Stillhart

You should rename this guide "Secrets of the Masters Revealed!" It's simple stuff like this that makes all the difference. Well done.

1 - PvP is tacked on in this game and it will never be good.

That's a big statement, but I think we all know it's true. You have to balance the game for PvP to make it good and they will not do that because it would break PvE.

2 - Therefore they won't be drawing in any new PvPers based on the quality of that part of the game.

Let's face it, if the pvp is bad, why do it? Especially if you're a PvE player. You want to go in, check it out, see how fun it is and discover it's not fun. Never do it again. Hardcore pvpers? They'll take what they can get because gimping themselves in a bad game is part of the challenge/fun.

3 - THEREFORE, if the devs want PvE'ers in PvP zones (for whatever reason, I don't know) the need to incent them with something they understand...PvE-style rewards.

Those rewards aren't for the PvPers. They're for the PvE'ers. It doesn't matter if a PvPer thinks the drop rate is fine because they don't care about them in the same way a PvE'er does. It's PvE'ers whose opinions count here. If we say the drop rate is too low and we're not gonna bother trying, they're not serving their intended purpose.

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The way this game works allows for a unique type of player- the "casual hardcore".


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For introducing this term I am going have you severely beaten.

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casually beaten, with a hardcore stick.

You can tell its hardcore as it has purple nails in it

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You win.

This thread... is clean.

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If there is no meaningful (tangible) chance of receiving a pvp reward while pvp'ing then the pvp reward doesn't exist for most users.

PvP IO's weren't put in the game to cater toward the ultra rich, the super hardcore pvp'er, or arena farmers, they were put in the game to reward pvp activity. They have failed at that since inception and these changes only serve to make the issue worse.

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This is what I was trying to explain to "poopy" but alas, there's no explaining with tr...err...triple chocolate ice cream is what I was gonna say!

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The same theory applies here. Remember folks, it's a VIDEO GAME. We pay money to play, that's the extent of my contribution and that's why I deserve EVERYTHING in the game. If I don't like it, I'll take my money elsewhere. That's the bottom line for the devs and time will tell how much this move will hurt their bottom line.

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um..GTFO then? No one is really going to miss you with that attitude. The "bottom line" is that any long term survival of a MMO requires certain goals that are also long term. Goals in which people can show that they are better than others and allow them to stand out. The only thing you "deserve" with your contribution is an opportunity, not matter how small, to put in hard work to get items you want. If you're not going to work for them, then it shows you don't really need them in the first place.

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You're missing the point. Well points. The first is that I think your use of words like "deserve" and "contribute" have no basis in a video game like CoH, but especially in the case of PO recipe drops. You're using rhetorical tricks that I've seen certain other groups (which I won't specify here in the hopes of not starting a flame war) use, and I don't like it. But that point is, if you'll excuse the pun, besides the point.

My MAIN point is that I just don't agree that the drop rate should be so ridiculously low (emphasis on ridiculous). If I do decide that I want one, "working" towards it won't work because the drop rate is so low that it's closer to winning the lottery than pulling in a pay check. If I could "work" for it and get one, I'd be happy. I don't see that as the case with the upcoming changes.

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It's very easy for one person to place 40 bids for 40 infamy total and bad up the numbers. I have never bothered adding deception to my bidding in this way, but the "# bidding" number must be taken with extreme skepticism, as regardless of the number, no bid is necessarily a "serious" bid.

I've listed things (even expensive things) at 1 and had them sell for higher than the last 5, but I wouldn't count on it.

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I <3 this technique. Get so many good things like that.

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Totally get that. I just happened to stumble on this range where I can consistently make 7M every 24 hours and sometimes as fast as 12 hours.

The thing I really need to do is figure out how long I think the niche will hold and try to stock up on some low-balled salvage and recipes. The sale price has been pretty consistent for 2 weeks; so to eek out some more profit, I need to lower the supply cost.

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Stocking up on low-ball salvage is never a bad thing. Even if this niche runs out, you can always use it for other stuff.

Stocking up on recipes is a risk, especially when they cost that much and the margin is already so tight (relatively speaking).

Also, you can store a metric [censored]-ton of salvage in your base, but you can't store any recipes.

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I'm at the crafting orange (and lately a couple of purple) recipes myself. Since I'm not very patient on waiting for the salvage, I tend to invest around 23-25 million into making a level 50 Enhancment that sells for around 30-35. Netting me about 5-7 Mil profit per transaction.

I could do better if I were more patient.

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I'm not big on going by margins by percentage in this game because we have no economies of scale (making absolute profit per slot the big factor), but if I can make 4 mil by investing 1mil or make 5mil by investing 23mil, I'd sooner go with the lower risk option.

Next step for increasing your profit per slot is buying recipes, crafting them and selling the crafted IOs. I'll blow my latest niche here just to give you an example.

