Uruare

Inclusive of Astral and Empyrean merit breakdowns, it's certainly something that can throw more thread-styled chips in your pile, certainly. The splendid thing they coded right in about the Alpha slot is that you don't need to run anything but a relatively short and, for a good few AT's soloable (And may I add, pretty cool) arc in Ouroboros; no grind required to unlock the Alpha slot at all.

Present breakdown of Shards -> Threads is a 1=1 basis every 20 hours on the time gated option, or 2=1 on the non-gated. Could you, without touching a BAF or Lamda trial, secure and break down enough shards to unlock all four i20 slots? Sure you could, and they've got a beautiful inf sink built right in; nothing wrong so far.

However, just where are you going to get Astral or Empyrean merits? Only one means of generating those presently, and that's by completing phases and objectives in the BAF and Lamda. Or, in the case of Empyreans, completing them period on a daily time gate.

Attempting to rely on shards alone can, in fact, be a perfectly acceptable means of unlocking the slots; that was never exclusively contested, or even inclusively focused on as a matter of concern by at least myself. I could perhaps have been clearer on that specific.






I'd almost be willing to bet every inf on every character I have that your conversions of shards was a near-irrelevant contribution to the fabrication of those t3's, unless of course you had an improbably huge stock of shards to break down. As it is, the cost in threads to fabricate a t3 is statically calculable.

t1 = 3 commons = 60 threads

t2 = 2 commons + 1 uncommon = 100 threads

t3 = 2 commons + 1 rare (4 uncommons + 100m Inf if you're relying on shards) = 280 threads

Total thread cost for a t3 crafted with shards via conversion alone = 440 shards + 210m Inf, if you're exclusively converting shards at the 10=10 for 2.5m rate on the time gated option.

Additionally, this will take you a minimum of 36.6~ days. Maybe there's some trick I'm unaware of for generating shards at a fantastic pace, but my personal absolute best day of farming for shards on +0/x8 maps and hitting the WST and nailing down both Tin Mage and Apex TF's in a single day as well as participating in three RMS raids saw me close the (long) day of (constant) bashing out with 16 shards. Obviously, that figure is largely RNG-variable where kill-drops are concerned, but I remember that day.

It was the 18 hour day of non-stop bashing that, while it was I certainly had fun burning that whole day to non-stop thing-bashing, wasn't something I especially wanted to replicate.

Nor was it something that was particularly replicable every day. In reality, I'd suspect that most people gunning for shards on a daily basis that're able to throw 4-6 hours at this game per day wouldn't have results too terribly different from mine.

Some days, I'd have a whole 5 shards to show for my trouble, including the one scored for trading Vanguard Merits for G'rai Matter and scoring drops to break down from ITF's and/or other TF's. Some days, the RNG gives nothing, other days that fickle mistress bestowed me with 9 or 10 or sometimes 11.

The days of logging off having acquired the minimum (or near to it) were rather more common than the lucky days. So, relying on shards to break down into all your threads for unlocking the i20 slots as well as crafting things to stick in them?

I'm sorry, but that's just not a viable alternative for anybody that doesn't essentially live on this game. It's a nice little perk, exactly as I said, but could only be exclusively relied on as an alternate path to doing anything especially meaningful with the i20 slots if one basically never logged off, hit everything that gives alpha component drops as often as possible and did all of this on the imaginary server where people were doing what one wanted to do at any given time, at all times, by way of TF's.

37 days as a minimum also hinges on already having the i20 slots unlocked, too. Nailing down enough shards to convert to threads and then convert to ixp would double-whammy one on the inf-sink front and soak a number of shards I don't really want to go calculate right now.

Converting at the non-gated 2=1 rate will ultimately take someone even longer, as they'll have to generate up to twice as many shards for the same result, and extend the inf sink's reach into their pocket by up to an identical margin.

In short and sum? Converting shards requires generation of shards. Generation of sufficient shards to both unlock the i20 slots as well as craft even just t3's to stick in them will almost certainly take you so long and/or cost you so much inf that you are basically being forced by functional reality to farm the incarnate trials.

That's functionally forced, not literally. You either take the train on the rails provided to get where you want to go, or you walk. In this case, my perception is 'or you walk on your hands across vast expanses of terrain that's largely unfriendly to your interests in the first place', and is the comparison really inaccurate?

I'll not even get into the costs of time and inf and sanity associated with trying to craft t4's for the i20 slots out of shard conversions. The terms 'prohibitive' and 'insane' and 'ridiculous' and a fair few colorful expletives too swiftly come to mind for me to comment reasonably in that direction.









She did what's already been done to death on this here forum-at-large by way of casually waving at shard conversion as an (and forgive me if I've misinterpreted the apologist context of most such posts, not only hers) entirely acceptable alternative to farming the BAF and Lamda.

I suppose it's acceptable in the framing of that nobody, including (almost certainly) the devs really care if you're doing it one way or the other or doing your best to synergize them both. By logical attrition, the acceptability of the disparity between the means of advancement hinges exclusively on service to personal agenda.

Is there technically a means by which people can experience the i20 shinies without ever having to touch a BAF or Lamda trial? Why yes, yes there is.

Is it an equivalent system, or even vaguely implied in its deployed construction as being one? No, and fait accompli for the Devs, it was not meant to be that.

So what, exactly, is the sum and whole of the problem that GG handwaved?

Breaking down shards is not a viable alternative. A nice perk that can supplement the very clearly intended course's yields? Sure. Could it occasionally provide a nice little supplement when you find yourself sitting after who knows how long of doing whatever on some shards you could convert?

Yes, but not realiably or consistently, and not in any even remotely economical fashion where the resources of inf, and most importantly time, are concerned to make it consistent.

That's the problem with it being referenced as any kind of viable alternative. It isn't, it cannot be, no amount of deterministic effort will make it be and handwaving the concerns of those that are basically saying "What the heck? We either grind until our eyes bleed for rewards that are doled out on some participation-weighting that seems pretty plainly to favor irresponsible teamplay or we grind until our whole body ruptures like in an anime bloodspray? Some options, guys!". is trite.


It does nothing to broaden anybody's understanding of the current situation, moreover, or that the current situation is likely strictly that; the current situation.

I've washed the salt out of quite a few peoples' eyes on my home server in a multitude of leagues I've both run and participated in by taking the time to, instead of handwave them or insult their intelligence by pointing at shard conversion as any kind of sane person's alternative to anything but ever, ever, ever logging out again by encouraging them to consider that we're not playing in a vaccuum.

And that this system, being quite new and deployed in what I can only call a bare-bones fashion, will only improve with time. Options will come. Alternate paths will flesh out around it in some shape, form or fashion or another, and if they're patient enough to wait the growing pains out, they probably will not have to grind the same two things over and over like mad hamsters on the wheel of shiny dispensation for all of their characters present and future.

Believe me, it works a lot better than mindless parroting of rubbish. Shard conversion is 'an alternative path' for the devs. They've provided it, you can do it, it's there, their hands are washed of immediate responsibility to provide 'an alternate path', they've bought themselves a half inch of breathing room to get other needful things done in, and something to wave at as a technical provision made in the meantime between 'The Current Situation' and actual, viable alternatives I, for one, see as being inevitably on the way.

When? Soon™, of course.

Just like all else worth waiting for 'round these parts.

You can also walk on your hands across Texas. Similarly, you could kayak from the shores of California to Japan.

It's amazing how broad the context becomes when technical ability is confused for a well-structured alternative.

My point here being, Golden Girl, that shard/thread conversions are not a realistic alternate path by which to do anything. Got some inf to spare and some elsewise useless shards cluttering up your Incarnate salvage page? Go ahead, convert them into some threads; you won't get a lot and what you do get sure won't be taking you very far, but it's something else to do with shards beyond craft yet more Alphas you're probably beyond caring too much about, right?

