Lakanna

Actually, all it proves is that increasing supply by one piece of salvage at a time isn't going to pull prices down. I'm sure that if we dumped several hundred luck charms, we could deflate the price temporarily.

Long-term increase in supply is determined by the drop rates, which is entirely in the hands of the devs. Bringing prices down can be done, but it's as unsustainable as driving prices up: the drop rates the devs set ultimately determine supply. The decision to have no drops in AE changed things. The decision to allow common salvage rolls hasn't done a lot to counterbalance it.

I finally got tired of waiting on my lowball bids yesterday, and dropped 600M on 4 LotG +recharge.

I ran Renault later on. Guess what came up when I spent the tickets on a random roll?

Seems like yesterday was LotG day for the RNG.

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I've been doing this since MA launched. Made over 100 million selling common and uncommon salvage.

People still pay me 50k for them when they could get them for 50.

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Sad but true. I've made an awful lot of money listing common salvage for give-away prices, only to find that someone wanted to give me tens of thousands of INF for something that was listed for 5. C'est la vie.

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The answer, as ever, is to give players a viable alternative to the market for getting IOs. Not a replacement, but a viable alternative.

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There is a problem there, though. If they're reasonable to get, people will get tehm, and the market gets nothing. A market really only functions well when you have some fluidity to it: things have to enter and leave. If supply dries up, then the prices spike, and people stop using it. End result is a crippled market that is worthless to everyone.

If you make things too EASY to get, supply outweighs demand, prices bottom out. Good for players, but then the market no longer functions as an effective INF sink (whether it does a good enough job NOW is debatable.)

The best solution is one that slightly increases the rate people aquire the things they want, but also generates recipes that they do NOT want as a side-effect. Those go on the market, ensuring a steady supply that resists massive price swings.

I suggested a team multiplier a while back, that would slightly increase the supply of recipes and salvage according to team size: not a huge boost, but another way of increasing direct supply (things people want, and get from drops) and market supply (things that drop but the player can't use.)

Ultimately, increasing supply helps to stabilize the market, and also makes it more attractive to more people. By the nature of markets, more people using it makes it more efficient. Too much, hoewever, would be as bad as too little. Merits had a much larger effect than most thought they would. I wouldn't be surprised if the devs are paying very close attention to anything that provides recipe and salvage rewards now.

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In other words, people will happily cut off their nose, just to spite their face.

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Yep. They're willing to take more time and effort to avoid a minigame they dislike. But, those people don't just take longer themselves: they also don't generate supply for the market. They actually help to keep prices high, ironically, by trying to avoid the high prices.

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Its just frustrating when you're WILLING to put in the time and effort to get something but have only 1 avenue to get anything specific (not counting purples of course) and that avenue requires and extraordinary amount of play to get even 1 thing unless you're chaining TFs.

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Actually, the market itself is a second avenue to get the top-tier stuff. And to be honest, the market is several times easier and faster. Gathering merits for a specific recipe will, by the statistics, LOSE money (effort, time, INF- it's all the same) over rolling randoms, crafting them, and selling them on the market, earning INF and buying what you want.

And yet people still do it. The problem isn't that it's time-intensive, the problem is, people either don't understand the cost/benefit of buying specific recipes, or they hate the market enough to do it even though it will take longer. People who hoard merits may eventually spend them. People who save towards a single, specific recipe don't generate all those random rolls for the market.

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It's hard to farm brutes. It takes alot of patience, constant watering, and thier seeds are really heavy...but when they bloom they emit the sweetest rosey aroma and it makes it all worth it. Just FYI, don't use mircale grow on your brute seeds. I did and it died.

Oh, and it helps to sing to your brute a little every morning before work. My last crop really responded well to Sinatra.

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Brutes might respond better to this.

The point I was making, though, was that it isn't just them losing out. less people supplying the market means less overall supply, which leads to higher prices, which forms a barrier to entry in people's minds.

