Hydrophidian

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Just saying the XP reward ratio in the MA compared to regular content is completely out of whack whether its Solo or on an 8 man team, the bubbles just fly

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Again... this simply isn't true.

XP gain for soloers and small teams is much slower in MA than it is in regular content.

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What do you consider a worthwhile flip? As in, for one recipe flipped, how much profit is considered worthwhile? 1 mil? 10? 50?

Just a noob starting to do this wondering. I've been doing about 25 mil per enhancement, selling one or two a day.

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For me, turnover rate is an important factor. I'll work things that don't return much if I know I'm going to make it up in volume sales.

Overall, I shoot for 100 mil a day on any character I'm not just goofing around with. I usually hit that mark. This is with casual market play, logging in a few times a day for 10 minutes or so.

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Could be bad timing to judge this just after the long holiday weekend here in the States. Prices went crazy this weekend. I saw the amount of Brass on hand drop below 50 units, which made the "Buy-It-Nao" price jump to crazy levels.

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The upcoming 2XXP weekend is going to be very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

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They're still far from the vendor trash they were previously.
I just sold Draconic Wings for a million red-side.

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Right, some are still a bit up there. But a lot of these recipes were going for 10s of millions in the weeks immediately after MA's launch. Particularly Draconic Wings, Tech Wings, and Rocket Boots.

I made about 400 million profit on Rocket Boots alone.

Point is, they've all come down a lot and there's actually standing supply on them now.

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It isn't as insane as it was, but it's still far removed from 'normal'.

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This is more or less what I'm saying. While we might disagree on exactly how removed it currently is from "normal" (pre-I14), it seems to me it's not nearly as insane as it was.

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The set flood was largely due to the super-efficient farms.

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This one I have to disagree with. While 'super-efficient farms' surely played their part, I'd say it had more to do with practically everyone being focused on the New Shiny and the subsequent wealth of tickets that flooded in.

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but I made bundle on my bet that most of 'the good stuff' would pop back up to near-normal prices once the outlier farms got shut down.

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Me too. Though my assumption was that people would start steadily returning to regular content once the novelty of MA started to fade.

And I think that's happening.

How about the people around here? Have you returned to primarily doing regular content, do you keep mostly to MA, or has it become more of a mix for you?

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Anything not available by tickets or merits and actually desirable is through the roof.

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Actually, no, the costume piece recipes have crashed. They made quite the spike immediately after MA's launch, but now most of 'em are going for peanuts again.

A lot of the common salvage also seems to be recovering, their existing supplies building back up.

And the set recipes just aren't coming in like they were on the heels of MA's launch. Prices on a lot of those are making their way back up to pre-MA levels.

When items that can only be obtained through playing regular content are coming into the market at a steady enough pace to keep the prices on those items down... that means people are playing the regular content.

Ignoring this fact doesn't make it go away.

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Are you seeing prices go down on stuff that absolutely can't be gotten with tickets (purples, respecs) ? I don't shop in that price range...

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Purples had already been messed with by the introduction of merits, so I'm not sure they can be used as an effective measure. Respecs, I'm not sure about, haven't been watching them closely.

Costume piece recipes, though, have shifted dramatically. They're still not coming in like they used to pre-MA, but they're definitely a lot more plentiful than they were the first couple of weeks after MA's release. Same with the temp power recipes.

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Why not?

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'Cuz it's not a parody or a derivative work? As described, it doesn't comply with either designation.

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It seemed clear that the OP knew that they were "meant" to be the JLA.

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As in inspired by; a homage? Maybe. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as it's suitably subtle... a "rough approximation". What's being described isn't any more a problem than any Claws/Regen Scrapper or several of City's existing signature characters. Manticore, Synapse, Positron, Statesman... they all strongly echo popular existing properties.

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What would DC stance be in regards to this?

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Comics are full of homage characters. As one example, Wildstorm, which is now a DC imprint (at least, I think it still is), had (has?) two popular titles built around the idea of homages: The Authority and Planetary.

But probably the most famous homage work out there right now would be Watchmen.

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I'm still successfully flipping uncommon salvage on one of my alts, buying for around 9k and selling for 100-400k, so it hasn't calmed down that much. =P

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A lot of the uncommons are still pretty volatile, yah. But I've been noticing sales for under vendor price lately, and for a while there, that just wasn't happening.

This post was inspired by an ongoing thread over in the MA forum.

Have other marketeers noticed that MA's effect on the market has diminished significantly since its release? In your marketeering, are you seeing trends towards pre-MA patterns?

