Cross-sever influence transfer?
By
13th_Stranger,
Posted on: 2007-03-08 09:32 in The Market and Inventions
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friends and family of employees eh? well thats not going to be remotely bias feedback in anyway is it? Nosireebob
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Eh, I don't even mind that, to be honest. I even understand why they chose to do it that way, although I question the quality of information they're actually going to get out of it.
What I mind is that we weren't told that in the first place, that we were in fact told that they wouldn't be revealing how they chose the testing group, and that we have to get that info from the UK community mod.
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You haven't been reading the right boards then. This was posted about on tuesday by me and others. Bridger's original mention of friends and familly was back on tuesday.
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
List of Invention Guides
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To be fair, this is Bridger's actual quote (emphasis mine):
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I don't actually know how many US players are involved - as I said, the bulk of the testers are Cryptic and NCsoft staff, and some of their friends and family (which would probably account for some, if not all, of the players).
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He (she?) was responding to disgruntled EUers who thought American players were in the closed test while they weren't. I can't believe that Cryptic didn't put some ringers in there like Iakona and Arcanaville. Unless they have friends and relatives who are insanely into the game, they won't get the quality of feedback they would from hardcore CoX-heads.
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The way I read it, I think Bridger is saying that of course *some* US players were invited, since surely *some* people who would be "friends or family" of Cryptic/NCSoft would already be players. That's a far cry from having representatives of the real playerbase involved, though.
And I think the only way people like Iakona or Arcanaville could have gotten in this thing is if they were related to or personal friends with Cryptic or NCSoft employees. They wouldn't have gotten in just based on their knowledge and number-crunching skills.
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If you're right, that's bad news. 
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Well, it's not all that terrible really. There will be at least a few weeks of open testing where people like Arcanaville, Iakona, EvilGeko, and others can shine.
The worst part about the way they're going about the closed i9 testing isn't the closed testing itself; it's the way they handled telling us about it. Which wouldn't be the first time that statement would be true about stuff in this game...
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Player A1 puts up a Level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.
Player B1 puts up the same Level 12 TO for 1,000 inf.
Player A2 (trying to transfer funds) offers to buy that level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.
Since player B1 wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).
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If this is how the consignment houses are going to work, and the Dev team can't be talked out of this, then please:
Remove the cap on the ammount of influence that can be traded, and/or allow one toon to send tradable commodities to another via in game e-mail.
I can deal with having to get another player to transfer funds from one of my toons to another, but it shouldn't take as long as it does. It is a real pain, and the artifical (and low) cap just means that it is player unfriendly.
Being unable to actually freely buy and sell items at the C-houses does not mean can you can't use the houses to transfer infl and items from one toon to another, it just means players will have to find unnessecarily complicated ways around it.
For example, i put a level 1 TO for one of the less used types (say, Increased Slow) after seeing there are currently none listed. Then i do the quick character login and purchase. All you really did is make me work harder at something the competing games allow freely.
After 8 issues, the 9th should really be enough time for the Dev team to allow players more freedom on this issue.
To counterbalance the above with a positive: the Invention system itself looks wonderful, and will make the game much more entertaining.
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Remove the cap on the ammount of influence that can be traded, and/or allow one toon to send tradable commodities to another via in game e-mail.
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Well, there is still a cap, but it will be 9 digits, so you should be covered there.
I like the emailing items idea, but I doubt they will do that.
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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All this is going to do is keep prices artificially low. You won't be able to sell anything for anywhere near what it's worth (which, contrary to popular opinion, can be objectively estimated in this game).
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Let's see if I've got this right.
'Hello Wentworths, I'd like you to sell this Zonkium Widget for me. Please get a million inf for it if you can.'
'Righto madam, I'll just pop it on the shelves.'
(later...)
'Hello Wentworths, do you have any Zonkium Widgets?'
'Yes sir, we do.'
'I'd like to buy one, for not more than 500,000 Inf.'
(Wentworths employee goes and checks. Lots of people have brought Zonkium Widgets in, and most of them had an asking price of around 400,000 Inf, but here's one whose seller is clearly desparate, and he only wants 100,000 Inf.)
'Here you go sir, that'll be 500,000 Inf.'
(Wentworths takes the Zonkium Widget that's priced at 100,000 and sells it to the client for 500,000. The client goes away happy. Several other people come in and offer a similar price. It soon becomes apparent that 500,000 or less is about what you can expect to pay for a Zonkium Widget. Meanwhile, my Zonkium Widget gathers dust on the shelves.)
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In a nutshell, yes.
If you have an item that just isn't moving, you can go and see what it has been selling for, then re-list the item. If you feel the market value is too low, then you don't have to keep it listed.
You could unlist the item and hold onto it, gambling that the market value will go up again. Maybe there was an unusual number of Zonkium Widgets in the market that week (supply>demand)? Maybe someone decided to list a bunch of them individually instead of as a stack?
Or you could try to find a direct buyer that doesn't want to deal with the middleman.
