FourSpeed
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Posts
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It would make RagManX extremely happy - he's been advocating market caps
(semi-jokingly) for years.
Actually, the only way to truly "limit" prices on the market would be the same
way they're limited for Common IO recipes (ie. have a "vendor" sell them
for a dev mandated, arbitrary, fixed price - like the crafting table in this case).
So, if for instance, you could go buy a LotG 7.5% from some vendor for
say, 200 Million, that would effectively cap the market price of it as well.
A variant of this mechanism is already in place with R-merits and A-merits,
although it's not a particularly good limiter since those don't have a concrete,
consistent, exchange-rate to actual inf.
I am fairly sure though, that the devs won't implement a true fixed-price
store for premier recipes for several reasons, but mostly, because the
current amount of influence in-game already would cause a massive
supply flood - effectively shifting the balance of toon performance totally
over to those sets, and rendering all other enhancements obsolete due
to an easily obtained, and limitless supply of the Good Stuff.
Given that the devs have stated many times over the years that the
content is balanced for SOs, that would be a Bad Thing. Additionally,
they've made it fairly clear that they intend (through drop rarity, and
merit-conversion settings) for characters to have to strive (or grind,
depending on your perspective
) to obtain the premium enhancements.
Regards,
4 -
WooHoo! Two A-Merits... Now I can get that new Porsche I was looking at!
Cheers,
4 -
Quote:lol - you DO realize, that the 88's Chapter on Guardian is ... One Guy,Originally Posted by Lascher
Catch us if you can 88's......A Faction of Dark Tomorrow, #3 on Guardian....the old fashioned way only.....smashing baddies!
and he's already in the Top 100 there, right?
GL if he gets any help at all from those of us on Virtue...
Cheers,
4 -
Quote:Originally Posted by iCynic
My confusion is that I'm wondering how I got to 100+ million influence, which is more than enough to manage my needs for the foreseable future, in around a month's time. I wasn't watching anything, not really trying, and I sure as heck wasn't playing every day (or every week for that matter). Is that really all there is to it? Can the simple idea of Bid Low-Sell Higher with Just Add Patience tacked on, be all thats necessary to garner influence?
No, no, no... You absolutely have to understand Equilibrium Pricing,
Opportunity Costs, Supply Curves in a Downturn Market along with.....
Oh, nevermind, it really IS as easy as you think. Seriously.
For instance, with the strategy used in my guide (see sig), you only need
to know a single piece of information, and you can *never* lose inf with
it. Putting it to work for 15 minutes per game session can get you as
much as a couple hundred million in a week or two...
The piece I find utterly amazing is that a lot of folks simply don't get it.
Worse still, many of them are convinced that obtaining crazy amounts of
inf is impossible without untold hours spent "manipulating" prices, rather
than figuring out that we're only slightly more knowledgeable, and slightly
less lazy than they are... It's hilarious in some ways.
Regards,
4 -
Quote:That may be reading more than is there.Originally Posted by Gunpowder Witch
So Alchemical Silver is an item where the speculation of marketeers doesn't evenly spread out the supply over time or flatten out volatile price swings. It is an item where actual shortages can be introduced and immediate profits made. Interesting.
I'm in complete agreement with UberGuy about what's going on. To me that
means you're seeing large volatility in an important salvage niche.
Based on what I've seen in globalchat, a LOT of people are PL'ng their minds
out in AE right now, and if the rates I've heard are anywhere near true, you
have a metric crapton of L30+ toons that are trying to buy a dozen or so
Acc IO's *each*, with enough inf on hand to duke it out for the limited supply.
What I think you're seeing is extremely high demand for a key item.
I can tell you, as an Ebil Marketeer, that would be a very expensive niche
to try to manipulate... Just by looking at the prices you showed, it would
take 100's of millions, or more to "produce a shortage", or far more importantly,
to control it for profit...
For that amount, I'd get a better return by flipping a 200M Armageddon
Purple for 300M with a lot less hassle and risk. I wouldn't touch AlSilver
with a 10ft cattle prod atm.
