Stormfront_NA

[QUOTE=TonyV;3430462]<QR>

The best way? Just play the game like you normally would. No, I'm not being facetious. If you do anything else, you will start finding it tedious, it will lessen your enjoyment, and you'll likely be making it more boring for others as well. Don't get caught up in this "I have to have everything, and I have to have it right now" mentality.
QUOTE]

I could not agree more!

Just do the TFs/SFs with your friends, trade 50 mertis and 20M for 1 A-Merit, repeat wash-rinse and repeat to get your 2nd A-Merit. With 2 A-Merits you can get about anything you want below a purple. If you are picky about what TFs you do, essentially level 50s, you will always have a chance to get a Purple, but since it seldom happens, it really does not matter since you are collecting merits for Alignement Merit acquisition. Trade A-Merits for high end cost WW/BM IOs, craft them and sellthem. With the money you make, buy the purple you want, trust me; this method is way faster than grinding for a purple.

Don't have the 20 million or 40 million for the 2 A-Merit trade? No worries, do 5 tips on day one, then follow up with 5 more tips and the morality mission and bingo you get 50 merits for the first pass, and there after you get the 1 A-Merit. Once again, wash-rinse and repeat and you can have at no cost your 2 A-merits, once you get these 2 you are on your way to fame and fortune!

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

Having not experienced I19.5 Striker, I can not witness about attaining the upper alphas in solo mode. But for i19 and the lower Alphas, its very soloable, tedius and long to achieve, but do-able.

It is do-able, because you can earn shards by defeating any mobs that are 50+, I have even gotten shards while doing my routine TIP missions. Since the incarnate system allows you to combine or transform shards into any component either rare or common, there is no issue over the ability of any of us being able to achieve lower tier alpha acquisition.

But I do have an observation over soloability and end game.

I do recognize that some ATs such as melee can naturally solo extremely well, as a whole they are incredibly well balanced and powered through their inherent power sets to solo with out much of a challenge if any at all. Frankly any of my tankers can do anything you got there at +0/x1/Y/Y and not break a sweat, I do put a little attention when I go +4/x8/Y/Y but even then I can play somewhat carelessly and still survive the surprise.

Ranged ATs, also regarded as "support" ATs (insinuates of a not for prime play but made for side-kick roles instead), by not having unconditional protections they must rely on conditional protections for their survival, also their conditional protections are questionably reliable upon current game evolution and design trends, and often not well rounded power wise (about half of the melee ATs have access to self heal through their primary or secondary power sets). Like everything each AT has exceptions where they are better or less worse power rounded than others. Because just about everything in the game has mez, and "support" has no unconditional protection against it, the challenge level a "support" experiences is substantially greater than a melee which as a norm does not even have to worry about it the very great majority of the time. Added to the spam mez in the game, is the practice of ambushes being considerably increased, these ambushes sees through stealth and usually opens up with spam mez. Once more to a melee, having extraordinary unconditional mez protection this is not an issue what so ever, but for the "Support" an entirely different story. Now also add that the practice of having ambushes spawn right a top of the players as well, while again of no consequence to melee for they have uncondtional protections, is game ending for many of the "support" ATs, after all no deal of good game play or practices can protect you from the bunches of mobs spawning right over you and opening up with a wave of mez you can't resist at all, not even a chance of it.

While I seem to make the support AT to look real bad, it can be mitigated, but once more developer design trends are making those mitigations support ATs can utilize increasingly less reliable. I have found thanks to IO sets, the ability to have very high defense values attainable, so when the ambush spawns right on my face, I have a 95% chance they will miss me. Its not quite unconditional protection, but it works. Sadly many groups of mobs are now boosting their to hit, and even some mez now are exhibiting auto-hit like properties, also there is an increased use in defense debuff attacks.

Another problem I have with the game, is when mobs are given immunity against player AT classes powers, such as when the Roman's roar the Controller's ability to use their powers needed for their conditional protections are essentially voided. While I agree it is challenge, is this challenge really fair over-all? Where is the challenge to the melee with this? seems challenge was achieved 100% at the expense of those ATs depending on mez for their protections.

