Enyalios

If by boost prestige you're referring to converting inf to prestige.....well I've done 3-4B in a day before and don't know of any limit in times per any time unit. It is slow on updating sometimes.....but I've never had it not show up eventually.

Yeah probably.....but the OP is pissed about purple prices so the rest of the post is valid.

I like the billboards praising for 1 billion. Heck....I'd probably keep that on perma-buy if it was in.

Lets see....what would I change........

1) There needs to be alot more pool C stuff dropping between 25-46 so I'd allow rolling of any level IO with merits at any level (a 50 could get level 45s even of sets to 50 if they wanted) and perhaps make the rolls cheaper for IOs not coming out at max level.

2) I'd lower the amerit cost of purples and PvP IOs just a little to be more in line with what I believe was the intent of the devs (lowering their prices) who don't have econ degrees. Not a huge change but like maybe 14 amerits for purples and 22 for PvP IOs. Perhaps I would set the PvP IO uniques to 25 or 30.

3) I'd add some new sets to sections which are really needing them (Targ AoE, etc)

4) I'd add purples for more sets (defense, resist, tons of others)

5) I'd make the purples have more varied benefits rather than mostly being identically good at increasing accuracy, recovery, and especially recharge. Perhaps I'd even add a 2nd purple set to the core ones (melee, ranged, PBAoE, Tar AoE)

6) I'd add new sets for mez powers (or perhaps just fix the existing ones) which actually do damage like damaging hold or whatever so that people using those sets could actually 6-slot a damage power and not do un-enhanced damage/accuracy.

7) I'd add a new type of enhancer to be ultra-rare in the 10-49 range. They wouldn't be as powerful as purples but good enough that people would seek them out even if only for frankenslotting.

8) I'd raise the inf cap.....because its not like people haven't worked around it anyhows.

9) I'd make more inf sinks in the game other than market fee and blowing inf up for prestige. I love the idea of selling the billboards for inf....not like the game is making actual $$$ off those so do the game a favor and remove some inf on shiny trinkets for the uber rich.

Can't think of more now.

Did @Smurphy ever do purple farms? I believe he's not even active in the game at the moment so if the prices are high and he's involved its cause he's not doing it atm.

I think the core issue here is that alot of people who used to spend alot of inf on other parts of their build like LotG +7.5% and Numina/Miracle uniques are now finding those recipes cheaper which leaves more inf for the ultra-rare stuff.

Additionally since amerit farming is new and shiny....and with old purple/pool C prices probably the best way to make inf.......alot of people haven't been purple farming. At one point in i14 I was popping more than 10% of all redside purples and making ooodles of inf (total earned was something along the lines of 45B over a month and a few days). If you want to complain about the prices being high but don't see the opportunity to make inf then well......you don't understand economics.

As for what the uber-rich on CoX do with their inf.....who cares....some maybe like to sit on piles of shiny inf like Smaug and be happy with the size of their pile. I don't do that....since I slotted out most of the toons I wanted slotted high-end, I have been blowing it up to get my duo-VG with spouse to #1 on prestige list on Freedom....and I only need like 200B more so I guess its time to go pop 10 purples a week again (which will make me alot of inf AND lower prices by increasing supply).

I donated a billion to Fulmens. What the heck, he's provided me with billions in the past on prestige matching for my make-my-own-goal-cause-there-weren't-enough-things-to-do-circa-i17 of reaching #1 on Freedom's prestige list. The least I could do was send him a billion back.

Everyone else who has a gob should do this too.....what the heck its not like it takes that long to make a billion these days....and it won't even do much to spec out a PvP toon anymore.

A billion infamy is still quite alot even to the high rollers. Its not easy to make billions over and over or everyone would be doing it. That said, I can assure everyone that Fulmens has been personally responsible for removing over 50 billion from the money supply of the game through his matching program and for everyone with less inf thats a great thing because it means prices are lower because the in-game economy's supply of money is lower.

I salute Fulmens for his altruistic goal of self-making a money sink in the game.

If I knew I could adequately judge what @Smurphy would like, I would judge for you all and cover his costs till he came back. Unfortunately, I really don't want to try and judge winners with someone else's infamy and I'm not a huge fan of AE myself.