That said, if I wanted one, I'd throw out a 55-100K bid, and expect it
tomorrow given the extreme volatility.
Regards,
4 -
@Hyperstrike: LoL
Quote:This is blatantly wrong. Sorry, but facts are facts.Originally Posted by Lascher
Also, yes....sellers do set the prices, don't blame the buyers. Just cause people ARE willing to pay the big bucks, doesn't mean the seller has to ask big bucks. You can always sell anything, even pvp and purple io's for a buck....and voilà....the prices all drop for everything.
Attempt to sell a TO on the market for 100M -- won't happen (unless you
buy it yourself as we used to before gleemail - to transfer inf)
Sellers list at (or below typically) what buyers have shown they'll consistently pay.
For LotG's, that may be 100-200M, for Silver, it may be 1-10K.
Pricing above the "normal" ceiling price for an item will typically sit in your
market slot for a long time waiting for inflation to catch up to your price,
or more frequently, until you pull it and re-list it more sensibly.
Somewhere up-thread, someone also mentioned needing inf for a character.
Having just done a bunch of math on this, I can quantify it somewhat.
If you're going to slot with just SO's, you'll need ~18M inf over the
duration of your toon's career.
Depending on how you approach it, you'll need somewhere between 6.5 -
15M for a roughly comparable performance build using Common IOs.
If you want to Frankenslot, or go for full set IOs, it's quite a bit higher,
and, of course, for premium and purples, it's astronomically higher.
I agree with Lascher on his point that you're not going to pick up those
amounts of inf consistently, by simply selling your drops. Sure, you may
get a lucky drop along the way, but for the most part, some sort of inf
building plan is needed if a player wants the process to be consistent
and painless for each character they make and play.
Regards,
4 -
Quote:Actually, I agree with this - and yet, if it is so easy, why is it that there areOriginally Posted by Young_Tutor
I think, big picture, the point is that COX isn't terribly difficult.
so many forum complaints from people who can't seem to figure out they'll
need 10-20M to slot SO's or Common IO's, (as the charts show), probably
~50M-200M or so to Frankenslot nicely, and a few Billion if they want the
premium purple goodies?
I further think that advocating an unslotted build, or just slotting drops like
somebody's 6 year old, is a cop-out, quite frankly. Additionally, this post
was never about "fun", it was about quantifying the costs for a minimum
build.
The devs say game balance revolves around SO's, like it has from day 1,
and I'd agree, and expect that the minimum helpful point would be to
advocate reaching that level, while hopefully, laying the groundwork skills
for players to achieve more than that through premium sets and purples if
they wish to carry their effort forward.
Regards,
4
PS> On a positive note, nobody appears to have issues with the math so,
I'll take that as encouraging, good news
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Quote:Please try to make sense when you post.Originally Posted by StabBot
Please keep direct quotes in context.
Right. It makes trading easier... That is all it does, and there is no fundamentalQuote:I'm not sure if you're being facetious, but I think that the answer to it might be helpful. The difference is that when trading in Atlas Park you have to spam the starting zone for many players with trade chat, which makes it very difficult for them to get help, and even if it weren't a starting zone, there's still a pretty limited number of people who can communicate simultaneously before it all turns into static.
Next, it has a much more convenient inventory management feature, and it allows you to bid on rare items without tracking down the individual player who found them. Also you can sell your own rare items for which a seller might be hard to find, especially if they're useful for a limited number of builds. Also even if it's possible to sell, a seller might not be paying a reasonable price at the time.
Furthermore, the record of previous sales and the centralized location regulates prices, with or without speculators. Whether the natural regulation of said prices is sufficient is, of course, what we've all been talking about.
difference between the two approaches except time and efficiency.
Amazingly enough, just like the inflation post, the entire point of that went
whizzing past your head - Perhaps a Reticle: Perception IO would help.
In the meantime, I will bow before the wisdom of Ron White and call this
a done deal...
