Garielle

The Wedding Pack.... doesn't come more normal human than that. :P

For the most part, your analysis is accurate as to how currency and value enter and leave the economy. There are two oversights which you sort of missed. First, when an IO is crafted, it takes a chunk of inf as part of the recipe, over and above the cost of the recipe and the salvage. Also, every time money is transacted on the market, around 10% of that is being taken out of the economy. The reason I say ABOUT 10% is that it is actually 5% of the asking price + 5% of the final price. If they are the same, it comes out to 10%, if the original asking price is lower though, it can be somewhat less than 10%.

Another way both infamy and value leave the economy is when players leave the game or delete characters. Even though in the first case, those items still exist, and will re-enter the market should the player return, at least for the moment, those items and money are not a part of the overall economy.

As for money sinks being able to fix the economy, I don't see it having a positive impact at this point. Economics is all about supply and demand, except it is supply and demand of currency, rather than goods or services. If you introduce money sinks, you are going to drastically increase the demand for money. People who are trying to make a lot of money to buy those purple recipes are still going to want those purple recipes, plus now they are going to be striving for whatever it is they can acquire through the new money sink. That means they will be charging even more for their own rare recipes and salvage in order to scrape together the money.

There are a few ways to deflate the economy. One is to increase the supply of items which are overinflated without increasing the demand for the same items. An influx of new players would indeed increase the supply, but it would also increase the demand, so that wouldn't work. The easiest way to increase supply without increasing demand is to increase drop rates. As the market becomes saturated, the demand will be met, and then start to decline, perhaps overnight.

The other way, and I have actually seen this accomplished in smaller online games back in my days programming MUDs, is to have a variable vendor economy. The way this is accomplished is to look at the current supply of money in the economy and have vendors raise and lower they amount they ware willing to sell and buy items for. This has to be done carefully though, as if it is not implemented correctly, it can make it difficult, if not impossible, for lower level characters to outfit themselves with even the most basic of gear.

Going Rogue actually has the potential to make a major impact on the market, particularly red-side. Blue side had a couple of years head start on the red side. There have always been more players on the blue side, and much much more money. There are a lot of people who were capped out on influence when City of Villains was still a distant vision of the future. Up until now, that money has been tucked away in Paragon City. The economy has no direct impact on the economy in the Rogue Isles. With the release of Going Rogue though, unless the game is going to maintain separate balances, plus separate inventories of items, that is going to change. Money will be moving back and forth between the two economies. This could potentially have a very negative impact on the villain economy. I am not going to say it WILL happen, but it is a possibility.

It really depends on when the majority of people who are interested are available. I am deliberately trying to keep things as open as possible until we can see who is interested. Personally, my schedule is fairly open and, for the most part, can be adjusted.

Wow. People are a bit too sensitive. I save my hell-repping for folks that engage in personal attacks, or who refuse to actually discuss anything even semi-intelligently, and instead choose to throw virtual temper tantrums when the entire world doesn't immediately agree with them and bow down in an immediate show of respect and submissiveness.


.

Good deal. Personally, I am hoping that this can be as level-irrelevant as possible. That's the idea anyway. Of course, we'll have to wait and see how many folks are interested and whether their primary interest lies in farming for merits as quickly as possible or using it as a fun way to level up while everyone on the team reaps the rewards.

Scrapyarders are the primary reason I skip as much of the Sharkshead content as possible and have come up with a relatively quick way of doing it. As someone else mentioned, I stay in Cap as long as possible, and don't go to Sharks until I absolutely have to. This is usually around level 21. At that point, I run papers and teams to level 26, then it's off to Ouroboros. You can quickly get to 30 by flashing back to missed arcs in Mercy, Port Oakes, and Cap.

Funny you should mention Widows. I had tried Widows in the past, and never really enjoyed them, primarily because I prefer ranged damage over melee damage (exactly the opposite of Chad). I recently gave them another shot though, and have been having a ball with my new Widow. Just got her to level 26 last night, and have specialized as a Fortunata. Now she plays a bit like a Stalker with ranged damage and better defense. Toss in the fact that some of the attacks have immob, hold, or disorient components to them, and it makes for a fun ride.

I have also found the Widow to be END friendly, even pre-20 In fact, I didn't have trouble at all keeping my toggles up. I think I may have had 2 fights the entire time where a toggle dropped. Throw in Stamina at level 20 and END becomes a non-issue. As an example, last night I was running Mask Presence with NO END redux (hadn't slotted it yet) and Tactical Training Maneuvers with just 2 SO END redux. Fighting all out, I still managed to stay at max endurance the entire time.

