EvilGeko

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Frankly the consignment house system can not be setup to cater to the 50's.

Quite the reverse. The pre-50 game, as far as Inventions go, is not merely unimportant, but totally irrelevant.

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What a bizarre notion. Certainly 50's will seek to optimize where lower levels your in that fight between influence/infamy and slots for your powers. But there are entire sets that cap out at level 30.

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Venture, in his own harsh way, is right. Inventions will have the most utility to level 50s and since level 50s (really all high levels) have the most capital and means to obtain capital, they will be market drivers no matter what you do.

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Player A1 puts up a Level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Player B1 puts up the same Level 12 TO for 1,000 inf.

Player A2 (trying to transfer funds) offers to buy that level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Since player B1 wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).

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That is disturbingly brilliant. I would have never thought of that. You did a fantastic job.

Symbolically speaking, the last roadblock has fallen. I am officially euphoric for the arrival of i9.

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Actually, it's stolen wholesale from FFXI.

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Who're you kidding, our devs probably paid retail.

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No dude, I saw their Sam's Club card.

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Transfering aside, I think that the method of going to the lowest offer is not a good idea. The purpose of the blind auction is to maximize the benefit to everyone involved. People end up buying things for what it is worth to them. The way it is supposed to work, however, in the case of multiple suppliers, is that you end up paying what is closest to your offer without going over. It isn't to give undeserved profit to someone who undervalues their selling item. In the science of Supply Chains, people bid what things are worth and they offer prices of the perceived value and are rewarded for this, not punished for it.

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QFT.

Having people rewarded for pricing their goods near their true value would allow average prices to adequately reflect the true value of goods.

As the devs often do, they try and fix one problem, in this case twinking, but they do it in a way that causes more problems than it fixes. And in this case it fixes nothing because there are multiple ways to circumvent this to twink. Ways that no one has really considered.

Twinking is a fact of life in MMOs and intra server it's going to be much easier and cheaper to use a intermediary. Especially now that you can do it in one transaction. Inter server twinking is going to be tricky but still easy. There are literally thousands of unique goods that can be sold on WWs. Some of which are quite rare, but quite useless.

For example, what if I do this:

1) Character A1 (level 50) puts up a level 48 Sci/Mut Fear duration DO that dropped as trash loot while playing (after checking to see if there were any for sale and finding none) on the broker for 100 inf.

2) Logs off; Logs on character A2 the same player's level 12 character.

3) Character A2 buys said enhancer and immediately put it up for 100 inf.

4) Player logs on level 50 and buys enhancer for 5 million.

The likelihood of there being another DO like this on the broker is infintessimal. The DO isn't sold in stores, and it's not very valuable so no one is looking for it. But it's rare. That's the funny thing. So intercepting that trade is going to require having that particular enhancer ready to go in the minute it takes the level 50 to set this up.

If you think the devs stopped twinking, you're dreaming.

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Player A1 puts up a Level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Player B1 puts up the same Level 12 TO for 1,000 inf.

Player A2 (trying to transfer funds) offers to buy that level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Since player B1 wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).

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That is disturbingly brilliant. I would have never thought of that. You did a fantastic job.

Symbolically speaking, the last roadblock has fallen. I am officially euphoric for the arrival of i9.

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Actually, it's stolen wholesale from FFXI.

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What this all amounts too is that people will feel like they are walking into a casino rather than a consignment shop. Even looking to make the simple transaction, you will be worried about getting somehow screwed either by the system itself, or another player, or the lack of knowledge on how it works and screwing yourself. My thinking...pretend I9 never happened and just hope I10 brings some useable content to the game.

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You can still make full use of the Inventions system without using the consignment shop. The consignment shop is an optional extra. If you don't like it, don't use it. I plan to use inventions, but I don't plan to use the consignment shop.

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You make a excellent point. I see all the confusion, speculation and frustration over one part of I9 and it just kind of turns me off to the whole thing. It would be nice to not have to buy all new enhancements every 5 levels or so. That alone could make the whole thing worth all this grief.

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You won't. All this other stuff aside, common inventions are going to be a godsend.