4 -
Quote:How exactly is this proven? Please show me the dev publication that saysOriginally Posted by StabBot
You acknowledge the devs set the intended rate at which you are intended to acquire those items.
therefore number one is disproven. Marketeering far exceeds the speed at which the devs intend for players to acquire items.
"thou shalt only obtain X items per hour". What the devs have set is the
rate at which items drop ---> for mob kills.
Much earlier in this thread I asked a question which nobody answered. I'll
re-iterate it here.
How, exactly, is *any* transaction on the market fundamentally different
than a simple trade in Atlas Park using broadcast and the in-game trade
screen?
You state that the market intent is to facilitate (ie. make easier and moreQuote:Personally I think the market was intended to be a system which reduces the effects of randomness by facilitating trade. Instead, whenever players trade items a third party drains a significant portion of the worth from both. Not that I expect people to care or change. I just find the assertion that the average marketeer who does nothing but markup items is adding value ridiculous.
effective) trade. I agree.
So, back to my Atlas Park question - If I talk to enough folks and trade for
enough items, your position is that is contrary to the dev's intent, and a
GM should come and punish me because I got too much stuff too quickly?
Really???
And since nobody answered that earlier question, I will...
The ONLY difference is that I can interact with more players (across all
servers and factions) more quickly and effectively than I could by simply
shouting out in broadcast, and for that service, there will be a 10% fee
on each transaction I make... That IS facilitating the trade you say is
the market's designed purpose.
I find your accusations from a position of complete ignorance, ridiculous.
Regards,
4 -
Quote:Originally Posted by Misaligned
Since I seem to generate some sort of negativity when I point out basic fundamentals like you can slot for free with drops and then am instructed on how we are trying to educate the newbs on how to play the market I will once again point out this scenario:
You are not everyone else. What is "good enough" for you is different from everyone else.
I have a 6 year old. Yes.. 6... years... old.
He has a level 29 or 30 blaster. He does all of the power picks. He picks all of the slots. He slots enhancements about once a week - when he remembers - and generally they are outdated when slotted (-3 level SO's for example).
He has a blast.
No where is it required for everyone in this game to have the ultimate build. No where in this game does an ultimate build have to cost billions of inf. If those are your goals, great. But seriously people, this game is so mind numbingly easy that a 6 year old can do it and have fun.
There is no challenge to this game. None. When some sort of challenge is implemented into this game, people complain that its "too hard" and eventually it gets a nerf.
You can play unslotted. You can play with horrible power picks and you can play by blindly picking slots. And you can do all of this and still have fun.
The fun part is for you to make up. Your fun does not dictate everyone else's fun.
I see - gotcha...
So, your advice to newbies is forget about inf and/or the market...
Play the game, slot what drops, and sell what you don't use -- and be happy with those results, because it works for your 6 year old.
Ok, thanks for your input.
4 -
Quote:What in blue blazes are you nattering on about??? Nice obfuscation toOriginally Posted by StabBot
I think there's a critical difference. The cost of keeping a hundred million barrels of oil (or whatever amount it would take to affect the market) in a facility rated for hazardous material storage would be quite expensive, in fact I don't even think you could turn a profit on it.
completely miss the point...
There's no 100 million barrels of oil involved, and no hazmat materials
storage, and the sale would no more affect the oil business than the
sale of your long storage items altered the market.
If, in 1975, you filled up a 100 gallon tank for .50/gallon (we had 250 gal
tank on the farm iirc, so this isn't all that unusual or difficult), and then
tried to sell (ie. flip, in game terms) that gas for $2.50/gallon, it would
have been sitting there a very long time (until somewhere around 2004 or
so, based on this chart).
At that point, you'd have gotten your price -- through natural inflation...
If this simple example is confusing you, or seems "critically different" than
what you did with your market items, I'm pretty sure I've determined the
real issue - you have little understanding of the workings of the market.
So, that pretty much concludes our discussion on that topic.