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EDIT: You know why I'm so frustrated? Because the devs are going to force us to abuse their system because they never just believe us when we tell them something won't work.
For the short time I played FFXI, I was able to make money basically standing in one place playing with their auction market. That's not the intention, but the robber barons are going to come out.
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EvilGeko has the right of it. At least, he will once there are enough Inventions in the game to have multiple of a given type up for sale at once.
The system is designed to penalize people asking for a large selling price. Why would I, as a seller, want to use a system designed to get me less for an item than I want? How long do you think it will take before the player base realizes this and adopts out-of-game workarounds?
Seriously, can anyone think of a real world system that works this way? The shady car dealership analogy someone mentioned seems to be about right. Why can't our devs just leave well enough alone?
-D
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Seems good to me.
- A clueless n00b (no offense to any reading this) who usually never comes to the boards, reads manuals, reads dialogue boxes/tutorials (in other words, 90% of all players) is going to wander into Wentworths' looking for prices.
Instead, he will see crazy prices all over the place. He will pick some widget that is useless to him, and place a price on it based on the fee of 10% of what he wants, rather than what the item is worth. He will spend up to 10% of his own cash-on-hand placing the item on sale, then sit back and see what happens.
More than likely, the item he has placed on sale is worthless. But 90% of the other people in Wentworths are also clueless about the item and none have dropped for them. They will place a price equal to the highest price that item has sold for that they can afford and cross their fingers.
So IF our clueless noob makes a sale, usually, he will get significantly more than he put the item up for, as in tens or hundreds of thousands more.
He will smile.
He will then dump everything he doesn't need on Wentworth's, spending all of his cash in search of the quick buck.
And since W's is cross server, he will likely succeed. Some of his items will gather dust, but others will gather sums up to 10 times what he wanted.
Wentworth's IS a casino. Except it's not random. Someone who watches pricing trends is guaranteed to make a slow steady profit. High rollers will lose small and very occaisionally win big.
You almost have to TRY not to make money. And if you don't like it, it's optional.
Here's how I look at it:
From a designer stand point (I'm not a designer, but hope to be) Wentworth's is a necessary evil. You can't have a crafting system without a trading system. They could not launch Inventions without W's.
That being the case, they are more concerned with making a bullet-retardant system than making one that will 'stimulate the economy'. To them, the game works fine without an economy, so an economy is optional.
Therefore, the system is designed to retard price fixing. There are things that are in slow supply, but nothing that ever 'runs out'. There are no penalties for underpricing an item, in fact you are rewarded. The buyer can sniff around for bargains (as far as we know).
If Wentworth's gathers dust, it's all good: the tool is there if anyone chooses to use it. But it won't gather dust. 90% of player will use it just because it's there, IF:
- They can find stuff they can use there, and
- The first few times they use it, they get a few sales.
The biggest flaws of W's, in my mind:
- The Invention System is TOO BIG. The chances of finding EXACTLY what you want are non-existent; but those who want something 'kinda sorta like this' should be fine.
- It needs some kind of built in ad system, to keep Broadcast and Request free of spam.
- It's non-intuitive. People will freak over the lack of pricing, especially in the early days before many items have sale histories.
- If feedback/turn around time is instant, it will encourage people to 'price creep' which is boring. If it is not, it will turn off impatient buyers, which is most people.
- We need more info on what a 'trnasaction inventory' is and how it works. If this is de facto storage, it will lead to people trying to misuse W's as extra inventory space, which will lead to them 'accidentlly selling' items.
- As seen in this thread, clueless people attempting to use W's as a item/inf transfer system will occaisionally get burned, creating a loud minority that will lead to a true sanctioned 'twinking system'. I sigh.
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How much are these "fees" going too be posi?
My Lego Models http://www.flickr.com/photos/30369639@N07/ lemur lad: God you can't be that stupid... I'm on at the same time as you for once, and not 20 minutes into it you give me something worth petitioning?Lady-Dee: Hey my fat keeps me warm in the winter and shady in the summer.
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How much are these "fees" going too be posi?
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Listing fee: 10% of the price you set, refunded if you sell within 24 hours, forfeit if you don't
Transaction fee: 5% of the price you sell an item for, so the most you'll ever get is 95% of the price paid
Source: Paragonwiki
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
With all you people selling enhancements for 1 inf each, I'll be rich in no time!
No idea why they just won't put a simple mail system in like other MMO's. Then you can cross erver mail itesm and inf to other toons.
'Course I think the idea of transferring influence to another toon is contrary to the purpose of influence in the first place. When influence was first put forth it was roughly equal to notoriety....the more people knew you the more you were "liked" or "recognized" and so they would offer you "things" in return for some of that notoriety brushing off on them. However, influence is now so out of whack for what it is being used for that it no longer serves that purpose.