Presenting it as an alternative route to unlocking the i20 slots and securing enough threads to craft anything, however, is tantamount to my above also-truths.

Walking on your hands is a neat trick. Converting shards into threads extends the usefulness of shards a little bit; gives you more of a perception of choice than anything that actually amounts to much, and it's still a nice little perk, but nothing more than that; a nice little perk.

So please, stop presenting it as some kind've alternative to the present inexorable and unavoidable need to grind the unholy snot out of BAF and Lamda. It just ain't so.

What is so is that there are two very obviously meant-for-repetition trials that pretty much encompass the entirety of everything relevant to the i20 slots and powers. I have no doubt that, with i21, i22 and perhaps well beyond, there'll be a lot of new ways to get the shinies, and if indications serve, a lot of backwards-compatibility in whatever new currencies might roll down the pipe (You can craft everything for your Alpha slot with threads and Trial loot as well as shards, as my reference for speculation).

Right now is what I'd call a time of growing pains. New system, not everything is in place yet, the infrastructure of the bottom half is just newly implemented, and there are indeed issues; valid issues; that people bring to the table about the scale of the grind as well as the unknown degree of impact that 'the participation effect' has on the RNG for loot tables.

Don't marginalize these issues. Instead of telling people that they can functionally walk on their hands across Texas, point out the like of what I just set in text above.

Try encouraging people to some perspective if you can. Handwaving real issues with a painfully obvious non-option as an 'alternative' to grinding BAF and Lamda until their sanity is gone if they want to incarnate slot the stables of 50's many of us rock around with isn't very helpful.

Thank you for your time, those of you that bothered to read this.

For the tl;dr crowd...eh. Reading won't hurt you, I promise.

I might suggest more expansive advertising, myself, as well as a richer environment for viral marketing. To elaborate a smidge, here's a few ideas that pop to mind that wouldn't require a massive budget, transubstantiation into being Blizzard or bewildering cross-over conundrums.


* Genre Emphasis: CoX is centralized around the concept of comic book heroes and villains, and this is supported by comic books about the iconic characters existing. Making comic books takes a fair bit of product-compatible art design and writing talent even just for a digital print however, but what about shifting into a webcomic trend?

Webcomics accomplish the same task of telling a dramatized story, typically with far fewer art panels per publish and in iterated pieces rather than the larger story segments (or entire stories) and multi-page featured in comic books.

An active and ongoing City of Heroes webcomic featured on-site might satisfy several prongs of interest relevant to a marketing concern, the first and primary of which that I'll focus on being visibility.

It is very easy for someone to toss a webcomic link to a friend, post it on a blog, stick it in a forum sig, toss it up on Twitter and even for individual strips to be passed around viraly, all of which would serve to bring the City of Heroes names, likenesses and mythologies to a wider audience whereby which they might attract subscribers.



* Digital Advertisement: Why is it that I see so many compelling World of Warcraft sidebar and banner advertisements linking to its Trial Membership page, and nary a peep nor a whisper about a wonderful testament to its genre like City of Heroes? While I'd consider it entirely possible that I've simply missed such things, or haven't browsed the right sites to see them if they do exist, I cannot recall, off the top of my head, ever seeing such things.

I know that the nickel-and-dime costs for such things can swiftly add up to substantial amounts of money when one is considering a major push across hundreds of sites from month to month, and I am wholly ignorant of budget viability for even the least of such endeavors, but it's an absence I've noticed quite a few times, usually while seeing banners for numerous other MMO's and/or browser games.



I've yet other ideas, but before I turn into a spontaneous unsolicited novelist worse than I'm already being, I put these ideas forth not as any sort of criticism of your marketing department, but rather for that the two points you made there BAB kind've struck a sympathetic chord with me.

There I see a dev and primary content producer of a game I both admire and enjoy essentially throwing giving a defeated shrug on the matter. Whether it was tongue in cheek or otherwise...well, I dunno.

Anyway, I'll close this and call it good, and hope no one shoots me for being presumptuous all the same.

Mmmhm. Yep. You're onto me alright.

You're kinda like that person in the club that doesn't ever have anything intelligent to say, but will lean on the wall and try to insert something into any proximal dialogue that makes you feel as though you've impressed others with your wit, aintcha.

OHO, I'M ONTO YOU TOO!

The devs are more'n welcome to investigate me though

When/if they ever do, they'll find some rather boringly common stuff and you'll still be that person in the room that has nothing intelligent to say but tries to be witty and postured.

Psychological projection in/deed/!

Anyway, ad hominem-slinging aside (fun though it briefly is on occasion, despite its lack of utility), I feel the need at this juncture to laugh hysterically and wander away.

You may commence with the cheering or clapping, or just whatever it is you do when disturbances in your force leave you to the regularly scheduled shoulder-clappery of your groupthink.

Nerp. I've simply identified it as being a problem and, in peering into the matter of how big and damaging a problem it is, found plenty of cause to want to set it on fire.

Yeah, I've got mine. Said before I wasn't complaining for my own benefit, which exactly nobody believed (predictably). So, y'know...I got it off my chest.

I've never bought inf either. Never felt the need to, as I've got plenty of friends in-game that I can do whatever I want with at dang near any hour of the day or night (Except hami/RMS raid).

I've also got a bunch of other friends and acquaintences who've told me some rather god-awful stories of trying real hard to get where they want to get and not being able to.

Typically, this is because they don't know how to farm or sometimes even to lead TF's effectively, and so they wind up feeling pretty snuffed-out on the whole game.

Me? I got no problem with any of it. There are some TF's/SF's I'm not personally familiar enough with to feel comfortable leading, but that's never stopped me from trying and failing and learning, then doing it right the next time.

But that kind've thing does stop a lot of people, largely 'cause nobody wants to feel like a noob. Especially the ones that -are- noobs. Can ya blame 'em? Who wants to be jeered and laughed at or cussed out 'cause they tried to lead an STF and didn't know precisely how to do it?

Yeah, a lot of those kinds of people could look such things up with google-fu, and I usually wind up telling people to do just that; when in doubt, use the intarnets. Someone, somewhere, has written about whatever it is you're trying to do, and all that.

It might not seem to be so for we here on this specific thread, but CoX has got a modest learning curve to it. I remember being new. I remember quite well coming into CoX for the first time, not knowing jack about slotting a character, having no fricken clue about what I could even do beyond chase the little dot on the map and get a mission.

-I- had the relatively good fortune of falling in with some old heads that familiarized me real quick with what's what and how this goes and how you do that, and they taught me the good ol' fashioned way; doing it.

And then I set out doing it myself and dragging others along with me, and here I am today, with all my shinies on most of the toons I want them on, knowing quite well how to get the rest whenever I care to go and drag people around for a few weeks on TF/farm extravaganzas.

No biggie -for me-. Or for you folks here, I'm presuming.

But hey, then there's the folks I meet that've been playing for quite a while that still don't really know how to do a lot of this effectively. Nobody's showed them or taught them, or they're just not especially brave and/or thick-skinned people.

There's a lot more of them than I ever thought, which I learned when I started looking.

And they're my concern, really. They're the ones I'd like to see helped out so they can make it too.

And maybe I've been thinking about all this from the wrong angle.

Maybe -a- good answer's got nadda to do with capping the markets or anything to do with them at all.

Hmm! Methinks I has an idea.

Yeah, pretty much. I did say it was unrealistic in an above post, and you've pointed out why.

But, I got it off my chest. The heck else is any of this good for, if not that?

