iltat

[ QUOTE ]
"Raises hand with middle finger in air! faint sounds of a voice saying "who really gives a shiz!"

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the fact that you flipped off everyone may have something to do with people not thinking your post was constructive.

Just a guess.

[ QUOTE ]
I PvPed in zone with Twitx for over a year, I know exactly what occured and also have had the record chat feature on to verify any broadcast chat. FYI the arena is not the only test of PvP skill LOL.

Get a clue because apparently you do not have one on this subject.

[/ QUOTE ]

k

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

An amazing PvPer based on what assessment?

[/ QUOTE ]

twixt's original thread at the time received well over 300 pages ...

this one has gotten up too around 12 and twixt has been gone for at least a year .

that basically speaks for it self.

[/ QUOTE ]

Meowtch must be the greatest PvPer that ever lived. She's started 2 different threads that have had over 1000 pages.

Find a more unrelated and obscure measurement to determine the abilities of a PvPer please.

[ QUOTE ]
PvP Guide to Guides

[ QUOTE ]
Q. Is X cheating?

A. While there are many different things that X can be, generally speaking the answer is no. TPing people into holes in the geometry in PvP zones is a petitionable offense, as is the use of language that breaks the EULA, but other than that, everything goes in a PvP zone. Trailing NPCs to another player is perfectly legal, as is killing someone repeatedly, popping lots of inspirations, interrupting duels and rep farms, stopping someone from getting nukes, using your tier 9 before you go into sirens, or really anything else you can think of.

[/ QUOTE ]


Now let me clarify because apparently you don't know the truth.

Twixt killed players, took over pill boxes to win the zone, droned campers (legal tactic), TPed enemies into mobs, heavies and pill boxes then killed them (legal tactic), always ran at 400 rep on his LOLmelee, trash talked the trash talkers, riled up the noobs and farmers, followed the rules and was never banned, and was an amazing PvPer at the top of the list with people like the Renegades, M3z and a handful of others.

QQ less and get your facts straight or QQ more and make this even more epic.

[/ QUOTE ]

An amazing PvPer based on what assessment? His rep? He never fought in the Arena (to my knowledge), he was never associated in any other high-end PvP besides RV, and while in RV, he never varied from his tactic of TP Foe into other sources of damage.

This is like saying Chris Davis is one of the most amazing baseball players ever because he hit a bunch of home runs this year. Specializing in one tactic does not show skill, it shows that you can specialize in one tactic. The fact that his methods were legal isn't being disputed at all. The idea that he was good requires some proof, not just your CAPSLOCKISCOOL word.

Just for clarification of a few peoples' replies:

- Twixt started on Champion server, then moved to Freedom. He may have moved after that, but I'm not aware of it. If you never heard of him, cool. If you supported him, cool. If you hated him, that's cool too. He was, to say the least, a polarizing figure to those of us who knew him.

- He was originally a nice guy that many people teamed with. Once his "study" began in PvP zones, it was widely thought that his account had been sold because it seemed like an entirely different individual.

- His method was not droning. It was TP Foeing opponents into PvE mobs (Longbow), fearing them, and keeping up this combination until they were killed by the mobs. This resulted in debt for those individuals. This is the main reason he received so much vitriol. He played a DM/Regen Scrapper that specialized in TP Foe, Touch of Fear, and TPing away. It was not a revolutionary tactic, and the "skill" associated with it is debatable. He simply applied the tactic with the intention of giving the other players debt.

- He worked hard to develop the anger that was directed at him. He talked trash, he posted kill-logs, and he specifically harassed those who expressed the most outrage. He portrays himself as some victim who doesn't understand the anger directed at him, but it simply wasn't the case.

- I've been in contact with the author of the article (wasn't hard, just shot an email asking if he had thought of actually researching the story instead of just taking Twixt's word as truth), and I'll be writing and submitting a Letter to the Editor tomorrow. The author didn't seem all that pleased with how the article turned out. Apparently, he wanted to provide a more in-depth description of what Twixt had actually done, but the piece was intended to be a human interest piece on Twixt's player, not a focus on the research itself. Someone quoted my "comment" toward the beginning of this thread, and as a Champion player, I'll be posting my letter in the Champion thread on this topic. Feel free to swing by there to check it out. I never personally held any contempt towards Twixt, but I would like to at least set the record straight as to exactly what took place.

Note: There's no excuse for the threats that were thrown at Twixt. He didn't deserve such things, but he also is nowhere near the altar boy he's presenting himself to be.

