Hydrophidian

Common salvage on both markets is, in many (most?) cases, getting back on track. The supply on several items is climbing back into 4 figures (at least one of those items rarely even got to 4 figures pre-MA) and prices are dropping.

Of course, this coming weekend is going to make it all go pear-shaped... but, point is, common salvage is, once again, becoming common. Yah, there are outliers. There will always be outliers. Yah, there are price spikes. There will always be price spikes. But, overall, I've watched the condition of common salvage steadily improve since the tremendous upset that occurred immediately after MA's release.

Not so much with the uncommons. Compared to pre-MA prices, they're still quite inflated. At this point, I'm beginning to think a lot of them aren't going to come down until probably Going Rogue hits the scene.

Rares equalized across the board, which--aside from being kinda weird--was, I think, probably a net plus. However, some of them are starting to creep up again, while the formerly cheap stuff has remained inflated. If that trend continues, it'll negate the overall advantage that was gained.

So, in the end, while I find the idea of buying specific pieces of common salvage to be an attractive one, considering everything I've seen in these past few months, I have to agree with Catwhoorg's assessment. Introducing that option would be (really) bad for the market. Convenient in the immediate, but we'd be suffering a loss overall as everything becomes more and more expensive.

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The other interesting point about AE arcs is wheras in normal arcs, players begin by questioning themselves: 'I wonder if I misunderstood this?' in AE arcs, they begin by questioning the author and the mission 'This isn't right, the author has done this wrong.'

This is a fundemental problem but nothing that can be changed. In my mind, it is due to the fact that players are aware that the mission is created not by a dev, but another player - a peer. They know it is created by someone who probably has less knowledge then themselves, and this fuels the over-critical nature. An analogy would be schools. Dev made missions are ones made by tutors, player made missions are made by other students.

Or in other words, instead of filling the blanks with something that will justify the story(as they would in a dev made mission), they fill in the blanks with something that contradicts the story.

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I think you're painting with too broad a brush here. While I'm sure there are a fair number of players that comply with your description, I'm also confident there are a fair number who don't.

In my case, I'm much, much more critical of developer content than I am of MA content. The developers are professionals, are getting paid, are the stewards of the world in which we are meant to immerse, and are, in effect, the GMs for the whole shebang. In light of all this, I approach dev content with greater expectations and I hold it to a higher (and narrower, more precise) standard.

For example, if the developers introduced something like Blight, I'd be screaming bloody murder about it, believe me.

But this is, to me, one of the greatest strengths of MA: the freedom to operate outside of the box, to create content that doesn't have to adhere to the constraints the developers have no option to ignore.

I'd just prefer to have fair warning when those constraints are being deliberately discarded by an architect.

But, back on point: I'd say there are also people who approach MA with the same standards, the same expectations, with which they approach developer content.

And that's fine. I don't do that, myself--neither do a lot of other people I know--but I think it's a valid approach.

However, neither approach--be it the more forgiving and accepting one, or the one that's universally applied--fit into the picture you're painting.

Given that, the players you're talking about may very well be a minority. A large minority, probably, but a minority nonetheless. So, as an architect, when it comes to feedback, I'd be a little leery of applying their view as the default.

In any event, I don't believe forumers, at least in this regard, are at all representative of the larger player population. Arcanaville made an interesting observation about that up thread. Standards, on the whole, seem to be less demanding, players less critical, than they tend to be around here on the forums.

I played this arc a week ago, and found that I didn't agree with the hype.

I think, as a story, it was decent enough. But as a roleplay story... not so much.

Rather than doing a point-by-point review, I'm just going to give an overview of my experiences while playing it...

I read the description of the arc. The description tells me what the arc is about. Seems okay... standard fare. I hit 'play'.

The contact has an odd na-- oh. Hrm. Okay, now I'm immediately suspicious of the contact.

At this point I should mention that, when I play MA arcs, I'm usually looking for things to weave into my own character's story. The contact's name starts to put this objective at risk. For now, I'll just pretend my character hasn't actually seen it written down anywhere.

