Redoubtable

I didn't mean to infer that an analysis was taking place, just that one was necessary to resolve the differing points of view. The special interest groups will always jump on something that they perceive as affecting them, especially if the suggestion is made without any apparent consideration of their perspective, and a proper discussion of the proposed change's impacts is one way to potentially disarm them.

I don't mean to be picking on you about this, it's more of a general problem (in my opinion) with the way that people present their suggestions in this forum, and this just happened to be the thread that I posted in.

Need may not be a factor, but any change requires a cost/benefit analysis. If this were a need rather than a want then the benefit side of the equation would be a lot stronger.

The actual answer to the question is that this is the internet, and on the internet the threshold for "hating" someone is a lot lower than it is in real life.

At least I hope so, otherwise there are a lot more angry people out there than I'd previously thought.

So is tonight Dual Pistol Corruptor night?

Ah, my bad. I guess I never paid a lot of attention to that policy.

I don't think casual players are necessarily all using SOs, but they're a useful baseline for comparison because casual players should at least have SOs (past level 23).

If I don't have a set-based build worked out from a low level then I'll slot generic IOs as they drop, starting at level 22. Once I get to 40 I'll buy recipes and craft them to fill any slots that are still using SOs. This allows a compromise between the reduced cost of slotting IOs at a lower level and the reduced effectiveness of level 25 IOs vs level 40s.

I'm sure I don't qualify as "casual", but this is the same approach I used before I really got my head around the invention system so I don't think it's a massive leap of logic to think that a casual player might at least slot the IOs that drop during play.

I didn't get on til quite late last night, how did Manticore go?

It kind of boggles my mind that some people are so opposed to the market that they won't even place an overnight bid on some common salvage. At the end of the day, though, I highly doubt that allowing the purchase of common salvage with AE tickets is going to cause the playerbase-at-large to suddenly start behaving rationally and obtaining salvage at the lowest possible cost.

A couple of hypothetical reasons for the devs' decision not to allow specific purchases of commons:

1. Like PvP, the market isn't compulsory - but I bet the devs would like you to use it, just as they'd like you to PvP.

2. The ability for lowbies to make a good bit of inf out of a lucky salvage drop is a bonus for casual players and people who don't have access to outside inf reserves.

3. 20 AE tickets is such a trivial amount that it paints common salvage as being essentially worthless. If you can obtain exactly what you need in about 2 minutes of game time, then is there really any point in requiring it in the first place?

We've got the tier 2 control item (Supercomputer) and space for another auxiliary power item, so we should be able to get a few more things in before the next expensive upgrade. The Vault and the Pillar of Ice and Flame are next on the list, once we rebuild the prestige reserve. I'm open to feedback on anything that you'd like to see added or changed, though the basic layout is somewhat restricted by the plot size for now.

Also, you forgot to mention the insipration storage.

Quick update on the SG: SENTINEL now has all 22 zone teleporters up and running.

That's true, "need" is a fairly nebulous concept in this context. My highly subjective definition is that "need" is what's required for your character to perform to the level that one could reasonably expect given the abilities/limitations of their archetype and power sets (assuming relative competence on the part of the player). The line where "need" turns to "want" is when a character gains the ability to solo a tough EB without Shivans/Nukes, partially because this was the expectation I had in SO days, and partially because the game usually gives you a warning if you're about to enter a mission which contains an EB.

Sounds like the difference might be that most of my attacks are six-slotted and all of them contain EndRdx to some degree.

Bringing it back to the point, I don't think your example really demonstrates that IOs are needed, if that's the point you were getting at. The goalposts have shifted a lot since IOs were introduced, such that SO builds that were considered perfectly adequate a few years ago are now seen as weak because they don't overcome the inbuilt limitations of their archetypes. Your tank could slot 2xEndRdx in all of your tank's attacks to address his end issues, which would trade off a reduction in end usage for reduced damage or accuracy. Nowadays you can get IOs which will allow you to get the same benefit without the trade-off, which is great, but that doesn't mean that you need them. As has been mentioned many times, the game is still balanced around SO builds.

As a point of comparison, I recently took a BS/Nin Stalker from 1-50 doing mostly solo missions set to +3/x1. I slotted sets as I levelled and could afford them, and by 50 I had earned enough to pay for my planned softcap build, which cost 500-600 million all told, with about 40 million left over. The only big drop that I got from defeating enemies was a Respec recipe in the mid-30s, which sold for 100 mill.

I definitely got a few good drops that sold for 10-20 mill, but the biggest source of income by far was reward merits. I earned over 400 merits from 1 to 50 - about 90 from Strike Forces and the rest from story arcs. The recipes that I bought with these netted me 350 million inf on the market, which was a little more than half of my total income.

This was the first character that I'd levelled all the way from 1 to 50 since merits were introduced, and it was also the first where I was able to afford my planned build at 50 without relying on outside sources of income. The single-target nature of the Stalker lends itself to completing more missions and arcs than the average character, but I didn't go out of my way to ghost missions for merits, and still took the time to do all of the newspaper and bank missions for Invader. I played this character pretty much every day for a few months, so he didn't get the chance to accrue much patrol XP.

It sounds like the sources of my income were quite different to Nethergoat's, but my results certainly lend credence to the conclusion that a 'casual' player is able to earn plenty of inf for a good to excellent build from just playing the game.

As a side note, after reading numerous debates on this subject over the last couple of weeks I've noticed that the people on the 'casual players' side of the debate almost always turn out to be farmers, who are pretty much the antithesis of 'casual'. I strongly suspect that the true 'casual' player (such as Radium's example above) doesn't actually care one way or the other about the whole thing as long as the core gameplay is enjoyable for them.