Snow Globe

This should be the basis for comparison, due to the fact that there is no outside factors involved. Of course I know very well that some players will completely disregard that and try to put forth what the market buys & sells at. This is why some of us hate the market and don't want to deal with it at all. For that, we have the AE Vendors and the Merit systems.

I could haul out a comparison of respec recipes vs actual money. This is something that is entirely possible to do as you can trade the respec recipes through the auction houses and buy respecs with real money. I just don't want to go too far on that tangent.

I don't subscribe to this premise. This might well be the value that people that use the market system might assign to tickets. However we do have the value that the game has for them: 250 for Commons, 1,000 or 80 tickets for uncommons, and 5,000 or 540 tickets for rares. Anything above that value is the players, not the game or the developers.

I do believe that I said this in one of my above posts.

If I saw a rampant upward spike due to someone flipping a certain piece of salvage, I'd likely buy stacks and dump them on the market for 250 Inf to supply the lack. It would help with the sales badges.

Edit:
I'd enjoy helping others get the salvage they need and I wouldn't care how much I "lost" on the transaction to do so. Getting the sales badges is great, and getting the quick +2 salvage slots on my lowbies would be extremely useful.

Nope, not even close. Think about where I post the most in the last couple of years: Badges & Gladiators and Base Construction. Any salvage I need to get, I use. I use it to build base items (thanks to Issue 13's removal of base salvage) and I use it to craft IOs for badges (and to slot on my characters).

Actually in some cases common salvage goes for 200K-500K. Even posting a bid at 20K fails to move for days. I've seen rares sell for less than some common salvage.

Just because I don't like the system, it doesn't stand that I don't know how the system works. The opposite is the reality. I know how the system works and I am thoroughly disgusted by it.

I want completely off the market salvage train. In the last year I haven't bid under vendor prices on any salvage. In a lot of cases, I've bid more because I knew the going rate. Yeah I'm probably paying "too much" for some salvage, but I'm not playing the game to take advantage of another player. Until recently, I posted my "spare" common salvage at 1 inf a piece.

You are making a lot of unfounded assumptions in direct contrast to my posts above.

No personal attacks, just an observation. When I make a personal attack, people generally know it and I get a PM from a moderator. I've made a few before and they tend to be somewhat spectacular when they happen.

Knowing is half the battle?

So? I'm not suggesting a change to the recipe rolls. Besides you can do the same thing with reward merits.

Wrong. The developers have said that the market is a game unto itself. They haven't said the same about crafting. The fact that they brought base crafting into the invention system has further removed any excuse that crafting is a game unto itself.

Contradict yourself much? I agree that you can get almost all the recipes. We both agree that uncommon and rare salvage can be bought directly (your next paragraph, below), and you agree above that common salvage can be rolled for. The fact that you cannot buy common salvage directly (useless drops still useless) with tickets caused shortages. At some point the developers should have realized that people wouldn't "waste" tickets on a random roll when they could get to choose what their reward was.

Given that would be directly flying in the face of the design goals to make uncommon and rare salvage directly bought, I would hope the developers realize that some players want nothing to do with the market.

Curiously enough I started that very suggestion (Buying common salvage with tickets) this morning, and the usual suspects are being outright predictable in their opposition of it.

The market poisoned its own well. Without the speculators, flippers, and the buyers constantly "raising the bar" there wouldn't be the need for this suggestion. There are plenty of potential sellers deleting stacks of common salvage thanks to "not being able to get enough" for them.

It has gotten completely out of hand and the AE vending ticket system represents a means of getting out of the markets entirely. Just like avoiding PVP Zones, this suggestion represents avoiding the PVP of the markets. Fight amongst yourselves for the best price of the limited stocks. The market will end up in the exact same place as PVP in that it will coast along being paid less and less attention to and finally getting nuked with new rules to balance the competition for newer players.

The suggestion to sell common salvage at a fixed ticket price would bring the AE Ticket vending for commons in line with the uncommons and rares.

Well being told to use a random system (play missions for drops, play dev choices for drops, or hope that the market might have the salvage needed for a reasonable price) when the original suggestion is to eliminate one random system (random rolls for AE tickets) seems counter-productive.

The point of the original post is to eliminate a random system where other, less common, salvage is at a fixed price.

Again, you are deliberately missing the point. I can buy a specific uncommon salvage with tickets. I can buy a specific rare salvage with tickets. I cannot do the same with common salvage.

And you are deliberately avoiding the fact that this suggestion has nothing to do with the market.

Your bias is readily apparent.

Merit Rewards fit that bill quite nicely already. Purple and PVP IOs could be added to merit rewards, but that is another thread or suggestion that I'm not making here. The slippery slope, as you put it, is practically horizontal.

Given that uncommons are 80 and rares are 540 (6.75 times uncommons), it isn't unreasonable that commons would be 10-15.