Anywho, I head into the first mission. I find it to be okay enough, though I have some issues with it. They're enough that now I'm thinking this arc probably isn't going to be adopted into my own character's lore. Could still be fun, though.

Second briefing. Well, okay, now things just got interesting. Much, much more difficult to swallow... but interesting. Putting aside all the "buts" that come up with the presented scenario, I'm now curious to see how the author's going to resolve all of this. Maybe, in light of the positive comments on the forums, the resolution is novel? We shall see.

I love the visual impact of the second mission. I've seen the map many times, but that map with those custom critters just... works for me. They click. Particularly the lieutenants. Nicely done. I choose to use hit-and-run tactics to relieve Liberty of all her backup before focusing on her, and that just adds to the atmosphere of the mission.

Third briefing. Wow, this just got epic. The support for it seems pretty flimsy, but I push that back for the moment. Now I really want to know how this is going to be resolved.

Third mission. I go around the corner, and at the end of the corridor is a hulking, misshapen black silhouette standing in a patch of fire. What the hell is that?! Oh! It's CK! Holy shi-wow, who knew he could look that scary? Best visual moment of the experience, right there, and I immediately want the Synapse TF tweaked in order to emulate it. This mission is also just fun to play.

Fourth briefing... what?

Ah. Now we get to it. I'm a touch disappointed by the turn. I did see it as a distinct possibility (due to the contact's name), but was hoping it wouldn't go that way, mostly because it just doesn't work for the character I'm playing. I'm still interested to see where it goes from here, though. More specifically, I'm interested to see how the author gives my character back to me.

The design of the fourth mission is pretty neat. A friend of mine has done something very similar, but has yet to publish. I wish there were more missions along these lines in the standard content. I also love the clues.

Fifth mission. A lot of people have apparently come to dislike the map, but I still enjoy it. I move through it quickly, though, because I want to get to the resolution. I want to see how this is all tied up.

Oh. I see. That's something of a let down.

I come away from the arc with two major issues:

1. What I got was not what I had signed on for.
2. My character was taken away from me... and, worse than that, was not given back to me at the end.

These issues are rooted, not so much in story expectation, but in roleplay expectation. Particularly the second, though they're intertwined, as the second wouldn't be as much of a problem, were it not for the first.

I find that there are some architects who approach MA more as an author than as a GM. Given the medium, I think that's an inherently tricky path to take. Not being clear about it at the outset... that's even more dangerous.

This arc wasn't at all clear about it. Quite the opposite, in that it was deliberately misleading. I understand why that is. I'm not even sure it could've been made clear without damaging the twist/reveal. But, from an immersive roleplay perspective, that doesn't make it any less disappointing.

All that said, I can see why this arc gets high ratings from a lot of players. It's got a lot going for it. But, specifically as an immersive roleplay experience, I think it misses the mark by a considerable distance.

Given the medium and the audience makeup such a medium is going to attract, I can certainly see why there'd be some controversy and extreme differences of opinion associated with this arc.

In the future, I may recommend playing it... or I may recommend avoiding it. It'll all come down to who I'm talking to and how they, as a default, approach MA.

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Studies have shown that a person who uses AE will actually cost the health care system less over their lifetime than someone who does not, due to the fact that an AE user dies earlier.

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That might be true... were it not for the myriad of birth defects caused by MA.

It's tragic that a baby's first--and ultimately only--word has to be "laeft".

It's a fact. AE has now been proven to be the leading cause of death among adults ages 18 to 45. Don't bother trying to argue it, it's a fact. AE is killing people.

You might think that's okay. You might think, 'hey, it's their life, let them live it how they want. If they want to burn the candle at both ends with AE, that's their choice.'

Sure, that sounds fair and reasonable. But, believe me, it's not okay. It's not okay, because there's something you're failing to take into account...

Second-hand AE.