Reporter just got back to me, and he encouraged I write a letter to the editor. I'll be fleshing one out and sending it in tomorrow. I'll post it here too.

Dark Melee/Regeneration Scrapper.

Basically, DM has a Fear power that is fast recharging and debuffs accuracy. When combined with the inherent uber-survivability of Regen, it makes the character extremely hard to kill. It also doesn't have very good PvP damage output, so it basically makes its living as a pain in the [censored].

[ QUOTE ]
Also, very well-written response at the paper's site, Ping.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks.

I also emailed the author of the article to ask him to look into doing a piece that actually looks at the community instead of taking Twixt's word as truth. We'll see if he gets back to me.

[ QUOTE ]
anyone know what build this guy was? It's evident that he was a hero class, but what AT?

[/ QUOTE ]

He was a DM/Regen Fearbot.

He went out of his way to not get kills himself, but instead, he would TP Foe/Fear people into mobs to intentionally give them debt. If he came across someone with the ability to overcome his tactic (he really only had one), he would Teleport away.

I read his story when he first released it, and while he's apparently an educated individual, his story was not very interesting to me because it felt like a dumb proof. Similar to a researcher releasing statistical proof that teenage boys think about bewbies a whole lot, his entire story was predictable. Of course people got angry, this individual was wasting their time, more than anything. Debt can be specifically tracked as a required time sink in order to get rid of it, so anytime he gave an individual debt (which occurred thousands of times), he was actually stealing some of that person's time. How shocking that people would be angry about such a thing.

He would go on to attack, insult, or dismiss peoples' criticisms of this approach to gameplay, which, in turn, made people angrier about the fact that this individual not only went out of his way to rob people of their available time, but he then seemingly embraced and prided himself on this fact.

I won't be paying any money, at any time, to support someone's proof that being a [censored] makes other people angry.

[u]Why You Should Listen To Me[u]
Because I'm a penguin. I'm a penguin who has made a whole lot of money on the market, and I can show you where to make the money. Every niche I mention in this segment will be one which I, personally, have made money in.

For now, I'll be talking about Blueside. With time, I'll start to throw some Redside in here too. Heck, I may even start alternating soon.

[u]What You Should Keep In Mind[u]
I'm posting this niche publicly. That means that you're not the only one who will read about it. That means it should get blown up in the next couple of days as the masses flock to it. Write it down. Store it in your memory. In two weeks, it will be plenty profitable again. If it doesn't work out for you, let me know exactly what your price points were, and I'll be happy to explain why.

[u]A couple broad Market tricks: [u]
Lowest list price sells first (if you want to sell for 5 mil and list for 5 mil, anyone who listed at 4,999,999 or lower will sell before you).
Highest bid fills first (think of the inverse to the first trick).
People usually bid even numbers (if you list for 6,000,000 with the hope of getting 7mil, there's a solid chance someone will bid that number exactly, if you list for 6,246,512 and someone bids it exactly, they just really are that cheap).
People usually sell for even numbers (again, inverse).
If there are zero bidders, bid low. Really low. Laughably low. You never know.

Anyway, on to this week's niche!

Level 50 Blessing of the Zephyr: Knockback Reduction (4 points)

Crafted Last 5:
60,000,000
25,908,000
60,000,000
60,000,000
80,000,000

Recipe Last 5:
33,000,001
33,000,000
32,000,000
30,000,100
31,908,000

Now, this information can tell us a whole lot. These are the things I learn from it:
1) There's a possible profit margin in crafted flipping of approximately 30 mil.
2) There's already at least one person flipping/crafting these (the 908K is a signature of a marketeer, just don't know which one). Competition means I would need to stay liquid (only buy 1-2 at a time) because marketeers usually will change their price point if their orders aren't getting filled.
3) The marketeer's buy orders on recipes filled (note the one that filled lower than his price point). That means they probably have limited means, which means there's probably enough turnover for both of us to profit. I'll also be able to step in and gank some of his sales without him noticing (if 5 sales go to lowball bids each day, and I only take 2, then the other person having limited means will still let him take 2-3 and not make him worry enough to raise his price point).
4) All these orders have filled in the last 36 hours (not included above, but it is true). High turnover means fast profit. Fast profit is my personal favorite.
5) Crafteds can be lowballed, actually, for less than recipes. This means the most profit will come from crafteds. I definitely want to throw one lowball up for a crafted.
6) Even though recipes cost more than a crafted lowball, there's still a HUGE profit margin there. Risk 30 mil for 25 mil in profit? That's cake. I'll buy into both.
7) It's Monday. That means that you'll get the last of the weekenders' money tonight, but prices will start dropping tomorrow until Friday. Almost a sure thing to get a lowball crafted, and may even lowball further on the recipes to see how cheap they can really be gotten.
8) The 80 mil sale is an outlier. Don't believe the cake. Go for the 60 mil guarantee. Let someone else sit on one for 3 weeks to score the extra 20 mil while you've taken that 20 mil and flipped it 8 or 10 more times over that period of time.
9) Cobalt is old. Srsly.
10) Buy, buy, buy.

