ThatGuyThere

I think this would have been a great idea two weeks ago, for what it's worth.

But yeah, a "Busy Weekend Pack", with some Team / Super! inspirations, mission teleporters, Experienced, XP Boosters, and a Windfall or 2 would be fun to have listed in the market. Price it at about 75% of the list price of the parts, and away you go.

/signed

Edit - Oh, yeah, but not the Wentworth's coupons, for all the reasons Roderick says.

I don't think that's going to serve the function you think it's going to serve.

One of the first "market" things new players learn is that certain items can be bought for less than their store price, and then sold at the store. Lvl 50 Recipes and jank salvage were how I started to become the man I am today - following TopDoc and Fulmens around, gathering up whatever Inf falls out of their pockets.

If you scoop all that 'junk' off the market, you're actually - unintentionally, mind you! - robbing other just-starting-out Marketeers of a profitable niche - that isn't profitable enough for them to have a richer player choke them out.

Just my thoughts.

Found the solution, in the worst possible way.

From what we can see, you have to put the referral serial code in on the City of Heroes website, then sign into the game, and pay for the month of VIP.

According to my friend, the store implied (to them) that they should activate VIP first, then enter their code.

So, others referring, be warned: This bit of arcana is best clarified before your friend rushes to buy themselves a month of playtime.

I've convinced a friend to sign up for a month of VIP! Hooray!

I've sent them the referral code for my free month! Hooray!

They put it in the store, and were told "Invalid code"! Boo!

...where are they supposed to put the referral code to get their bonus points (and not coincidentally, my free month...!)?

Thanks in advance!

/signed.

And as I say when I really like an idea, "I have Paragon Points, and I'm not afraid to use them!"

I suspect - and I'm sure I'm only highlighting what, for most of you in this forum, is already obvious - that the counter-inflationary effect you're seeing here is "value memory" (I'm sure there's a correct term; if there is, correct me, please).

My theory also assumes there's essentially three level of marketeers - those who use the market as a store (who I'll call buyers, although they may sometimes sell), those who use it to buy and sell (who I'll call sellers, although they both buy and sell), and those who marketeer (who I'll call marketeers). I'm absolutely spitballing the game is stratified between these groups by about 50%-35%-15%, or so, plus a quite-large number of players who don't interact with the market at all (or in highly limited ways) and therefore don't matter to us here.

All three groups, when they visit the market, remember Luck of the Gambler +Recharge (or, even more generically, "good recepies") being "about 100 million", give or take. They have only the last 5 to go on, and judge only that prices are high right now, or low right now.

For Buyers, they just bid their 100 million, and leave, waiting for their LotG. That's how the market works, to them.
For Sellers, on the five-to-ten niches they work, if prices are low, they might put in a few bids; if prices are high, they sell some stock. That's how the market works, to them.
Marketeers fill bases with crafted enhancements while the recipes are cheap, and pull them out when they're high. They also consider the double XP is coming up, and as people hit lvl 22, they're going to want to Buy It Nao for LotGs, Performance Shifters, and Miracles, so they stock up ahead of time. They also lowball stacks of salvage those recipies use, in preparation.

But all three of these groups' decisions are affected by the "100 million" price point, as if that's how much a LotG "costs". It's not, of course; it costs whatever the market will bear. But since the majority of the game ~thinks~ of it as costing 100 million, the price, long-term, hovers around that mark. (The marketeers are quite aware that it doesn't cost "100 million", but are also quite aware that most people expect to spend about 100 million on them; the net effect is quite similar, really.)

I think this has a long-term stabilizing effect on prices, and I'm going to argue that A-Merits, which are really LotG Merits, are evidence I'm right, or close to right. There's no reason for LotGs to cost the same before and after A-Merits - A-Merits made LotGs much more available, to players with virtually any level of ambition (tips are readily available, and short). But their value didn't considerably change, at the time.

(The value has changed since, because of the Power Packs and the enormous outpouring of Reward Merits, which complicates my theory, but I have an answer for that, too; that tells us that 'working' on Luck of the Gamblers through tips to then resell them on the market was infrequent, such that a sudden influx of reward merits is a significant shift in the level of supply. Further, most of the game (...that uses the market...) expects LotG's to be about 100 million - and that's easier than two day's 'work'.)