That's right. AE users are endangering us all with second-hand AE. Startling evidence has come to light that strongly suggests second-hand AE may be shaving years--perhaps decades--from the lifespans of people who don't even use it... simply because they're in proximity to those who do.

AE users can choose to put their own lives at risk... but should they really be allowed to make that choice for everyone else?

Should they?

Clearly not.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

First, isolate AE in its own exclusive zone. Then, put at least two large, empty zones between AE and the rest of the grid. This will insure that no one accidentally stumbles into the AE building or its immediate environs.

Travel powers should not function in these buffer zones. Also, the floor of these zones should be covered in caltrops. It should take at least 30 minutes real time for anyone to traverse the buffer zones and get to the AE building.

Secondly, impose an MA tax. Anyone who uses MA should have to pay a small, extra fee every month. Say... 15 dollars.

This will help cover the increased medical costs--a burden we all must share--associated with the physical issues brought about by extended and focused AE usage. These issues include, but are not limited to: AFD (Acute Farmitis Disease), EOH (Early Onset Humpback), "Orange Fingers", chronic Heartburn, rapid eyeball expansion, Noobheimer's Disease, Twitchette Syndrome and, of course... Anal Fissures.

The above measures should be enacted immediately, as if lives depended on it... because they do.

Please. Think of the children.

Thank you.

*SHRIEK!*

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I guess I keep trying to get people to remember what it is like to start a new game from scratch, without being "in the know"

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And I'd point out to you that the new player experience is not uniform for all players. I think this is what others have also been trying to convey.

I know a couple of people who've just recently started playing. They haven't had the issues some folks here have complained about.

So those issues aren't universal. Not even for new players. Which begs the question... why the difference?

It seems to me that MA is only negatively impacting a particular playstyle and approach to the game, and it's an approach that a lot of people--maybe even most--don't adopt for themselves.

I, personally, have no problem with the idea of taking steps to mitigate the negative impact on that playstyle. But--and this is a big but--not at the expense of another demographic and playstyle.

I don't PUG. I stopped doing PUGs long before MA, I don't PUG now, and no matter what's done to MA, I won't PUG in the future. For me, the gameplay has not changed one iota since MA's launch. It hasn't significantly changed for anyone I routinely interact with.

What has changed is that we now have more options for leveling and improving our characters. From where I'm standing, that's a good thing. I fail to see why that should be taken away from me and those I play with, just because some people can't find PUGs as readily as they used to. I fail to see why one legitimate playstyle should be given so much more consideration over another.

I used to PUG, way back when. Then I hit level 40, and I could no longer easily find a team that wasn't herding and/or PLing. The 40+ game was rife with the same behavior folks are grumping about today in AP.

My reaction was to change my approach. I pretty much stopped doing PUGs. I found other ways to level.

The developers eventually changed the game in such a way that the PI PLing crowd was significantly diminished... but by that time I had adapted to a new (and I think better) way of doing things, and felt no need to return to PUGs.

Frankly, I think that, when it comes down to it, that's just what most of the folks who've been complaining about MA are going to have to do. Adapt.

The game routinely changes, so I'd call it unreasonable to expect gameplay to remain static, or to expect the developers to 'institutionalize' any one particular playstyle over another.

MA shifted gameplay. Going Rogue will no doubt shift it again.

The options are either to roll with the changes, or to remain locked in one, narrow playstyle. If the latter is chosen, there are going to be periods of 'drought' as the playstyle rises and ebbs in prominence and popularity. That's the unfortunate price for being inflexible. However, what I've been seeing around here is a lot of thinly-veiled 'I want to eat my cake and have it too' criticisms about MA.

That's just not going to garner a lot of sympathy, no matter how it's spun.

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I NEVER said I believed that they *should* remove AE, I simply said that it COULD be done...contrary to what so many people like to say.

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Technically speaking, yah, they could yank it.

Practically speaking, no, they really can't. Not anytime soon, anyway.

Besides, there's no indication that they want to.