As for inflation, you can probably estimate the money supply (very loosely,
within an order of magnitude - Millions vs Billions vs Trillions, etc.), with
some simple math for those so-inclined to use a pen, napkin and 5 minutes
of time.
They've said they have ~100,000 players per month... We also know that
high level guys are producing the supply (look at relative item volumes by
level), and we further know that L50's can make anywhere from 1M/hr to
20M/hr depending on what they're running.
So, let's say, for giggles, 10% of those 100K players run L50s for 10 hrs/wk
(so, a couple tfs worth), at 5M/hr...
So, that's 10000 L50's * 10 hrs * 5M/hr == 500,000,000,000 inf / week
or ~2 Trillion inf / month...
First, that's a pretty conservative estimate (I'd suspect) on L50 activity -
the game is 6 years old...
Second, that further ignores *any* contribution at all by the other 90,000
L1-L49 players.
Third, that doesn't even consider inf from vendored drops.
So, loosely speaking we're probably talking somewhere around 3 Trillion?
(speculating on those factors) of new influence being generated *every*
month out of thin air through normal gameplay...
The only real sinks to that are: The Market (in the 10% fees), Costumes,
and other Stores, and S/VG prestige (assuming they converted inf for it as
the 88'rs do)...
If there's a surprise about inflation, it's that it isn't worse than we currently see.
I suspect it's largely because many players have massive piles of inf that
they're really unable to spend, so it stays (largely) uncirculated, but that is purely speculation on my part.
In short, the devs might wanna give some thought to some money sinks or
the inf cap... assuming they've actually done the real math, or care much
about the results.
Regards,
4 -
Quote:Speaking for myself, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be particularly pleased withOriginally Posted by Nethergoat
one could absolutely get to 50 slotting drops....but then, one could get to 50 totally unslotted, so.....
either of those builds, but then again, I'm Ebil...
Cheers,
4 -
I like SS - it feels the most "Brutish" to me.
As for the crash, it's no more than an annoyance to me. I do agree you
want to be able to stack it to avoid the def part of the crash.
As for the -dmg, that doesn't affect Vet Power attacks. So, when it
goes down, I just fire Sands of Mu, Blackwand, and Nemmie Staff, instead,
and that pretty much gets me through it, with minimal loss of effectiveness.
Regards,
4 -
"Sparky" is an ok power, not great, not awful.
From an endurance standpoint, those 10 shots it can put out are a pretty
good deal.
My E3 used it in 3 situations (in order of usefulness).
1> Pre-Nuke. I'd cast it, so it can chip away (and probably kill) a straggler
or two that survive the nuke while I'm recovering my Endurance.
2> Against a tough single target (ie. AV). It helps...not much, but > 0
3> Against a decent sized spawn I've already aggro'd, on the theory
that every little bit of damage helps - if he kills something, bonus (same as #2).
Regards,
4
PS> I just slotted it for damage. -
Quote:lol - seriously? Make a toon, solo it to L50, slotting only the stuff you pickOriginally Posted by Misaligned
You can cut it to 0 by simply using drops.
Novel ideal.
Incidentally, the salvage flipping guide in my sig generates roughly 10 mil a week with 5 minutes of your time each day.
So, do it for 2 weeks and you can fully SO or IO your toon all the way to 50.
up off the ground... I'm willing to bet you will not be happy with the stuff
you end up putting into those 94 slots.
And, I'll guarantee you it will cost you more than 0 with the very first IO
you have to craft...
Novel idea? Sure, but largely ineffective, and completely impractical.
As for marketing, yes, your strategy gains ~10 Million in a week, and my
Recipe Vendoring strategy gains 10M+ in a couple of game hours...
That said, those strategies are worth exactly bupkiss if they aren't used
by the newbies they're most intended to help.
It's definitely clear that a player who struggles to fund a 15M minimal IO
build, or an 18M SO build has zero understanding or practical experience
with either of our guides -- which is basically the point of where I'm
heading with this thread, how do you get them to START using those
guides to solve the funding problem?