I'm not talking about people who aren't willing to make the effort, either. I'm talking about people who are willing to put in a LOT of effort just to avoid the market. And to be honest, responses like "tough cookies to them" isn't helpful towards getting people to use the market instead of walking away from it for good.

The TO/DO/SO sytem works just fine, so no need to change it. But IOs are better. The market and current drop rates work fine, but they COULD be better, encouraging people to use the market, rather than driving a number of players away from it. Which is why I still argue that "ultra rare" was a mistake. Of course, someone posted upthread that costume pieces were supposed to be high-dollar items originally too. The devs changed their minds there. I dont' think that making purples fall from the sky is a good idea, but I don't think that getting one should be the equivalent of winning the lottery either.

I don't think the gruesome results or people saving merits was entirely unexpected. it was one of the very things that the devs touted as a feature of merits: you can save your way to whatever you want, but it is generally more efficient to roll randoms.

If there was an underestimation by the devs, it was in just how many people want the shinies, but HATE the market system. Like I was 3 months ago. Like the OP. People who don't WANT to use the market, and don't understand why prices are so high.

People who want the shinies that the devs wanted to be exceptionally rare. The devs underestimated the desire of a great many players to get the best recipes in the game (I don't know how they missed this one, though...) They ALSO misread how many people would go to any lengths to avoid the market.

Truth is, when prices reach tens or hundreds of millions, for every poster that comes here and complains about the high prices, how many people simply look, decide they'll never be able to afford market prices, and start hoarding merits? I don't know the answer, but I will say that the people who don't use the forums and think prices are too high, are not going to come here, they aren't going to learn anything, and they will simply abandon the idea of ever using the market at all.

That's a bad deal all around. The players who walk away aren't contributing to the market, and they aren't benefiting from it.

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On a somewhat unrelated note, I just want to take a second to thank you guys for being so positive and excited about this feature that's consumed so much of my life for so long. It's been a very long haul and tremendous amount of work from many people on the team. Your excitement about this feature is making it so much easier for me to continue to be excited about it, and that's making it a lot nicer to get through the final stretches of finishing this issue up and into your hands. I can't speak for the other people who've done a tremendous amount of work on this feature as well, but for me personally...it's a huge deal.

The handful of non-glowing responses I've seen have been very reasonable and more in the realm of disappointed but still understanding. For that I'm exceedingly grateful.

So thanks for staying positive and constructive, it makes reading the forums so much easier and working on this game so much more rewarding.

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We've been told it was gonna be extremely tough, that there was a possibility it would never happen, that it would take immense amounts of manpower and time...

And you came through for us. Everyone who worked on this, who had a hand in it, it looks simply amazing, and I can't wait to see it in action. Thanks. Truly, thank you for all your hard work, to all of you who did this for us.

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I would say 1.5 sets. There are powers in the Empathy set that the Defender can use on himself. Heal Aura comes to mind, as does Recovery Aura.

By the way, my Empathy/Electric Solos just fine.

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Here's another thing to think about: can controllers actually leverage their secondaries better than defenders? Emp defenders solo have a few powers that work on themselves. An /emp controller has those, plus buffable pets.

One of my favorite powers for my earth/rad is choking cloud. if I open with stalagmites or earthquake, I'm in the center of the mob before they can hit back, and CC is doing the work for me. I would imagine the same would work for plant or fire. How many defenders can reliably use CC solo? (I have and love the lockdown proc in CC.)

Fulcrum shift: for defenders, this is somewhat risky solo because it requires getting into the center of a group. Controllers with a spawn even temporarily locked down can get in and use it in safety. It even buffs pets that are in melee, which is an added bonus.

The buff and debuff sets seem to have a lot more synergy with a control primary than with a blast secondary. I'm not saying that defenders can never use Fulcrum shift or choking cloud solo, but it's easier and safer for a controller to do so. I would think that trick arrow and storm offer no particular extra synergy, while cold (come I16), empathy, FF (maybe), and sonic all have powers that benefit from having a pet. Rad and Kin can both use their more dangerous powers with greater safety.