Most of the stuff I work, on both sides of the fence, has been steadily reverting to pre-MA dynamics. Anyone else finding this to be the case?

I take this thread as yet more evidence that the rating system was a big mistake.

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No it has not.

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Yes, it has.

Items that only drop by playing regular content are being placed on the market at a steady enough pace to keep the prices for them down. This means that people are playing regular content. It is the only way it could happen. It is the only explanation. It is a glaring and inarguable indication that people are playing the regular content.

They may not be playing it the way you play it. But they're playing it.

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The only common salvage I have seen really drop in price is that which most common to lowbies.

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Then you need to look again. I look at this stuff multiple times a day. I buy it, I craft with it, so I know what the trends have been and how they've changed over the past few months. Again, I make hundreds of millions of Inf a week. That's not an exaggeration. You can't do that without having some inkling of market trends.

However, you need only open a market window and search on salvage to see that prices on most items have dropped and supply is rising.

On blueside, Regenerating Flesh, for example, is right back to the exact same behavior that it exhibited before MA was introduced. Hydraulic Piston, which had its supply decimated by MA patterns (it went from 4 figures to 0), is now back at over 400 for sale and 0 bidding.

That said, I don't expect everything to return to exactly the way it was. MA is still having an impact, and likely will continue to have an impact for the foreseeable future. Some items will take longer to recover than others. Some will remain altered until something else comes along to shake them up. MA is being used, and that's going to affect the market.

But it's clearly not being used as extensively and exclusively as you and others have been claiming.

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we can argue these pseudo facts

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I'm not arguing "pseudo-facts". First of all, there's nothing to argue. Further, there's nothing spurious about what I've been pointing out about the market. It isn't a matter of opinion or perception. It simply is what it is, readily observable to anyone who bothers to look. The numbers on the market are as real as any other numbers out there.

And what they currently show is that the upheaval that immediately followed MA's release has settled down. Significantly. Don't believe me? Go post in the market forum and ask about it, see what the regulars in there say.

I'm sorry it's inconvenient to you claim, but when prices drop on items that can only be obtained by playing regular content, it means a lot of people are playing regular content.

There's really no way around that.

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The auction house is also negativly affected by AE as the player base has dried up due to the direction the game has been going or lack of players playing regular content enough to team with. salvage and recipes are being put up for sale by the hundreds and thousands with few to no buyers.

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I use the market quite extensively, so I can tell you you're flat out wrong here. The market trends clearly and inarguably indicate that a substantial portion of the player base has returned to playing regular content.

When MA was introduced, many recipe prices crashed, not due to a diminishment of the player base, but because there was a huge influx of supply. That supply came from people buying recipes with MA tickets (through the random rolls).

At the same time, supply for items that can only be obtained by playing regular content dried up. Prices on those items subsequently sky-rocketed. For example, MA contributed to the inflation on Purples (merits being the other culprit). Also, costume piece recipes started going for tens of millions.

Meanwhile, salvage went crazy. No one was listing common and uncommon salvage. As a result, standing supplies plummeted and prices went up. A lot. On the other hand, everyone was spending their tickets on rares, so those actually went down in price.

In short, MA picked up the market and shook it like a snowglobe. The rules were rewritten overnight. But was this a negative impact? No. It was simply an impact. Things changed. But that happens to the market with each and every new issue. This time was simply more dramatic (the most dramatic yet).

However, now the market is starting to look more like it did before MA was introduced. For salvage, supply is recovering and prices are going down. For set recipes, the tsunami has stopped and prices are going up. And the things that can only be gained by playing regular content? Supply is going up.

So... clearly... people are playing regular content, and the statement "salvage and recipes are being put up for sale by the hundreds and thousands with few to no buyers" is demonstrably wrong. In fact, judging by the current state of common IOs, demand seems to have increased. They are routinely selling for prices you once only saw during a 2XXP weekend. How is that even possible if everyone's leaving? How am I making hundreds of millions every week if no one's buying anything?

So, I'm sorry, but the fact that you've so grossly misrepresented the present condition of the market has me wondering if you're actually even trying to make a fair and objective assessment of the situation.

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I would like to ask what server you play on as this could be a big difference in the way you see the impact differantly than I.

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Why should this matter? MA is either the complete disaster you've claimed it to be in your earlier post... or it isn't. You didn't state, "it's a disaster on Freedom." You declared, "It's a disaster." Period. No qualifiers.

If it's a server specific issue, that's a very different scenario than the one you've presented above.

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I know you havent seen these things but look around. its happening or it wouldnt be such a controversy now.

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I don't see a controversy.