Finally lets talk about the alphas, lower tier:

I earned a Neural Radial Boost, I did not care for the primary ability, but I wanted the defense boost for obvious reasons for my Controller. I went: Oh well the 20% increase is not going to happen because of ED, so I was really banking on the 1/3 or about 6% increase that ignores ED. I delved my Controller prior to slotting the Alpha and had a ranged defense of 44.2%, and then after slotting my Controller my Defense raised to a comical 44.6%.

I did send a bug report over this, for 0.4 out of 44.2% is hardly 6%.

Eventually a friend in my SG indicated the reason for the low improvement is that Alpha's only affects the inherent abilities of a power, and not those abilities gained through IO sets.

That explained why the Neural Radial Boost turned out to be a royal piece of trash.

Now I went through this lengthy description for a reason, I am looking at AT solo-ability and end game.

Notice have I used the Neural Radial Boost on my MA/SR Scrapper, I would likely ended up gaining close to that 6% gain, when you compare that to the 0.9% gain a Controller achieved, it is clear that the solo performance ability gap between melee and ranged got larger.

Now there are other types of boosters, such as Musculature which increases damage right? Is the benefit in increased performance from this booster evenly effective across both the melee and ranged? Since the Blaster, allegedly, does the greatest damage, they would get more from the % gain in the multiplier for damage, but when you go to the damage depressed Defender, the Musculature increase is nearly cosmetic.

Think of the math of it, if your damage is 0.6 (Defender std) and you multiply it by say 6% increase, you get 0.636, a 0.036 increase (something does beat nothing), but you go around to a tanker who does 0.8 and you multiply this by 6% you get 0.848 and improvement of 0.48, which sets the tanks with a performance increase of 13.3%. So once more this second booster only increased the solo-performance gap between melee and ranged. There is only one exception to this observation, the Blaster, they would be 1.0 times 6% would gain 0.6 to their damage, thus damage wise making the blaster better for soloing, than melee in paper.

Lets see, there are the Endurance booster, I can agree that both Ats would experience about the same increase in endurance recharge performance. But does both camps enjoy this improvements the same? Frankly my support toons, after I went thru the expense of slotting 1 Tissue +Regen, 1 Miracle +Recoc, 1 Miracle Heal, 1 Numina +Regen & Recov and 1 Numina Heal and the now inherent Stamina 3 sloted with IOs I have no endurance issues with any of my support at all. So gaining extra endurance is pointless. Now lets look at melee, some of my tankers gains nothing from the endurance bosoter as well, but go to any toggle heavy melee, and now we are talking noticeable improvement! so once more, this booster marginally favors the melee.

Finally you get the quick recharge, I would say this one would marginally favor the support ATs, for the slight increase would allow mez and debuffs to recycle faster, and these powers are the key to a support toon's survival. From melee, they get their damage attacks recycling better, but I find it in my case of little value, I have usually 8 forms in which to deal damage with, by the time I have used my 8th, one or more of the spent powers have recycled.

So I would like to see changes if at all possible, in which the solo performance gap between melee and range could be reduced or mitigated to some extent and not increased; after all the more powerful the melee becomes the greater the challenge they are going to demand, and as a result the support takes it on the nose!

Stormfront

Mmm

Be careful in imagining how much goodness you gonna get out of the incarnate adds...

Once more, they only affect the base powers you have, and not the IO set benefits you have.

If you are a support type, you will naturally not have much for resistances and defenses, thus any enhacements via incarnates will be superfluos at best.

Same can be said for Melee, you will naturally not have much for mez attacks, thus any enhancements via incarnates will be superflous at best.

Let me explain the reason I am saying this, it had to do with my bad experience with the Neural Radial Booster. I got such little improvement, because I only had Weave as a defensive power, the alt when slotted with the Neural Radial Booster experienced such a low gain, because the enhancement did not had much to work with.

So even when we get the upper tiered boosters, which allegedly will ignore ED, they may not be as flashy as we may imagine, because they simply will not have much to work with to boost.

Let me illustrate two extremes of how good or indifferent the Def portion of booster would operate like...


The awesome end!