An inherent for defenders that helps them both solo and teamed.

I wasn't sure which to count, honestly. nukes are a 3-minute base recharge, except Rain of Arrows.

I didn't count anything that did no damage. If it did damage, I put it in, with a few strange things like Creepers (which is not at all hard to perma), Voltaic Sentinel, and Phantom Army.

Honestly, I think controllers are fine. Controller damage, even capped, is still fine. it's when you add containment that things get to be overboard. If only there were a way to add damage to a controller, without doubling the strength of the damage-capped ones. Maybe making containment into a damage buff instead of an extra packet of capped damage? Been saying this for years.

I will admit 2 specific cases where defenders hands-down outshine controllers. AV fights, and GM fights. Controllers are hindered in those by not being able to rely on either controls, or containment. Defenders also have enough time to stack their buffs and debuffs to great effect. For taking on an AV, I'd MUCH rather bring my kin/sonic than any of my controllers. Ditto for dealing with GMs.

Re: spawn collapse. Yes, I see it a lot too, and I'm even guilty of it. Another reason to love plant control: melee enemies will naturally seek each other out and collapse into a smaller group when they're all confused.

Serious IOing? Depends on what you mean by that. You can frankenslot on the cheap, especially things like stun sets: pick up 3 acc/rech/stun in any combination from the stun sets, top off with a trio of damage IOs, and done. Global recharge isn't cheap, but the Basilisk's Gaze set offers it for 4 slots in a hold power, along with decent (58.73 Acc/Rech/hold, 15.23 END reduction at level 30 the way I typically slot them) enhancement to the power itself. They also aren't terribly expensive. and the 4th slot is a 7.5% global recharge.

Creepers requires +200% recharge total to make it perma. 2 level 50 common recharge IOs are 83% Hasten is 70%. AM is 30%, and siphon speed is a stackable 20%. perma-creepers without global recharge is possible with a kin, while a rad would be a few seconds off. Speed boost is +50%, so either one teaming with another kin can get creepers perma with just common IOs and a buff from a teammate. PA needs +300% global recharge, so solo, it's unlikely to get it without heavy slotting of global recharge bonuses. dedicated slotting, Hasten, frankenslotting, can all be used to bring the recharge on these powers down quite a bit.

oh, and I'm not the one who used "shocked" to describe people. You were quoting someone else. Minor nitpick, but I don't like to take credit or blame for what someone else said.

Head to Dark Astoria, just off Talos Island. Run into the first group of zombies you see, obliterate them, then repeat.

be warned, zombie bowling is addictive. before you know it, it will be 4 hours later.

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We established that? Fact? If the variance is unnoticeable, I'd rather have defender AoE blasts over controls. If you prefer controls, have fun. Neither is right or wrong.

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AoE stuns, holds, and immobilizes all do damage in addition to their mitigation. With containment, they do even more. Powers like Carrion Creepers and Hot Feet blow the best defender AoEs out of the water.

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This is extremely dubious. It is only in the outlier cases where controllers out-damage defenders on teams. Solo, controllers can do well, but on teams, I'll take Ball Lightning and Howl, thank you.

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I'll take a large AoE immobilize on a stunned, held, or confused spawn, plus containment damage. See above: Carrion Creepers, flashfires, stalagmites... AoE damage, with containment, AND mitigation built in. That's also before the epics. Contained Fissure or Fireball... The outliers GREATLY outdamage defenders, even in AoE. the "midrange" sets like stone and plant still have an advantage though.

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Slowly, maybe. Poorly, not so much.

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Agreed. Played well, they have as much survivability as any other squishy, they just move slower through spawns.

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It devastates me that so few people understand how good most defender blast sets are in AoE output.

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And how some people will refuse to acknowledge that controller sets are right at that level, while still adding to the team. Not jsut the controls, which are significant, but the debuffs of earth and ice, the slows in Mind, and the pure chaos that Plant can make happen.