I'm not going to inform anybody of anything amazing that they're actually giong to care about. Har har, I'm not -that- dumb.

Frankly, I'm venting. I've been digging into this and conducting casual, observational studies of things just to amuse myself for a while, 'cause hey, some people have fun flipping markets, I have fun generating little bits and bytes of observational data on ground-level things like drop rates.

We've all got our oddities, and that's mine. However...digging into the gold market's underscoring methods and mannerisms hurt my brain.

The goggles, they do nothing, and the brainbleach doesn't help.

So, yeah. I'm carrying on like a panicked squirrel; I know it, I'm admitting it, 'cause it's true.

I'm sure some people are -VERY OFFENDED- by my opinions, but I'm not going to apologize for them, 'cause I'd just be lying. I'm not sorry.

I am, however, pretty well given to thinking that we're going to have to do something about this.

The Dev's can't really do anything that won't flatten us all under a very discomfiting boot, and with GR coming down the pipe, I am very much convinced that they're not going to be too eager to sally forth in an attempt to revitalize this ol' game without cleaning up house.

Maybe I'm wrong. I could be wrong, I might well -be- wrong about that, certainly.

I dunno. I know what I'd be doing if I were them, and that'd be quietly preparing a nuclear strike from orbit on some of the oldest, most damaging problems going.

At least, if I could bank on the influx of new players generated by a shiny new expansion possibly being forecast as sufficient to make up for those that'd make rude gestures at me of the old-crowd and stomp off.

So yeah, kinda worried. Kinda legitimately worried, I think.

I really do wish I could think of something more realistic to do than join hands and sing kumbayah about it, but eh.

I really can't. Can we fix it? I'd love to try, but it's prolly just F'd.

So...I'll come off the "ARGH!" kick now.

Irrelevant when the market isn't supplied by organic means. Really, do you -truly believe- that the pvp IO cartels inf-sellers maintain don't have a pretty good lockdown on this?


Clearly, you do.




Who's suggesting that they should? Black and white perspective on the matter much?




And greed just 'happens', of course. In whatever world it is you live in, things clearly just 'happen' and just 'are', nobody has any control over or impact upon any of them and it's all just kinda...'there'. Isn't it.

What motivates greed? What amplifies desire into a sense of need? What is it exactly that can turn a reputable, generally honest player into an inf-buyer?

I assure you, the answer is quite similar to what can turn a normally honest and non-violent person into a murderous thief quite easily.

And that answer is? A perception of need.

You really think that doesn't apply though, huh?

Some work very hard for what they've got. Others get without very much work at all. It's quite easy do so that in the context of CoX. All you need is some spare cash and you can literally buy your way out of having to spend many a week, month or even year working hard for anything at all.

So uh...that which I'm really villifying here? The gold market and that which sustains and supports it? It's laughing at you while proving you wrong. Whatcha gon' do about that, Chuckles?



Just the number of people that have admitted to me -personally- of having bought inf makes it rather clear that this is a futile, near-baseless threat.

How many more were just too smart to admit it or talk about it? It's like trying to count the number of people that had sex before they were adults; just those that admit it indicate some staggering numbers, and how many more simply never admit it?

HMM!

Amazingly, I've talked to all these people in game. My queries about how they avoided getting caught tended to revolve around the synoptic answer of "I didn't brag about it." or "I didn't buy a lot at one time. Billion here, billion there."

See, while I'm sure that the devs can and very well -might- track every transaction that occurs...well, gosh, there's so many legit players with craptons of money that they can't look at a transfer of 2b and go "GOT ONE!"

'Cause very likely, they don't. They -might-, but they probably actually don't.

So, short of these inf buyers identifying themselves by some means, how exactly do you propose that your catch-all there even works?

'Cause from where I'm seeing things, it's a deterrant threat that the Devs have been rather kind enough to not take a size HUGE hammer after. They'd squash a lot of legit players if they did; players that weren't actually doing anything wrong.

PR nightmare! Not that such things really stop certain other companies like Microsoft or Sony or EA, but maybe you'll start to see just what I'm pointing at if you consider it -outside your very small box for just one second-.

Y'know, that box in which you think everything you want to believe is true and everything else, like human psychology and socio-economic factors, is irrelevant.



Would be true if that happened more often, sure. WILL happen if it starts happening more often, but man, it's gonna be a rough day when catch-all mechanical solutions have to come into force to prohibit even the possibility of gold marketing.

'Cause they will squash you. And me. And everyone, somewhere, somehow.

Ya really just don't -get- basic relativity and the relationships of causal factors, I think.

The -only thing- that is going to bring people to getting squashed by the Devs for inf buying -will be- mechanical solutions.

There's no freaking way to identify a gold buyer from someone transfering inf to a buddy. None.

All they can actually do without creating a PR nightmare (and they're not gonna do thaaaaaat) is squash the ones they can identify within reasonable doubt.

They've made it harder for the gold marketers to operate. Trial accounts have suffered in experiential quality for this, amongst a considerable number of other mitigations.

How to curb the gold market without squashing the legit players? Heck of a conundrum, that is; -heck- of a conundrum, especially when the gold marketers are operating within the -technical parameters- of what any ol' player can do.

No player is technically prevented from farming quite a number of repeatable missions. Some of the most abused ones had timers thrown on them, but frankly, there are still so many farm-convenient missions available down a short arc chain (if even that) that it doesn't really matter anyway.

Now, could they monitor simultaneous connections from a single IP and limit the number of active connections, to further curb farmers' abilities to mega-farm? Sure. Heck, maybe they already do and I just don't know about it. What 'normal player' needs to have 20 accounts going at once? Or even 10? Or 5?

What about 1? They could do 1. Easy-peasy you bet they could.

But, there it is. The gold marketers can run 10, 20, 30+ instances of the game at one time from the same place and, I presume, rake it in by FFAing with themselves for max-kills-per-hour.

HMM!

So yeah. I know it doesn't fit well in your little box of a world in which things 'just happen' and 'just are', but there are causes and causes for the causes and factors that impact upon -seemingly irrelevant and unconnected aspects of the matter- that...you really, in all your posts, seem willfully and deliberately dismissive of.

Some pretty dang obvious ones, if you think that it's /easy/ to sift the inf buyers/sellers from the legit farmers and multi-account owners.

Which is -all- to say that, if it worked, it'd be happening. As it is, it doesn't really work, a lot of people get away with it and the only ones that seem to get caught are the ones that were inept and somehow brought themselves to being identified as such.



You're perfectly welcome to not agree with me, of course, though your demonstrated qualifications and familiarities with actually knowing what you're talking about make me wonder if you ever actually leave this forum to acquire your opinions and basis for believing them.

You've got yourself a nice little box built there of your opinions and beliefs, and clearly a small band of others that find you either charismatic or compelling enough, for whatever reasons they favor, to agree with you.

S'fine. You have, in the course of your own expansive assertions, framed quite a few very relevant and impactful aspects demanding consideration as irrelevant or baseless.

Human psychology, presumably because you know little to nothing meaningful of it, does not seem to factor into your comprehension of market conditions, socio-economic trends or just what it is that motivates -people- in a marketing environment in the first place.

Instead, you attribute everything to said-nothing-at-all buzzwords like 'Greed' and 'Lazy' and consider, so it seems, all your thinking done.

Oh how I wish I could live in a world as simple as that. That world where things just 'are' and stuff just 'happens' and we have no impact on or control over any of it.

Why, we wouldn't be responsible for anything, not even things we did or supported or profited on or anything at all. We could just do whatever, all day long, and it would just be stuff 'happening'.

Sounds like you've got yourself well fortified in that ivory tower of your'n, fella. Have fun with that.