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Take out the transfer thing. Let's instead make this something that's being sold to be sold. Why does the person who's willing to pay 5 million have to pay 5 million? Why can't they get the benefit of the bargain?

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Because, you are determining what price you want to pay for something.

If somone really wants to buy a Positron's Rusty Lugnut so they can make an IO from the Cool Like Positron set, they need to determine what they think a good price for it is. If that player decides that 100,000 INF is a fair price, then that's his budget. He can try to find a better price if he wants or he can just lay down his 100,000 on the the first one he finds in the inventory. If the seller happens to have 20 Positron's Rusty Lugnuts, takes the time to list each individually, and values them at about 1,000 each, then score for him.

Like actual auctions (real world and online), you need to invest time in it to get the best deals. At least with this system, you are promised to get a certain quality item; there are no manufacturing defects in Paragon City - every Positron's Rusty Lugnut is as good as the next.

Incidentally, this is similar to the original business model used by priceline.com. Their notion was you name the price and you get what you paid for (within certain parameters). You didn't get to pick certain things about your flight (no specific carriers, for instance), but you could chose where you flew out of and into, how many stops you'd be willing to make, etc. Its a good business model as long as the buyer isn't ignorantly throwing down more money than they really wanted to.

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A straight consignment system would be better. You search, you see what everyone is listing their products for and you search out the best bargains.

You don't have to play this silly game. I know how to play the game and how to abuse it, but I'd rather we just have a healthy market. And secrecy doesn't build healthy markets, free information does.

EDIT: You know why I'm so frustrated? Because the devs are going to force us to abuse their system because they never just believe us when we tell them something won't work.

For the short time I played FFXI, I was able to make money basically standing in one place playing with their auction market. That's not the intention, but the robber barons are going to come out.

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Because only an idiot will actually offer 5 million. You'll start at something low like 50K, and move up in 10-50K increments until you find the low price. In your example, you'll get it for 100,000. Sure when things get started a few people will overbid, but after awhile the only time that's going to happen is if someone doesn't have a good transfer strategy.


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What if there is a limit on how often you can change your bid if you fail to buy? Ie. I place my offer of 50K then 75K then 100K or what ever increment. What if it won't let me do that more than two or three times?

I actually think that would be a reasonable restriction to keep the buyer from fishing to much for the best price.

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You could do that, but really that's part of the 'benefit' of this kind of auction system. Trying to find the lowball bid. Because the successful lowball bid creates an auction log entry. That entry can encourage sellers to lower their prices. That's the theory and it's going to work VERY well for salvage. Recipes and HOs not so much.

And how long of a lock out time do you implement?

I know no one likes high prices, but initial high prices will institutionalize Wentworth's as the primary trading venue. Which means that we all have access to more stuff over time.

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All i have to say is the 1 and only thing that EQ has over COH/V is they added the shared bank slot - this game really needs the same thing

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Yep. It was all well and good when they called it influence and you use "lose" influence to change your costume because it is harder to recognize you and so on. But they're pissing away any semblance of story by putting in the auction house now. Inf is currency so give us a freakin' bank.

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QFT. Anyone who still think's influence is anything other than money is deluding themselves.

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Ok, let's look at what Posi said:

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Player A1 puts up a Level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Player B1 puts up the same Level 12 TO for 1,000 inf.

Player A2 (trying to transfer funds) offers to buy that level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Since player B1 wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).

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Now let's change that from an inf. transfer to a sale scenario:

Player A puts up a Rare IO for 5,000,000 inf.

Player B puts up the same Rare IO for 100,000 inf.

Player C offers to buy that Rare IO for 5,000,000 inf.

Since player B wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).



Where is that at all keeping the prices low as you keep saying?

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Because only an idiot will actually offer 5 million. You'll start at something low like 50K, and move up in 10-50K increments until you find the low price. In your example, you'll get it for 100,000. Sure when things get started a few people will overbid, but after awhile the only time that's going to happen is if someone doesn't have a good transfer strategy.

This is not theory craft. You can log into FFXI and see people doing exactly that.

And what happens after you get it for 100K, that enters the sales log and can touch off a permanent deflation in that product. Said deflation could move sales off the auction house until the log times out.