I'm trying to think of a real-life equivalent, and I can only think of the 25-cent bags of candy sold in most convenience store. The price-point of these bags hasn't changes since I was a kid, because that's what their "market" expects - one coin, one bag of candy. It's not a perfect example, because what you get in on of those bags has decreased dramatically...

Perez Park. Having to chase down CoT through the trees while they try to complete their rituals. Have them able to escape you and restart their ritual. Lots of spawns, and stuff.

The Terra Volta reactor. Oh, wait. Yet still...

Steel Canyon, against a giant, and I mean GIANT, monster, as it crashes through buildings. Yeah, it'll never happen because Code Rant Here, but it'd be awesome.

No, *I* don't need the starter. My friend does.

Who's never had an account.

And thanks, Snow Globe!

From the way I read the guide, and that makes it sounds like the VIP Starter Kit actually isn't anything; VIPs get Going Rogue anyway.

Hm.

Hey, I'm trying to get a few friends into the game.

The VIP Starter mentions that you get access to Going Rogue, as well. So here's my question(s):

1) If they DON'T get the Starter, and just pay for a month in store, can they get Hero Merits / do tip missions?

2) If they DO get the starter, when they have a month that's not VIP, can they get Hero Merits / do tip missions?

Or, phrased another way, "Why get the VIP Starter, instead of just a month of VIP?"

Here's my two problems - and I'm 80% sure I'm down a reward token and monthly points, for the record:

1) The way to "check" how many rewards you've received, vs. how many you should have, is needlessly complicated. I'm a fairly clever person, and I even like math. I've tried to figure out how many reward tokens I should have based on months played (about 30-ish, more or less, if memory serves, over about four years), plus points bought (... more than a few ...), and can't get a number that matchs. The account info screen doesn't present me enough information, easily enough presented, to be certain of this, of how many tokens I have, and of the rate at which tokens should have been rewarded. Let alone Paragon Points, or Transfers (although my transfers also always seem to arrive on the 1st).

Because the method of rewarding tokens / points / transfers is inconsistent, I don't know if I need to check Paragon's homework, and I don't know how closely I need to check Paragon's homework. Should I expect my transfer when I pay, or on the first? Should I expect my points on my billing date, 30 days after my billing date, or half-way through my month? If I don't have my reward token on the 22nd, and my billing date is the 10th, is that normal, or should I wait until the *next* 10th? Again, it's just not entirely clear if the system is working as intended, or not. And I'd argue that inherently means it's not.

(Related, this whole system has made at least one returning player balk. Trying to explain that he won't get his Paragon Points or reward token, or transfer when he pays, but instead at a semi-random point "later", made paying for the month much less enticing. The initial explaination - "Hey, a transfer, a pile of points, and a reward!" - had him convinced; the fine print lost a sale.)

Plus, imagine non-forum-goers, who don't know it's bugged, and don't know if they should check; there could be untold numbers of them with serious glitches, and no idea how to fix them.

2 - Because it's not clear if the system is working as intended, unlike every other problem I've ever had with the game, I can't go to the Paragon Wiki for a quick answer, or the Forums for a long one. Answers are inconsistent, and at least a portion of the Forums argue that everything's working just fine (or fine enough), which, while it might be the case for them, doesn't seem to be true as the general case at this point.

Nobody can definitively tell me when to expect my points, token, or transfer - because there are at least three possible dates for each (1st, billing date, and "by the __th"), all of which seem accurate for someone.

Hello!

Since they were on sale, I purchased 2 extra costume slots. But now, when I go to the costume change screen, instead of saying, "Purchase in store" with the cart, they say "earn in game".

Have I simply unlocked those extra slots, and have to "activate" them in some way?

Paragon Wiki was not wholly educational on this topic.

/signed

I don't think there should be a limit on emailing yourself. I guess I hadn't thought of the RMTs emailing themselves, and granted, that's ... inconvenient.

But if you add up the time / difficulty to the RMTs, compared to the time / difficulty to the real players, I'm pretty sure the balance of that falls heavily on inconveniencing real players, without significantly limited RMTs.

Kind of hoping this is just the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, and nobody compared the "strike force dates" to the "double XP weekend" dates.

Because if this was a intentional choice, it was a bad one.

I'm saying that, and I've never run a WST (I'm mostly a solo-er).

...seriously.

Why aren't they?

Flip the switch, turn the dial, whatever. Make the Catalyst account-bound.

Edit - Please.