Lohenien

Believe that is up to Synapse, War Witch and possibly Posi.

When the market and IOs came out in issue 9 I had 8 million influence total. Nowadays I have somewhere around 20 billion.

No matter how much you have to start with, there is a way to make more influence via the market.

In game poverty is merely a result of lack of effort - therefore if you are poor you have no right to whine about it.

My stone tank has soft capped defense outside of granite - the only time I pop into granite is for heavy non s/l/psi damage enemy groups or AVs where I really need more resistance.

meh - IOs and the market are not really for the casual player so their earning power is mostly meaningless as long as they can afford SOs, which IIRC only requires maybe 20 million for all your SOs as you level up.

flip something more profitable and stop keeping the casual player down !!!

simplist way to make it last is to buy 3-5 of every recipe you want and then sell the other 2-4 at a profit.

I have to assume they are fixing this due to some future system or set of IOs that are possibly coming out. I'd half expect HOs to get fixed soon considering this change. Was it a bug yes, but 8-15 hp/sec or slightly more end/sec isn't going to break the game in terms of balance. This leads me to believe this was not done due to balance reasons since it has been around since the IO system was introduced years ago.

Castle and Mod8 have opposing viewpoints on the influence cap. This is because there are multiple ways to look at the influence situation. The basic problem is players generate too much influence and have no place to spend it but the market. The secondary problem is the devs don't want their rewards to become trivial to get.

Because of the fact that the devs want somethings to be carrots ( this IS an MMO people!!!1!!1 omg) there will be haves and have nots. Even if the devs eliminate the level 51+ influence storage IO/recipes, players can still store more than that. As mod8 points out, it would just be a new annoyance and not a solution.

This game has been broken since original beta in various ways, and influence generation is one of them. The problem is it is too late to reduce influence gains without having huge backlash. It's also likely impossible to increase market fees at this point as that would create more of a real black market than we have now.

So the only things that seem reasonable to do would be to offer new influence sinks and fix the TF drop problem (see below). These things won't help PvP IOs, but they can help all the other items.

If pvp drop rates are broken then they should be fixed, but we need serious data on what the devs say they should be and exactly how they should work.

Having extra influence above 2 billion is not really a problem - the problem is lack of places to spend it which concentrates all of it on the rarest most coveted items.

*TF drop problem*
When they added merits they removed drops from the TF rewards and replaced them with merits. This murdered the supply of pool C recipes in their sleep and concentrated supply into max level ranges because now supply is not automatically generated and players can wait til X level to roll their random rolls or just get a given recipe at X level. This hurts the market and makes it unfriendly to lower level toons. Instead of removing supply and replacing it with merits they should have implemented that system better by adding merits on top of the random drop system.

I'm sorry Uruare but you are wrong. Gold sellers do not supply gobs of endless influence to 90% of the population as you seem to think. They are not the cause of inflation.

Try this : grab a 50 and run any kind of farm mission set to +2/8 with no bosses (AE or non AE doesn't matter).

You will get around 2-5 million influence a run. Players can do runs like that in 10 minutes time, hence at a minimum, a farmer could earn 12-30 million an hour. Multiply that by say 1000 players and you have nearly 30 billion an hour being created.

When you have that kind of earning potential on the low end, players will begin to pay more for items simply because they can.

No one has to buy influence - go run AE for 1 hour 1 week, roll bronze level 10-14 and sell your good drops. You will make hundreds of millions a week just doing that.

People that insist they HAVE to buy influence are simply the most lazy among the lazy, and certainly not the majority.

This idea would do nothing but inconvenience people. Instead of putting stored influence into non existent items we would just bid high amounts on items that sell for really high amounts.

For example pvp IOs that sell at the 1.5 - 2 billion mark. I can bid 1 billion or less on that and it may never fill thus my influence is stored.

This idea would do nothing to lower prices.

The only way to lower price at WW/BM is to increase supply to the point that all items may as well be free.