What happens to A is that he may lose his listing fee, and says "Screw this" and starts spamming the auction channel till get gets a direct trade. Just like in FFXI when people set up their stores to avoid the auction house.

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Example: diamonds. Expensive, cause wars and all manner of strife. But people pay big money for them so people do what's needed to get them.

Yes I realize blood diamonds are bad. The analogy is purposeful because economies are often brutal and there are winners and losers. You can't stop that.


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Well, you always take the tax (fee) that WW's charges and give it to the poor. Not necessarily directly, but in Enhancement Stamps or programs that teach poor toons how to farm Dreck.

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ROFLMAO!!

Well done sir. You win the interweb.

/signed. I know it's a joke, but I think all nooblets should be given a stipend when starting out.

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I don't get that. If the rare IOs that can go for 10 million inf. will make more people sell them, yet you say very few character can drop 10 million inf. whenever they want...who's buying them?

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People are trading money back and forth and others will create new wealth in order to attain what they want.

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Putting a price of 10 million inf. on a rare IO isn't going to increase the amount of rare IOs in the game. They're rare. Chances are players won't even sell the rare ones till they've used as many as they can themselves. There won't be any bidding down, ever, if it's done the way you want.

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Sigh... Rare only means that it doesn't drop very often. What high prices do is encourage people to farm up more of the stuff and not hoard it when they get it. Just like in real life, if something is a PITA to make or create but it's nevertheless desirable, people will do what it take to create it.

Example: diamonds. Expensive, cause wars and all manner of strife. But people pay big money for them so people do what's needed to get them.

Yes I realize blood diamonds are bad. The analogy is purposeful because economies are often brutal and there are winners and losers. You can't stop that.

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No, what it does is allow only those rich characters to control the economy. The pre-prestige characters mostly. Let's face it, if you had 500 million inf. and you put a rare IO up for sale, why not hold out for a high price, you don't need the money, and you know they'll be a sucker with the same amount of inf. as you who will buy it because what's 10 mill to him.

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That same character will instead just hoard their stuff, buy whatever they want at the very weak prices and truly control the market.

Allow open trading and someone who's poor but get's a very desirable recipe gets rich. Now they just get a small price from the 500 million guy who can now and always will be able to buy whatever he wants because prices are kept artificially low.

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Prices being set too high isn't healthy either. I hate games like WoW, and EQ, that have hardcore players controlling the market and overpricing items which keeps the small guy from ever being able to afford anything decent. This isn't WoW or EQ, so why should they do things like those games? They're trying to implement something that's fair to all players, not to make a few players richer and leave the rest out of the loop.

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But it's not fair. That's the problem. Keeping prices artificially low just allows rich characters who don't support SGs the ability to buy up any and everything they want. This is just how it works in FFXI.

*Shrug* But you know, it's cool. This will play out just like bases and a year from now, Positron will be talking about how they didn't intend for what we're saying now to happen.

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Thing is I probably will only buy and sell at the consignment house. Frankly I won't bother using the outside trading. I'm not that desperate for influence. It still is essentially meaningless once you have a character high enough level. Sure in the 1 - 30 range influence is tight and you fight for it but after that? Phswahh. Its easy to get, so I don't see why people are wanting to sell for high values? So you have a rare recipe and can't get more than say 50k for it? So? This is bad why?

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Not so bad. I'm fine if people only want to get an HO for 50K. Let the suckers put there's up and get screwed. Mines get traded with my friends.

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I will buy there (should there be anything) but wont sell there, I dont need any inf and would sooner give HOs, IOs, reciepes and so on to my friends and carry on deleting the lvl 53 SOs I dont need than to use WW in its current incarnation.

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Sadly, I feel the same way. I'll be scouring for bargains and trying to set up trades on the boards and elsewhere.

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Thing is I probably will only buy and sell at the consignment house. Frankly I won't bother using the outside trading. I'm not that desperate for influence. It still is essentially meaningless once you have a character high enough level. Sure in the 1 - 30 range influence is tight and you fight for it but after that? Phswahh. Its easy to get, so I don't see why people are wanting to sell for high values? So you have a rare recipe and can't get more than say 50k for it? So? This is bad why?