I see a few people on the forums making the 'X has ruined the game!' claim, where X is, in this instance, MA.

The thing is, over the years, I've seen that complaint a lot, where X was some other "disaster" that was ruining the game: PVP, IOs, the market, ED, Pocket D, Winter Lords, and so on. And yet, here we still are... so I now, as a matter of course, take the claim with a hefty grain of salt whenever it arises.

Personally, I think it's far too early to be making any definitive claims about MA's overall long-term impact. It's still settling in.

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For new users this can be very intimidating and confusing having such high level toon's looking for teams in the same zone as some one who is celebrating thier first earned level outside tof the training room. this is not the kind of environment we want new players to be exposed to if we want this game to stay alive, nor is it desirable for regular core players.

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I happen to know a couple of new users, and they've been neither intimidated nor confused in the manner you describe (they both love MA, by the way). Frankly, I'd find it pretty odd if they were. And, speaking as a "core player", I don't really care who's in Atlas or what they're saying in broadcast. I stopped paying attention to Atlas broadcast a long time ago.

From all I've seen so far, both in game and on the forums, it seems that MA has impacted a particular subset of players: those who primarily do their playing in PUGs and who tend not to build their own teams.

If this is how you play, yes MA's introduction has no doubt disrupted your playstyle. However, current indicators suggest that this will pass.

After all, if leveling is your goal, MA is usually not the way to go. It's only superior with a sizeable team running on a farmable map, and that's only ever going to appeal to a certain subset of the player base.

As someone who usually either solos or runs on small teams, I don't go to MA to level. Regular content is much faster in that regard. I think it's fairly safe to say that my approach to the game is not uncommon, and MA hasn't disrupted my routine at all.

So perhaps it isn't as big a problem as you perceive it to be.

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AE is a huge disaster.

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News to me!

Please explain how MA has "alienated the desired player base"?

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Any average player that has been with the game for a few issues can plainly see just how dramatic a negative affect it has had on the game.

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I've been with the game since August of '04, and I don't see this dramatic negative effect. I do see a lot of positive, though, so even if the negative effect exists, MA can hardly be called "a disaster".

Are you claiming that the regular content has been abandoned?

Because I can tell you with absolute certainty that it hasn't been.

From my vantage, the only potential problem MA has introduced is making power-leveling too easy to pull off.

If that is a problem, the developers will address it, just as they've done in the past.

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I can't get a call from the DEVs on what exactly the "no parody and no derivative works" actually is supposed to cover, but this seems to fit that.

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It doesn't.

Sounds like someone was/is just having fun with MA.

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Is it a copyright infraction?

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No, it's a homage, which is fair game.

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i dont car about people taking holidays off...

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I don't car about that either. Gas is too expensive.

Beep beep!

Given that the Booster Packs have, so far, been themed, seems like a natural fit to me to add decorative thematic base items to the packages.

Anyone like this idea?

Would you be more inclined to buy the Boosters if they included base items?

I've been having a recurring problem lately. Often when I try to put enhancements into storage, the game freezes up and falls over.

Anyone else having this issue?

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Just reduce AE Exp somewhat.

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It's already reduced.

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Bump the xp given by dev missions so it's a bit above the average AE (non-farm or non-exploit farm) and you'll see more activity in the rest of the game.

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Regular content already gives more experience than "the average AE".

There is already more activity in the rest of the game.

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Origin is a tag in fact

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As in an origin story. That's not what I'm referring to.

I'm referring to the 5 Origins (capital O) of the game: Magic, Mutation, Natural, Science, Technology.

For example, If I'm playing a Mutant character, I may be interested in arcs that focus on that sort of thing (Crey experimentation, Arachnos projects, Outcast exploits, etc), just as some of the arcs do in the regular content.

Author-side, it'd make it easier to write for a more particular character type.

Character origin and Origin can co-exist, which is why I'd make Origin its own category to be set.

So far, in my arc searches, I've looked for: a particular genre, something that fits a particular Origin, a particular level range, a particular enemy group, and/or a morality. Arc length has also come into play.

The I15 additions have made my searches easier. While I think some of the existing tags could be more refined, I wouldn't take any of them away. I'd actually add Origin as another category you could set.

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People need to quit saying "JOIN AN SG/CHANNEL/ADD EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER TO YOUR GLOBAL LIST" like it's going to change that 80% of the population is doing this.

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If you mean playing MA, there's no way it's 80% of the population doing it.

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Like if I need to kill 200 council members to unlock a weapon, can I just setup a mission with 200 council members and run through them real quick?

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No. Weapons are usually granted through defeat badges, and you don't get credit on those in MA content.