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Defender secondaries are BLAST sets. Blast sets which happen to be loaded with AoE powers. AoE powers are much better on teams than solo. Having a blast set does not in anyway imply that the AT was designed to solo. Blasters have a blast set and were also designed to function much better on teams than solo. The three ATs in the game with Blast sets are all designed with teaming in mind. If anything, having a blast set is more a indication of defender's being team oriented than having a buff/debuff primary (Solo designed ATs tend to have buffs, but those usually are only self-affecting ones).

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I'm not sure what "loaded" with AoE means here?

Archery: 1 cone, 1 targeted, 1 location
Dark: 1 targeted, 3 cones, nuke
Electric: 1 target, 1 PBAoE, nuke, pet
Energy: 1 targeted, 1 cone, nuke
Ice: 1 location, nuke
Psy: 1 cone, 1 targeted, nuke
Sonic: 3 cones, nuke
Rad: 1 targeted, 1 cone, 1 PBAoE, nuke

Ok, so ice has 2, Archery, Psi and Energy have 3, Electric, Sonic, and Rad have 4, and Dark has 5 powers that are AoE (and remember, I counted nukes in that)

Earth Control: 2 targeted
Fire Control: 3 targeted, 1 PBAoE
Gravity: 1 targeted
Ice: 2 targeted
Illusion: 1 PBAoE, and I'm counting PA.
Mind: 1 cone
Plant: 1 targeted + creepers

Mind and Gravity both get 1. Plant, Earth, Illusion, and Ice get 2. Fire winds up with 4 total. Keeping in mind that every control set except mind ALSO gets pets that can do damage independent of the controller. (and add even more control to the team). I'm not dedicated enough to work up individual powers, but the AoE immobilize that even gravity has, recharges fast enough to use it often. I would bet that controllers are a lot closer to defenders than you're admitting.
And again, this is before APPs

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I agree. They gave controllers AoE damage in their APPs to try to help make up for it, but the longer recharges make it a bit hard. I guess controllers will have to console themselves over their lack of damage with "excellent survival skills through powerful single target and AoE control."

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Damage isn't what controllers lack. Even the ones that aren't outliers have more damage solo, plus the same buff/debuff capability, plus controls to make the entire team safer. The only thing defenders have on controllers is the buffs and debuffs in the blast sets: -def in rad, and especially -res in sonic.

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OK. Please do not use Fire/Kins or heck, Anything Fire/ as a baseline measurement of performance for Controller damage output.

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You can use my earth/rad/earth? Or by next week, a plant/rad that I've been working up. Give me a few months, and I'll have a plant/storm that will leave the most AoE-centric defender wondering where all that damage came from.

Fire/ is the most damaging, but earth/ plant/ and illusion/ are all pretty good in the damage category, solo or in teams. What baseline are you suggesting?

1: Hold, stun, and confuse are 100%, perfect mitigation when they hit. The knockdown patches of Ice Slick, FR, and earthquake are perfect mitigation. Controllers bring these to the table: you don't need defensive buffs when the enemies aren't able to hit back.

2: Defender damage is comparable to controller damage pre-pets. once pets are involved, defenders aren't even close. All pets except imps ALSO add more control to the team- more mitigation and more offense, all in one.

3: Controller buff/debuff capability is often on par with defenders. Defender blasts may get extra debuff abilities, but ice control has slow/-recharge, earth has heavy defense debuffs, and fire has massive damage.

There is really nothing a defender brings to a team that a controller can't do better, including protecting the entire team while increasing the damage output of the entire team.

Nice, congrats!

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About the only place I could see it happening is Corruptor/Defender but until Corruptors have all the same power sets proliferated to them that defenders have I don't see it happening completely.

There will still be a few "evil empaths" (sheesh what an oxymoron that will be) roaming the isles.

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Who would NOT trade vigilance for scourge?