My feeling is that they have no idea that they'll need to earn 15-20M just to
equip their toon with the bare minimum enhancements, let alone, have an
idea how to practially achieve that funding on their own. Further, if it's
sets, they want, they need a factor of 10, at least, above minimum for
that approach.
That's a scenario I'd like to help improve if possible, not by giving them a
proverbial fish, but by showing them that they should learn to fish, and
giving some practical ideas on how to do it.
imho, the bulk of the complaints I see stem from the basic idea that they
never had any real understanding of what they needed to do to get their
toon to where they want it to be...
While we know it isn't very difficult to do, we also know, it won't happen
by crossing your fingers, clicking your heels and wishing - some effort is
required... That mindset is the biggest stumbling block, I think.
Regards,
4 -
Quote:You're mixing market forces here.
What a bunch of nonsense. The other day I logged onto a character I hadn't used in months to find that all of the recipes/salvage I had posted had sold for hundreds of millions of influence, far more than they were worth at the time.
When I was a teenager, gas was 50 cents a gallon... Anybody trying to
sell at $2.50 a gallon would have sat on their supply for a long time.
When I started actively marketing common IO's, L35 Damages were going
for 125K... If you'd have listed them at 450K, they'd have sat there for a
long time.
Today, in both cases, selling at those prices now would be a deal...
The force at work in your case is "inflation", pure and simple and it explains
why the items you listed didn't sell then, but have sold now...
Regards,
4
As for Max, your understanding of economics is woefully inadequate. While
that's not uncommon, it makes a discussion about it pointless, so I will
simply say that flipping doesn't work the way you believe it does...
Since we just went through all this foolishness with Blue_Centurion less
than a week ago, I'd rather poke my eyes out than try to talk simple
economics with you...
GL, Have Fun, Bye Bye. -
Quote:Leave my "Junk" out of this discussion...Originally Posted by Nethergoat
2: Sell your Junk on the Market
Besides, I think there are laws against selling it...
Cheers,
4 -
I wasn't going to bother getting involved in this one -- oh well...
Also from the same Wikipedia article you reference:
Quote:While flipping may fit your first part you quoted, it fails here. By that, IMost studies of rent seeking focus on efforts to capture special monopoly privileges, such as government regulation of free enterprise competition, though the term itself is derived from the far older and more established practice of appropriating a portion of production by gaining ownership or control of land.
mean the manipulation covered by "rent-seeking" isn't in the actual goods
themselves, but rather, from control of a finite supply resource (ie. land
where the goods are produced) or monopoly or regulation.
Clearly, none of those mechanisms prevail in the market -- there are no
limitations on access (ie. regulation controls), there are no limited
resources (as long as players kill mobs, get drops, and sell on market -
supply is infinite), and monopolizing a market for any extended timeframe
is impractically difficult (limited slots, no way to control supply sources).
The second issue is the word "manipulation" itself - how are you defining
this? Or put another way, how is any market transaction fundamentally
different from a simple player trade accomplished through broadcast in say,
Atlas Park, using simple chat, and the simple trade mechanics? Or, are you
calling that manipulation as well?
In answer to your other question (increased listings), it doesn't directly
increase them, but it certainly doesn't decrease them either. However,
from an indirect standpoint, when flippers stabilize a niche nearer it's
"normal" price range, it does make it more reliable and attractive to other
players to list their items on market, rather than vendor them, because in
many cases, the stabilized prices are better than they'd get from the
vendor, so they can get a better deal selling on market.
Regards,
4 -
Quote:Originally Posted by seebs
Okay, newbie question... I basically stopped using SOs at all once I found out about IOs. So I have only a vague comprehension of them.
When people say that a level 25 IO (32%) "underperforms" SOs, what are they comparing with? Even-level SOs (level 25 at 25)? Three levels higher? Two levels lower?
An even level SO (ie. one at the level of your character) is 33.3% enhancement
(for Schedule A enhancements).