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Because high prices will increase supply. If the rare enhancers are going for 10 million inf. for example, that's enough to get a lot of people in. Very few characters can just drop 10 million influence whenever they want. At those values people are going to sell because it's worth it.

That's desirable because as the supply increases, people would naturally bid down the price in order to obtain the sale. No need for some blind guesswork auction.

But the price you would settle at would reflect the true value of the good to the economy. What this system does, is create very real incentives to circumvent the sales system. That's not healthy because it keeps resources on the native server, giving an advantage to larger servers. That's important because those servers can also draw whatever winds up on Wentworth's. While it won't be the good stuff, it means that some players by accident of server choice will face a market artificially leaning towards them.

There will be stuff sold at Wentworth's. Probably a lot. But this selling system keeps prices low by choking suppliers. And that's never healthy.

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This smells of some of the statements made by Statesman about how they didn't anticipate how bases and prestige would be used/not used by the playerbase . . . even though many things were mentioned during testing by testers.

deja vu



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But I'm perfectly happy with the system. I would perfer to see the prices stay low.

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Yes, if you don't want to see the system used as much.

Leave the inf transfer issues out. think of it this way:

Again, what is the incentive for me to use wentworth's as opposed to just doing direct item for item (HO for IO, recepie for salvage, recpiece for HO) with my sg buddies and friends, if I can't make any money at wenthworths.

In other words if prices are kept perpetually low, why the hell would I want to unload what I can't use at wenthwroths if it gives me nothing of value in return? Since you can't do direct item for item trades at wenthworth's the only valuable commodity would have been inf. So why should I use wenthworth's again? Because I'm a nice guy/gal?

Makes more sense just to trade with friends.

If the devs are looking to block inf transfering using wenthworths all that needs to be done is block toons on the same global ID. problem solved.

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Their intent was to control inflation both in the short and long term. That's the intent. But blind auctions don't allow influence to naturally assume it's true value as a medium of trade. So what you said will happen will happen for most of the high end stuff. The trash loot will get sold by lowbies but high level people flush with cash will probably hoard what they have for their own alts.

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This smells of some of the statements made by Statesman about how they didn't anticipate how bases and prestige would be used/not used by the playerbase . . . even though many things were mentioned during testing by testers.

deja vu



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But I'm perfectly happy with the system. I would perfer to see the prices stay low.

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That's the intent, but that's not what's going to happen. What's going to happen is that the high end stuff, the stuff that's hard to get and people really want will be traded via barter or direct sales. Or it just won't get sold at all.

Furthermore, this is going to help validate what a lot of people's concerns about influence. Rich characters won't go through the trouble unless they can get a decent return on investment.

FFXI's system might work if we always had it. But we didn't. It's being inserted into a game flush with cash. You want prices high in such an environment so that the real value of influence can stabilize and to bleed it out of the economy via astronomical commissions and listing fees.

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Player A1 puts up a Level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Player B1 puts up the same Level 12 TO for 1,000 inf.

Player A2 (trying to transfer funds) offers to buy that level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Since player B1 wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).


WOW does that suck. All this is going to do is keep prices artificially low. You won't be able to sell anything for anywhere near what it's worth (which, contrary to popular opinion, can be objectively estimated in this game). Even if people are willing to pay that much no one will dare list an item for anything even close to fair asking price, because the sale will almost certainly go to someone asking less. Once players sass the dynamic (which was, like, yesterday) they'll bid up from practically nothing every time.

Since the consignment houses are cross-server (another monumentally retarded idea), all it takes is one joker out of 170,000 players willing to give away what you're trying to sell to keep prices depressed. Under this system, if I had invention items I couldn't use or keep, I'd try to barter them for items I could use, inefficient as that might be. If I couldn't, I'd destroy them before putting them up for consignment under these rules. Why should I sell things for a fraction of what they're worth?

As for using the system for inf transfer: why is this even possible? Every buy/sell order should be tagged with the player's global ID. Orders from matching IDs get blocked. Easy.