Take a Super Reflex Scrapper, lots of Defensive Powers, both Passive and Active; as a result placing a Neural Radial Booster on her would yield spectacular results! Considering how easy its to defense cap an SR Scrapper one would question the why to do this, on the other hand, there are so many defense debuff attacks now days, that having a bit of padding may not be a bad thing.


The Blah end!

Take an Energy/Energy Blaster, no defensive powers at all inherent in their power pools, but can get some defense through the fighting pool's power: Weave. Thus the Neural Radial Boost does not have much to augment, so the total benefit for the booster is kinda lack luster.


A player keeps sniping at me for trying to maximize my defense, I do not idiotically go charging at mobs as accused so arrogantly. I want the defense to survive when the ambushes insta spawn right at top of me, and no amount of good planning or playing practices can do a darn thing about it. Incidentally, the insta spawn on top of me is an issue for my support toons, for they usually open with spam mez; for my melee that is super, I don't have to go to them to whoop their buns! And their opening with mez means a free round of hits for me, for their mez is totally ineffective against me. At the end, its all a matter of perspective...

Stormy

Hi:

We seen the Alpha's! For my melees they were awesome, for my support they were a bit of a disappointment, maybe the devs can work on them some. For instance the Defense booster portion of the Neural Radial, accords a 20% increase to defense, with 6% ignoring ED. My Controller needed a bit more Defense so I layed the tier 2 to boost her up. I entered with a range defense of 44.2%, after I slotted the neural Radial it raised to 44.6%, what a piece of trash! Where is my 6%? Turns out, the boost does not include the gains achieved by IO sets! Only those from the powers themselves! So as a support AT, which do not get much for defensive powers (weave and maybe another one such as steamy mist for a Stormy) there is not much there for the alpha to enhance. Perhaps the devs can change the Alpha's to also modify the effects gained thru IO set powers as well and thus make the Alpha's more useful for the support side.

But regadless of how good or not the Alpha may be... lets back to the subject of future Beta, Chi, Delta powers!

But what are the Beta's, Chi's, and Delta's going to look like or do?

Perhaps instead of having multiple paths as the Alpha's did, they may simply offer specific new powers an abilities.

So why not take a little time, and put down your guess. who knows you may get to influnece the devs some.

To start the thread here are some of my guesses or suggestions...

When we fight AVs, they have powers or abilities that "are not" available to the AT class they allegedly represent (that is what makes them special and an AV). For instance Positron, is a Defender, yet he gets the use of "Force of Nature". I am not complaining he gets that power, just noting he gets that power. After all, we incarnates in time would be as good or a cut above the run of the mill AV, by definition right? At least thats my thinking based on the Mender's first mission which is supposed to illustrate what our potential could be...

So a potential Beta, Chi, Delta etc: Force of Nature, inherent power, kicks in when your character is down to 25% hits.

Another suggestion is "Power Stun" super high MAG stun as utilized by Rommie and Reichman for instance.

Would like to see a Beta, or whatever with a greater emphasis towards support ATs, something that for instance raises the MAG potency of their MEZ, and the percent of their debuffs! and as a secondary extend their durations. But do note, raise the potency and effect, prior to just duration.

Giggles...

This is a subject I have complained much about, and every time I sought some relief I got flamed by the community.

It is sad that melee are the only ones with true unconditional protections versus the overly-used mez in the game. Ranged has conditional protections, as a player said, get them before they get you type of situation is the norm.

I have complained over the get them, before they get you! Is a problem in fact, easier typed than done. After all Bosses will shrug your first mez attempt all the time, and LTs about half the time (They have inherent unconditional MAG resistance); since you do not have uncondtional mez resistance, even the weakest mez is guaranteed to affect you. If the conditional protection, you attack with is to work: It has to either disorient, confuse or hold the "entire" group you are engaging for they are usually linked, so you can't attack one without the others doing something about it. If you apply statistical theory, you will quickly realize that the odds are horribly stacked against you getting them before they get you.

Now the use of breakfrees does provide some mitigation for the excessive use of mez, but really, should a player depend on a breakfree for every group confrontation to enter with when soloing? Does a melee depend on a luck to survive every basic group comfrontation they enter in?