I suppose it would remove the impetus for those that have some sort of misplaced emotional dependancy on feeling superior or 'elite' in contrast to everyone else, as the argumentations to maintain a wide margin of disparity in terms of availability all seem to centralize in one synoptic theme.

The words 'trivialized' and 'devalued' are heavy indicators of precisely what the real currency is that is so coveted in the metacontext of the matter.

See, there are some people that play games like these with the casual interest of socializing, beating around with friends and generally not making a profession out of the game.

While they're quite able to do that to most extents, the sum of all your protestations is this : Those people shouldn't have access to the best stuff. They don't need it and they don't deserve it unless they make a profession out of the game.

My return to that is: Really? That's justification for maintaining a market that CASUAL PLAYERS (yep, I said it. Again) that don't farm a lot and don't care to play wallstreet can't participate in without buying inf?

'Cause, y'know, it's a lot easier for people like that to buy inf. I know you think such people don't exist (or maybe they just don't exist in your box, like human psychology and socio-economic factors don't), but the fact of the matter is simple.

There's this big, huge gulf in availability between the best stuff and the second best stuff.

EEEEENORMOUS! It's amazingly gigantic! Insert descriptive expletive here!

Is that ok? Yeah, it would be, if the inf sellers weren't most of why that is so and weren't the ones doing the bulk of the profiting on that disparity.

But hey. You're making yours, man. S'all that matters, right brah?

I'm picketing your home/place of work and declaring that a higher power hates you?

I thought I was chatting on a forum and verbally debating/arguing/dickering about my opinion.

Man, I need to get me a bunch of signs and some chilluns to carry them, 'cause chilluns generate sympathetic response!

Pardon my inability to take you seriously.



Adjust for a bulk majority dispensation source retaining sufficient surplus to maintain the largely-monopolized market.

Adjust for the fact that said market is self contained in that the only -easy- way to afford those IO's is to buy inf.

Adjust for the fact that an FFA of 8 friends of mine that got drug out and rehashed for about 5 hours generated 3 PVP IO drops between the lot of them.

You're really oblivious to how relatively easy it is to farm those things if you've got the fortitude, friends and/or spare accounts to gank as quickly as possible, aintcha.

Wanna know how to control that badass PVP IO market? Buy everything that's valuable and goes on sale. Keep 1 up there at all times until it sells, maybe 2. Let non-involved flippers play a bit with the others, but keep the top-inf selling pieces locked down and be prepared at all times to buy out everything in excess of 3.

Oh how do I know!? I researched that market a lil' bit when I found myself sitting on a couple of PVP IO's, one of which was listed in the history as selling for 1b each iteration.

I flipped a profit of 700m in -ten minutes- by listing that thing for 1.7b above and beyond the previous 5's going rate. SOMEONE GAVE ME 700m yo!

...now, who does that? Why would they do that? Could it just have been someone that went "WANT!" and started typing in 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 on up to my listing price before they yoinked it and damn the cost?

Sure!

But I've been informed that this isn't uncommon behavior. That if I had 20 of those IO's and listed them for 2b, they'd sell, probably within 10 minutes, and that it wouldn't be 'typical players' buying them.

It'd be inf sellers, and the high-ball flippers, making sure their control of supply doesn't get f'd up...with the occasional player thrown in there that just had poor impulse control.

Have I been lied to, perhaps?

Maybe the ~3 billion dollar gold marketing industry is actually just dumb people that don't know as much as -you- about how things /really/ work, and surely don't seed, wipe and manipulate markets in games like these to acquiesce to their desired patterns of supply and demand.

Why, if they could do that...such things could...could happen in real life!

PEOPLE MIGHT ACTUALLY ROB BANKS!

But hey, at least in RL, we can take out loans via legitimate channels for making biiiiig purchases. All kinds of loans!

But what did people do before they could...realistically do that or things like it? Before such things were, y'know, existant and available?

Well, they robbed stuff a lot. A brief -glance- at history might inform you of some startling things. Heck, don't even look tooooooo far back. Just the, well, Great Depression'll do just fine.

Hmm. HMM!

Incidentally, and tangentially, I recently met folks in an SG that have their own little banking system set up in it. It was pretty darn neat, and they ran it like an actual bank in which members could apply for loans and pay them back in incremental fashions on a modest percentage of profit for the SG as a whole.

I'd have my doubts about the enforceability of recouping loan amounts from welchers, but the ones I spoke with said it worked out really well for them, people's max loans were based on how long they'd been in the SG (tied it in to tenure and investiture; smart!) and they didn't have a problem with people paying it back with the modest interest.

And that they, in fact, wound up helping their own folks pay back their loans anyway just for all the TF's and missions and whatnot they all ran together with frequency!

O'LAWD, and also that they didn't have any problem with keeping their noses clean in terms of having nadda to do with the inf sellers; didn't need them, the SG had over 100b it could tap into for loans anyway.


So uh...yeah. People have a tendency not to steal (or break the EULA?) when they don't perceive a need to.

/Tend/ not to. Tendency, which means something that will occur in most cases most of the time.

Adjust for the truly lazy/entitlement-motivated, adjust for the exceptionally greedy and/or impatient, and you've got the bulk of your exceptions to that trend hallmarked.

So really, what were you trying to say again? I couldn't hear you over the sound of your inexplicable insistence on denying the validity of human psychology.

I'm picketing your home/place of work and declaring that a higher power hates you?

I thought I was chatting on a forum and verbally debating/arguing/dickering about my opinion.

Man, I need to get me a bunch of signs and some chilluns to carry them, 'cause chilluns generate sympathetic response!

Pardon my inability to take you seriously.



Adjust for a bulk majority dispensation source retaining sufficient surplus to maintain the largely-monopolized market.

Adjust for the fact that said market is self contained in that the only -easy- way to afford those IO's is to buy inf.

Adjust for the fact that an FFA of 8 friends of mine that got drug out and rehashed for about 5 hours generated 3 PVP IO drops between the lot of them.

You're really oblivious to how relatively easy it is to farm those things if you've got the fortitude, friends and/or spare accounts to gank as quickly as possible, aintcha.

Wanna know how to control that badass PVP IO market? Buy everything that's valuable and goes on sale. Keep 1 up there at all times until it sells, maybe 2. Let non-involved flippers play a bit with the others, but keep the top-inf selling pieces locked down and be prepared at all times to buy out everything in excess of 3.

Oh how do I know!? I researched that market a lil' bit when I found myself sitting on a couple of PVP IO's, one of which was listed in the history as selling for 1b each iteration.

I flipped a profit of 700m in -ten minutes- by listing that thing for 1.7b above and beyond the previous 5's going rate. SOMEONE GAVE ME 700m yo!

...now, who does that? Why would they do that? Could it just have been someone that went "WANT!" and started typing in 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 on up to my listing price before they yoinked it and damn the cost?

Sure!

But I've been informed that this isn't uncommon behavior. That if I had 20 of those IO's and listed them for 2b, they'd sell, probably within 10 minutes, and that it wouldn't be 'typical players' buying them.

It'd be inf sellers, and the high-ball flippers, making sure their control of supply doesn't get f'd up...with the occasional player thrown in there that just had poor impulse control.

Have I been lied to, perhaps?

Maybe the ~3 billion dollar gold marketing industry is actually just dumb people that don't know as much as -you- about how things /really/ work, and surely don't seed, wipe and manipulate markets in games like these to acquiesce to their desired patterns of supply and demand.

Why, if they could do that...such things could...could happen in real life!

PEOPLE MIGHT ACTUALLY ROB BANKS!

But hey, at least in RL, we can take out loans via legitimate channels for making biiiiig purchases. All kinds of loans!