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QFT. FF 11's auction system was the worst of all the possible ones they could have picked. And what's crazy is that it's not even a consignment. It's a blind auction. It's going to ensure that really valuable stuff is sold directly or bartered.

Cripes why must we always do things the hard way in this game....

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Not an inf transfer but a much more secure way to transer something to yourself/transfer inf.

You can put in a buy request and the first item of that type will get bought by you at the price you specify. So get both alts to the consignment house. Log in with alt A1 and check the system to see if the item you want to use is listed. Ie a level 7 flight TO. You see none listed. So log A1 out and login with A2, this alt then enters a buy order for a level 7 flight TO for 10,000,000. Logout A2 and login A1 now A1 puts the level 7 flight TO into the system for say 50 inf and instantly gets the sale for 10,000,000. Voila your done with much less chance of random intercept.

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Yup. And there are things you can use to sell that will make this much less likely to be intercepted.

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Player A1 puts up a Level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Player B1 puts up the same Level 12 TO for 1,000 inf.

Player A2 (trying to transfer funds) offers to buy that level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Since player B1 wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).

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So you went with FFXI's system. A lot of mischief is possible there Positron. And unfairness.

Take out the transfer thing. Let's instead make this something that's being sold to be sold. Why does the person who's willing to pay 5 million have to pay 5 million? Why can't they get the benefit of the bargain?

Goodness, why not just use a real consignment system?

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EvilGeko's
Frozen Aura consolidated discussion

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No need. That's power's suckiness is self-evident. And this is an important point to make about MoG. MoG certainly FEELS impressive. You get that nice full heal, capped defense, technically you get the resistance although it means jack poop. But over time many Regens have come to learn the truth.

MoG is a power so situational as to be useless.

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That's an opinion.

And... is this a discussion thread? Or a "MoG sucks" support group thread? Because I seem to have missed the lesson that taught us little Regens that MoG is just pretty lights and debt. I've seen plenty of opinion on the matter, but nothing particularly convincing.

I may have missed some posts before I jumped in. And if an intelligent argument of facts was presented that I didn't see, then I apologize. But, since I've been reading this thread, it would seem that any posts not agreeing that MoG sucks simply get glossed over.

I think I might be starting to understand forums...

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You haven't been reading then. Arcanaville has made some pointed comments about MoG's usefulness and I even admit in the first post it has some uses.

You don't really say anything in your post, you just lob a troll. I'm happy to discuss the issue with you. I've discussed why I think MoG lacks in the very first post. I invite you to counter.

Likely you're going to resort to the same boring things everyone does. But I'm happy to go over it again.

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EvilGeko's
Frozen Aura consolidated discussion

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No need. That's power's suckiness is self-evident. And this is an important point to make about MoG. MoG certainly FEELS impressive. You get that nice full heal, capped defense, technically you get the resistance although it means jack poop. But over time many Regens have come to learn the truth.

MoG is a power so situational as to be useless.

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I think that I would be happy if they did this:

A. Slightly reduce the effectiveness of IH as it stands, but turn it back into a toggle.

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I would be happy if they slightly reduced the effectiveness of Elude but turned it back into a toggle also.

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What if it were 30% defense but cost the same as the old IH? I think that would be interesting. I'm not even sure that would be overpowered.

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with the IOs adding +recharge you'll get your wish.

Now buff soul transfer.

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There are plenty of MoG posts. I created this build so we can have the cogent arguments in one place. Let's not throw mud at each other.

I dealt with Soul Transfer in the very first post. We've went over the "we want a buff" BS. The fact is, Regen isn't this godmode set and it's not fair that MoG is the way that it is. Dark Armor is a stronger set than Regen by far. Soul Transfer could be changed, how I don't know. But that's irrelevant to MoG.

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how do regens sleep at night asking for a buff

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Common mistake. Don't want a buff. Want a power that can be used more often. Not the same thing.

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Heck, if the maths in this game weren't so secretive and screwy, there wouldn't be any need for people like Arcana and myself on these forums.

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I've never understood why Statesman doesn't understand this.

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Castle, what are the current unique enhancers if you don't mind us asking?

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Can't say yet! I can say that the list is in flux and may change during testing.

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Thank you for answering. I appreciate it.