Positron's Blast: Chance for +dmg L50 recipe. I bought a stack for something unbelievably cheap like 500k or less per recipe...I think I got a stack at 50k each on redside and a bit more on blueside. I crafted them at a cost of maybe 1-2m per recipe (price dependent on how patient you are buying the salvage). I sold them consistently for 5m-8m each. Make sure not to post more than one or two to the market at a time or you'll be hurting yourself.

I haven't used this niche in a couple weeks so no guarantees if it's still around and working as described. Do some research and find your own niche where you can pull this off.

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If the goal is to get people to PvP the rarity needs to be not so rare to make people not want to bother and not so common as to make them pointless.

I think they would probably be best served to have more PvP sets where we have rare ones and very good uncommon ones which would entice people to want to PvP.

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That firt point has been thrown around plenty, but your suggestion here is actually a pretty good idea! I hadn't thought of it, but it makes perfect sense. You can double the amount of recipes, double the drop rate and still have the same effective drop rate on the rare ones. In fact, they could probably 1.5x the drop rate and effectively LOWER it and people wouldn't care because they're still getting SOME kind of cool drop more often. I like it!

I suggest you drop that idea over in the suggestion forum. I'd /sign it.

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I rather agree with Dumple, it seems unnecessary to increase drop rates on something *that* is, from what I can tell, supposed to be very rare.

"Casual" people don't need PvP IOs, no one needs PvP IOs. To satisfy that craving, one must be willing to put in the time.

Edit: *That*

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So are you saying you agree with them nerfing the drop rate? You don't think they were rare enough already, they should be much rarer? I mean, I get the whole "they're awesome, they should rare" argument...but when does it get so rare it's ridiculous? Price is pretty much our only way to gauge scarcity and 600m for a single IO FAR outstrips the price of purples that are, in general, better.

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Contribute? This isn't an anarcho-syndicalist commune.

Do the math before you point fingers. "Putting some effort into it" is a little bit of an understatement. Getting PO drops before took some effort. Now it's going to take astronomical amounts -- winning the lottery amounts -- of luck. That's what we're complaining about. Trust me, we'd love to put the effort in, but the drop rate is just nerfed all to hell.

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yes, contribute....as in, what makes you think you deserve to have any PvP recipes at all? Maybe there should be items that are restricted to a small, small percentage of the playerbase.

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Deserve? There you go again using words that have no meaning in an MMO. Why do I deserve it? Because I pay my $15 a month just like the next guy.

Analogy time! Let's say I want to play a football video game but someone decided that only a microscopically small portion of players could play their favorite team. What makes me think I deserve to play my favorite team? It's a [censored] football video game that I am paying money for! What does DESERVE have to do with anything?

The same theory applies here. Remember folks, it's a VIDEO GAME. We pay money to play, that's the extent of my contribution and that's why I deserve EVERYTHING in the game. If I don't like it, I'll take my money elsewhere. That's the bottom line for the devs and time will tell how much this move will hurt their bottom line.

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For a game that claims to be for the casual player this doesnt fit at all.

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Where does the game state that PvP sets (and purple sets for that matter) were for "casual" players? A casual player doesn't need any of these top sets to play the game effectively.

If people want those sets, then they should stop being casual and start actually putting some effort into it.

On a side note, I wonder how many people complaining about the PvP recipe drop situation are PvErs. IMO, the ONLY people who can complain about this problem would be the active PvPers. PvErs don't supply any PvP recipes. They're just leeching the drops from the PvPers.

This is really similar to people who complain about purple drops. I wonder what percentage of their playtime do they actually play on their level 50s outside of AE. It's strange that people who are just constantly alting and not contributing any purples to the market complain the loudest.

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Contribute? This isn't an anarcho-syndicalist commune.

Do the math before you point fingers. "Putting some effort into it" is a little bit of an understatement. Getting PO drops before took some effort. Now it's going to take astronomical amounts -- winning the lottery amounts -- of luck. That's what we're complaining about. Trust me, we'd love to put the effort in, but the drop rate is just nerfed all to hell.

See this thread from one page back.

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Because it is there.

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Whoa that is interesting. Is this still a valid or acceptable response when the object of "being there" is being "climbed" for fun rather than for personal challenge and betterment?

"Because it is there" is usually used in reference to dauntless and difficult quests, not just for any old goofy game. Not that I'm the arbiter of when and where the phrase may be used!

Sorry if I over analyzed it, just struck me as interesting.

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Some people have a need to conquer anything they can. The harder the better, but just because it's easy doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

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Given the general market inflation, and the prices on the chase PVP IO's, I don't see how they can keep such a low INF cap. Those suckers go for 300-600M Inf right now, and you can only hold 2,000M? Really, I'd like to see more effort put into reeling prices back, getting chase items around or under 100M each (and I realize the complexity of such a statement, so don't think that I don't), but barring that, raising the inf cap would at least allow a body to go shopping without having to bid/convert/mule INF around on alts all the time.