Choosing groups, well there is wisdom on that, but is that really heroic? is it fun not to be able to engage 75% of the mobs types in the game? By now, are there any mob types with out mez?

What has worked for me to an extent, is to defense cap my ranged alt. It is not easy, in fact it is impossible to cap against all 3 positional attacks, its extremely difficult to cap in any 2 positionals, its reasonably possible to cap on a single possitional.

With the above in mind, I try to attain 45% ranged defense and 30% aoe defense if possible for all my alts, and get what I can for melee defense. I still get mezzed, but not nearly as often, and I can survive most engagements without guzzling breakfrees like a drug addict. Also some mez attacks are auto hit, which essentially there is nothing you can do about it.

I also make sure to have the power hover and I use it during combat, partially because it grants me a bit more defense, and prevents most opponents from "meleeing" with me, since I was not able to raise my melee defense much.

There are a few powers that offers mediocre respite against some status effects such acrobatics and combat jumping, you can also acquire anti-knock-back IOs that goes along ways in making you more survivable as well. Karma KBP on Hover and Steadfast KBP on Tough gets you a MAG 8 knock back protection, which is good enough against the great majority of the attacks you will endure, I usually buy a Blessing of the Zephyr KBP for my fly to have KBP MAG 12 between all 3 which is just as good as MAG resistance afforded to Tankers.

Another critical survival technique, when soloing is Stealth. I always buy the Celerity Stealth, and get Super Speed, between both you get fairly robust Stealth. Since Super Speed is so inaccurate to move around, I just engage it with my Celerity Stealth and hover about, fortunately hover now is reasonably fast to move about and you get the added defense bonus to boot.

If you can hover high, and not close to the ground, so if you are ambushed and stunned, you are not ground level. Thankfully, if stunned you no longer automatically descend to the ground, that has saved me lots of times from certain death.

I had tried and tried to advocate for support or ranged should have the means to have some level of unconditional mez protection across the board as it is afforded to meleea, usually I suggest a 3, the same Bosses get. Far inferior to the Scrappers' 9 or Tanker's 12. Because even if we get to mez first, the odds of the mez working on the entire group in a single application is very poor, just about all mobs have mez ability of some sort (in many mob types even minions have mez), and the mez range of the mobs is quite good (somewhere between normal ranged attacks and snipe), and devs are increasing the use of ambush tactics with many spawning right on top you (which pre-empts good playing practices).

So boost your defense, hover always, and get effective stealth, that will help a lot.


Hugs Stormy

Ps: I have nooticed in the new TFs and Tips, there are a lot of mob type re-labeling. You have what is normally a LT labeled as a minion or a boss labeled as a LT. These re-labeled mobs have the powers and abilities of their true nature, but have the hit points and resistances of their label. Thus you can see a Rikti Mentalist, usually a Boss now labeled as a LT, you are fighting in reality a Boss with less hit points, and getting the reward for defeating a LT instead.

Sniff...

The simple truth, you have bad luck; just like me. I been playing for years and have demolished droves of bosses, ebs, and mobs to only see team mates get them.

I always have suspected that the random number generator may draw a random seed to base its randomness from perhaps your account ID number, and thus it may explain why some people are so consitently lucky or unlucky. In our case, our ID number just suxors. There will not be a time, where all your bad luck goes away and tidalwaves of good fortune strike us, its frankly an urban myth or for the past 6 years has not yet happened to me; can you imagine after 6 years of pathetic luck having 6 years of exceptionally good luck? Heck I have not even have 5 min of great luck yet!

I recommend you do TFs and Hero/Villain Tips for the merits and A-Merits respectively. Convert those merits for very rare recipes, craft them and sell them for a small teasure. To my great surprise a LoTG 7.5 can be just as expensive as any other purple. You will find that since we are just so unlucky, it is faster to just do TFs and Tips and eventually buy our purple than grind for a purple that frankly will never drop for us.

Stormy

Mmm...

I think the power does not work as advertised, but perhaps the power is working as intended by the devs, after all its used by a support class, and they have not bothered to correct the description.

