Nethergoat

reward driven power-gamers pay the bills just like RPers or anybody else.

I'm not tying up a slot for a 5 inf sale.

I list my junk salvage for 1, whatever doesn't insta-sell gets deleted.
It would be nice if there were something else I could do with it- more depth of gameplay is a good thing.

It's a missed opportunity because junk isn't fun.
All drops will never be created equal, but if the game had a system in place to make junk meaningful in some way (like WoW's system of buying rep) it would add more complexity & fun to the game.

Oversupply isn't a "problem" per se- that salvage certainly isn't hurting anybody just sitting around like that.
But it could be used to generate more fun.

Ditto.

We need more stuff to blow our inf on, whatever form it takes.

My marketeering has taken a hit over the last year or so because I don't need inf any more. All my characters have more than enough for their needs. If I needed inf for something, I'd be a lot more active playing the market than I am now.

My first 50 got there on SO power as well.
And the *only* reason I upgraded some of my older characters to generics was because I hate the way SOs penalize you for leveling and need replacing every so often.

I have several characters who 'get by' just fine with generics and a -KB IO (because I hate getting knocked back =P).

Some folk like to pretend that you can only get good drops by farming, which is patent nonsense. Farming is more efficient at generating drops than 'regular' gameplay, but you'll get good drops regardless.

When I had more play time my fire/rad got a lot of great drops from farming, but he also got his share of great drops running missions with teams (he got lots and lots and LOTS of team invites, which I was occasionally able to accept).

very few people who use the market will bother strolling over to the store so they can get 250 inf for that circuit board.


Someone in a long ago thread suggested adding a Donation Box to the market, where you could toss your unwanted junk for other players to take if they wanted...I always liked that idea...

He's definitely a toddler-friendly character- as long as I don't have to run off in the middle of a fight, he's fine. I can't say I planned it that way- I really just wanted to check out the stalker buffs.

But it certainly worked out well for my 'new' gaming schedule. =D

If you'd like to demonstrate what happens to the finances of your idealized Casual Gamer, by all means do so. This is my experiment and I'm running it according to my own parameters.

I will note that the IO system is no longer "new", it is a well established system. I don't agree that 'casual' players would rather embrace obtuse, irritating, expensive SOs over cleaner, simpler, easier generic IOs.

Again, you are no more the spokesman for "real" casual players than I am.
I've explained the rules I'm following. They seem reasonable to me.
If you disagree, feel free to discount my conclusions.
But I'll tell you right now, you aren't going to get anywhere with me by shouldering the mantle of the "real" casual gamer and lecturing me on how I should run my experiment.

If you have different ideas, great- run your own experiment. I'm not doing it for you.

I think you're drastically overestimating the difficulty of this game.
Have you played on the default difficulty setting lately?

And on a 1-50 timeline, the only difference between a vet and a newbie will be efficiency. If we're operating on the assumption that a player is aware of and willing to use the market to sell their drops, which I am, it doesn't MATTER how many times they faceplant- they will still eventually get the drops and realize the inf from running contact missions.

They might take longer to reach 50, but their earning potential is exactly the same as that of a veteran player making the same trip via dev created contact missions.

I regularly list things for 1 inf that sell for millions.

You can certainly maximize your earning potential on the market with by applying your knowledge and observations, but anybody can dump their junk into a slot, list it for somewhere around the 'going rate' and make a boatload of inf in the process.

This is true.
But even without any really big ticket drops, you will still end up with a giant pile of inf doing nothing but running contact missions and listing your drops on the market.

I'm investigating earning power, but I'm not intent on maximizing it.

As part of my emulation of an archetypal 'casual' CoH player it seemed logical that if you were playing a stalker you'd maximize their 'specialness' by stealthing missions. And this particular character's force of personality insisted on it, the same way it insisted on no travel power- I cleared some missions early on, but it didn't 'feel' right so I started stealthing everything I could.

I ran some missions the other night and have one possible modification in mind- ganking lucrative looking spawns as I run through the map looking for objectives to complete. I nuked a couple of juicy lieutenant/minion spawns and got some nice drops.

I might also do the same while travelling through high-ish level zones, we'll see.

I'm also viewing this as somewhat of a balance to my ar/dev blaster thread. He was an AoE specialist who made a bundle mowing missions full of big spawns, this guy is a single target specialist who is actually minimizing his chance to get drops. It will be interesting to see how much inf he ends up with and compare it to my blaster's final tally.

Nope.

That'd definitely work.

