Ok, so I know this is my first post. And I know this will likely get flamed to all get out, but here it is anyway. Before ranting about having bajillions of influence or ruining your uber marketeering skillz.. Please take into consideration that for this game to thrive and continue to grow it needs to be newbie friendly.
I get by decently as a 30 month Vet with 10 50's and all 36 of my character slots filled on Virtue, but at times I struggle to even begin to slot a build the way I planned it. So imagine for a second what it would be like to be a new player looking at the market and seeing 100's of millions of influence for one thing and then their bankroll barely breaking a million. (If they are lucky)
That being said, I propose removing player to player influence transfers, unless you are emailing it (ala i17) to a character on the same account only. Remove all enhancement and recipe drops, and using the system currently in play add an influence bonus, where a dropped recipe would be gained.
Now I'm sure you're wondering where and how we'll get our sets and recipes, right? From a vendor. If there's one thing this game lacks, it's money sinks, and it's quite apparent when looking at the market. Influence is just being passed from player to player ans generated at an astounding rate from drops. Remove ALL salvage...crafting would then be useless. Using the same menu system as currently used in WW/BM, navigating the vendor would be simple.
Make Epics scale from 30-50, rather than just 50 and keep PVP-IOs and the new level scaled Purples as drops that are worth a LOT of influence when sold to a vendor, should you not want them. This will ad the MMO standard "bind on pick-up/bind on equip" to the game that has proven very beneficial among every other MMO out there.
Most of you will just suggest that if people cant afford one thing or another to run TF's and Arcs to gain merits and buy them that way. I couldn't agree more. But that isn't solo friendly, for those who enjoy soloing most of the time. This offers itself to making merits drop from mobs and removing influence all together. The point is having multiple forms of currency and little to no money sinks in the game have allowed the costs to sky rocket which leaves all of the best/most useful enhancements unattainable for 95% of the player base.
The devs hate farming and exploits. So making every mob drop the same amount of influence based on level of the player and minion/leut/boss/EB/AV status, would aid in this. And not needing bajillions of inf would let players make the toons they really want, while just enjoying the game as intended.. rather than farming, exploiting and TF speed running for hours on end, with minimal gain.
I'm not saying the game needs to lessen the time sinks, but it does need more money sinks.. and I think this is the solution.
/ramble
*wipes brow*
Whew!... I hope this makes sense to everyone. Every time I bring it up in game everyone seems to agree with me, aside from the marketeers on my friends list rolling 200-300 million influence into their bankroll daily. And that in itself, sorry guys, is a prime example of why the markets are a bad idea. The devs constantly work on fixing exploits but over look the source of the issue.
Thanks!
Syndyr
