Grouchybeast

Oh, my God, Sam. You know the pain you'd have if you looked at a build and every single power was Frankenslotted with IOs of different levels? That's the same pain I get when I read about you using WWs. :-)

I just checked WW, and the Mako's Bite recipes all sell for a million inf or less. Even with 6 rare salvage pieces, a whole set ought to come in for under the 25 million that one piece cost you. Red Fortunes are all under two million per recipe, and don't have rare salvage in them.

Next time you need IOs, PM me a list.

Even more weirdly to my mind, even buying permanent access to side-switching on the Market instead only costs 1200PP, compared to 800PP to switch one character once. Which means that unless you're 100% sure you'll only want to side-switch one character, ever, it makes no sense to buy the token.

The only thing the tokens really make sense for is convenience, and the convenience applies equally to VIP and Premium, but apparently VIP isn't the intended market. It's all very surreal.

The loyalty awards are a perfectly straight and upfront offer from Paragon: if you stay subscribed between date X and date Y, then we will give you Z in exchange. Dates X and Y bracket the release of a new MMO likely to appeal to their customers, and encourage people to maintain subs that they might otherwise decide to drop while they play with a new toy.

You'll note that Paragon don't say retroactively, 'Hey, we're really pleased that you decided to stay subbed for the last four months, so we thought we'd give you this stuff.'

I have a Mind/Psi Dom in Praetoria, who is currently running repeatable missions to get up to level 30 in time for I23. She has been ridiculously easy to solo pretty much from level 1. The variety of controls means that there's always something available to neutralize mobs. I won't say she's blindingly fast, but she's been extraordinarily safe.

Why, yes. Yes, it is.

If they release purchasable sets too close together, then some people whinge endlessly about how the devs are holding them up at gunpoint and stealing their monies, because vets can't buy the sets right away with stipend points. So blame those people.

Or, because the production team want to pace the release of new content of the same type so that there is a steady flow of items coming onto the market of interest to as wide a spectrum of players as possible.

Pick whichever option makes you happier :-)

Aww, bless! Good luck, and have fun.

(Also, maybe search for 'Luck Charmers'. But not if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to know how a story turns out before you get to the end of the book.)

I thought the DA arcs were AWESOME. I've never felt more like I was playing a really super powered hero than when I reached the end. I really felt like she was an Incarnate. And also like everyone else really was looking to my character to save the day because she was the only one who could. (Admittedly, she has three level shifts, but on the other hand she's also a zero-defense super-squishy blaster.)

Also, it's really important to have a great costume. One that you'd be proud to be seen wearing in a cut scene when you save the world.

Oh, wow. Those look awful. Thank you for saving me from a purchase that would have always annoyed me.

He means toggles running on characters when you log out still being running when you log back in. The game will now be recording toggle state and restoring it on log-in.

Other people are getting free cool stuff, and that's always a good time to put your hand out, just on the off-chance.

I bet you that if this was a real offer, someone would buy it.

What did you think about the new DA arcs? For all the God of Death, and the blood and tentacles artwork that looked like it had come right out of the back page of a thirteen-year-old boy's notebook, I finished the storyline feeling really super-heroic and awesome.

Don't feel too bad. I didn't bother to try to log in yesterday afternoon because I thought it was Thursday.

Toons don't have to be VIP to send an SG invite. It's only interaction with the SG registrar that needs VIP status.

Really, just supply and demand.

Most PVP IOs are essentially junk. With a few exceptions, they have undesirable bonuses, and no one really wants them. So much so, that despite the incredibly low supply and the fact they they keep their bonuses on exemping, demand was low and so prices were low.

Imagine demand for IOs as a pyramid.

At the top, you have the people who will pay 2+ billion off-market for their +def proc.

Below them, is a tier of people who will pay 2 billion on the market. They just aren't willing to go to the hassle of off-market transactions, or they don't value the IO more than 2 billion anyway.

Below them, is a tier of people who are willing to pay 1.5-2 billion.

Below them, is a tier of people who are willing to pay 1-1.5 billion.

Then the people who are willing to pay 0.5-1 billion.