I don't think tanks have to worry, and scrappers would have to look up from their current target to see brutes taking their spots. Of course, with the new difficulty system, both might just chose to go wipe out 8-man maps by themselves just for giggles anyway.

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“Little Blue Fuzzy Thing” (old Howie Mandel joke reference)

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Howie Mandel told jokes? Were they funny?

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Oh yes. Especially when he started improvising.

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For the first time i purpled out a toon (5 sets of 5 purples, 2 of those sets are ragnarok and arm.) along w/ slotting him w/ the MUST HAVE io's (lotg: + global rech, miracle + recov., regen. tissue: + regen, etc.)

IT COST ME 4.5 BILLION!!!!!

I'm sure if i was a little patient, and decided to farm the cim. wall 24/7 i could have gotten it for less, but that is ridiculous...

So, who wants to play president and draw up a plan to get the virtual inflation down... other than taking out AE...

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I have a great idea: let's let farmers pad their own missions with little or no effort! If they can do this, they won't have any real incentive to pick up lowbies just to pad their farms. Even better, it just might encourage them to go back to the OLD farm missions that actually drop salvage and recipes, increasing supply overall and bringing prices down!

Hmm. I don't think that will ever fly. Purples are supposed to be ultra-rare and only a very few people should have them. The devs will never do something that would increase supply of them...

Short answer: Creepers are buffable, but short-lived.

I don't honestly know about the +recharge buffs. I BELIEVE that all pets lost the ability to be affected by +recharge to fix some issues with the AI, but I dont' know if that applies to Creepers.

Here is the I14 updated guide to Creepers Everything you wanted and needed to know should be in here somewhere.

What exactly are you planning on farming? I tend to go a bit strange here. if it's XP, then stick with a fire/kin. If you're interested in farming for drops, though... Try plant/storm.

1: Seeds of Confusion. No Containment, but it increases kill rate by quite a bit.
2: Carrion Creepers. Best. Power. Ever. The only way to make it better is to perma it, which is doable, if not exactly cheap..
3: Roots: Twice the damage of the other AoE immobilizes. Combined with Seeds, you shouldn't be taking much damage while you melt mobs. Also sets up -kb for storm powers.
4: Freezing rain. Buffing Creepers doesn't help as much as you'd like- they only last 15 seconds apiece. FR offers -resistance, -defense, and more control as an AoE knockdown. Even more fun with an Achilles' heel proc.
5: Snow Storm. You take it for the -fly, since Entangle only hits stuff on the ground. it's a lovely power, though
6: Tornado/Lightning storm. With foes safely immobilized, these become monstrous powers.

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Seems like the EASY answer is to have PVP drops in PvE. Then when I get them I'll be more interested in using them. Easier PVP drops = more people considering PVP'ing.

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That doesn't work because maybe you will, maybe you won't. As long as the PvP IOs are tied to PvP, they will work as a motivator. The minute you make them accessible in another way, you remove that motivation to PvP.

If they are to be an incentive to PvP, they need to be desired, which means rare. The whole point is that you need to give PvP a good try before you get any significant amount of them. Making the drop rates too high means that they will be farmed, and that some people will play just long enough to get what they want, and then leave. In order to KEEP people playing PvP, the rewards have to be rare, and good enough that people will put the work into getting them.

Players have shown over and over that if the reward is good enough, they'll do things they don't enjoy. And they'll do them for exactly as long as they have to. Without making PvP a fun, enjoyable experience to begin with, PvP IO's treat the symptom (not enough people play PvP) without dealing with the underlying cause (not enough people enjoy PvP to participate in it.)

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From the outset of creating the Invention System we wanted to make sure that players desired these new, craftable items. If they didn’t actually make your character better then the players wouldn’t be motivated to use the system. We tried to think of new, exciting things that Enhancements could bring to the game. We determined that adding mini-powers to your existing ones had a lot of potential, as the sky would nearly be the limit on what we could accomplish with these new Enhancements. In addition we wanted Enhancements that never expired...