A casual player to me is someone who has less time to play the game than others and therefor such a player doesn't have much, if any time to spend farming influence via some method. Instead casual players would farm merits and AE tickets. These kinds of players generally fall into type F because they are not accustomed to using the market and probably have less influence than other types of players. They would generally think "oh god this stuff is so expensive I'll never afford it " . The market haters are generally also in type F, though as some have admitted are actually in type E.

As for type G, I'd say no - that falls into a subcategory of type A and B combined. Instead of consistently doing A or B behavior you make an active decision to do one vs the other.

I've played the market since it came out, I've check it almost every single day since issue 9. I know full well prices have been raised in the long term. When I started out in issue 9 ( I've been around since about July 04 but the market was issue 9), I had 8 million influence. I've been a flipper and a crafter the whole time, though I mostly do crafting. I have around 18-20 billion on hand and about that much in IOs on my toons.

The most expensive stuff used to cost 40-50 million ( for lotgs and numinas). Now they run from 60-200 million. Yes, in the long term prices have risen. People can now create more influence per hour than they used to. The market does not create influence, defeating mobs and selling to vendors does.Purples started out in the 30 million range and stayed below 75 million for a long time. Once AE hit, the amount of influence being created skyrocketed. Suddenly people had alot more to spend on these very rare and low supply items. Suddenly people had alot more PLAY MONEY to spend. Because so many people now had ALOT MORE PLAY MONEY they started bidding MORE on these RARE AND SHINY items. Because people started bidding higher, items listed at the old 30-75 million range all sold out and now when people go and see what the items are normally selling at they see the new price that people are willing to pay. Because there is low supply on these VERY RARE AND SHINY items people can infact behave the way you suggest ON THESE VERY RARE AND SHINY items ONLY. This means there are less possible flippers to help lower prices by listing lower due to lack of supply. If the people who would list lower CANT GET THE ITEM OFTEN ENOUGH they can't lower prices by listing lower.

The market is a pvp environment and it's time for a lesson on how flipping and crafting effect the price of an IO in the blueside market ( because redside has a horrendous lack of supply which allows manipulation more than blueside). We will first define a few types of players that may be involved.

Player A is a patient buyer - this player will wait for a bid to fill up to a month or more if need be in order to get the IO at the price they want.

Player B is a buy it nao buyer - this player wants everything ASAP and will pay what ever they need to pay to get it ASAP.

Player C is a flipper - this player will list low bids on a crafted IO/recipe and sell the crafted IO/recipe at a higher price than what they paid for it. This kind of player will not craft the recipe, but instead sell the recipe itself at a higher price.

Player D is a crafter - this player will buy recipes and salvage and then sell crafted IOs at a price higher than what it cost to make the IO.

Player E is an evil market manipulator - this player will attempt to sell items at higher than previous 'normal' values in order to make a profit. This kind of player will do things like : buy up all the current supply of an IO/recipe, manipulate the last 5 sold lists, list well above current 'normal' rates.

Players C and D understand that you have to list lower to get more sales so they will not list at the going rate or higher. Instead they will list the items for some price lower than the going rate but higher than what they got it for.

Now that we have defined the players lets give them are field to play on : Pounding Slugfest: Chance for Disorient level 30. This recipe changes price wildly.

Player A wants to slot this in his power. Player A looks and sees that the crafted IO is currently going at 30 million (CURRENTLY GOING). Player A goes and checks the cost of the recipe : 75,00 influence but 0 for sale. Player A puts in a bid at 75,00 and does not look back at it for a week. When player A comes back he now has his IO at a total cost of around 2 million influence when considering salvage costs and crafting cost. Player A saved 28 million by being patient.

Player B wants to slot this in his power. Player B makes billions of influence by farming. Player B looks and sees that the crafted IO is currently going at 30 million. Player B bids 31 million and buys the IO. The top price on this IO seems to have increased by 1 million due to player B's impatient nature.