I would price higher that our identified marketeer's price point, but not by too much. Maybe 2M more. If he's sold his stock, he'll be putting new bids up, and he'll probably increase them slightly to account for other marketeers trying to jump his price point. Since he seems to like his 908,000 signature, I would say that an increase of 1M can be expected from him. Thus, you want to jump THAT price point. A bump of 1M and some change (whatever signature you want to develop) would probably work splendidly.

Final tally:
Buy-in: 65 million
Sales: 120 million
Fees: 12 million
Profit: 43 million

[ QUOTE ]
Running Invincible, 2 hours 43 minutes 19 seconds for the whole TF.

Link to pics with a completion time in one of them.

Each of the Reichsman fights was at LEAST half an hour.

People on other servers, like Pinnacle, are reporting 30 minute Reichsmans. I'm thinking they avoided the first Reichsman fight (probably makes sense if you really and truly need the dimensional grounding gun to actually beat him the first time) and stealthed a bunch of it. I know we stealthed the Reichsman Earth mission.

Everything else we just steamrolled.

[/ QUOTE ]

My first run (with my SG, which is kind of unfair in its own right) was on Invincible and 1:32. My Claws/SR Scrapper was our Tank.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hey now, I'm not all excited about the problems either but I won't begrudge them some time off for a national holiday. I have to work on days like these so to me it seems a little unfair, but I'm glad other folks don't have to.

It will get fixed, I will gnash my teeth until it does but everyone it entitles to some time off.

[/ QUOTE ]


i dont car about people taking holidays off....however...today was NOT a holiday..tommorrow is..and yes im working it.

with a exspansion,new issue and tons of new bugs to squash... frankly they should all be at work today. even the banks and post offices were open..give me one GOOD reason why their not at work and ill retract it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Besides because today was the day of national observance since the holiday actually fell on a weekend?

Sheesh, how desperate are you to find [censored] to [censored] about to start picking on folks for having the 3rd of July off?

[ QUOTE ]
Ah to argue with a SG leader. Feels like old times. Only difference... you aren't blind.

Anyways, money or Influence, Ping? No one ever said anything about money. And if I did accidentally... It's cause I'm on a cell phone updating the Forum. (Yes, I'm aware how it looks updating forums remotely.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Influence. I apologize for not being clear.

I make far more influence by not playing than by playing.

[ QUOTE ]
The problem though is that people that play the market usually don't share their little tricks other than "buy low sell high" and so that excludes anyone who isn't willing to sit and try to figure out a market mini game when they actually purchased a super hero game.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am a veteran, no doubt. However, the market's only been around since I-9, and I've only been seriously playing it since May of '08. In my first year of making sure to spend less than 10 minutes before an after each play session, I made 14 billion influence. I started with 4 million (what I had left at the end of last year's Pingu anniversary).

As for sharing my little tricks, I've made a host of posts in the Market forum that have included my actual pricepoints on different items, I've included a list of actual items I made money off of, I've included explanations of how to manipulate the pricing to make sure you got things as cheap as possible and sold for as much as possible, and I've responded to every PM I've ever received with a "starting list" of EXACT IOs that could be bought for cheap and sold for more (through both crafting and flipping) that were the ones I started with. I've coached numerous BMT members (and Pingus) on how to work the market, I openly tell people when I see something selling for a ridiculous amount (usually, salvagewise, if I see a shortage of a certain salvage) in numerous global channels including BMT, I sell my products for a 10-20% discount in BMT, and I even operated a shopping service for approximately 6 months in which I would front the money to buy their items and they paid me back on a payment plan. There are a host of guides in both the Guide section and the Market section of these forums that give step-by-step details on how to make money on the market, there are testimonials aplenty in the Market forum, there are many "gurus" who openly offer advice to anyone who asks for it, there are threads in which people actually track their trek from 0 inf to 100 million in less than a month, and a host of other resources.