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General reply to the thread:

Paragon Studios has vested itself in MA as a tool to facilitate player-created content as an alternative to the standard content.

That's the design. They didn't have to design it that way, but they did. They had good reason for that design and they've plenty of reason to want to see it work out.

Without rewards, MA can't be the alternative it was designed to be.

So, rewards aren't going to be removed from MA. To do so would be to essentially declare it a failure. I think the devs will pursue many other options before resorting to something like that.

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Reichsman gives Column Breaker, though.

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Well, poot. Guess I gotta go do that TF now.

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But NONE of the TFs/SFs offered in Ouroboros reward badges. and reward hilariously low merits, too.

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There's a whole bunch of missions, arcs, and particular defeats that I think should give a badge, and those are among them.

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The newest TF does kind of suck apparently though, so I don't think that's a good metric to really judge pickup groups by.

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Its not very fun, its true. a lot of people dislike running it unless you have a truckload of debuffs to make Reichsman less likely to take 20 minutes to kill. not to mention other than the first map its very generic, re-used maps

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And no badge(s), far as I know, which doesn't help.

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I predict ...

Things will change. Those who adapt will continue to be successful. Those who don't will preach doom and gloom and/or whine until they post an angry "That does it, you lost a dedicated customer this time." post; which will get several "Can I have your stuff?" replies.

Some people will try to anticipate what the changes to the market will be and will speculate wildly on what salvage / recipes / IOs will be worth stockpiling. This will cause a minor ripple in the market. During this time, here on the Market forum, we'll see a post about every 3 days about how the prices for XYZ have gone crazy.

When Issue 16 goes live, about a third of those speculators will have been right and will be back here gloating about the killing they made. The others will be sulking and trying to figure out how to make some of their losses back.

Four to six weeks after I16 launches, things will have re-established a new equilibrium. Marketers will keep making money, and the 6 or 7 hardcore PVP players will still be complaining that they can't get their PvP IO's at the price they would like to pay.

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You may now change your forum handle to Cassandra. Kthx.

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The devs are not going to block the AE from new players. It's heavily been advertised as an alternative levelling method.

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Wow, 7th post, not too bad, tho a bit later than I expected.

The farmers are oh-so-quick to trot this out whenever the topic comes up.

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*boggles*

Wow. Uhm... first of all, it's not only "farmers" that bring this up. Secondly, it's brought up "oh-so-quick" because it's simply the reality of the situation. Third, even if it were only farmers bringing it up, that doesn't make the point itself any less valid.

Here's someone who isn't a farmer telling you: The developers designed MA to be a leveling alternative, 1-50. They have plenty reason for it to be that way. They are now vested in it being that way. So any suggestion that would undermine that functionality probably ain't gunna fly.

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"The devs want it this way", when I'm sure if you asked them all now, at least half of them wouldn't.

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You can hold to that opinion, but as this is a point of MA's fundamental design, I'd bet you're wrong.

But even if you're right, the developers are now vested in the current model. They'll likely come up with all sorts of things that don't break it before resorting to something that does.

The new I16 difficulty settings are probably an example of that.

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I actually think the opposite. I predict that a lot of people will leave the game to pursue something new (that other mmo) and the market will inflate drastically to compensate.

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My prediction: that other MMO™ isn't going to have anywhere near the impact on this game's population as some people seem to think (or hope) it will.

And yah, I'm not gonna make any calls until we get more details about the difficulty slider. Specifically about whether or not it's going to apply to MA.

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If you think that the market hasn't negatively been effected, then you have a very narrow view of the market.

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The effect has been a mixed bag so far, and jumbled up with other factors (holiday weekend, impending 2XXP weekend, new issue).

As I've said elsewhere, I think it's way too early to proclaim MA's long-term effect on the market negative or positive.

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Thus inflation of certain goods like salvage and purple recipes is indeed due to AE. Purples because they're not generated in AE (except in Devs' Choice arcs) and salvage because most people are reluctant to cash in their tickets for it.