Smurphy has been very reliable. I'm sure he'll declare a winner when he comes back.

Lets see......I made a few bets on things.

#1 I bought piles of the pet damage uniques (non-purple) on a blueside toon or 2 starting about 9 mos ago. Total recipes acquired (205). Avg purchase cost of 11k..........I've sold 20 so far at an average selling price of 36M. I will still be making 300M a week in profits off this in March but its nice enough.

#2 I thought non-highend Pool C/Ds would do well while highend pool C/Ds would crash. So I bought alot of odd ball stuff that help make sets and I figured would rise from 5M cost to 20M or so. They averaged out going up 50% so like NG I crafted them to get an acceptable return. I now have huge piles of IOs pouring out of my base....but I'm averaging the 15M per IO/recipe profit I wanted though for much more work.

#3 I thought rare salvage would spike as people had alot more recipes to craft. So far this hasn't happened at all. I probably have lost 100M in opportunity cost on the slots these rares are clogging up.

#4 I thought there would be a field-day on prices of some of the more useful low level temps and common IOs. But people are apparently too lazy to walk to the 1 market and 1 uni in Prae so this hasn't come about. On a positive side.....I have enough recovery serums and kin dampeners stored on one toon to cover level 1-20 for about 11 accounts in case I ever get ambitious to play more in the pre-stamina time.

I too have done very well with Red Fortunes (and have been for 2 issues now). I dont get why they've held up so well but maybe with both NG and me playing them maybe we're keeping the price propped up. Not like there is a clearly better defensive set that isn't stupid hard to acquire.

All told I've made about 3B since GR went live which is maybe 600M more than I'd have made in the same period pre-GR. Hard to say how things will play out as all the Prae folks get to 50 (casual players not hardcore folks) but I have plans for that too....along with guesses on what i19 will do too.

Which works best varies from toon to toon honestly. If you can do +1 only 5-10% slower than 0 you'll do better in the end because of the extra good drops from the bosses. Lets be honest...is it useful to "fill-up" 10% faster but have 4 plasmatic tasers instead of 2 when you're done? +1 if your farmer can handle it is the best.

If you're going for pure purple drops then you should have gotten a farm map at 48th and run it on -1 once you're 50th. I still do that from time to time with my Inv/SS Tanker but honestly having much-less-valuable level 47 non-purples makes it not really worth it so I really mostly do it now to get the BP mask badge for friends or 2nd account toons.

In my experience here's how it goes:

-1 x8 -- you'll kill stuff like a whirlwind.....but a good chunk of the recipes you get will be level 49 and thus much less desirable. Probably not worth the speed increase.

0 x8 -- you'll kill pretty fast but you'll have alot of groups with no bosses. You won't get any level 49 recipes though.

+1 x8 -- you'll kill a little slower than on 0 x8, but with all groups having at least 2 bosses you'll actually end up on most maps with a few more of the high-end pops.


Anything over +1 x8 -- dont do it for the drops.....only for faster PL'ing, prestige farming, or whatever. The only things which are better here are the inf drops and the exp.

The ratio isn't that ridiculous. If you made it too much better people would just stay out of SG/VG mode all the time and convert everything. With Fulmens' support its actually quite cheap.

And honestly....what else are you going to do with your excess inf?

Praetoria seems a bit harder to me. But I whiz through most of the CoV/CoH content anymore. I dont know if its cause I know it well....or its easier. Freaks can hit hard but they're not hard the way Praetoria and its 10 ambushes per mission are.

Dunno if its just something weird....but my scrapper in Praetoria popped 3 level 10-12 tech resist SOs. Sold 2 of the 3 on market since I couldn't use them.

The best option is to go with a level 50 Perf Shifter End along with the proc to get the +5 run speed as well.

I work in the real life financial markets and I can tell you that the CoX market is a real-item market....not a symbolic market like we have moved to in the financial sector. I know things are supposed to be attached to real goods...but you can short a stock on the NYSE without actually having borrowed it from somewhere (which is how some stocks had short positions of 100% or higher during the financial crisis)...........you can also trade derivatives of derivatives which means you're so far removed from the real item that its symbolic.