If you can't figure out our tricks at this point, you're actively trying to avoid them.

[ QUOTE ]
So suggesting the market as a normal source of income is, for the most part, idiotic.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll keep that in mind. Next year, I hope to have 20 billion to give away at my Anniversary. I only had 10 billion this year.

[ QUOTE ]
But for you long-time players that love to play the market, please continue to come into threads with transparent "pat myself on the back for being rich" posts.

[/ QUOTE ]

Anyone...ANYONE...can do what I do. Any toon. Any starting capital (even a Level 1 with nothing but the 2 inspirations they give you in Outbreak). Any type of connection. I have never said otherwise. I only speak up when people imply that farming is the only way to get rich or they don't play often enough to get rich or they can't afford any purples/PvP recipes/hawt cyb0rz because they don't have enough influence.

But for you victim-complex players that love to whine about the market, please continue to come into threads with transparent "they don't share their secrets" posts.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I have 5 toons purpled to some extent. I haven't farmed for any of that influence.

[/ QUOTE ]

And you never stopped playing. How about those who'd like to compete who either, A. just started, or B. left for a period of time.

Things should just be compared objectively. I don't think you'd need to 'farm' for it. Long term vets have different situations than new people or those returning.

[/ QUOTE ]

I make far more money NOT playing than playing.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I love farming....whether it be PLing an alt, or farming for merits, tickets, influence, or purple/PVP IOs.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you consider it, how else can one get PVP/Purple IO's? They are insanely expensive as it is, so either you have to farm for the influence to get it, or farm for the drops themselves.

In fact many people are min/maxers and want to Purple out their Toon. Or even IO out their toons. Either way I don't believe through normal play by the time you have hit 50 you'd have accumulated enough Inf (through play, selling drops, etc) to purple out a toon entirely.

I've only been back for a little while though so perhaps there are tricks I don't know for getting a lot of influence relatively fast. But that seems to me like it'd be 'farming' for something.

More on this later, I must leave work!

[/ QUOTE ]

I have 5 toons purpled to some extent. I haven't farmed for any of that influence.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Receipts?

[/ QUOTE ]

yes

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, thanks for the clarification.

This is currently happening to me on Armageddon crafted IOs only.

Receipts?

[ QUOTE ]
lol crit, got blaze to 33 now! Cant wait for 50 baby! Gonna drop sum shiz like its hot!

But damn, this market is messed up! IOs costing hundreds of mills lol gah gonna take someone a very long time to get setup on all slots.

Ribos for 60mill+? I remember after every Hamidon raid I was buying them for 10mill each LOL I had every single slot on my char 50+ lol just to get one now....seems impossible!

[/ QUOTE ]

I've made 800 million inf and slotted an entire purple build in the last month.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Oh and the fact that someone, somehow, thought Task Force Nothung was a good name

[/ QUOTE ]

They probably overestimated the typical player's familiarity with Wagner's opera The Valkyrie, as Nothung is the name of the magical sword.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just because people are familiar with it shouldn't discount the fact that I am a male with an incredibly juvenile sense of humor.

As for the rest, the TF was cool. Who I ran it with made it cooler, but I can see it being enjoyable to run from time to time. Not a huge time investment (heroside), though not a large merit reward either, so it will get limited play after the newness wears off. Nice to have another TF my 50s can run though. I'll get the badges over the next week. It's a nice pastime of an issue, in my opinion.

1:39 for a Pingu team with 60 deaths on Invincible. And we were taking it lackadaisically.

Anyone else notice the the results and everything next to and below them were off-centered?

Oh, I only received a high for Obsessive-Compulsive.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Man, I just hate the term "top ranking" SG. It is so full of wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

Every time I read the words Rank, Ranked or Ranking in broadcast spam I replace it in my head with derivations of Spanking.

[/ QUOTE ]

It just means a really smelly SG to me.

[ QUOTE ]
I presume you didn't play on Freedom then at that point, rarely a day went by without somebody asking for the fortune teller mission.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't, but even so, your statement is moot. I'd have to still meet all the requirements I listed before plus I would have to be in the appropriate area at the appropriate time. Bummer to all you who play at uncommon times. Now if only the modern economy had a way of allowing all players, at all times, on all servers, to make way more money than they did back then by that level...hmm...

