Nethergoat

Great title to get hooked on!


I picked up my copy years after the fact when I got obsessed during the Claremont/Byrne/Austin run. A buddy of mine was liquidating his comics before heading off to college, and as he'd worked at Atlantis Fantasyworld in his youth he had a lot of terrific stuff in amazing condition- the heart of the collection was Avengers 1-300.

He traded it to me in return for a promise to pick up the tab for pizza and movies that summer- needless to say, I came out ahead of that deal. =P

Now, like a lot of middle aged geeks, he's rebuilding his collection & it galls him that I've got a copy and he doesn't. =P

I hadn't seen them mentioned here, but I did run across a listing while digging through the market looking for opportunities.

It warmed my heart to the price tag on those babies...glad not *everything* in the game is being given away.

I actually had a brain cramp this morning over some level 20 generic IOs for my elec/traps corr.

Got most of them no problem then ran into a speed bump on a couple of Defenses for my bubble machine.
Doubled the 'last 5' on my first bid, no dice.
Went 600k on my next bid, no dice.
Actually paused and thought WTH I can craft these for, like 30k! before coming to my senses and picking them up for a cool million each.

I mean, this is on a character who has a 150m bankroll at level 17 so what do I care? I have 10 minutes to gear up and run a mission while my son's eating breakfast, I'm not going to spend 5 of it messing around crafting a couple of IOs that are "overpriced".

That's not exactly what I said, but by all means get worked up over it anyway.

Feel free to sprinkle a handful of IMHO's over my posts in this thread if that helps your indigestion.

Web Grenade is alright, Caltrops are fantastic.

Targeting Drone's big draw back in the day was allowing you to go crazy slotting damage, which made it great for the binary world of SOs. ED & IOs have seriously eroded its utility. The +per is nice, but.....

Taser stinks, but for an ar/dev like me it's useful for stacking with Beanbag.

Trip Mines are okay for people who don't mind the playstyle they impose. The fact that they don't benefit from Targeting Drone's +acc is shameful.

Smoke Grenade is junk, Time Bomb is junk, Gun Drone is SUPER junk, although it gives a decent bump to Defiance- still not worth the interminable activation time.

The only actually good secondary, IMHO.
A couple powers could use tweaks, but for the most part it keeps you safe while you lay waste with your primary.

Really?
here's the quote again:

THEY don't use their secondaries.
THEY can't "handle" close range.

If it walks like a duck, etc.



In any case blasters need help and people will continue playing other, better engineered ATs in preference until they get it. What shape it takes is irrelevant provided their survivability and playability issues are addressed.

'painting the tape' only works when people don't care about the price, otherwise they bid less.

Actually I'd say most of the market profits in the game come from people who don't care about how much play money they throw at things. It'd be different if the stuff we buy had any gravity, but it's all just funtime game treats. Or if making inf took any sort of real effort, but it doesn't.

In a game where people hurl fistfuls of Monopoly money at each other because drifts of the stuff line every street with more falling all the time, opportunity abounds.

It's like he's color blind, but instead of not seeing red he can't see clear statements of fact.

I like the cut of your jib, sir!

THANK you!

Or just used Google.

That's what I did before picking up the set.

Okay, there's just SOME WEIRD REASON people don't like blasters, and it has nothing to do with their secondaries- got it.

Hey look a LRN 2 PLAY/LRN 2 BUILD argument!
What a shock!

=P


Obviously the AT is fine, it's the dum PLAYERS who can't PLAY RIGHT who mess it up!

Carry on.

Whenever I refer to 'flipping' it's in the context of a relatively high volume, high turnover item. Usually salvage, but also stuff like inspirations, generic IOs...basically anything where there's enough flow & price variation to make it profitable to recirculate junk.

And I've always had great success selling 'off level' IOs- in fact some of my more profitable, low maintinance schemes over the years have involved off-level recipes.

Turnover is slower, but profits are higher- just right for a certain type of character that I don't log in all that often.

From the "survivability" aspect, which I assumed was the aim of this thread?

Melee attacks, nukes that leave you helpless, damage auras....nothing wrong with them in and of themselves, but they do nothing to upgrade the comparative weakness of a fragile AT with no innate defense against status effects or incoming attacks.

People like what they like, I get it. Every gimp AT over the years has had its devotees who deny anything's wrong with it besides other players who need to LRN 2 PLY or LRN 2 BUILD.

Blasters are in a somewhat different category because they *used* to be much better than they are now, comparatively, so there's still a sizable population around.

But when I scan the crowds in Paragon these days I see plenty of corrupters, plenty of dominators....not that many blasters.

Even the crummy ones have some good scenes, true.


I'll check this on out when it hits Netflix streaming.

you have a bright future writing Viagra solicitation emails, my good fellow!

Don't forget Enemy Ace!

People often enjoy things that aren't very good- I think I mentioned my fondness for my cold dom somewhere back up-thread.

Given the context of this thread, I thought you were claiming there wasn't anything wrong with them.

Okay, I thought you were making some sort of objective claim that they were actually "good".

Were you able to keep a straight face when you typed that? =P

Aside from Ice, name one even halfway decent blaster secondary- I'm genuinely curious.

Just more proof the Gods love EEEEEEEEEBIL!

=D

Even just playing more or less straight up, you'll make a relative fortune JUST selling drops. The thread is probably long gone, but for a while I was tracking the earnings of my concept/RP stalker Mope, who was playing through the game 'normally' in a way that pretty much minimized his chance to get drops- stealthing everything possible, avoiding combat other than eliminating absolutely necessary targets, etc.

(actually wait, IT'S STILL THERE! Nice! Looks like he had 50m or so at level 30. That Numina's mentioned eventually sold for 500m sometime during my hiatus, which really throws off his earning curve....but anyway, 50m at level 30 is a nice chunk of change).


Of course teaming (which I don't do much of) would mess things up, both by increasing your leveling speed and 'leeching' your drops (dang teammates!).

Even so, buying 'cheap' stuff like salvage shouldn't be an practical issue, more of a mental one ("OMG THIS COMMON JUNK SHOULDN'T BE SO MUCH, I REFUSE TO PAY!")

I deny that any player availing themselves of the market would be unable to afford whatever salvage they wanted at the 'going rate' these days.
Let's remember that those "ridiculous" prices benefit them when selling.

And there are so very many alternative ways to get your junk now, either by spinning inf out of thin air (I made something over half a billion selling the unwanted ATOs from 30 or so Super Packs) or just buying it more or less directly (tickets, merits, etc).

that's what Gleemail is for! =D

A more elegant way of putting my rather clumsy point.

And another benefit, ignored by the OMG HIGH PRICES ARE TEH DEBIL crowd: raising the price floor benefits sellers. instead of getting a handful of inf for their junk, or just not bothering to list it at all, they get a decent price.

I don't know anyone here who's ever said you can't mess with low supply items- that was, after all, my primary argument for merging the markets. Villains were getting hosed not just by the relative feebleness of their market, but by savvy operators who were using that low supply to jack up already high prices even further.

My *only* success with "cornering" a common salvage was red side, back in the day with ancient bones. And even there, once people noticed someone was paying a decent price they stopped vendoring or deleting their bones and supply went through the roof. Within a few days of my walking away it was back to its original feast or famine state- very low supply, with people either paying 5 inf for a bone or paying 500k for one.

In a healthy market (i/e blue side, or the merged market) these things tend to take care of themselves & such "manipulations" are short lived. Yeah you can make a ton of inf off them, but the horizon is usually closer than you think.