Snow Globe

Yeah, an economy that had 4-5 Double XP/Inf weekends, RMT sellers/buyers, rampant farming of Inf and Merits, and drop rate bugs (which is why the drop rates haven't kept up) distort it. Just because RMTs aren't really a part of the ongoing problem now, it doesn't mean they were not a part of the problem in the past.

The market is flawed, deeply and seriously flawed. Something needs to be done because it is broken.

Well I agree that buyers are partly to blame for the prices, however when there are stacks of bids not being sold because the people placing the items for sale have placed the items for 3, 4, even 10 times the "last 5" (I'm sure we've all seen examples of this) the only way to reconcile this is to put blame on the sellers. You know, those setting the "minimum acceptable bid". People have gone to great lengths to explain why it is bad to be able to reduce that minimum acceptable bid after the fact.

So, yes, I blame both the buyers and the sellers for rampant greed.

They've never dropped on the live servers. As Fleeting has suggested, they have dropped in a closed beta, but those drops did not get carried over to the live servers, or even the open betas. That shows the developer intention in spades. They will not likely be dropping unless the developers change their mind about the level cap.


You probably should have.

Well, as to tomorrow on the live servers, I think I can say with confidence that will not happen.

A test of reasonableness suggests that what people are using is a loophole to get around the Inf cap. As has been shown before, people will adapt. Sure they might grumble a bit. However given that we're talking about a very tiny portion of the population (less than 1,000 of 150,000+ accounts) that are excessively storing these bids, then the developers might not care. I don't have the numbers, but I am sure that the developers can get the numbers.

In other words: Do nothing because it might upset someone. We've had about two years of that attitude. Guess what? It isn't working. Something must be done as inactivity is only making the situation (and eventual "solution") worse.

May I direct you to the mass badge removal of Issue 15? Perhaps you've forgotten it. It works exactly that way.

The developers have shown in the past to let matters alone until it reaches a critical point (which may not have been met yet here), or they may not be aware of just how far the practice has spread (if you don't know the right questions to ask, you'll never get answers). Case in point: The bug where exempted characters maintained full strength (sadly the 1,000+ post thread was lost). Or the example posted above where the developers didn't even know there was a bug in the drop system that has been around since Issue 9.

Considering that 'V' is based on a story from 1935 called "It Can't Happen Here", about fascists in America, I'm still thinking the whole thing can be laid on WW2's shoulders.

Or outside any closed beta that I am aware of.

Given that I'm not aware of level 51+ recipes dropping and there were a number of closed betas that I didn't get invited to, I'm willing to concede that they may have dropped during a closed beta. However since none of that ever was open to the public at large (open beta) or done outside development (live servers), I can safely discount any information that stayed within the closed development system. As we both know, what changes in closed beta stays in closed beta.

If they have dropped, and still exist in the game, then they are legitimate candidates for bids. Dropped inspirations and base salvage can still be used. Stuff that cannot and have not dropped ever shouldn't be allowed to bid on. This is a simple concept.

I'm not arguing that at all. All I'm pointing out is that an exploit should be closed.

Are you saying that removing all that "stored" inf will not be a sink?

And this is why I dismissed them earlier in the thread.

And you failed to read the post, it seems. Name one, just one, level 51+ recipe that legitimately dropped in game...

Oh wait, you can't because it never happened.

Note that I did not say the were never any level 51+ drops. I know of a few: Single Origins go up to 53 as rewards (rare, but possible), there was a loophole (fixed) where level 51-53 Hamidons were dropped (the developers should have reverted those to 50, but chose not to at the time). Apart from dropped, not crafted, enhancements there are the combined enhancements (special origins and single origins) that cannot be sold on the market due to specific rule changes.

However the level 51+ recipes or crafted IOs simply don't exist as far as the drop system is concerned. Given this, I find it hard to believe that anyone with an ounce of thought would think that the developers would think that people should be able to bid on non-existent items isn't a bug (unintended action). Anyone saying that it IS intended is either self-delusional or lying. If anyone had a single shred of evidence to support the position that it is WAI, it would have come to light since Issue 9. And don't try the blatantly circular argument that "because the developers haven't fixed it, that means it is WAI."

Fail. Legitimately dropped base salvage still exists in the system. Level 51+ recipes never have been dropped.

Three things:

1. Issue 9, not Issue 8. There are plenty of loopholes older than this one.
2. An obvious exploit, when closed, shouldn't profit those that used the exploit. It doesn't matter how much effort was put into it.
3. The length of time that has past is completely irrelevant. As guessed above, it likely hasn't been dealt with due to the small amount of players that are actively using this. The priority is likely less than fixing some of the base bugs.

In the case of the costumes, it wasn't just one crazy person. It was a bunch of people with one of two attitudes: Let the market be without restriction or the "I want to measure how well I can do by getting as much as possible out of the people that don't have as much time as I do" crowd.

I get the feeling that you are trying to tell me something different than the others here are saying. Perhaps because they know that I pretty much do your advice already.

