Nethergoat

It does take a little effort, but I took pains in the OP to minimize the time investment even though it would generate extreme savings.

Assuming you pay table prices for the recipes the only variable is the cost of salvage. Some of the components for generics are pricey, but some are basically free.

These kinds of annoyances are no different than the tedium of sorting through the confusing SO listings and then buying the wrong enhancement because the system is intentionally confusing.

You're right that generics are more "work", with the resource gathering and assemblage requirements.

But SOs aren't any kind of streamlined, simple alternative.
If they were clearly labeled and presented in an organized manner, then sure, they'd be the winner by a landslide- but they aren't.

Both types of enhancements were built as timesinks, they just impose different types of temporal penalties on the player.

I'm talking generics here- Mid's has no place at the table.

Using set IOs in any sort of efficient way I'd agree is beyond the purview of any 'casual' player. Once they set off on that path they leave 'casual' behind.

Again, SOs are also "work", just a different type. Instead of the temporal drag of buying salvage and shuffling over to the university or base, you have the temporal drag of sorting through disorganized lists of confusingly named SOs, and repeating that process every X number of levels as your enhancments weaken and die on you.

I haven't messed around with SOs at all since I9 so my sense of just how much time you'd spend kitting out with them is pretty blurry, but I don't think it's the vast improvement over IOs that folk assume it is.

I don't slot anything but drops until I can stick in 25's, at which point I have a large bankroll (if I've done nothing but sell drops) or a huge bankroll (if I've been bothering to marketeer along the way).

It'll never happen. When it come to the market there aren't enough plugged-in gamers to exhaust ANY outfitting strategy.

Example, way back when I 'outed' the LotG flipping niche.
There were never any for sale so I figured they were underpriced.
I started buying them up at the 'going rate' (around 40 million, IIRC) and selling them for 100 million.

I did it for a while, long enough to convince myself it was entirely sustainable. Then I posted a thread about it in here.

You'd expect something that high profit to just go POOF! at that point. I mean, that was big money back then. But it did the same thing any other niche did- with more players the margins gradually shrank until it wasn't profitable any more.

I checked back a few weeks later, flipped a few to satisfy myself that it was working again, chuckled and wandered off.

On a smaller scale, I doubt there's been a more publicly vociferous advocate of buying ultra cheap crafted generics than myself, and yet EVERY TIME I throw up some lowball bids on a new character they fill.


I'll agree that if the entire playerbase was as engaged and informed as the average market forum regular things would work a lot differently- but they aren't, and they never will be.

It'd be like saying "if everyone graduated from medical school, doctors would be unemployable!"
Technically true, but irrelevant since a vanishingly small % of the population has any interest in medicine in the first place, let alone the wherewithal to plow through medical school.

Except that higher prices also reward our friend the Casual Player when he goes to sell his junk.

I'm not sure why so many people ignore this half of the equation.

Nothing, except I laugh really hard.

No.

They can't.

No.

Cryptic did all the damage they could to the CoH brand when they were running the show here, now they're irrelevant.

then you lose at 'Search'.

So given the long history of Posi being the poster child for terrible, boring TFs, you expect the devs to give it a quick pass and called it good? Knowing ahead of time that any insufficently radical fix would trigger a mass ****-fit among the forum hysterics?

Uh....no.

MA delivered more content than the entire rest of the game.
The devs created the tools that empowered players to create the content- heck, one of those players did such a bang-up job that he's now a dev.

I understand that whining about how little content we've gotten over the past few years requires intentionally ignoring a lot of things and carefully constructing your definition to exclude revolutionary systems like MA, but it's wasted effort. Anyone who's played the game knows the devs have delivered tremendous improvements to core gameplay as well as a nearly infinite fount of 'content' (defined as "new missions to run that earn rewards", which is an entirely reasonable metric).


Finally, a bit of truth amidst the nonsense.

See, to me that sounds like Anti-Fun.
Before I can slot 25's I'll slot whatever drops- the only thing I pay for is Acc. The low level game is easy enough that I do just fine running around with a mish-mash of drops.

If I hated the old system with less vehemence I'd probably follow your lead. If enhancements were clearly named and sanely organized at the vendors, sure, why not drop some inf for 'max' performance.

But they aren't, and the time I'd waste sorting through lists is time I could be spending bashing Skulls or Snakes. =P

I use generics in the same way, except once I slot them they usually stay there until I get a permanent set IO solution.

I might try going the vendor enhancement route on my next alt, just to see if it makes any appreciable difference....or rather, if the difference is great enough to overcome my antipathy toward the wretched vendor interface.

UGGGGGH.

I'd forgotten about that.

Oh yes.
And back in the day blowing a few hundred K on the wrong SO wasn't a trivial matter, it could be a meaningful chunk of your bankroll.

And it's actually simpler now than it used to be- remember when 'range' and 'cone range' (or whatever they called it) were two separate SOs?

shudder.

I'm not sure I agree with this.

The system for purchasing them is so obtuse that in the past I would often log off a character for a while when the time came to upgrade- it was so needlessly annoying I had to build up momentum for the re-slotting.

Assuming (as I have in the OP for this thread) that you're buying salvage at 'retail' and getting your recipes from the table I doubt it would take any longer to craft the stuff you wanted than it would to scan through the word salad SO listings in search of what you wanted.

And I know I'm not the only person who wasted plenty of (then precious) inf buying the *wrong SOs*, only discovering the mistake when I went to slot them and they wouldn't go anywhere.

Not a problem I've ever encountered with generics.

True- chalk up one more gameplay improvement for the Rogue Isles.

Another check mark on the side of the SO ledger is that with weighted drops you're a lot more likely to get something you can slot than in the old days.

Of course, the same can be said of generic IO recipes.

heck I could do that myself. =P

There are only so many hours in the day.

Re-working the most longstanding offender in the "long, tedious, boring TF" category tells us they know they're a problem and strongly implies future repairs for other offenders like the shard TFs (and hopefully Bastion, er Citadel, which isn't tremendously long but is a boring series of identical missions)

Why?
More ATs available to more players is good for the game.


there are "wads of content" in this game I wouldn't play again if you paid me. There is a tremendous amount of boring, outdated junk cluttering up heroes (including pretty much the entire low level game) and red side is afflicted with a lack of variety.

In the end it doesn't matter if people play the "wads of content" you lament going unexplored or if they park themselves in MA and enjoy the wads of content created by other players- paying players support the game however they choose to spend their time.

We don't cotton to wild-eyed anarchists around these parts!!!11

Investigate....with extreme prejudice!


I've only been able to run a couple of missions since posting this thread & was excited to get a couple of Deific Weapons....until I went to list them and found out that thanks to MA they go for around 700k these days.

=(

Oh well, better than nothing...and the ridiculous prices I got for some of his commons helped make up the difference.

Farming is more efficient, yes.
I still get good drops running missions or teaming.
I've gotten my share of purple drops just running missions with friends.

*shrug*


I think there's a perception issue at play here.
If your baseline is an 8 man farm it might seem like you're not "getting any drops" playing 'normally'.

But the reality is purples fall on farmers and 'casuals' alike.

Farmers will get more, since they work to maximize their opportunities. But the %'s are the same whether you're farming, running radios with pals or soloing story arcs.

it'd be great if you could trade in salvage for a random roll in this or that drop pool, a little bit like merits.

No idea what a 'good' exchange rate would be, but it would definitely soak up excess supply. It'd also be a new inf sink, as folk would buy up salvage to convert to rolls.

if all salvage was that available the market would be broken and not doing its job.