I'd prefer a system like the one WoW introduced to sop up oversupplied basic goods- they turned it into currency you could trade in for 'rep' with this or that faction in the game. It eliminated long-term oversupply and made a lot of basic stuff worth listing on the AH again.

I mean, we wouldn't necessarily need to trade salvage for rep, but introducing more uses for oversupplied salvage would do wonders to cull supply.

I've posted my working definition of 'casual'.
That is the metric this thread operates under.

Other people are certainly entitled to their definitions, but they hold no sway here.

As I've noted, in my opinion 'casual' is more of a frame of mind than a function of the number of hours you can dedicate to the game, or how many months per year you are able to subscribe for.

My last re-up I signed on for 6 months. Then a friend gave me CoD: MW2 and I proceeded to ignore CoH entirely for about two months, logging in my main marketeers every few weeks to manage their inventory.

That lack of play time had zero impact on my 'hardcoreness' or lack thereof.

As for rewards, nobody's entitled to anything they aren't willing to earn in this game.
If your cousin wants l337 gear it is there for the taking if they're willing to make the effort.

Simply subscribing to the game doesn't entitle a player to the best rewards, any more than it entitles them to hit the level cap. The potential is there, but it's up to the player to realize that potential.

The hour count on this particular character wouldn't tell us much because he went 1-35 in the Olden Tymes, when leveling was MUCH slower, the environment for a solo blaster was MUCH less forgiving and the debt cap was MUCH higher. I'm positive it took him a lot longer to get to 35 than it did to get from 35-50. I'll check his hour total the next time I log in though, just for kicks.

I'll keep closer track of this metric with my stalker

You can earn more than 300 million from one drop if you're lucky, which I wasn't.

And conversely, it's entirely possible someone could get worse drops than I did and earn less inf.

It's just one data point. While someone else might make more, or less, on the way to 50 they would still end up with a big, fat pile of inf, more than enough to kit themselves out with anything short of the game's most extreme luxury goods.

I wasn't keeping track, but I didn't get any 'great' drops from his merits- the single best recipe was a hard to get Posi that went for 10 million.

I'll keep closer track of where the inf is coming from on my experimental stalker.

Entirely possible- this is the only time I've leveled someone this particular way and paid attention to the results.

I'll be interesting to see where my experimental stalker ends up on the financial pecking order.

There are as many definitions of "casual gamer" as there are people with agendas to advance. Here's the one I go by, which was hashed out by a lot of different folk in a long-ago thread:


'casual' has more to do with someone's approach to the game than the # of hours they play. My 'casual' gamer is defined by their inattention to the thing that the less casual players tend to obsess over- efficiency.

I played with a couple of friends for years. We all played about the same # of hours per week, but they were definitely 'casual' and I was definitely not. They ran whatever came their way, did whatever sounded fun, didn't worry about the 'best' way to slot their powers, didn't pay any particular attention to their builds (my favorite manifestation of this was my buddy with the DM scrapper who took Flurry because he loved Shadow Maul so much....when vet rewards hit, he took, you guessed it, Sands of Mu. And yes, he chained Shadow Maul, Sands and Flurry together every chance he got).

Meanwhile, I'm not a Mids-crazy build nut, but I do notice when powers suck, and I do think about efficient slotting, and I do want my characters to be 'good' at beating up the foe.

So, it's more of a philosophy than anything.
If you want to earn rewards efficiently and you worry about the performance of your character, I don't think you're a 'casual' player even if you only log in for two hours a month.
And playing 40 hours a week won't make you hardcore if you're just running around like a chicken with its head cut off, doing whatever looks neat without regard for how well it's moving you along the path of progress.

Definitely.
It takes all kinds- the strength of the game is that it 'works' for players like your friend & players like me and everyone in between.

zero assumptions.
I'm just reporting the numbers I accumulated.

I've done everything in this game at one point or another, and the drop rate is the same whether you run missions, run farms or street sweep hazard zones. The only thing that matters is how many enemies you defeat- with the mission slider, that variable is largely in our hands.

Payback ran at optimal settings for his powerset and survivabilty- even level, +3 or 4 spawn size. His AoE concentration meant 'normal' contact mission created plenty of opportunities for drops and he was able to clear them in good time.

maybe you're just a crummy farmer?

It's been my observation that these sorts of genuinely 'new' players aren't the ones complaining about the reward structure.

Assuming they like the game, they're the ones running around having fun exploring stuff and learning by trial and error- IMHO the most fun part of any game.
I wouldn't *want* them to care how much inf they were earning or what was most efficient- that inevitably comes with time and exposure. Genuine newbies should be left to discover the game at their own pace.