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Possible non-merger solutions

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Why even have the +Stealth IO exist at every level above 15? If I had been designing this part of the game, I'd have made all the stealth IOs exactly level 15. (Perhaps the recipe would need to be level-dependent, to work with the current drop system. But the crafted IOs should all be the same level...)

[/ QUOTE ]Only one level of each unique IO would be great, they all do the same thing anyways. And yeah, the unique recipes should still have a specific level so you can't slot a miracle +recovery before level 17, and probably some kind of tag as well to make them only drop between 20 and 40.

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Not exactly. As a for instance the unique - steadfast resist/+3% defense does indeed provide more resistance if you use a higher level IO. The +3% defense part though is the same no matter what.

[/ QUOTE ]Well, most of them do the same at each level they exist at, and it was those that I meant.

Whenever I think of the amount of possible addenda I could add to a post, to try and cover every possible hole, I start getting a severe headache. So I don't even try doing that anymore

Possible non-merger solutions

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I don't see any benefit in these changes- in fact I see it flattening the diversity of the market, making it more of a store and less of a mini-game.

What would you expect to gain from flattening recipe ranges and locking the uniques in at a fixed level?

[/ QUOTE ]From a market profiteer point of view it would of course be bad, but frankly, I don't care all that much about that group of people.

Possible non-merger solutions

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Other than that you make a good point for having the set bonuses last when exemplared: that way the highlevel recipes will be more in demand and actually be the more expensive ones, the way it should be.

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the market is very democratic- the majority of the game's players get to vote on what prices 'should be', and that collective decision trumps your personal opinion.

[/ QUOTE ]Supply and demand is what dictates prices, that has nothing to do with democracy. If people could vote on what price they wanted to pay for recipes, the end result would probably be something like 0.25 infamy (ie: most would to get them for free). Right now, the game mechanics make it so that demand for low-level recipes is much higher than for high-level versions of the same recipes, resulting in higher prices being paid for low-level recipes than for the high-level ones. Are new players (with generally lower level characters) richer than old (with allready higher level characters) players? No, obviously not, yet low-level recipes are the ones they come into contact with first. And they obviously can't slot the cheaper high-level recipes either, because those are still level locked.

I'm an idealist and I think prices on low-level stuff should be lower than high-level stuff, so some more people can actually afford it as they level up. Is that my personal opinion? Ofcourse it is. Just like it is my personal opinion that one shouldn't do illogical or unfun things (from a gaming point of view) to be competitive in certain things. "Suck it up and grind it out, because I did so too." has never been a satisfactory answer, to me, as to why something* in a mmorpg didn't make any sense/required an insane amount of grinding/...

*Something affecting my gameplay, as long as it's fluff it can have the silliest prerequisites possible, I won't mind and I will simply not get it.

Possible non-merger solutions

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Why even have the +Stealth IO exist at every level above 15? If I had been designing this part of the game, I'd have made all the stealth IOs exactly level 15. (Perhaps the recipe would need to be level-dependent, to work with the current drop system. But the crafted IOs should all be the same level...)

[/ QUOTE ]Only one level of each unique IO would be great, they all do the same thing anyways. And yeah, the unique recipes should still have a specific level so you can't slot a miracle +recovery before level 17, and probably some kind of tag as well to make them only drop between 20 and 40.

Possible non-merger solutions

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if you like pvp'ing in certain zones, build sets for those levels.

my fire blaster is optimized for level 30 so he has all his goodies when he oro's down for a DA visit.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm playing the game and slot things as I level up, limiting myself to level 33 IOs is not my idea of natural progression. I don't have any interest atm to make twinks for specific level ranges and I don't think I ever will, instead I never go to those zones anymore (and I bet that I'm not alone in that).

Other than that you make a good point for having the set bonuses last when exemplared: that way the highlevel recipes will be more in demand and actually be the more expensive ones, the way it should be.

Possible non-merger solutions

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The only other point I'd make, is that this would also somewhat "devalue" the Purples, as one of their best features in many people's eyes is the fact that the set bonues are always on while giving you superior enhancement levels. The thing is, this is also a huge plus, because it means to implement your idea, no new coding would be necessary, as it would seem the code already exists.

[/ QUOTE ] Aren't the bonuses of purples mostly superior to the other recipes? Still plenty of incentive to slot them then, even when they're no longer a necessity for players that exemplar down.

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Bear in mind, they did this intentionally. Arcanaville reported that during beta they revealed that they specifically intended the market to be a mechanism by which high-level characters enriched low-level ones by buying their stuff. In light of that, and the IO/exemplar interaction is the only way I see that in play, I think removing that would remove the vast majorty of the pricing we see. I don't think badging alone could sustain the levels we see now.

[/ QUOTE ] And at the same time any good sets are unobtainable from the market for new players, because prices are too high on them. For new players that don't play the market for inf, very little would change: they'dd still be able to buy very cheap common IOs thanks to badgers.

Although I've got to admit that I'm biased about this. I'm very annoyed by the double standard that the purples create: on my first visits to pvp zones I got invariably ganked by level 50 heroes that were fully IO'ed; now that I'm 40 and am nearly fully IO'ed myself, I still am a free kill in Sirens/BB since none of my bonuses work there. Instead of just having worse bonuses than someone with purple sets, I have none

Possible non-merger solutions

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A possible drastic change could be to only drop levels 10,15,20,... of recipes (like the common recipes). That way both demand and supply of each of the remaining recipes would be increased 5-fold, resulting in a much higher turn-over. Although this might just be a tad bit too drastic