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MA isn't the sole cause of the inflation on purples. It's certainly contributing, but that rise started with merits (in combination with Oro). Level 50 content was being neglected well before MA hit the scene.

Also, the incoming supply on salvage seems fairly decent. It's not pre-MA levels, but it's close. The problem I'm seeing is that there are a lot more flippers/manipulators working it than there were before MA (likely tempted into the practice by the extreme shortages that came about in the aftermath of MA's release).

Going Rogue will probably purge salvage of thousands of dummy bids, much as MA purged them from recipes.

Regardless, I still say it's way too early to saddle MA with long-term negative impact on the market.

But I'll make a prediction right now: MA will get blamed around here for the 2XXP price spikes... even though that's happened during and immediately after every previous 2XXP weekend.

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is there anything i missed?

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Yah, the dishes. Could you wash those please?

I hate doing dishes. >.<

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Its decently simple why set IOs dried up.

They capped tickets to 1500 a mission.

And most of the smart marketers realized that with such a cap, salvage was way more profit-friendly.

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Hmmm. That doesn't line up for me for two reasons...

1. The glut continued for a while after that cap was put into place. The supply flow didn't really start to sputter out until after the 4th of July weekend. Bids also shot up around then. I currently attribute that to a sudden influx of high level characters combined with marketeers starting in on their 2XXP preparations.

2. Even with the prices rising, buying salvage with tickets still isn't more profit friendly. Besides, if a lot of people were doing that, there'd be more supply, not less.

The profit in salvage is in flipping/manipulating, hence the absurd number of standing bids on once largely unwanted items. Compared to other things that can be done, it's not a particularly lucrative or efficient approach. But, right now, it's pretty easy--set it and forget it--and that makes it attractive.

Right now I'd say the smart marketers are farming regular content. Preferably with a 47-50.

Shouldn't someone have the choice to do nothing but MA, if that's what they want to do, new player and vet alike?

I understand that it's potentially jarring and annoying to run into people of higher level who've no idea what's going on outside of MA... but I'm not sure that's really a problem for the game itself. Sounds more like an inconvenience for a subset of the player base.

I'm not too keen on the idea of hindering one subset to accommodate another.

Rampant power-leveling, on the other hand, is a potential problem for the game. But removing AE buildings from lowbie zones won't do anything about that. After all, the hub of power-leveling used to be Peregrine Island.

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RMT and the decreased drop rates of purples is what is damaging the market. If anything, AE is increasing the supply of a lot of the rarer salvage.

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The market, overall, is pretty wonky right now. It's not just MA that's responsible for that, but it's clearly a big contributor.

Rare salvage seems to have evened out across the board. That's good in some cases, bad in others. Hey, I can get a Platinum for 500k. That's great. But now I have to pay that same amount for Black Blood of the Earth. Not so great. On the other hand, that's good news for lowbies playing regular content, selling their drops. Long and short of it: mixed bag.

Many uncommon and common salvage pieces have gone kooky. Particularly on blueside. This is mostly bad news. Especially for the impatient.

However, for the patient, there's a lot more Inf to be made on common IOs these days than there used to be.

Set recipes are drying up. Immediately after MA's release, there was a tremendous glut, and prices crashed. Now supply is dribbling in at a seemingly slower rate than it did before MA (which is pushing prices up). Still trying to figure this one out. I think a lot of factors are involved.

People are playing regular content enough to bring in a slow but steady supply of costume piece and temp power recipes.

...but they're still not playing that content at 50, because the purple shortage continues to worsen (Merits started that problem).

All told, based on everything I've been seeing, the market today is a very different animal than it was pre-MA, and the trend right now is that it's getting much more expensive to outfit a character. Especially a level 50. And especially if you want the high-end stuff.

That upward trend is probably going to continue into and beyond 2XXP weekend.

Ultimately, I don't think we're going to have a clear idea of how MA itself is impacting the market for the long-term until well into August.