But what did people do before they could...realistically do that or things like it? Before such things were, y'know, existant and available?

Well, they robbed stuff a lot. A brief -glance- at history might inform you of some startling things. Heck, don't even look tooooooo far back. Just the, well, Great Depression'll do just fine.

Hmm. HMM!

Incidentally, and tangentially, I recently met folks in an SG that have their own little banking system set up in it. It was pretty darn neat, and they ran it like an actual bank in which members could apply for loans and pay them back in incremental fashions on a modest percentage of profit for the SG as a whole.

I'd have my doubts about the enforceability of recouping loan amounts from welchers, but the ones I spoke with said it worked out really well for them, people's max loans were based on how long they'd been in the SG (tied it in to tenure and investiture; smart!) and they didn't have a problem with people paying it back with the modest interest.

And that they, in fact, wound up helping their own folks pay back their loans anyway just for all the TF's and missions and whatnot they all ran together with frequency!

O'LAWD, and also that they didn't have any problem with keeping their noses clean in terms of having nadda to do with the inf sellers; didn't need them, the SG had over 100b it could tap into for loans anyway.


So uh...yeah. People have a tendency not to steal (or break the EULA?) when they don't perceive a need to.

/Tend/ not to. Tendency, which means something that will occur in most cases most of the time.

Adjust for the truly lazy/entitlement-motivated, adjust for the exceptionally greedy and/or impatient, and you've got the bulk of your exceptions to that trend hallmarked.

So really, what were you trying to say again? I couldn't hear you over the sound of your inexplicable insistence on denying the validity of human psychology is.

I'd ask the flippers to take a more concientious perspective of their markets and avoid those that inf buyers traffic in most heavily. Unfortunately, those are the lucrative markets where impulse/greed purchases are the most profitable, so it's an unrealistic basis at the functional level.

But still, I had to throw it out there as with my occasionally scattered reasoning for asking it, as I'm not quite deluded enough to think anyone's going to actually listen to such a thing, or change their practices just 'cause some random nobody on a forum illustrated some such practices as being part of "The Problem".


I'd ask those considering buying inf, or who have in the past and simply didn't get caught, to stop. The markets you're supporting, or are considering supporting, contribute in fundamental ways to making the most desirable saleable game content unrealistically expensive for those that do not engage in extreme activities or similar practices.

I'd ask those that do not like the market prices as they are to do what they can to refrain from supporting those markets. Prices tend to drop when sales dwindle on those things, as some have pointed out in this thread.

I'd ask everybody that's terrified of unacceptable changes to do what they can to help people not perceive a need to lean on inf sellers to 'get anywhere in a timely manner'. Nobody wants to feel like they're wasting their time when easier/more effective methods are available to accomplish the same goal.

There is, however, no way to compete legitimately with the instant-gratification inf sellers provide in terms of farming (even grey-area AE farming) or flipping. They are, however, things that -can- be done, and done legitimately.

Teach people how. Put teams together and invite people to get in on drop farms in PI or Grandville's TV arc, or run scanner/paper missions with people. Invite a newbie along whenever you can, do stuff with them, throw them a bone if they're cool and give them direction.

Lots of SG's on Virtue, where I'm at, (And likely elsewhere) go to great lengths to help their own out, be it with badge hunting or loot collecting when it comes time to want to IO out to merit hoarding and whatnot. I cannot comment on what transpires on other servers, but where /I'm/ at, we need more of that.

It exists within SG/VG's, but a lot of people are still 'going it alone', don't know how to farm effectively, don't feel like they know anybody well enough to ask for help, and the list goes on.

If anyone wants to combat inf sellers, the best way I know of and have personally seen to keep people away from them is to help them get what they want via the legitimate means.

Start an SG or VG that's all about helping eachother get stuff. If you're into RP as some are, make RP events out of helping people get their goodies.

It's all stuff that people already -do- in various ways and places, some more, some less, but more of all of it would be a big step in the direction of cacking the gold market.

Similarly, it would be a really big step if more people took the time to inform themselves of how the inf-sellers really work. A lot of people I talk to, including on this very forum thread, seem to be of the impression that they don't do a lot of business and that prices have dropped 'cause they can't sell anything.

The opposite is true, despite common marketing standards that illustrate price drops with demand drops. They're not dropping due to lack of demand; they're broadening availability and capitalizing on ability to do this and still turn a profit thanks to their abilities to maintain purple and PVP IO markets in the stratosphere.

Those I've spoken with that claimed to be involved in such markets made it pointedly clear that AE farming the henchies is nice...if you're small-time and selling inf for hundredths of a penny to resellers. The real money is in PVP IO farming and stacking the markets while lowering costs to generate more business, thus creating a growth cycle.

They sell 1b for 16 bucks. The buyer takes their 1b and buys...what with it? SO's, thus destroying currency? No. IO's. There's nothing else to buy with that much money.

Which IO's? A comparatively negligible amount gets spent on bulk IO's; the uncommons and rares you can fill a toon up on for 500-700 mil. The rest gets spent on purples and PVP IO's, and you'll get nowhere in those markets with 1b. They've made sure of that. You'll have to grind like a machine or go Wallstreet Tycoon on the lucrative markets (which helps them keep the prices locked in waaaay up there!), or? Buy more inf.

They farm PVP IO's and purples as a mainstay. It's really all they've got left anymore that will generate the inf they need to maintain their supplies. That's where the bling is, especially since their own market flippers ration out the supply of PVP IO's to artificially maintain a starvation-scale demand. Drop rates on those are crap.

Now, that could be countered by some wide-spread farming and selling of PVP IO's, but most of us aren't really interested in spending 16 hours a day doing nothing but lurking in FFA matches and systematically killing specifically fast-kill toons on alt accounts.

So that isn't gonna happen. Most of us lack the motivation and the means to do it on the scale they're doing it anyway, as most of us do not have the number of accounts a single human gold seller manages and operates in such endeavors.

According to the sources that've been chatty (it was hard to find chatty sources on this, but dangit I did it!), there are very few one-time buyers. Once they get a taste of how easy it is to click-click, enter digits and BAM, have the shinies, they'll be back.

So, they've got no reason to -not- lower their prices when repeat purchasing is the mainstay and the established trend, and moreover itself even more encouraged when it can be done so cheaply.

The only tools we've got to keep people from falling into that market are to get people involved in things that directly help them get what they want while having fun doing it.

'Cause thathere are a couple of things you can't buy with inf in any lasting manner that people do value; fun and friends.

And for the "Got Mine, F-you" crowd, I'm very uncertain about either.

I'm accusing those who play the "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" card in support of inf-seller/buyer saturated markets of being reprehensible, yes. Having purples and PVP IO's is not reprehensible, nor is acquiring them via legitimate means.


And yeah, I'm as familiar with RMT sites, practices, methods and market strategies as I can be without actually trafficking in such businesses myself. Amazing what you can learn by talking to people that are/were in such businesses, -use- such businesses, being casually inquisitive of those considering the use of such business, firing off email inquiries to sellers and market reps of such business sites and educating yourself on something before you complain about it.

I think we call that sort of behavior 'research', though since I'm likely treading on unfamiliar territory in that reference, I'll sum it up for you.

I didn't come to this forum on a kneejerk response. While it -may be inconceivable to you- that people exist that educate themselves on a topic before going "This is total crap" and saying so, I could point you in several directions to do so yourself and -you- can then tell /me/ exactly what's what about what with which market.

What I'm finding terribly tongue-in-cheek and pyrrhicly amusing is the fact that you in particular call me 'holier than thou' when you're the one that came descending from your "I'm a casual player and I've played for 5 years and have almost no 50's" attempts at countermanding a non-existent threat on the basis of informing me that I do not speak for you.