A +3 SO (ie. one at +3 levels to your character) is 38.3% enhancement
IO's don't work that way, they get a fixed number, period. So, L25 is 32%
which would slightly underperform compared to any even level SO. An L45
IO is 40.5% enhancement which handily outperforms any +3 SO.
@Goat:
Agreed - IO badges can be lucrative, but that's not really what we're
talking about here - in the sense that, a player who is active in the market
has already, far exceeded the cost concerns in this thread
Also, for an IO, I'd agree, it's difficult to see a 1.3% change - however,
if you're slotting, say 3 damages, then you're talking about 4% - again, not
large, but I'd say it's detectable in-game.
Getting back to the bargain basement pricing though, underperforming by
3-5% for 33% less cost over SO's, may be a tolerable tradeoff for some
players, especially, if they're market-challenged, and doing it to help scrounge
and save for better IO's later.
Personally, if I was doing the cheapskate's IO build - I'd use the "Frugal"
approach -- but, in all honesty, I'd advocate learning enough marketing
skills to gain, not only the 15M needed for that approach, but the 50-100M
needed for barebones Frankenslotting (which is ultimately where any guide
with this info would be headed).
Regards,
4 -
Helpful stuff, Organica -- it's good to get an updated primer for the new UI
Regards,
4 -
Quote:Just loosely doing some back-of-napkin calculations, I'd say the shortOriginally Posted by Caulderone
Just a question if you feel like adding it up.
What if you continued to use L25/L30 of the most frequently used recipes (acc,dmg,end,rchg) and got them memorized, instead of moving up to 35s/40s.
Would that save you enough money to go to level L45s in everything at 42+ and still be cost competitive with SOs?
answer is: No
Neglecting what the costs would be to actually memorize the various key
recipes, and just assuming you've got that done prior to L22, I come up
with these figures, keeping all of the other assumptions constant...
For the L22 Line, recipe cost disappears, salvage stays the same (30K),
and crafting is cut in half (~18K), giving an IO cost of ~48K each (L25).
So, if you just slot with L25 commons the whole way, that's 94 IOs * 48K
which is roughly ~4.5M or so. That replaces the entire group from L22 on,
so, you'd figure to save ~9 Million...
However, a full set of L45 IOs would cost 384K each (118K each if you
had those memorized too), which comes out to ~36M, and still more than
11M memorized.
As you can see, that far exceeds the savings through memorization, even
if that process were free (which it isn't), so, no - that's probably not going
to be workable (imho).
Regards,
4
PS> One other thought though. If you just slotted L25's the entire way,
and never upgraded to higher levels (even unmemorized), the total costs
over the career would drop to ~6.3 Million.
However, bear in mind that the build would *underperform* SO's somewhat
(which might be ok at 1/3 the price of SO's - but I personally wouldn't
advocate that approach) -
Quote:@Dumpleberry: Agreed - it isn't a L50 issue per se. But, how many L20-22's
Everyone knows that any level 50 struggles to have anything close to 18 million inf. in this game.
have 5M (unless they got a lucky drop, or participated in the market)?
Also, L50's can fall into the category #2 description below as well.
The thought behind what I'm writing is twofold really.
I think a lot of complaints we see in forum fit into 3 categories:
1> New / Inexperienced players that freak over the cost of a Luck Charm
2> Players trying to figure out how to buy decent sets for their toons
when they've only accrued 20-50 M (and want to progress beyond SO's)
3> Players trying to fund uber builds and whining that 2B only gets 1-3
premium IO's.
Categories 1 & 2, I believe are similar in that they've probably not quantifed
(or planned) for what they'll need, nor developed even the beginner level
marketing skills to achieve it. So, they (sort of) shoot themselves in the
foot by shopping only when they need to fill a slot, or decide they now
need sets, and get stuck with NAO pricing and associated sticker shock.
The second related part is that their "economic scale" isn't correct.
WE know that 20M is *one* decent (not even great) IO sale...