Actually, Positron was presented with some drop tables well before Issue 13 with a bunch of tables showing how many sets vs how often a power is available. Snipe sets far outstripped the amount that could be slotted.

One would think that with all the data mining that they can do that they'd have better access to these figures than the players.

Yeah, unsanitized function calls decrease drop rate. Figures.

Those that frequent the market section fall into two camps, it seems: One group sees a problem that needs to be fixed, but can't agree on -what- is the solution. The other group is completely resistant to change, as it nets them more Ningis. The fact that no one has collected enough to make a Triganic Pu or that the banks will not deal with "fiddling small change" doesn't matter to them.

Generally speaking, people don't want to have to be economic majors to play a game or even have to take an economics course.

Yes, and I clearly remember people fighting that too. Maybe not the same people as now, but it was fought against by those at the top of the market.

Does this have anything to do with this thread except in the most tangential way? I know plenty of additions that players have asked for over the years have been done. Heck, a couple of mine were actually introduced in the past.

I think I see that as a missed opportunity by the developers to balance the sets values. Seriously how many snipe, immobilization, and sleep sets need to be dropped or made? Why do they drop more than other sets in certain pools? The drop rates and the merit costs are out of step with what people are actually using or can use.

From what I've seen since Issue 9 is that unless an idea attempts to address every single point (impossible as no one can agree on what is "essential"), any idea gets rejected. If it does try to be a unified method of change, it gets rejected as being "too broad". So what is the level a suggestion must achieve to get any kind of support?

Please note that "everyone needs to learn the market system" isn't really a feasible suggestion. The problem isn't even the RMTs selling Inf for money. The problem, as I see it, is that there are really no controls on the system. As we've seen in the AE system, players will bend any rule to do what they want until the developers set in to balance the system.

Actually, I'm speaking purely as myself. People are currently using a bug to exploit a loophole on the amount of Inf that can be held per character. Make no mistake, it isn't "working as intended" by allowing bidding on recipes that don't exist as drops. It doesn't matter one bit if people are using a black market that bypasses the auction houses. Without that exploit, the ability to ask for multiple times the Inf cap would be lessened. It wouldn't be eliminated, but it would be lessened.

Frankly I'm anticipating drastic changes to the market along the lines of the Issue 13 PVP changes. Sure it will tick a lot of people off, but it will take a shakeup of that magnitude to change the status quo.

Some of the costumes have stabilized, but not all. As to assuming that something won't happen will make sure that it doesn't, the same thing applies to doing nothing until a complete solution gets presented. The market now exists as a meta-game and until something (anything, really) gets changed, the problem will only intensify.

Or Gargoyles' Demona rip-off:

This, I believe, defines why it is a bug that they show on the market.

If one of the badges that cannot be earned suddenly appears on a character, that too is a bug. Same difference.

Edit:
Unless you seriously expect the developers intended for undroppable recipes to be sold or bought. To me, if the developers did intend for the level 51+ recipes and crafted IOs to be bought and sold, they would allow those recipes to drop. It is somewhat circular reasoning to say that just because the market has them in the list that it isn't a bug.

Um, no. Just no. Why do I say that? Because then any thoughts of having moderated channels gets thrown out the window. Given the grief several of the badge channels routinely face, this is just a bad idea for those that prefer to have a specific experience.

I've been trying to explain why all thread. To repeat myself from above:
Simply put the inactive accounts are filling the channels.

• They cannot be removed by the channel moderators.
• The GMs will not remove inactive accounts from the global channels.
• Developer and GM response is for the PLAYERS to make a new channel.

Those are the resources you fail to take into consideration. You want a channel open to leave and join at will, but you are unwilling to remove inactive accounts because they "may" show up. At that point why not have a single "Global" channel that every player in the game can subscribe to?

This brings me back to making a server channel. If you want to see a server channel on another server, then that is something else entirely.

I like the idea of being able to export a text copy of your recipes, salvage, vault salvage, and wentworths slots. These are all character resources and it would be nice to be able to export it to a text file. I personally would like a full text output of the character (Power selections, slotting, badges, misc info like number of costume tokens, etc), especially considering the following:

The web interface, is in all likelyhood, dead.

Err, no. You are confusing Zookeeper with Empath.

Herding entire maps. Thus we got the aggro caps of Issue 5.

Yet the epic damage taken badges haven't been reduced.

Make a new character or log into another character.

Use this command:

/chatsave

Go back to the affected character and use this command:

/chatload

This will restore your chat windows and if it happens at any later time you can just use /chatload to restore them without having to switch characters again.

Completely unneeded. Having a villain enter the mission first fixes the spawns to the right type.

Some like the challenge. Additionally, better xp while doing the mission.

Except the necro post was only barely related to the thread at all. Badge checklists (necro post) don't usually entail a Badge Re-Organization (thread topic). So a necro post that should have went to a new thread.

I can see that. I was just putting it out there.