Etc, all the way down to all the people who would pick one up if it was the same price as a Steadfast +def.

In the past, supply of the highly desirable PVP IOs was so low, that it was only enough to fill the very top tier of the pyramid, with a little overspill. Many went to off-market sales, and those that went into WW were immediately picked up by a 2 billion standing bid.

Then comes news of enhancement converters.

Demand for PVP sets increases globally, because they now have a use -- conversion into desirable IOs.

Demand for the PVP sets containing the desirable procs increases more than for the other sets, because it requires fewer converters to hit gold.

Off-market sales dry up as the news of converters spreads, buyers decide to wait, and the demand vanishes. The top tier of the pyramid is gone before the converters are even active.

People with PVP IO stock start to unload it on the market, because they foresee increasing supply and falling prices. Again, even before converters go live, prices start to fall because supply is increasing.

First of all, it reaches the people who still have outstanding bids for 2 billion for the IOs. (And lets hope they really wanted them, and weren't just storing inf.) Eventually, that tier is filled up. There are no more buyers willing to pay 2 billion.

Now, sellers have a choice. They can wait for more of the 2 billion buyers to come along, or they can start dropping their prices, to pour supply into the tier of people who will pay 1.5-2 billion. Sellers are still making out like bandits at 1.5-2 billion, and they know supply is increasing, so down the prices go.

Remember that sellers are competing against other sellers for buyers. If I have a waiting bid in at 1.9 billion, and you price your IO at 1.899 billion, you get the sale when someone who prices at 1.901 billion doesn't. So particularly when there's a combination of increasing supply and outstanding high bids, it makes sense to drop listing prices to try to catch those bids. Once those outstanding bids are they're gone, there might never be bids placed that high again.

Eventually, though, the demand at the 1.5-2 billion level soaks up the supply. Is there still an excess of supply? Then either a seller must drop their price, or be left sitting on piles of unsaleable stock while other sellers take the sales.

Prices will keep dropping, until the supply coming into the market is matched by the demand at that price. Then it will stabilise.

If there was price-station gas supple price fixing happening, then sure, everyone could agree to sell their IOs for only 2 billion. But that requires that a) you can get agreement from everyone who ever sells on the market, which is impossible and b) no one will agree to the price fix, and then unload all their stock at 1.8 billion and run away giggling. Which, of course, would be very ebil.

You don't actually need to have all the attributes in the green to have good slotting.

All the green means is that you're touching the edge of the ED limit for the attribute. So, for example, slotting Accuracy that high is almost certainly overkill.

Mousing over the power will show you the value enhancements in the power only. If you select the power and look at the details in the Info tab, that will show you the Accuracy, Recharge and End use including your global bonuses. Then you'll be able to see how you're doing after taking set bonuses etc into account.

That's because it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

If people feel that access to VIP only features is worth $15 a month (or $10 on a yearly plan), then they can pay the sub and use the features.

If people feel that access to VIP only features isn't worth the price of the sub, then they can drop to Premium and use the money for Paragon Points.

That's a choice we have now that we didn't have before Freedom. The fact that some people choose one option and some the other doesn't mean that the choices are broken in some way. In fact, there's very little point in offering a choice if everyone chooses the same option.

If you, personally, don't feel that the sub is good value, then stop paying it and switch to Premium instead. That's why Premium is there -- to give you the choice.

I can definitely see why that feels weird to you, and also why it makes it an unsatisfying experience for you.

I mean, I LOVED the DA arcs. I loved that I could roll through the missions on my uber-squishy zero-defense blaster, smashing my way through ranks of blue-conning EBs. I have never felt as much that my character was a real Incarnate anywhere else in the game. I beat a GOD, and he didn't stand a chance. When Ellie stood there in her Incarnate armour in the end cut-scene, it was one of the most satisfying moments I've had playing this game.

BUT, that's only my personal preference as a soloist. I know I'm lucky, in that most of the time my play preferences do seem to line up with the dev's design preferences. If there are ways of expanding the options in DA to improve the experience for other solo players, while keeping the current experience intact, I would be all in favour of that.