Stormy

Hi:

There has been a current ideology that the price of goods at the market are driven to very high levels because influence is too abundant in the game. As a result lots of players have recommended ways to suck the influence out of the game, ranging from weird taxation, limiting influence accumulation, etc.

It occurs to me, if one truly wants to remove influence from the game a new form of consumption needs to be deviced in order to leach out the influence.

I am thinking there is a way to drain player's influence pockets, and not really be too arbitrary about it.

In Dark Age of Camelot, they have a concept of equipment wear. Essentially as you use your sword to attack and your armor absorves damage for you, they naturally wear out and in time require repair or maintenance, and in time after so many repairs the item is too worn to be repaired and essentially falls apart. DAOC refers to this 2 traits as "Condition" and "Durability". Both are marked in percentages, with Condition indicating the state of repair of the item thus a 93% would indicate a 7% worn out, Durability is the actual item's life condition, so a 87% means that it has spent 13% of its useful life already. Of course when the item's durability drops to 0% its gone.

So the question, can these principles be applied to CoH? It is a different question, if we even want to!

I can see Condition and Durability applied to power enhancements, each time a power is used it has a 25% chance to experience a 0.01% wear or loss of Condition.

Each time you execute a repair onthe item, it has a 25% to suffer a 0.01 loss of durability.

Like DAOC it would be interesting if the bonuses provided by the enhancement were decreased by the condition of the enhancement. For example if you have asingle IO in a power anditprovides 42% ACC, it would only provide 21% bonus if the enhancement was at 50% condition. Durability has no impact on the bonus performance of the enhancement.

If this concept was to be used, it would also have an impact on the market!

After all, if a player respecs and pulls out old "used-up" enhancements and sales them, they are obviously not worth as much as a brand new one with 100% Durability, this in itself can create a new dynamic at the market as well, and also be used as a device to bring prices down.


Oh yeah, what would the repair cost should be?

Base Cost: 100 Influence
Enhancement Cost Mulitplier:
Trainer: 1
Duo : 2
Single : 4
White IO : 10
Yellow IO : 100
Red IO : 1,000
Purple IO : 5,000
PVP : 10,000

Repair Cost: Base Cost x Enhancement Multiplier x % condition being repaired

Thus a Purple IO down to 80% Condition would cost

Purple Repair cost: 100 x 5,000 x 20 = 10,000,000 influence


What you all think? Any suggestions on cost of repair/



Stormy

Mmm...

I know it sounds odd, but I keep track of those recipes I craft the most such as LoTG 7.5 < Bleezing of the Zephyr, etc. And store those called for white salvage only. Why you may ask?

Because a certain number of the population likes to horde certain materials and resale them at idiotic prices. Thus charging 100,000 or more for salvage not worth more than 50 influence.

I do not store yellows, I can get them most of the time for reasonable prices at WW, but can always get them at AE by trading tickets.

I do store reds, under the same philosophy as whites. When I run out, is a quick trip to AE to replenish a basic set.

As a rule of thumb, I keep 5 of each key material in storage.

The principal thought is use AE as your source of salvage mainly. If you spend an hour a week at AE harvesting tickets, you may find you have all the tickets you need for your salvage requirements.

Stormy

Mmmm...

I have experienced the post confuze aggroe, but maddengly its not consistent so I can't put my finger if there is a why or a software bug.

I looked at my confuse power set up, and all they ahve are ACC and Confuse duration IOs, so no procs. And yet I have experienced some mobs aggroing me after they get over the confuse, yet there is no consistency over them.

One of the more common mobs that tends to do this to me are Clockwork Knights, but then again, its not every time.

I suspect that perhaps as their confuse fades, if another clockwork strikes them while under my influence, they are viewed in a manner similar to an MM's pets are viewed as, and thus I get the aggroe. Not sure if this is the case, as I said, the event is not consistent, but I see this as fun challenge and keeps me on my toes.

Stormy

Mmm...

