TheMightyObs

Tuhmaydough, tuhmotto. Many tiny corners of the common and uncommon salvage world are filled with people buying specific pieces of salvage for 1-15k influence then selling them for 100-600k influence. Oh, don't worry, inflation isn't the problem. It's just people demanding nonsensical prices and getting them for extended periods resulting in something that seems like inflation. If someone shot a hole through you, you'd complain about the hole in you. By this logic which you've presented, if a tornado whipped a metal pipe with a two inch diameter clean through your body you shouldn't have the right to complain just because it's not technically a bullet hole. But the hole's still there. Who care's what's causing it? Just because some minor amount of deflation happens with each resale doesn't mean the person reselling is losing anything or being forced to lose any money - it just means that the person doing the buying is throwing more of their own money in to a hole. It's not a fix. The person selling has already counted on that money vanishing and is pricing their goods at an artificially higher than necessary price to compensate for this loss in profit - so what we have is a "mechanism for deflation" which results in higher prices for everyone. But it's not inflation. Who really cares? Fine, don't call it inflation. I call it a pile of stinking offal.

You misunderstand, I'm saying the only solution is to farm and then sell what you make without ever resorting to resale.

1.) Yeah, you can get a decent build for under a billion influence. But not on every toon.
2.) You got most of that money on the market which means you became part of the inflation problem. Buying and re-selling is a source of inflation. Farming without reselling is the only solution.
3.) That's 2 billion influence every 18 days, which as you've been so kind to point out is a stupidly unprofitable way of doing business. So it's not a viable alternative.
4.) I hate farming, am focusing on WST's, have a real life and a lot of other 50s to io out. I could sink 6 bil in to finishing one toon with three io's or IO out 4 others. I haven't finished my main toon more in protest than anything else.

I win.

I'm sure it seemed pretty alarmist when Israel Bissel rode through the colonies shouting "To arms, to arms. The war has begun." He was right, though.

The only reason we can't technically use the term "hyperinflation" is because when most countries undergo hyperinflation, they print more paper money to stimulate the economy but can't print it faster than the currency is devalued - at which point the populace reverts to bartering and systems of hard currency like gold and silver standards. In essence, the only reason we can't have hyperinflation is because WE DON'T HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE FORM OF CURRENCY TO FALL BACK ON and bartering is worthless in a world where you can sell your goods on the hyperinflated by not hyperinflated only because it technically can't be deemed such market.

Here's where it becomes a giant concern. I fully IO'd a toon about three years ago. It cost me around 1.5 billion and today is 6 billion influence from being finished. The present build is worth 19.3 billion and all I've added is one Panacea proc. Panaceas are presently being largely sold p2p offmarket for 3-4 billion. Sure, it's not that bad right now, but what about three years from now when PvP uber rares undergo the inflationary shift? We can laugh and say, "It will never happen" but
1.) The game already has trillionaires
and
2.) Now we all have three builds
3.) For each of the massive number of new 50's that were spawned by the recent series of AE bugs followed by dblxpwknd.

Sure, the market's not that bad for us right now. But what's it gonna be like in three years? If we see similar inflationary trends (which apparently aren't bad enough to concern the crap out of you all yet), how are you going to feel when my primary toon's build is worth an eighth of a trillion influence and it's still not complete? I wouldn't ragequit over a doubling in prices, but if they go up by that much than I'll have two choices. Either I can stop bothering to try and fully enhance one toon or I can utilize my considerable abilities to sway the market in such a way that... dun, dun, DUN! Prices go up as I sit on thousands and thousands and even more thousands of fully crafted IO's until their value increases. I don't actively engage in this behavior presently because things are so bad right now that the more people there are cornering niches of the market, the worse it gets for everyone. The only viable solution for coming up with enough money to fully IO a toon to completion within a month is to farm AE for at least four hours per day set to +4x8, claim a low level silver recipe roll and craft/sell what's valuable then sell off what isn't selling well offmarket at the store (which feeds the inflation). With two accounts, you can overnight afk PvP farm. Most people don't have two accounts though, or can't run two instances of CoH. This leaves AE farming as just about the only viable solution for making a billion influence per day... which means that purple recipes aren't done inflating.

This increase in prices is a problem, has been a problem and will become a much more serious problem unless addressed in the near future. Otherwise the challenge of ever attaining one complete build will over the years come to elude all but the most vetted players who one by one set aside their concern for their fellow players and farm up masses of personal bases capable of storing 1,400 IO's each (like I have, not counting ww's and toonslots) then carve out their own niche in the market until there's nothing left to carve, everything is unreasonably priced and half of what's produced is sold in stores to drive up prices as a solution to one's inability to sufficiently store the amount of created goods needed to drive up a given corner of the market. I've sold tens of thousands of recipes in the store, and am not the only one. This isn't some great big imaginary "lol wut if" scenario, it's our future. I have two ideas for addressing this.

1.) Add streakbreakers to purple and pvp recipe drops. (This may already be in the system, I don't know. If it is, please add a better one.)

2.) Instead of having three builds which are each enhanced individually, have one character, three builds, and one pool of say three hundred IO's with which each build can be permanently slotted. This could cut demand in half without making anyone either wealthier or more poor and would drastically increase the quality of gaming in CoH. This would also make it a lot possible to respec a toon once and replace half the enhancements on it without having to delete tens of millions (if not billions) of influence in equipment (and thus driving IO inflation further) or using multiple respec's to remove IO's (and thus driving respec recipe inflation further). It solves so many quality of life issues without harming anything that I can't believe this isn't already in play.

I'd much rather spend 30 billion to fully IO three builds on one toon than, say, 25 billion here and 10 billion there then 15 over there. Or 30 billion across the board. I feel very comfortable saying there are individual toons in this game presently who hold 100 billion+ influence in total slotting and personal inventory. Four years ago, one billion influenced could've fully HO'd every toon you had on a server. Now you can get two enzymes and an Acc/Dam for a billion influence - but inflation isn't a problem? I perceive it as the most problematic issue with the game.

If you don't think we can attain a kissing cousin to hyperinflation, you haven't been watching. I've personally caused it on many instances and sustained it for long periods. I've made recipes go from 5k to 4 million overnight and it cost me so little to do so that I made a profit on my first sale. That is the beginning of the problem and I could easily have tacked on another zero. I would've again made my money back for that second round of price increases on the first sale. The mechanisms for what could be perceived as hyperinflation are present, the means exist and just because it hasn't afflicted every aspect of the market yet doesn't mean it won't. It just means it hasn't afflicted every aspect of the market YET.

If you don't think what would and should be called hyperinflation in this game is possible, you can barrow my copy of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations then I'll introduce you to a few self-made millionaires and you can ask what inspired them to start accumulating then sitting on wealth. In the end you'll understand that the only thing we're missing to ignite what should be called hyperinflation is the impetus to enact it. If you tell me it can't happen outside of purples and PvP io's, I'll do it just to show you then provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to do it. The real cure for the market is a long-term alleviation of the impetus to rapidly enact and continuously increase artificial inflation. Dot, period, end of story. We solve the problem or it'll never be out with the old and in with the new, it'll eventually just be in with the new who can never hope to compete with the old because they started playing three years too late and will never be able to hope to be on the same level before CoH2 comes out at which point it'll be out with everybody. And inflation could be the reason CoH dies instead of living on like EQ did after EQ2.

Room-by-room permission is a really good idea