On the other hand, THEY have been selling TO's for 40-100 inf apiece - so 20M
"appears" astronomical. Additionally, there is a pretty pervasive perception
(however inaccurate, and ultimately self-debilitating) that market prices
are insane, and further, the prices are controlled and manipulated by
cabals of evil marketeers.
As a result, there is a clear attitude (visible in many of our forums if you
look closely) advocating avoidance of the market.
In other words, I think there is a pattern to the behavior that many (most?)
players don't even look at that stuff until higher levels (but in the case of
group #2 players, they're typically still underfunded, even so).
I'd like to attempt to alter that mindset a little by putting practical costs
into better perspective, and possibly providing some ideas to help them
start debunking those common market perceptions for themselves.
I know - probably whizzing in the wind, but, I'm silly that way...
Regards,
4
PS> For category 3 - stop whining ... if you can make 2 Billion, you can
make 10 - it's not any harder...
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Quote:Definitely not true for PvP IO's.Originally Posted by Rajani Isa
And both are sets of all Unique (only one slottable per BUILD) IOs.
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For Holds, I believe the Lockdown Proc has that (indirect) effect.
By that, I mean - it doesn't directly change the mag of the hold per se, a
Mag 3 hold is *still* a Mag 3 hold, but the proc adds a percentage chance
to apply an additional hold to the target, and since they stack, the *effective*
mag increases for that target for a short while.
Regards,
4 -
Some good points here guys - I appreciate the feedback.
Even though 10-20M is pretty inexpensive in this economy (though most
"casual" gamers wouldn't know that), I agree that there are several things
that could be done to lower the costs more - that's part of what the
guide would be intended to address.
I agree with Goat on the point that SOs, by and large, aren't available on
the market at anywhere near the quantities you'd want if you were equipping
a toon with them. For the most part, you're really relying on vendors for
those, from a build perspective. IOs are much better in that regard, being
available in good quantities at the market, as well as fixed price at tables.
@Quasadu: I'd be curious to see your numbers if you can locate them -
I'd imagine them to be pretty similar (so it would be a good sanity check
on my math), and for IOs, I'd be curious on where you drew your arbitrary
cost for salvage (I think 30K is pretty generous actually, but it's volatile
enough that different viewpoints would be interesting)
@Sardan: Timing is, indeed, a very key issue if a player wants to keep costs
down - in a couple ways. First, as you mention, to avoid NAO pricing -
smart shopping (planned in advance) is by far the best way to lower IO
costs - no doubt at all (whether it means you buy from badgers, or simply
avoid the volatility swings).
The other key aspect where timing matters, is when to *start* accruing
significant funds (ie. start using the Market intelligently).
Note the costs at L22 and L37 - at L22, costs jump by a factor of 450+ percent,
and at L37 they've nearly tripled over that (we mitigated that somewhat with
the "Frugal" IO strategy). Still, looking at these numbers, I see now why
those were such crunch points back in the old pre-market days.
Between L17 and L37, level basically doubled, but SO enhancement costs
increased by a a factor of 13. Ouch.
The other part of that is this: If you got 1.5 million early - that gets you
all the way through the purchase of L22 SOs. Unfortunately, that only just
gets you the L15 set of IOs. Even with the "Frugal IO" approach, you'd need
nearly 4.5M by L22 - an early start is vital there.
We've repeatedly proved that just playing the game and selling drops will
get most players 100K or so, by L10, but 1.5M is a pretty big hurdle, that
early, for a non-marketeer, and 4.5M may well seem unreachable.
With TOs/DOs, that strategy is enough, but for IOs, I believe it's pretty
important to get the casual player over "Marketing Fear" early if they're
going to go that route. At least, to the point where they'll use beginner
market strategies (ie. sell drops, recipe vendoring, etc.)
Anyway, once again, I appreciate reading the thoughts you've all posted -
they're clarifying points I'd want to cover if I turn this into an actual guide.
Regards,
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