Yes, painfully. You are so blinded by your market bias that you are failing to understand a basic premise here: I could care less what happens at the market. Marketers like yourself have so poisoned the well that I don't care what happens to anyone's niche market. I've turned to other places to get what I need when it comes to uncommon or rare salvage.

You fail in logic. I can't buy what isn't for sale.

A fact that I'm aware of.

However you fail to understand that I could care less about the market and the fact that I am not talking about the market. I am talking about the AE Vending system alone. The market can proceed on its merry way in peace.

I have a solution to what I've said I feel is a problem: common salvage costs more than uncommon salvage within the AE vending system.

Why, yes, I did know that. You are avoiding the point: multiple rolls raises the cost of common salvage.

The options I mentioned do not require any prerequisite powers to get.

I still have to wait 3 months to get the 60 month reward (I just earned my 57 month reward yesterday).

Then I'll not get 4-5 of the vet badges and whatever they give.

Queue jumping vet rewards is bad.

I started 1 year after launch. You can't change the past, look to the future.

Bull. It is inconsistent with the other vending prices for salvage.

Funny, I tried this last night. I placed everything I didn't need to the blue market at 250 inf. Some salvage had zero bids and thousands of offers, so no sales. Others sold, but combined not enough to bid on the specific salvage I wanted within my play time. I might come back and get the piece of salvage I needed, I might not. I don't have to face this situation with uncommons or rares. I can go to the AE Vending and get those at a fixed price.

The market is supposed to be optional and my suggestion would help that to be the case.

Again, bull. When common salvage is going for 50k-300K and uncommons are going for 5k, there is a distribution problem.

Looking at the market forums, it is generally considered a waste of time selling salvage.

Funny, I don't think that has anything to do with what I'm suggesting: Balance vending prices at the AE.

Grandville/Shadow Shard Jetpack, run the Atlas Park mayhem/safeguard, or the mini booster for $5.

Nope. Not everyone. Besides as I've shown, you can already get flight before level 6.

Someone can't count, it seems. This is what random rolls prey on: people with low math skills.

Thus costing more. What part of 1 selection costing 80 while another costing 8-80 don't you get? It really isn't a difficult concept. When X widget costs a random amount while Y widget costs a fixed amount, X widget costs more. Given that the X widget is supposed to be more common than the Y widget having the X widget cost more is counter-intuitive.

And this is why I made the suggestion in my original post:
I specifically ask for the removal of the random rolls.

This has nothing to do with my suggestion. AE vending should be consistent with itself. Random rolling commons isn't consistent with buying specific uncommons or rares.

See my above points.

Thanks! Now I owe the following to yet more marketers that I've talked to in the past that said item and inf transfers were bad for the game:

Your clarification was worth more than just one raspberry.

Salvage has more uses than just IOs (Bases, Empowerment Buffs) and generic IOs require more common salvage than Set IOs.

This shows that you haven't a clue as to what you are talking about. The developers have said that tickets in the AE are to replace drops at the same rate as playing outside the AE.

Random Common Arcane/Tech Salvage (Level 10 and up) 8
Uncommon Arcane/Tech Salvage (Levels 10-25; 26-40; 41-50) 80
Rare Arcane/Tech Salvage (Levels 10-25; 26-40; 41-50) 540
Training Origin Enhancement (Level 1 and up) 15
Dual Origin Enhancement (Level 15 and up) 35
Single Origin Enhancement (Level 25 and up) 75

If a specific piece of common salvage (due to the random number generator) costs more than a specific piece of uncommon salvage, then something is broken.

8 x Unknown number of rolls: Common salvage.
80 Tickets: Uncommon salvage.
540 Tickets: Rare salvage.

The ticket system is set up to mirror what you'd get as drops. Given that you get to choose uncommons and rares, you should be able to choose commons as well. To do otherwise means that common salvage is worth more than uncommon or rare salvage, which isn't intuitive.

Given that the prices and availability of common salvage on the auction houses are less stable than the uncommons and rares, it should stand to reason that random rolls aren't working.

I've had to roll up to 10 times to get the piece of salvage I've wanted on occasion. That equals an uncommon salvage. Thanks to the random number generator, one could end up spending even more than that to get a specific piece of common salvage.

Nope, never worked that way ever. At least until the SSK system. I've not checked lately, but with the SSK system, it is conceivable that the team leader/mission owner will get credit for a higher level being "sidekicked" to them. However, I don't think that is likely.

The first badge should tick around 15-30 minutes of active play (attacking stuff while in a mission). The first badge is 4 hours of mentoring or 14,400 seconds. 1% should be 2.4 minutes if my math is right, and you need 5%-15% to show.

The problem is that /ex or /mal has NEVER counted as mentoring as far as badge credit has been concerned. By counting /ex or /mal players are being confused as to what triggers credit.

So to be completely accurate they are for having other characters sidekicked or lackeyed to your character.

There isn't a badge for exemplaring or malefactoring. There is only Zuu.... er, sidekicking or having lackelys.

While I'm not opposed to merging the markets, I don't see how that will do anything about players storing inf above the personal wealth cap.