Folks leaving? I have not really noticed a mass exodus of players at Champions. There may a perception of emptiness, but its only an illusion and not a reality. We must consider we now have three entire zones to operate with, then we have the PvP zones as well and quite a great deal more of instanced missions. When you pull it all together, you get the feeling there are less players, when in fact, we possibly have more players than ever but they are spread out all over. Imagine taking the population of Massachussets and placing them in Alaska, if you were to go to tiny Massachussets you would go wow, this place is full, but then take the same numbers to Alaska and you would go, this place is dead, nobody is here type of effect.

Unlike many other MMO's CoX does introduce new material in an unusually frequent manner, that all by itselff goes a long way in preventing the game from becoming stale.

I applaud CoX not going the WoW way over increasing max levels, and making the effort so tedius the game quickly looses luster. CoX needs to be careful as they evolve the incarnate system that it does not become a gather 100 shards to make this component like WoW tends to do, for the game can quickly become tedius and lose its player base. WoW has increased its meda blitz because they are bleeding hard from their player population departures. I find the 4 shards makes anything refreshing and just right, the 8 shards plus a common component is probably ok, but at times it can approach tedium as the shard drops during a TF can at times become a bit too rare.

I don't foresee for several years that this game is going to fall out of favor, short of devs itnroducing some real dumb rules or changes, which is incredibly unlikely. I also doubt that another super type game can be made that can outclass CoX. Even Champions on line, while not really a bad game, lacks the so many utilities and maturity this game has. I tried Champions on liine to check it out, but soon I detemined the chat features were rudimentary at best, their character customization was ackward, and so on. Perhaps if CoH stops improving and Champions keeps working on their system they may catch up, yet I think CoH is to aggressively evolving for that to ever be a factor

I tend to agree with other posters that free often is not quite free, there are all these hidden charges that will hit you, kinda like what our banking industry is about to do to us.

Hugs

Stormy

Giggles...

I confess: I am an altoholic...

By now I have 36 level 50 alts in the Champions server, all totally decked out with IO sets and 18 of them already have the 2nd tier alpha enhancement, but all 36 have already unlocked the alpha slot as well.

I will also confess, that not all of alts concepts worked as I thought they would, some such as my Peace Bringer are aweful disappointments. Yet I did take them from level 1 to 50 and thus they are sufficiently especial for me not to want to delete them. So I would like to move my 2nd class alts to another server or servers actually. This way, I can try other servers and find out what their feel would be. But frankly there are new concept characters I want to build, and I want to do so in Champions.

Long ago, I had some alts in Virtue and finding the server not to my liking I actually paid to have them moved into Champions. I was royally angry when a few months later they allowed free transfers.

From my perspective half a dozen free transfers would be great or add a new alt page with 12 new slots we could purchase ( I still have 2 new slots pre-purchased).

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

How to get caltrops and not break cottage rules...

My thoughts would be to add it as a secondary effect to an existing secondary power set power.

For instance, there is the smoke one in Ninjutsu, why not just add besides the smoke properties that it also deployed a set of clatrops. It would make sense to me, because usually we tend to slow down when surrounded by smoke. I believe all secondary power sets have a smoke like counterpart, thus implementing the caltrop suggestion should not be an issue of which Stalkers based on their secondary power set choices could have or not.

I do like theidea of caltrops, from the aspect if I bit more than I can chew; it gives me a better chance to get out of dodge alive.

Stormy

Hi:

With the advent of I19 we getting alot of new choices and specially versatility, not to mention free-respecs :<)

I had, in my mind, optimized my defense cap for my Stalker based on MIDS, not realizing that the value of my defenses were based on full hide.

I remember going into an ITF all smiles and so excited at my killer build, and then I went Aha! Dead LT, and then the minions proceded to kick my buns, with the other LT and Boss.

I felt like crying, oh heck, I did cry as in mere moments I was reduced to dust. With my ego totally crushed, I endured the rest of the TF feeling more like a support AT than a melee.

For days, I been wondering and agonizing on what happened, and how could it had happened?

Eventually from reading in this forums, I read an article about MIDs defensive calculation being done in an "optimistic" manner. So I went back to my build in MIDs and toggled off my "Hide" power and bang, there was the potential answer to my public humiliation at ITF, as soon as I attacked, I gave up my full hide coverage and besides becoming a target, I also became a victim.

