Panzerwaffen

New players ask questions about server population in just about every MMO I've ever looked at, including the big one. I think it is just human nature.

Only need to stack it on the person tanking GW really. Keeps her from breaking loose and nailing a squishie. Of course, a bubbler that can softcap the team works really well here too, and can also cage GW if she does happen to break loose.

Agreed. The likelihood of this suddenly allowing players to acquire all the purples and PvP IO's they want without serious investment of time & effort, is about as likely as the devs adding a magic flying pony that craps out rare recipes and gumdrops as it cavorts about the various zones.

Better than getting a Morality Demerit though. Those are bad news.

Don't worry. I'm sure you will get exactly what you've been waiting for. A vendor that sells purples and PvP IO's for a fixed price. And I'm sure that price will be set so that all players can have easy access to all the best gear with minimal effort or investment of time on their part.

No, not automatic. Because you clearly do not understand how it functions.

Why? Because you consistently continue to make statements on your own, that demonstrate that. Such as:

"If multiple players are selling an item for different amounts, the person with the lowest list price will sell first as long as a bid is higher than their list price."

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Consignment_House

Hey, you're in luck! There is a store for IO's. Two actually. The crafting tables all sell common IO recipes for a fixed price. The merit vendors all sell uncommon and rare IO recipes for a fixed price too.

Is this the same WoW where something like 70% of the playerbase doesn't make it to the level cap (Blizzard's own numbers)? The same WoW with the seemingly neverending treadmill of gear upgrades? The same WoW where the best items are Bind-on-Pickup, and there is NO way to ever buy or sell them? The same WoW with add-ons that rate player's Gearscore so they can be excluded from those same raids they need to get the cool loot if they don't have some arbitrary amount of 'good' gear?

ULTRA-RARE. That is the developer's own description of purples. It's not really that complicated a concept to understand.

Really? What is this gap? And how much of that is perception?

SO's are available to everyone. Common IO's are available to everyone. Cheap uncommon set IO's are available to everyone. Rare set IO's are available to everyone. Ultra-rare purple IO's are available to anyone. PvP IO's are available to anyone. The only difference between any of these things, is the amount of effort required to obtain them.

The first three (SO's/Common IO's/Uncommon set IO's) are so easily obtainable that a player would have to go out of their way to not be able to afford them.

The market makes it EASIER to get these things, not harder. See WoW's BoP system and raiding treadmill as a counter-example.

And don't say that SO's and basic set IO's aren't good enough. I have a MA/Electric Armor scrapper on Test, slotted with nothing but old yellow SO's. I can handle x3 or x4 difficulty with him. I made an all-too common Fire/Kin controller just to check it out. Slotted with nothing expensive, just easily available IO sets he is soft-capped to S/L damage and can solo farm at x8. No purples. No PvP IO's. No rare unique IO's.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Merit_Vendor

And with that one single statement you have demonstrated your complete and utter ignorance of the way the market functions. No wonder you seem to fail at being able to use it.

No competition? All players blueside use the same market. All players redside use the same market. Soon all players will use the same market, regardless of faction. There are tens of thousands of sellers and buyers. All those sellers are competing against each other for the prices the buyers are offering. The seller with the lowest selling price always gets the sale.

Your problem, is that you seem to want to remove the competition that exists between BUYERS. That's not fair.

The only understanding of economics needed for the market here I learned in elementary school and watching Sesame Street as a little kid. Supply & demand isn't exactly graduate level economic theory.

Or, if they're a new player who doesn't understand the game well, just quitting.

I'm not clear what the Incarnate system has to do with this.

But that same logic can apply to nearly every TF in the game too. Just because something is easy for one group of players doesn't mean it is nearly as easy for others.

I've been on TF teams that steamrolled through +3 & +4 spawns. I've been on TF teams where the team could split and go 4 different ways, and be perfectly fine. Just the other day, I was on an Ice Mistral SF. We ended up with 6 VEAT's, one Fire/Rad Corruptor and a Brute on the team. Just about everyone was IO'd to some extent. We went at +0. We ran all over every map in different directions like fourth graders on a sugar high. The brute was laughing about how he could barely build any fury at all because everything was defeated so quickly.

But that doesn't mean every team is like that. For every one that blitzes through content, there will be another that struggles to get through that same exact content.

I do agree with your overall point that something like the respec trial that offers a tangible and substantial reward like a respec, shouldn't be TOO easy. There should be a challenge. The trick is balancing that challenge against the whole playerbase, and in the case of the respec trial, the players most likely to really need that respec.

Odd. Market seems to work just fine for me. Perhaps you should file a bug report.

Minimum team size to start the respec trial is 4 players.

I like this idea. That sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

/signed

OK, so how to improve it, without pushing it over the edge for new players who desperately need that respec? I don't see how they could just lower the time between spawns by a significant enough amount to matter, without also creating a very real risk of inexperienced & badly built players getting overwhelmed because they took too long to defeat each wave.

Here's my suggestion: Once a wave is defeated, the timer for the next one drops to 15-20 seconds. That's enough time for most players to recover end/health before the next wave comes in. Leave the fixed timer in place, so that if they take too long, the next wave still spawns. That removes some of the tedium for experienced players, and preserves a realistic challenge for less experienced ones.

Of course, don't expect to get the same number of merits for the trial after a change like this. The trial would be quicker to complete, therefore the devs would have to adjust the reward downward to reflect that & prevent speed farming of merits.

Sorry, got to disagree. It is a valid point. Things that seem easy and trivial to jaded vets, can seem impossible for others. You're right, usually the spawns in the reactor are defeated in seconds and the team just stands around twiddling their thumbs looking at the clock & waiting for the next one. But not every team out there can defeat them in seconds.

Case in point, I tried to help 2 new players who were asking about the respec trial. They had completely messed up builds, and knew it. I've done the respec trial dozens of times. I was completely confident going in to it that no matter how bad their builds were, as long as they actively assisted me, we'd be fine. Nope. Failed on the last wave when the reactor was defeated. Those two players simply could not stay on their feet and I couldn't defeat the remaining enemies fast enough to protect the reactor.

The respec trial has to be balanced around the minimum required of players to start it, and with some assumption that those players might have less than effective builds.

Respec trial not enough of a challenge for you? Crank up the difficulty. Run it at +2. Or if you have less than a full team, run it at x8. Personally, I find most TF's pretty boring unless we're running at least +1.

As boring as I find most respec runs, this is a point that too many folks are missing. If the respec trial is made hard enough to be a challenge for normal players, then it becomes impossible or near enough for a team of people who may actually really need that respec.

Shhh! We're not supposed to talk about our secret cabal of marketeers lest the unwashed masses become aware of our byzantine plots...

Wait.

Crap.

Oh well... I guess the cat's out of the bag now.

My approach is pretty much the same. I use the system quite a bit, and I get a kick out of running into players I've starred before on new characters. I don't 1 & 2 star others a whole lot, but it has saved me (and other players) some grief a couple times when a problematic player showed up for a TF and was recognized before they could cause trouble.

You can craft anything at any time. A level 1 character can craft lvl 50 recipes, for example.