Maybe that's on purpose?"
Then on my first mission I got lost. And on the way back I got lost. And on my next mission I got lost. And on the way back I got lost again. Also stuck in cul-de-sacs, turned back on myself, routed down things that looked like roads/alleys but just went around a building and came out on the same side. There were no landmarks. All the buildings looked identical. And everywhere I looked, those creepy pusher robots were either getting mugged or walking past muggings without noticing them. *shudder*
So I decided to try villain side. Promising, at first; at least you could tell which way you were facing. But it was so cluttered and dark, and so full of messy little alleys and junk, that I again got lost. And lost. And lost. It was a bombed-out postapocalyptic ruin, inexplicably filled with people standing around waiting to kill me. Why were they there? There was nothing to steal. The looting was obviously long over. There weren't even any pusher robots to mug.
At that point I gave up. Let my trial account lapse and pretty much forgot about the game. Fortunately, about a month ago several of my friends got into it at right around the same time WoW irritated me to the point of cancelling my subscription there, and I decided to go ahead and give CoX another chance just to play with my friends.
And now I'm hooked. So I'm glad I came back, and now I'm seeing some of the really cool stuff, and looking forward to more coolness in the future.
But my point is, my first impression of the game, based on the dated, cloney, boxey blue side starting area, and the headache-inducing darkness and depressing pointlessness of the red side starting area, was basically negative. It didn't make me want to keep playing.
TL;DR: Make the zones a new player first sees look more distinct and vital, please. I'm bummed out to think how I nearly missed out on this awesome game just because my first impression was bad. -
I'd like to chime in on the requests for selectable idle stances. Either on character creation, probably on the attack animation screen, or in-game with a 'set this as your new default' option so the game remembers.
I'm pretty new to this game, but I'm already an altoholic. And of my many toons, only one looks right with the 'Superman standing on top of a tall building' pose. A couple would look great with a parade-rest pose -- you know, the Captain Picard, fists-loosely-clasped-behind-back pose? One really needs a thoughtful, intellectual pose -- an adjusting-glasses or stroking-beard animation would be awesome, but anything to keep my weedy bespectacled mad-scientist from thrusting out his chest with his hands on his hips would be an improvement.
The current idle pose is especially silly on villains, as I believe someone else has pointed out. Some need a sneaky pose, some need a ready-to-explode pose, some need a slouchy gangbanger pose, some need a lurchy zombie pose... oh man, that would be awesome.
Oh yes, and the arms-folded part of the Superman pose looks very weird on female toons, even the ones who can otherwise pull off the golden-age pomposity. Not to mention how cool it would be if my pipe-wrench-wielding tomboy could have some kind of hipshot, gum-cracking, wanna-make-something-of-it stance. I mean, while I'm dreaming. That's pretty much the coolest thing I can imagine.
...
Actually, now that I'm really thinking about this... I would like to see all the animations that impart a set personality to your character become optional, have other options added. The 'Tarzan' animation has been mentioned as particularly out-of-character for a lot of people. And even if you want to stick with the classic flavor, can you imagine Batman doing that? There are a lot of animations that appear to define your character for you, and they often look quite dorky.
More to the point, I can't think of a character concept where both the patriotic-hero pose and the Tarzan animation are in character. So the sorta default pose-personality is self-contradictory. Customization is a big part of what makes CoX so very awesome. Let's have some more of it! -
Quote:Oh my word... there's a website?Originally Posted by Westley
and.... they fight crime!
That's the entire concept behind my SG. Teamups that are awesome because they make no earthly sense. And now I'm going to go over there and click refresh about a squillion times. -
Arc Name: They're Super Freaky!
Arc ID: 432786
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Driver 8
Difficulty Level: 1-20 solo friendly (I hope!)
Synopsis: Zombies have broken into a dance club and stolen the DJ's record collection. Why? Maybe they just wanna rock?
Estimated Time to Play: Pretty short, it's just one map. 15 mins?
This is my first go at the AE system. It's just a bite-sized bit of comedy fluff, but I hope it'll make you smile. I'd especially love feedback about the difficulty level; I want it to be non-frustrating for solos and duos at low levels, but not so easy it's boring. Also, if you have any negative feedback, don't be shy! I write for a living, I'm used to criticism.