In CoX an item is actually delivered on every transaction that succeeds so I don't see any way with how its set up to do a shorting system. Unless some enterprising player was to set up an off-market brokerage which allowed you to borrow items from them and so on. I just don't see that working...this isn't City of Brokers and trust me if it was most of you would want to poke your eyes out with forks rather than keep playing.

It really depends on time of day.

Infinity and Justice run #3 alot during much of play time.

Late at night Champion often runs up to #3.

Guardian sneaks in sometimes.

Figure out when you're most likely to log and check a few times around that time and you'll see.

The only thing I've ever been unclear on is are the EU servers on the same market?

Has anyone moved something from Freedom to Defiant for example through the market?

I had 5 schemes to make inf from all this and while only one has paid off.....its paid off big. I locked up 50 of a mid-range proc at an average cost of 10.5M (fully crafted) and they're selling about 8 per day for 55-70M. My level 10 generic IO scheme sold out quick but didn't make big money. My other 3 schemes are experiencing the same slowness you describe...but have patience, if your schemes were well thought out I'm reasonably sure they'll pay off in the end.

Maybe they hate praetorians even more than they hate villians on merits?

I had 2 of these things (a 50 and a 31) and dumped the 50 on market for 2B (-200M fee) and the 31 off market for 2.1B as soon as I saw how amerits worked. Most people will not pay obscene prices in the billions anymore because to them 2.75B is harder to acquire than the amerits to buy this thing the slow way (60 days).

Ergo......its not worth 2.75B atm unless you get lucky and hit one of the few people willing to pay that much who hasn't already.

Fury is right.....I don't reveal what I'm doing usually because it just feels bad......but even when I have nobody has come and stepped in my niches.

I mean I'll give you one I played redside forever......Titanium Coating Res/End

I was getting the recipes for less than 10k each....salvage for less than 10k.....crafting for 500k or so.....and then selling them for 10M each with an occasional typo where someone was being cheap (6.5M bid or whatever) and ended up giving me 65M. If you have one of these crafted redside, didn't make it yourself, and bought it since 2008 there's a good chance I made it. Considering how many of these things I've made over the last 2 years I'm pretty sure I've made 20-30B on them.

Am I afraid people will come try to take the niche from me....nah......you'll just drive up the prices short-term and then you'll get bored and I'll take the niche back after having sold my stock for 15M for a couple weeks as you drove up the recipe prices.

You mention people being pissed back in the day that you couldn't heal......well its gone to the other extreme now probably....healers are out of vogue and buffs/debuffs are de rigeur. You were just ahead of your time. Now storm has that hurricane kb thing.....so make sure to practice not spreading the mob out with it cause massive focused AoE damage is what teams really like now too. Just herd them into a corner or something and hurricane is really useful.

I'd make a new toon in Praetoria starting on Tuesday. There'll be tons of people so lots of chance to do whatever.

As for what to play......that depends on your playstyle honestly.

Scrappers are easy because you just find things and beat them down without concern for aggro management or whatever.

"pure controllers" I assume you mean a controller who isn't trying to do damage along with their mez/debuff(buff). Yeah sure controls plus debuffs are always welcome unless you've run into a really bad group. Some controllers do massive damage too but honestly I find those combos often lousy on teams because the players don't worry about the team and think they're farming.

Have fun and find something you enjoy.....its still basically the same game underneath though inventions (i9) did change the power balance between players and the npcs alot.

I agree -- the gaus proc is only worth it if you're 6-slotting. Not worthless, but not amazing either.

Its not greedy.....its ebil.......and given that my goal is to reduce inflation by destroying a total of 200B (yes billion) inf making it into prestige I don't know if it really counts as greed anyhows. I don't know what the supply of money in the game is....but I know if I wasn't doing what I'm doing along with Fulmens and 1-2 others that prices on everything would be at least 5% higher across the board (except on stuff which has no bids ever).

But yes....I pre-plan well in advance. I'm already stocking up on stuff I think will become more valuable with incarnates system approaching...though I'll admit we're more in the dark there so I may well be wrong with more of those moves than I have been with the GR ones.