Can this not be changed by using the slider at the top? Ah, okay. Still though, if one is stopping at 22 and farming, they are getting only what they receive from random drops. Random drops, when using flashbacks, would still be at the level of the arc, so all other points still hold true.

Can someone explain to me why this is better than just leveling to 26 and then using Ouroboros to flashback to content in the desired level range?

With flashbacks, you get drops that are leveled according to the mission arc you are running (though end of mission rewards will be your own level). Additionally, you are earning merits which can be used to roll for still more rewards of any level you like. Pair this with the fact that you have access to powers up to 5 levels above the level you are fighting at, which means faster/easier kill rates.

The ability to choose your arc also gives you some control over the types of drops you will be getting. Want more magic salvage? Run some CoT or Tsoo arcs.

Finally, I know that mid-level drops have always been the most profitable on the market, but with more and more people taking advantage of that, at some point the paradigm could shift. If your XP is locked at 22, then you will need to level up in order to get to the content that provides the new "in demand" drops. If you are using flashbacks, you are still leveling the entire time, so may well already be in a good position to start farming the newly desired drops immediately.

The only drawback I see to using Ouroboros is that blue side content tends to have arcs which require more "Kill X <Insert Enemy Group Name Here>" missions and cross-zone arcs. I can see this having a small impact on farming time, but with the faster killing and merits being earned, there seems to be ample compensation to make up for it.

Is there something else that I am missing here?

Hmmm..... There's a reason, beyond encouraging people to buy the game, that trial accounts can't use broadcast, tells, channels, or invite people to teams.
Here's a hint...

SuperGuy Invites You To Join a Team.

[TEAM] SuperGuy: CHEAP INF @ WEARELOSERSWHONEEDAREALJOB.COM! Thank you for you support.

You have been kicked from the team.

They can hit 7 innocent victims at a time that way. Account gets banned? So what. Make another, it's free.

DISCLAIMER:

In regards to the use of "you support" above, no it is not a typo. Yes, I am intelligent enough to know that proper grammar would be "your support", but unfortunately, the useless idiots who propagate spam like above, do not.

Okay. Your thought process assumes that there is only one single circumstance which would cause the online store to be unavailable. Remember that there are multiple server pools forming multiple functions. If some of these functions involve more than one server pool, and any one of the server pools is unavailable, that function will be unavailable.

Let's say, for example, the servers that run the Online Store are down. That would cause the store to be unavailable, obviously, but may not necessarily affect anything else.

Now, say, for example, they are doing maintenance on the account management servers. Now, the store will not be available (because it can't apply anything to your account). Furthermore, anything you had already purchased, but had not yet applied would not be available either.

"Locally" has an entirely different meaning when referring to variables. It refers to the scope of the variable--how long its contents are kept around. A local variable usually refers to a variable stored only while the structure it is in is being executed.

I have found an easier work around for this bug (or seem to have). Before entering the elevator, issue a /petcom_all stay command. The pets will stay put until you enter the elevator. As soon as you enter the elevator, the "Stay" state will automatically revert to a "Follow" state, and the pets follow you into the elevator and NOT bug when you exit.

Alternatively, if you are on a team, just let any teammate go up first so that the foyer on the next floor is mapped. The problem seems to occur only when entering a floor for the first time. If you have already been on the floor, you can go up and down all day long and your pets will successfully follow.

The thing is, it is difficult (at best) to specify what rank you want spawn. Yes, you can create a non-required "Boss" objective, but that boss will likely be surrounded by Lts and Minions unless you specify the surrounding group as None. If you do that, then there's not much point.

The bulk of the spawn in a map is going to be randomly generated mobs based on the group you have selected for the mission. These will be made up of all three ranks, if all three ranks are available. Even if your group has 1 kind of Minion, 1 kind of Lt, and 20 kinds of bosses, what will spawn will be a whole bunch of copies of your minions and lts, and 1 or 2 bosses which may be the same or different. The reason boss farms at the moment spawn nothing but bosses is because the group that is set for the mission doesn't have any minions or lts assigned.

In addition to the end of Bridging and the adjustments to Custom Critters in MA Arcs, if a group used in an arc does not include minions, lts, and bosses, rewards are drastically reduced. Even if you create a group consisting of developer created bosses, it will reduce the XP and other rewards unless the group also contains Lts and Minions.

So... Boss Farms are not going to be the candy store they are at the moment.

That...was.... AWWWWESOME!

Kinda leaning that way myself, but wanna see how much stuff they get ironed out with the current patch. Right off the top of my head, I can think of three bugs that still exist with pets. Two are minor annoyances, but the third can be the difference between survival and a very nasty death.