Was I trying to speak for you? Really? You might just as rationally take offense at my stating that 1+1 =2 by declaring yourself to be 1 and that I have no right to tell you what you're part of.

I've already stated in a prior post my retraction of /all/ market flipping being reprehensible. It isn't. Poor choice of wording and haste brought me to mis-representing an entirety when, in fact, it is only a specific section of that entirety that contributes to "The Problem".

As for being 'holier than thou', I don't buy inf, I understand quite well how markets work, I flat refuse to rip people off by staging market escalations and encouraging amplified scarcity of the most high-demand varieties of saleable game content available, and if that means I've got a little halo over my head, good for me.

And yes, your vocabulary is very relevant.

Your assumptions and insinuations say more about you than they ever can or could about me.

Ponder that. I'll be over here, being unappologetically ethical and opinionated.

Well, I don't feel bad for that. What I do feel bad about is that by the time a new-ish player comes around to starting to eye them top-shelf IO's, they're not going to be looking at a market that gives them a lot of incentive to feel very realistically motivated to try via legitimate channels for those things.

In fairness, most of them won't know better or different and will likely assume that that's "just the way it is and has to be".

As for my morality and ethics, they're pretty firmly seated in a glad willingness to refrain from profiting egregiously off the foolishness of others, as that does not result in happy players. No, I'm no GM or Dev, and it is not my -job- to worry about player relations or public contentment here; not, at least, in any formal or implied fashion.

I perceive it as being my privilege, however, to welcome new players and to get them excited about a rather unique game. I've had the undisputable honor of falling in with groups of people that make some very serious efforts to make it even more fun for people of any playstyle to be here.

Why? 'Cause we like it here. We like our communities and we like our Devs. What I and quite a few of those I keep regular contact with do not like is the "Got mine, F-you" mindset that keeps the gold market vibrant, ensures that certain IO's will be a lol-worthy endeavor to acquire and that the only mechanical recourses in address of that will either be futile or will negatively impact everyone quite unpleasantly.

See, I'm not talking about 'goodness of soul' either. That is a tangent that you correctly attribute as being out of the framing of this context.

You're not going to convince me that respectable, operable and inviting ethics are either impossible or irrelevant, however.

Or, for that matter, unnecessary.

According to you and everyone else that doesn't agree with me, no.

There are at least forty nobodies in my talk-to-all-the-time social circle alone then. I'm an RPer that casually PVP's. If I tried, I could prooooobably find about 12x as many casual to full-time PVPers...mmm...on my server alone.

That's is a LOT OF NOBODIES d00d!


You're oblivious to the pvp set farming cartels. Though, in fairness, I don't know if they actually sell those or are just farming them for their own joyful retention and then...well, not farming them anymore. I shall ask those I can!


...Mmkay. Please don't ever go look at what powers like Headsplitter, Eviscerate and a couple of those other obscure Scrapper attacks are. I suspect your head will explode.

O'wait. We don't use those in PvP. Nothing but 6-slotted brawl with 4 damage procs and 2 hami acc-dmg's!

-_-



I'm so very glad you were here in the nick of time to tell me so. I almost thought for a minute there that I did, but you sure uh...y'know, I'm not even gonna try with this one.


You quite completely failed to read the "I dunno; too soon to tell" bit, didn't you. Skipped right over it to launch into your defense of...what, exactly? Are you a hardcore PvPer and are kneejerking in frothing defense because you think I picked on you? Clarify.


Garsh, I sure wish I know'd somethin' about them ec'nomics, but I reckon that if support for a market dwindles and buyers ain't buyin', the sellers can't -sell-!

And yeah, I'm suggesting that there's plenty of stuff to do in CoX besides tweak the build, cap the IO's out on the best-that-ever-was and then throw it in the trash 'cause of "Bored Nao, NEXT!"-itis.

Yeah, some people have seen every arc and mission and map and tree in the game both red and blueside so many times they have to suppress a yawn just to lower themselves to log in, and killed every GM, gone on every TF/SF and raid that there is, and'a so on so -on-.

I know people who've done all that. I'm sure there are scads of them I'll never meet or see; YOU COULD BE ONE OF THEM! And I'd -Totally- sympathize with, if you are, like that's all that's really left for you to do that's dynamic and interesting in the game on the mechanics and engine-related levels.

And if you're not...uh...well. Self explanatory. Go. Hunt. Kill Skulls.

And so on.



That's -a- goal, sure, and a worthy one if you do in fact want it to be the best that can possibly be. No shame nor foul in wanting that man; it -is- part of the experience you're paying to receive.

What other stuff could you do with yourself on that or maybe even any toon when his build is finished though? Is it really game-over-bored-nao when you slot that last IO and there's nothing left to respec for, no numbers left to tweak and you can't even gripe about wanting that one slot here over there anymore?

If it -is- that way for you, I'd love to hear why, actually.




Power to ya, man. Rock him up.

Working to improve my characters and the sense of accomplishment ala "A Job Well Done"; that warm fuzzy feeling I'm sure a lot of us know for a multitude of reasons; is totally cool.

I'm not encouraging setting up a vendor selling purples and PvP sets for 20k. I'm not advocating putting them on merit vendors.

I -am- stressing the need to kill the prolific marginalization of the typical player from having a real shot at having that same enjoyment without resorting to A) Grinding like machines for unreal amounts of time, B) playing Wallstreet with the markets or C) buying inf from inf sellers.

And I am stressing that need for two reasons. Firstly, because I see a lot of people that do A and will, whenever possible, do B, but find that neither are especially purposeful compared to C.

C is instant gratification. It breaks the EULA and you can get account locked permastyle for it, but the desire for those IO's isn't going to diminish. Fact: It will take months of doing A and weeks of doing B (if you're good at it, consistent and keep on it multiple times daily on several of the most lucrative fronts) to afford all the shinies you could ever want.

It'd take 20-40 minutes of C to accomplish the same.

And -neither A nor B are the problem-. C is the problem. And making A harder and longer to do only pushes more people to C. Similarly, the fact that rather few people even know B exists doesn't push them to finding out if they can do that.

Staggering market prices pushes people to C. The higher those prices go, the further out of an increasing number of peoples' 'grind tolerance' they get, but they still -want- those things.

And while some will go "Didn't need them anyway" and certain others, such as yourself as you've stated, will do however much of A they need /anyway/...you really can't dispute the fact that there are also those that will go "Meh. 16 bucks a billion? Fine, I'm in."

And -that- is the problem, because the number of people doing C isn't going to decrease just because it 'shouldn't' and they don't need those things. People want those things.

Follow the point I'm stressing here?




In an ideal gameworld, you might not have to consider relinquishing the challenge of anything for the good of anything else. When profiteers and illegal rackets start capitalizing on that challenge, something's gonna have to give somewhere.

If you want to hate something, don't hate the people that are trying to ultimately preserve the integrity and functionality of the systems you find enjoyable.

I guarantee you that if the things that currently drive the gold market in CoX were suddenly more available to people of any playstyle, the gold market would dwindle to irrelevant obscurity. There'd be no profit left to make, nobody would perceive a -need- to break the EULA to get what they want inside of sometime in 2012, and then we'd /maybe/ be able to consider having a free market.

We /all/ might very well have to accept the 'threat' of compromise to get rid of something that capitalizes egregiously and very damagingly on some stuff that is not -itself- the problem.