So now, I have a design question for you all more experienced players than me:

As I understand there are 2 schools of defense capping, you could go positional (melee, ranged, AOE) or go the Lethal/Smash route which exploits the characteristic that there is no pure attacks, since all attacks are something plus lethal or smash.

Which route makes more sense for a Stalker?

I imagine, I can pursue lots of resistance, but I don't think that is possible with a Stalker to get resistance to any truly respectable level.

What I want?

I want my Stalker after uncovering, to be able to Scrapper around. I may not be as damage effective as a Scrapper, but I want the staying power of one. I value survivability above damage dealing ability, since I like to solo large groups of mobs at a time.

So any advice or builds for my Claws/Ninjutsu Stalker?

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

I seen some really intriguing concepts, and they make me wonder.

It seems a basic premise for a large part of the posters is:

Premise 1:

"Excessive influence held by players produces market price inflation"

Thus given that premise as valid, then it becomes logical to deduce that the solution to inflation is "taxing the rich" so the poor has it better, ha ha ha... I am sorry could not resist the political barb...

But the feel is if we could decrease how much influence a player could hold, then they could not afford to pay any price for anything the desired, and therefore the prices at the market would drop.

While this seems very reasonable, after all supply and demand rules would essentially support this position, after all if demand is essentially broke, then the availability of demand for the current supply would plumet and thus the supplyers would have to reduce their prices.


I have been addressing the very same issue, from a different angle...

Premise 2:

"If the noraml way of acquiring goods is too expensive, go outside the box"

Unlike Arcanaville who would suggest to get coupons to buy player supplied items, I want to totally and completely decouple from that environment.

Let me explain, why I don't think the coupon concept would work, is the coupon worth whatever price the item at WW is priced or is a fixed amount; thus if fixed it would essentially render the coupon worthless. If it pays the player asked amount, I believe it would only make the inflationary costs go even higher and now we are looking at some aweful exploit conditions, such as I get a cheap white recipe, place it for sale at WW for a billion, then go do TFs get my merit purchased coupon and buy my own recipe for a billion...

I believe under the principles of supply and demand, if you want to force the suppliers to drop their prices: "You have to drop demand", not increase it.

This is why I support A-Merits, Merits, Vanguard and AE Tickets as a way to actually drop demand at WW/BM. Why should I buy an over-bloated priced LoGT 7.5 at WW when I can get it for 250 merits at the vendor or 2-Amerits as well?

Once more, yeah it may be a bit tedius, maybe. But tips can be done in a few minutes and are not that bad to do. If you are patient in a week or so, so yo will have your 2 A-merits, also while doing tips you can get shards, recipe drops and all kind of wonderful things as well. Frankly hardly a bad deal.

But my alternate principle is simply, find ways to satisfy your needs outside of WW/BM to drop demand, that will work if enough of us use this process.


Now here is a simple one the devs could do:

Premise 3:

"Vendors sales all things as well, thus price capping"

This one is quite radical, but it will sure as fire work! It will end inflation hard and fast. Not only will it end the over-pricing and inflation it will cap how expensive anything is and perhaps make the pain of those who are not so lucky in getting what they need a more reasonable enterprise.

If the vendors sold everything, salvage and recipes. Then at WW/BM it would make no sense to sell stuff higher priced than what the vendor would sell them to you. A good question would be what are fair prices for salvage and recipes, were it would it still allow for a healthy MM/BM operation. After all how much a player could sell something for would have to be less than the vendor, and yet good income could be achieved from actually receiving a drop, that is a fair profit. For instance, if we say an invention set common IO is worth 500,000 influence purchased at the vendor, then a player could reasonably sell that recipe for 250,000. Knowing that any two whites of his, would allow him to purchase at a vendor any white recipe he would want, or find a bargain at WW/BM.

There is another approach, one pretty much illustrated and desctribed by Penny:

Premise 4:

"Bid a fair price, and be patient"

Actually if as a community refused to pay the over-bloated prices, that in itself would force prices down. The two obstacles I see with this very simple suggestion is personal patience and the community standing tough over a fair price, besides determining what is a fair price?