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Since they're nerfing the PvP IO drop rate, I don't think they really care about prices in the slightest. Considering how most MMO's do things, I'd expect them to take the ridiculous band-aid step of raising the inf cap.

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You posted the Bloody Bay method? I had to PM Moldy to ask how it was done >

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Someone posted it in this very thread, IINM.

I'm kind of with Nethergoat. I like figuring out the theory on how to make money much more than I like making money. It's the same with designing builds in Mids (or coming up with ship fittings in Eve). A lot of times, the game is won before you even start "playing", as long as you planned it out well. The strategy is the important part and the rest is just leg-work.

So yeah, I figure out how to make money, make a little money doing it and then get bored and do something else. I think it's like in chess how they don't have to actually finish a game when it's clear that it's over.

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For things like this, that have a very dramatic impact on game play, cause crashing, affect a lot of people, can be used as major exploits, etc...it'd be really helpful if you could bring those issues to the forums where they have a chance of being immediately and directly seen by us.

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I was pretty surprised by Bab's response indicating that they weren't aware of the STF issue because the STF bug had been noted several times in multiple forums. I wanted to make sure that our concerns over the PVP IOs weren't going to simply be overlooked, so I PM'd Synapse and asked him to review the concerns raised in this thread. He's the "rewards guy" so I figured it might be something he implemented. He replied and indicated that he'll check with the software engineer who did the implementation.

So this is of course no promise of any changes, but at least we know for sure that the appropriate dev will at least see our concerns.

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Wow, good job, thx!

I think the problem is when the attacks that do get thru have debuffs attached.

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All I could guess was that he's trying to *assemble* a *line* of 2bil inf bids?

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As long as he's not trying to assemble any lines to snort.

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Some people roll in their inf, some people pay other people to roll them in their inf, some people snort it. *shrug* Whatever floats your ebil boat!

All I could guess was that he's trying to *assemble* a *line* of 2bil inf bids?

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Yes I agree, but it's a situation where people who weren't actually risking anything were getting rewards. And then to top it all off, some were openly setting up in high traffic areas like zone entrances and then declaring their actions to be completely proper when called on it.

Um.... did anyone really think this practice was going to be allowed to stay?

And if it's been deemed an exploit, from the previous history of this game, why would anyone expect the devs will ever comment on it?

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I see your point about the exploit and I agree. However, farming IN GENERAL happens. People farm for purples, they farm merits, they farm tickets, etc etc. They're making it almost impossible to farm for PO's at all. People who wouldn't normally pvp are now less inclined to do so since the chance of getting a worthwhile reward is so inexplicably small. Seems counter-productive to me, but I guess I don't know what they're actually TRYING to accomplish, only what they will accomplish.

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I hate to nitpick part of your post here, but aren't you guys always claiming that nothing we do in this backwater forum channel is gonna make the devs change anything, that it's below their radar, etc etc? Wasn't this repeated several times in this very thread a week or two ago?

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Feel free to nitpick away, at any of my posts.

I wasn't actually thinking about Snappin's thread. There were mutliple ones in the I15 feedback areas mainly about the Blood Bay farming, including several which got pretty nasty with back and forths. (the nastiness is why most of them seem to have evaporated into the ether)

That pretty much forced this issue onto Devs Radar, not that thye likely couldn't see it from datamining anyway, I have little doubt the drop numbers were well above their projections.

I still think that the Market forum is below the Devs radar, but there are certainly areas of the forum that are smack dab in the center of it.

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Ahh, well that makes more sense then. I don't read those parts of the forums (in large part due to said nastiness) so I didn't realize it was being advertised to the devs so blatantly. And didn't realize that your "here" wasn't the market forums, just the forums in general.

Nit unpicked.

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Why not just return the rules to the way they were? What really was the reason for the change? Was there too many PVP IOs on the market?

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From what I'm reading (and please correct me if I'm wrong) I believe their intent is to put a stop to the people sitting there with two accounts, using one account to kill off their second account, which isn't defending itself, over and over.

A few threads about this have popped up with people taking part in this practice declaring they feel this was "Working As Intended" instead of being an exploit. I'm guessing this change is meant to declare it an exploit.

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Well, as long as the new goal is to keep the supply at near-zero levels for those of us that play on small servers and don't have the ludicrous bankroll to get them in the auction house, mission accomplished.

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While not the politest post, this guy is essentially correct. Supply will drop from this patch. The primary effect of stopping afk farming also has the secondary effect of dropping supply by huge amounts. I really don't think dropping the timer to 5 minutes is gonna offset it by any significant portion.