Knowing what I know about marketing and public relations, I know for a damn fact that the Devs are not going to just saturate the markets with things that were elsewise ultra-rare to kill the profitability of the gold market. I'm sure they'd /love/ to kill it with fire, but there are too many people that would neither understand nor accept such a change, even if it were temporary, and the cost in retention might well not justify the profit of prolonged attenability.

In short, I know what they're -not- going to do because I know what they cannot -afford- to do. I might have some experience with such matters in firsthand fashions.

However, I've also got a pretty fair idea of what -we- are going to /have/ to do if anything /they/ do is ever going to work.

We're going to have to, firstly, stop supporting the known markets in which the gold market profiteers do their business. -We-, the players. Why? Because even if the Devs come up with a sophisticated identification-and-banning schema that somehow locks in on gold sellers and buyers, it's not going to be perfect and, ultimately, it will either be a futile gesture or so heavy-handed that our forced compromise will come in the form of a patch or patches into systems that there will /be/ no argumentation upon.

Maybe some haven't noticed, but Going Rogue is a full expansion. CoX might not be 'on the up' right now, but if you follow the patterns and trends of businesses in -any- market, you'd know what Going Rogue is.

Going Rogue is them saying "We're not done yet. In fact, we're on a growth plan, not a retain-and-appease plan."

Maybe Going Rogue will generate new market saturation for them; that is doubtlessly their hope and intention, 'cause people don't just make an expansion to throw it and the market they're intending it for away.

I'm quite certain that they're going to be doing quite a lot to make sure that, when GR hits, it will be as inviting to new players as it is intriguing to old returnees and retainees alike to the best of their creative abilities and marketing mitigations such as budget and time as that they can.

So, how about we help them out since we like the game so much and do what -we- can do to kill the gold market before, y'know, they do it for us.

'Cause if they have to be the only ones doing it, we might just see purples on vendors and PvP IO's being random rolls off a PVP ticket system. Generation of those things might well be taken partially to completely out of depending on a specific form of player activity.

And who's gonna do what then? Yell on the forums about it?

I'm demonstrating how useful -that- is presently.

(Read: just about none at all, except I do feel better for having gotten it out of my system)

Ciao.

The ones I'm specifically on about have been bitten by the completionist bug, and have thrown up their hands and walked out the door (most temporarily to await changes in the overall system i17 and GR might bring) in response to the aggregate problem of drop rates going weird (So they often say; I can't prove that. Yet.) as well as ever increasing prices in the WW/BM markets.

These aren't new issues for most of them, and frankly, to call any of them lazy would be a point of absurdity. They're just past their points of tolerance for what is acceptible in terms of prices for, specifically, purple sets, PVP sets, Miracle +Recovs, Regenerative Tissue +Regens, LotG Globals, and so on.

These are not stupid, uninformed people. Some have been playing a heck of a lot longer than me, some haven't been, but exactly none of them are kneejerking or crybabying because things can be expensive and some stuff takes work to get.

We're all fine with expensive and work in my social circles. What we're not ok with is blatant foolery, and what I for one see transpiring in those markets is absolutely foolish in regard to Melee, Targeted AoE, PBAoE and PVP IO's.

But, to specifically answer your question rather than just pontificate, to make a perfectly good and very effectively IO'd toon, it costs no more than 500-700 mil, provided one goes light on LotG globals, high-demand uniques and Numinas.

One can even purple out non-PVP-valuable powers on various AT's for relatively little, which indicates that the real crux of the problem is somehow centric to PVP-Valuable IO's.

Does this indicate that the 'hardcore PVPers' are the real mainstay of "The Problem"? Frankly, I dunno; too soon to tell.

But it does indicate that it bears some genuine examination. When the availability of purple IO's is flat-out turning people off to certain AT's altogether, even in just the social circles I keep, it kind've goes out of mere speculation and into genuine concern.

At least, it does for me.


XD Well, I'm not saying that complaints couldn't be put forth about it. I've griped about 1000 rikti monkeys before, but never too terribly seriously, and some of those defeat badges have proven to be good excuses to get a bunch of people together to go kill stuff anyway.

Believe it or not, as wouldn't be evident in my posts here, I'm a big fan of finding ways to turn a normally dull task into something enjoyable for myself and others. Like farming for defeat badges and accolading and whatnot.

I'm lazy 'cause I don't advocate prices or systems that increasingly encourage people to perceive a need to buy inf or AE farm to attain what they want.

Gotcha.



Aye, damn them "moral" grounds. Moral and ethical concerns have no place in business; what kind of crack am I smoking?! Where do I GET such ideas!?!



For my own casual observations, most of the people I know that've quite didn't quit 'cause they were going "O'man, I gots everything. Bored nao, time to quit."

Though, I know a few dozen in my assorted coalitions and SG alone that are playing other games out of sheer frustration with market prices. Maybe that's just my mileage; it could well just be that I happen to socialize with the unrelatedly mashed-up social circles that just /happen/ to all be people that do put quite a bit of effort into accruing wealth and /still/ can't afford to IO their toons how they'd like!

Or maybe we're all just dumb. Yeah, that must be it.



No thanks, I refuse to simply accept whatever prices profiteers and inf-buyers with poor impulse control set forth. Frankly, if there were a ship for me to raid and kick its tea into the harbor on the matter, I'd do it.

As it is, the closest I've got is bandying words with you on a forum. Eventually I'll run out of concern and move on with my life, but not just yet!



Ok, sure, fine, there are technically near-limitless options, including offering to ERP for inf and saving it up until you're there. One could also panhandle under Atlas' butt and probably make out pretty ok if one was creative and endearing about it.

Similarly, one could put together an SG with the goal in mind of singling SG members out and collaborating effort to tweak them out, then moving to the next, and so on; that's a good option.

But, I listed the rather evident ones that most people /will/ pick from. Subjective functional observation of probability. I'll be very certain to be precise and clear so as to avoid any and all ambiguity for you in the future.


You might not be, but I am. It might help if we were having the same argument, but prolly not. The whole underscoring crux of my real concern is that inf sellers are being inadvertantly facilitated by ever-rising market prices.

And there are people who go "Don't care, got mine!" and rake it in flipping purples and PVP IO's to cash in on making sure those high prices -stay- high, which only escalates the problem as fewer and fewer people are able to legitimately afford to purchase such 'luxuries'.

It is completely and utterly immaterial if they 'need' them or not. It is entirely relevant as to whether they want them or not. DO people WANT those things? In most cases, yes, with varying degrees of concern ranging from the "It'd be nice" to the "I WILL DO ANYTHING FOR MOAR PURPS!"

Take a guess at what happens when an increasing number of people are hedged out of a market that's got prohibitively high costs on the best stuff? Sure, some go "Meh, didn't need that stuff anyway" and roll on, happy enough with what they do have.

Others (in which bracket I fit) go "Grargh, why do I hate life?" and go farming, TFing and favor-trading to cobble up spiffy collections of the stuff I want. Oh, but I be vurry surry, I apparently don't "want it enough" to just swallow whatever BS the market presents me with?

Forgive me if I take that as a compliment.



Aye, you can! And no, no, you're not responsible for the choices of others, but it'd sure be nice if more of the general playerbase, especially those with knowledge of the markets and how to generate inf legitimately went "Hey, let's get civic and help people not think they need to suck on the inf-seller's crack pipe."

Or maybe even, "Hey, let's not support the markets that inf sellers roll it up in."

But, I know, I know, if there's a thin nickel to be made, there will be a Bernie Madoff that will do any single thing they can to make it, no matter who it hurts or how it screws anything up for anyone else.

No, I'm not comparing you specifically to Bernie Madoff; I don't actually know what your specific practices are, so I'd do well to not criticize them and will, in fact, retract all prior assumptions about them.