[ QUOTE ]
No, I don't have to pay 3M now and I don't, but I do have to pay 250K instead of the 20K I used to have to pay to beat the flipper's price.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, you ignore the fact that higher prices allow your sales to sell for higher prices, which, in turn, allows you to pay the higher prices without a net effect on your wallet.

[ QUOTE ]
I made a spreadsheet of what I dropped and I know what I got on average per merit on a sample of say 3000 merits, and I know I get more value from buying the single recipes.

[/ QUOTE ]

As any true statistical analyzer would tell you, this is anecdotal evidence and irrelevant to the equation.

[ QUOTE ]
This is not the point I was making, you can't do this any more as the 50 can now Ouro the FT any time they want, so there's no inf available. Also at that time, if you had a float of 3M early on, you would never run out of inf for SOs, so having a bankrupt toon basically never happened if you were careful. There were plenty of 50s broadcasting their willingness to pay, particularly people who'd outlevelled the FT before badges existed, and who if they had 20M inf had all the inf all their toons on that server could ever need.

[/ QUOTE ]
1) You're ignoring that toons now can sell stuff to have inf available. No one needs to sell badge missions any longer.

2) I leveled 4 toons through to 50 before I knew a Fortune Teller badge existed. I never happened upon those contacts who give the mission, and I never heard anyone speak of it. Again, my original statement applies:
[ QUOTE ]
If you took the right contact, were the right level when you ran it, recognized what it was, and advertised it appropriately during a high traffic time. All of these things would occur only if you already knew what Fortune Teller was, which would require having played way past that point.

[/ QUOTE ]
If your point wasn't to prove that toons are poorer now, then what was your point?

[ QUOTE ]
I've posted examples in previous threads, but things like red fortune (and some of the lower priced healing sets), when there are frequently none of some of the recipes between levels 25 and 40 but many crafted enhancements in that range, all at 1M+, a lot at 3M. Often you'll see several obvious flipper bids for 223456 or whatever. What you can't do now is pick up the recipes for 20K just by waiting a while as I used to, or get a steadfast res/def for 100K.

[/ QUOTE ]
Just because there are none for sale right now doesn't mean there will not be any for sale. What's stopping you from seeing the flipper's price, setting a bid for 1 more, and waiting 24 hours? Just because you could buy them for 20K before doesn't mean you have to pay 3M now.

As for Res/Defs, people learned how to softcap toons, so why is it surprising they went up in price? Just because prices rose doesn't mean it's getting worse because those risen prices also give you more money when you sell such items. Don't neglect this fact to attempt to prove your point.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm extremely solid with the numbers (I'm actually a maths/stats guy IRL) and what I do if there's an advantage to doing so is merit purchase a 20 miracle unique, sell it and buy a 35-40 to pocket the difference if I can wait for it (I usually don't have the cash just lying around at level thirtysomething when I IO up to straight up buy one).

It would probably be a good idea to random roll instead, but (as fulmens will testify from the rolls I sold him) I have terrible luck on random rolls, I've taken well over 100 merit rolls on 35-40 TF, and got 1 numinas unique, no miracles and no LotGs so far, so am not inclined to try again.

[/ QUOTE ]
1) If you're a math/stats guy, what are you doing talking about luck? Any math/stats guy would chalk it up to chance and would recognize that no matter what your last 100 rolls turned out like, your most profitable selection is a random roll. Either you're really bad in statistics, or you're not really a math/stats guy.

2) If that's what you're doing, then that's your choice, but that shows me that you're not actually analyzing the statistics behind your choice.

[ QUOTE ]
This is just not true, a 50 could do what I do on normal missions thru Ouro and TFs, and would get more influence for doing the same mission as me exemped, and the same drops other than the mission end ones which are not usually valuable anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're ignoring my entire point. even though you quoted it. Again:
[ QUOTE ]
...you're more motivated to play on a regular basis by leveling toons up as opposed to getting burned out on 50s. This, in the long run, helps your inf generation because you play more overall.

[/ QUOTE ]
Burnout is a part of MMOs, but if you're varying what you play, what you fight against, and what approach you have to use in order to play, you will delay the inevitable burnout that will occur. This additional motivation of an additional reward (XP) and progress (levels) will inspire you to play more than if you were to pick a certain toon and never change. Thus, you keep yourself in the inf race by logging more hours.

I actually appreciate people like you. You keep the warehouse stocked. I make money as the middleman, but without the blue collar "workers" like you producing, I'd have no way to make money.