I can't think of a 5th approach, maybe some of you smart ones out there can...

A quick recap...

I don't believe the "limited influence accumulation" proposition to be proper; my second proposition to use "alternate sources to acquire goods" can be rightfully accused of tedius; the third "Vendors sells it all" Can be very reasonable but for the players that really abuse (play) the market would be a horrifying turn of events; the fourth could actually work, but can we get enough mass participation to achieve the effect?

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

Darkgob, please read my entire post, you focused and fired away on a portion of the post. I simply reported on what DAOC does. If you read a few lines below, which you failed (in purpose?) to post, I clearly state the first ability is not a good way to go.

Other posters question bias on the loot ditribution...

Well why not do a TF and see how the loot was distributed, an entire Tf is pretty lengthy, takes a couple of hours if you do a kill all. Now since there was lots of loot, and shard drops, one would expect the loot distribution to be somewhat even among all the players or at least within a one standard deviation. With that in mind, why not ask other players ow many shards they each received? Did the numbers were faily close, or did you notice some extremes?

Now one could argue, that it was really random and the generator is not getting stuck or whatever, and thus the odd distribution is fine, after all it was a single set of two hours of draws we conducted. So do a second TF preferably the same one and kill them all! Did we at last get a near uniform distribution of goodies? or at least within one standard deviation?

One could argue, well its just sample #2, and thus if the distribution is odd, its ok, it was random after all, right?

In the past few weeks, I done dozens of TFs a week, and I am still waiting for my streak of good luck to happen. So after about 96 hours of TF playing, I have not experienced a "lucky" streak, heck I have not experienced a not unlucky streak either, nor I have seen any uniformity of drops, there is always the player who got zip, or one, while another got in excess of 8 for the TF. You all may argue that is fair, since all have the same chance in paper for the drop, my argument if we all have the same chance, how come over 2 hours hours we do not all have roughly the same amount of drops?

Stormy

Mmm...

If you want to really place inflation in a head-lock, and even reverse the cost of salvage, recipes, and IOs; you would need to institute sources of such goods outside of the traditional market (WW/BM).

Notice that the costs of red and yellow salvage is to an extent placed under restrictions thank to AE and your ability to trade tickets for salvage. If AE would offer white salvage as well, it would also clamp on the white salvage cost inflation and ruthless manipulation we see today.

Notice you can buy standard enhancement recipes at the university, thus the cost of that recipe is effectively capped. It may make sense to have the IO set recipes also available to thru the university as well, thus hard capping the prices for IO recipes. I would suggest an entirely different thread to determine what a fair price for the various types of recipes would be.

AE somewhat addresses the recipe thing, but since it is a random recipe drop for the exchange of tickets, its kinda pointless from the position of getting what you really need at the level you really want. Perhaps the ticket amount you can store can be significantly increased to accomodate a true exchange of tickets for recipes of your choce and level, aka like we can do with Merits.

The Merit system is another way to acquire recipes with out using the market, if the preponderance of the players would do this instead of using the market; I would predict the prices at WW/BM would commence to drop.

Alignmernt Merits works in the same way as Merit System, its just a different way to acquire the merits for trade.

Vanguard Merits, are kinda useless in this regard. Perhaps they could also be made tradeable for salvage and recipes, but once more I suggest a different thread be started to discuss what the trade rates should be.

As you can picture, there is already an almost comprehensive set of systems that allows us to circumvent the market, and avoid the ravages of inflation and player greed.

My dissertation on how I make money, is simply an example of using those already in game systems that allows us to not use the market.

The basic principle, stop using the market! Thus demand plumets and so will prices will have to follow.

I do not support measures to deny players the ability to store influence, items, or what not when the market system can be circumvented all together.

The devs have all kind of ways to fix this as well, if inclined. A sudden increase in the drop rate of the good recipes would have shocking repercusions on the bloated market prices for instance. After all market prices are a function of supply and demand, if the devs provides ample supplies, then the price would obviously drop.

Hugs

Stormy