Player C wants to sell this recipe or IO. Player C looks and sees the IO is currently going at 75k for a recipe and 30 million crafted. Player C comes back a week later and now sees the recipes are selling at 2 million and the crafted IO is selling at 13 million. Player C now bids 80k each on 30 recipes and 7 million each on 5 of the crafted IO. Player C comes back a few days later and relists the recipes at 500k each and the IOs at 10 million each.

Player D wants to sell this crafted IO. Player D looks and sees that the crafted IO is currently going at 30 million. Player D comes back a week later and now sees the recipes are selling at 2 million and the crafted IO is selling at 13 million. Player D bids 500k on 10 recipes and comes back a few days later, buys the salvage, crafts the IOs. Now player D knows it cost him 3 million influence to craft the IO AND player D ALSO knows the IO has sold from 13-30 million in previous weeks. Player D decides to list the IO for 8.5 million in an attempt to undercut the other people getting the 13 million influence sales.

Player E wants to sell the crafted IO and make as much as possible doing it. Player D looks and sees the crafted IO is selling at 13 million and the recipe is selling at 50k. Player D then bids 75K on 50 recipes. Player D also buys all the currently available recipes and crafted IOs. Player D comes back a few days later, crafts the IOs and relists them all at 26 million (twice the going rate).

In this situation player E has caused a temporary shortage of supply and a spike in the perceived going rate. Player E is the evil market manipulator that is trying to cause prices to go up in order to make even more profit. Players A,C and D all know that the IO varies in price because they watched it over more than one week's time. Those 3 kinds of players will not buy at player E's prices because they know they can wait longer and get it cheaper because supply on that recipe / IO is high enough to support competition. Player B doesn't care because now he has the IO he wanted. After about a week, Player E will be stuck with 20-60 IOs that are not going to sell very fast because players C and D have both started buying recipes higher than player E did and they are selling lower than player E does.

Because supply is sufficiently high for this IO, player E cannot manipulate it very long without failing.

If this were instead of pvp IO, the supply is much lower and now Player E has bought up much more then the normal level of supply for that IO, so much so that player C and D could not get any. At this point player E is the only person that has any of that IO to list for sale and players A and B both have no choice but to pay player E's prices because players C and D cannot sell items they don't have.

The majority of players are of type B,C, and D. Players A and E are less common. Player E is the type of player that most market haters assume exist in huge numbers. This is not true because of how high supply is on most items available. Player type E cannot function in high supply niches.

Want an example ? Take the crazy salvage manipulators (player type E) - they are the ones that jack prices up on salvage( players C and D do not do this because they know it is futile). What happens ? Salvage prices stay high for a day at most. Why ? Because supply is too high for the manipulator to keep cornering the salvage.

Player type E flourishes on low supply items like purples, respec recipes and pvp IOs. They can more easily corner these niches because there aren't a few thousand people listing lower than they do.

Player types B and E cause prices to go up. Player B does this long term, player E short term.

Player types C and D cause prices to come down from the high value and go up from the low value and therefor prices normalize to a middle value.

Player type A has no effect on prices because this kind of player competes with players C and D for the lowest possible price.

There is another player type, F . These are the kinds of players that fail at the market because they expect to pay low prices without waiting as long as player types A,C or D to get those low prices. These kinds of players either transition to player type B or they avoid the market all together because they feel everything is too expensive because they can't buy RIGHTNAO!!!! at low prices.

This concludes the lesson on how the market works, so remember folks : prices aren't going up that much due to player type E. Long term increases in price are due to player type B. Also not every person that uses the market to for profit is player type E, there are types A, B, C and D to consider and who make up the majority of the market users.

The market is not for casual players. The market is a pvp environment.

Causal players can do the not lazy thing and bid on some salvage and then check back later that day or the next day and they will likely get the salvage at the price they want.

And yes people do give away their billions earned on the market - i know supergroups that do that regularly. I've given away hundreds of millions to completely newbie players just to make things easier for them.

AFAIK the pbaoe stun powers like handclap and lightning clap do not accept pbaoe damage sets.