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With the Invention system we hope that players find a myriad of more possibilities to slot and build their character. When we introduced Enhancement Diversification in October of 2005 we’d hoped that players would find alternate ways to slot their characters, and they did to an extent. This new system takes that ideal to a whole new level. With the addition of sets and the varied bonuses they give, players can now make decisions based on exactly which ways they want to be powerful.

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From the I9 updates page. IOs were promoted as a new way to add customization. As a way for players to build exactly what they wanted. They wanted them to be desirable, but [ QUOTE ]
With the Invention system we hope that players find a myriad of more possibilities to slot and build their character.

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THIS was the design goal they stated. Not a treadmill, not a system the encouraged a huge gulf in power between those with rare IOs and those without. They haven't gotten it quite right yet: the options are there, but not attanable by most players (there it is again- the system was originally designed to INCLUDE most players, as I read it.)

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So the people willing and able to pay get the nice stuff. If you can't afford them, or think prices are simply too high, well, that's your own fault, and you don't get to play with the great options that other, more deserving, players can get.

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And here I'd given up on your ever making a rational reply!

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Funny that a post that was bitter, cynical, and entirely self-righteous, you call a rational reply. Especially since straight in the post, I said some players were more "deserving" than others. If it were serious, it WOULD have been one of those entitlement whines you imagine in all my other posts...

OK. It boils down to what IOs are supposed to be. I see them as a great adition to a game that is already fairly customizable (and will be getting more so soon.) If certain options are ultra-rare, then that defeats the purpose of allowing customization. They are a part of the game, and shouldn't be restricted to a small group of players.

As I understand it, you believe them to be rewards. Special. Something that only a few players should have access to. ("Few" being a relative term in a game with 10k subs.) I get that, I do.

A large part of my problem with them is that the devs made a mistake in equating rarity with power. I remember an old interview with the developers of Magic, where they said that they made rare cards more INTERESTING, with strange effects, but they tried hard to not make them extremely powerful. That leads to a degenerate environment where the person who spends the most money, has an inherent advantage over anyone else. They made sure that every rarity level had some really good stuff, a lot of decent stuff, and a few things that were subpar.

Guild Wars comes up a lot when I really get going on this. They made a game where the best weapons were available to everyone. The difference between a crafter-made weapon and one that cost millions of gold wasn't in power, it was in looks. Rare skins, interesting looks, but in performance, they were identical. It's probably no surprise that I played GW for a long time, because there was no chasing to get the best stuff: it all worked, and vanity items looked cooler, were desired and wanted, but offered no in-game benefit.

WoW is the other end of the spectrum, where the BoP items mean that only the absolute most dedicated players will ever see some items, while others are literally so rare that they will only ever drop once on a server. WoW has a lot of people on that particular treadmill. It's a game I tried and honestly, didn't enjoy after level 20: t's more about getting the best gear than anything. The best gear was literally make-or-break, and the person with the best gear (see: level x9 twinks in PvP) had a huge advantage that could never be made up for with any amount of skill: they had better gear, they were better characters, end of discussion.

CoX, for 9 issues, gravitated more towards a fun, casual game where anyone could get the best stuff. The player was the most important thing, not what gear they have. IOs changed that equation by introducing a new way of customiznig, which is a good thing. Making the best stuff also be the rarest is where I believe they made a huge mistake. It has led directly to beliefs that are inherently laughable. For example, that the player with the most money is more deserving of having a powerful character than someone else. Or that because a build costs x billion to create, that it is not overpowered because of the effort invested in it. This would be similar to someone showing up at a game of magic, wiping the floor with everyone , then saying that "the deck isn't too powerful: I put a lot of effort into getting those Power 9."

Bottom line is, that if IOs are a customization option, then they should be relatively easy to get, build, and slot. That is what I see them as, and what I hope for them. If they really are a powerful reward, to be hoarded only by the few, giving massive advantages, and creating a large disparity between the haves and have-nots, then they were a mistake to introduce into a casual game.