I'll even extend a genuine apology for having verbally swiped at you about it, as you are, in fact, correct; the market can be played without hurting others to do it.

And I will agree that, in that extent, it's perfectly legit even by my lofty standards.





You can stick to markets that aren't rather obviously high-traffic dependencies for the inf sellers.

Question is, will you? Nobody can make you. Nobody can even tell you that what you're doing is wrong outside of rather specific moral/ethical contexts like I unapologetically carry around.

So, laugh away if you feel the need. The 'I got mine and if I don't see anything I don't have to care about where anything came from' mentality is really quite impressive, though.

You clearly care about something to argue as you're doing, but it only seems to be to defend a status quo that makes you rich and blankets you with some apparent sense of plausible deniability of or any connection to anything that might be a problem.

Perhaps I'm not the one with the blinders?



Artificially (And intelligently) regulated markets are the biggest bane against the gold market there is. Aye, sure, people are always going to be lazy and looking for the easiest ways to get the most out of anything.

Some will exploit bugs in the engine, others will pull whatever shady stunts they can figure out how to pull until they get sufficiently slapped for it or prevented from so doing, and if they can, some will make rude gestures at any 'agreements' they've made with a click-click and buy, steal or detriment anybody to gain advantages for themselves.

So, maybe capping the markets wouldn't be the best idea; I'll admit that there could be better ways to address it.

In tandem with other addresses, it could work very nicely. Cap the markets, increase drop rates somewhat and take the general emphasis off shinies.

But where to put emphasis on? It's gotta go somewhere, right, or people get bored?

Where indeed. Stuff to /do/ with all those shinies perhaps? There's lots of stuff to do and plenty more coming down the pipe with i17 and GR on the way, but what then?

Oh deary dear, what -then-?

I'll give -you- a few days to mull that one over. It seems rather evident to me, but what could I possibly know about MMO's and how player retention and engagement can work?



Think outside your box. You're awfully quick to tell me I'm wearing blinders while demonstrating your own in very nearly the same paragraph.

The market. Is not. The problem. The market is just a thing in the engine; a bit of code, if you will; that enables people to engage in silent, blind auctions with only previous sales data to guide the decision-making process from a cold start with.

The problem, as I'm sure you'll disagree, has considerably more to do with what a socio-ecomonic scholar might call a participle of the contextual theory of demand. Specific to this is the pointed fact that demand is a perception.

What do people perceive as being in demand, and why? According to the market, a very specific variety of IO's.

Why? Why would they want those overpriced things? The set bonuses off them aren't -that- much superior to those found on rare or even uncommon IO's, so what is -really- pushing that market?

Prestige maybe, and not the base-building kind? Do people just want bragging rights? Well, maybe, but I think the answer to that is also the answer to the question "Why DO so many people work so hard for all those badges?"

Completionism? Because it's there, some people will want it just to have it and feel like they've 'finished' something. That's a pretty powerful motivation for some, as the plethora of people with 300, 400, 500, 600 or even tipping 700 badges will attest.

Could be part of the all-important why underscoring the matter, eh? Is it rational? Is it reasonable? Well, who knows; it clearly seems to be for some, while certain others disagree.

But unlike with most badges, IO's very directly impact the effectiveness and utility of your toon as well. Sure, there are accolades that do the same thing, but getting those in no particular way depends on anyone else's decisions.

For some reason, I just don't hear anybody complaining about accolades being too hard to get.

And yet, I hear people complaining all the time about purple and PVP sets being too stupidly expensive. Blow such complaining off as much as you like, marginalize it to your heart's content, but there it remains.

Think it'll just go away if you stick your fingers in your ears and go "Lalala, can't hear your whining, you're all crybabies and you're dumb, lalalala!"?

Tragically, that doesn't work. Unfortunately, the intelligent will ask "Now why are they complaining?" and examine their reasons to sift through them for answers as to the whatfors and whyfors.

Are some, in fact, just lazy? Sure. Some really do just want everything handed to them, and some, in fact, feel they deserve to have it all handed to them. But let's with-hold judgement on that for a tick.

Some others are perfectly happy to spend their time doing quite a bit of stuff to get what they want, and I think most of us fall into this category. We've all got different tolerances for the grind as well as preferences for what we will and will not do that might fall into grey areas, such as farming, AE farming or other 'quick and dirty but legal' ways of things, including flipping the markets.

Ok, so flipping is less 'quick' than it is 'dirty and legal', but I digress.

Certain others, for reasons ofte nas inscrutible as they occasionally are anything but, will do anything to and past the point of demonstrable reason, to get what they want.

Those sorts will lie, cheat, steal and connive in any way available to them to get their way, and that is frequently in attendance to a near-complete to complete lack of concern for what impact their activities have on anyone else.

Why?

If you don't know, then I suggest you find out to the best of your abilities.

If you don't care, then you're not qualified to speak so loftily as you do any more than a self-stated mathemetician that dismisses multiplication as irrelevant is qualified to speak on mathematics.

But let us focus even more on this all-important question of -why-. Why do people want what they want, and do what they do to get it?

Muddle on that for a while. Entire libraries exist on the topic, and funnily enough, a growing number of them are specific to the psychology and socio-economic phenomena fundamental to and, in some cases, -unique- to MMO's.

But don't take my word for it, not that I dare for one second imagine you would.

I do not come to this forum armed only with a pouting lip for not having been able to afford a Ragnarok set and an angryface urge to bop you or any other legitimate player on the head for why.

I do not come to this forum with the urge to make things easier for myself -alone- to do or achieve or indeed to accomplish anything.

Take a look at my post count. I clearly don't feel the need to come flouncing around here very often, and I really don't care to make a habit of it.

However (And this is a big however), after speaking at length with at least a hundred various people on one server -alone- about these matters, I'm aghast at several things.

Inf sellers do more business than most think they do being one of them. Oh, sure, most are too smart to ever admit it or talk about it, but just those that have admitted to having bought inf in the past without specifying anything more than that has made me go "WHOA!"

I'd sure love to see some full data on who has and hasn't as well as why. I would -LOVE- to see such data, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. But, alas, the best I can do is ask people.

Lots of people. And depend on their veracity in the replies made for all of it, which seats it all firmly in the realm of probable possibility.

And that's scary enough for me. It's less scary than downright depressing, however, as it makes it fairly well indicatively -certain- that this /is/ a problem and it /is/ impacting the markets, and /if/ it is impacting the markets (which, really, what else is it going to impact? SO prices? O'wait, those are artificially regulated, it -can't- impact those!), it is /not/ impacting them in favor of anyone exceeeeept...?

The inf sellers, the inf buyers and those profiting on their transactions and facilitating the maintenance of monumentally high prices.

Who's it hurt?

Everybody else, except in such occasion as that someone gets a purple or PVP IO drop that they can haul to the market and cash in on, if they don't keep it themselves.

Now, you might ask, why don't we all just smile and nod and focus on finding more of those and cashing in on them? Would that not be THE ULTIMATE ANSWER to all our (read: my?) woes?

NO!

No, it will -not- answer my complaints, because my complaints do -not- hinge on personal profit nor gain. YOU BET YOUR SWEET A** I know very well how to capitalize on a market circus as that has been created here, and you can laugh at me for refusing to do so /all/ you very well please. G'head, laugh it up Chuckles.

I am refusing to contribute to a problem of proportions that do not have impact in the game only. I won't invest in Coca Cola, I won't invest in Nike, I won't invest in Microsoft, I won't invest in Apple, I won't invest in Wal-Mart, and I sure as all royal snot will not invest in the Gold Industry.

Call me an ethically hide-bound fool if it pleases you. I really, really don't care.



Right back atcha. Right. Back. Atcha.