In retrospect the devs would have been better off sticking with the "money" concept and heroes in the Paragon City world would just get paid cash bounties for certain missions or get a city "stipend" payment for doing good deeds. Then the heroe (or villain...this could be consptually reworked for them as well) can just buy the toys (i.e. inspirations or enhancements or whatever) they want\need.
makes everything simple.
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In retrospect the devs would have been better off sticking with the "money" concept and heroes in the Paragon City world would just get paid cash bounties for certain missions or get a city "stipend" payment for doing good deeds. Then the heroe (or villain...this could be consptually reworked for them as well) can just buy the toys (i.e. inspirations or enhancements or whatever) they want\need.
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Hehe, yeah and when you save a mugging victim they can say "You're my hero! Here's 20 bucks!" 
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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No idea why they just won't put a simple mail system in like other MMO's. Then you can cross erver mail itesm and inf to other toons.
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Theres no guarantee that they wont, nor that there isn't already the ability to transfer influence cross-servers currently in the works. All Positron posted was an example of what would happen if someone tried to do it using the Consignment shops. NOT "Oh, and we're never giving you the ability to transfer influence cross-server, either. So nyeah!".
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Ah, geez, Posi, can you guys just give us an easy way for one of our characters to give another one of our own characters some inf? <_<
I mean, it's great that the inf amount will be increased (makes those 20-30 transfers go by a heck of a lot quicker), but requiring a third party to do this is getting kinda old. The consignment houses looked like a good way to help out our alts, especially on other servers, but I guess the only workaround is to sell some item that currently isn't offered, then quickly switch to a wealthy alt, before somebody puts the same item up for a much lower price. >_>
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Sounds like a good plan but with all the servers and so many players how many times will this plan really be successful? I really think a bank system would really work for this but that is on the back burner and if and when it comes out it may only be on one server not cross server.
That there's an "extra layer of challenge" to figuring out that you buy accuracies and end reductions first?
Must be, since you actually buy accuracy and damage first....
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Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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How can you grief on this? You can't see the set price, right? Nor who's selling it? So, unless you know person X is selling item y for Z million influence, how can you deliberately intercept the influence laundering item?
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Player A1 puts up a Level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.
Player B1 puts up the same Level 12 TO for 1,000 inf.
Player A2 (trying to transfer funds) offers to buy that level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.
Since player B1 wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).
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This has been discussed on the Victory Forum, but there are safeguards any player can take to make sure they don't get swindled by jerkweeds trying to make a quick buck.
1) Don't try to transfer too much at once.
2) Use an enhancement or item that is not found at a store (i.e. don't use anything divisible by 5). There are currently over 9000 posibilities to use.
3) Check the store to make sure the enhancement you're trying to swap is NOT offered as an auction currently. I assume there will be tools to do so.
4) List your enhancement and immediately swap characters.
5) Before buying your enhancement, make sure someone hasn't listed a similar enhancement. If there's another listing there, simply cancel your original offering and try again another time.
Common sense will trump scofflaws.
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My Level 4 SO Enhancements will be PERFECT for this! 
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If you have such things, then YES they will be. I deliberately eliminated low levels from my calculations above for DOs and SOs. Level 4 SOs have a very small possibility of existing, but they will be very rare. (The lowest SO I've seen is level 12.)
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In fact I do have a pair of these. They were awarded to my Fire/Rad Troller when he was exemplared into the Positron TF. I tried to petition to have them changed as I've had done in the past but alas, support has changed their policies and will no longer correct broken awards in game.
I was thinking I'd make a lowbie in Atlas a happy camper for a level or two but now I've found a much better use for them 
Sign It : http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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How can you grief on this? You can't see the set price, right? Nor who's selling it? So, unless you know person X is selling item y for Z million influence, how can you deliberately intercept the influence laundering item?
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Cut & Pasting the summary I wrote up earlier today over at ParagonWiki...
Hazards
Given how the consignment houses are understood to function, the above basic transfer method is subject to a couple of different versions of interception, where a different character than the intended recipient ends up receiving the transfer. Both involve the interceptor happening to be at the auction house during the time it takes to swap over from one toon to the other to complete the transfer. This may seem like a small chance of occurrance, except that there are likely to be people specifically waiting around the consignment houses specifically to try to make these intercepts in order to make a bunch of Inf for little effort.
Buy/resell interception
This one is actually the easier of the two to defend against. It involves the interceptor seeing the odd, low level item placed up for auction, buying it himself, and immediately relisting it in order to be the one to receive the transfer. This scheme relies on the fact that items can be bought for much larger amounts than they are actually listed for. For example, player A wants to transfer 10 million Inf from character A2 to character A1. Character A1 only has 10,000 Inf on hand. Because of the 10% listing fee, the most A1 can list the item for is 100,000 Inf. The player wants to transfer much more than that, and so goes ahead and doesn't bother listing it for even that much, instead listing it for a reletively small amount, say 100 Inf. He intends to then swap over to A2 and go ahead and buy it for 10 million Inf. But while he is changing characters, player B purchases the cheep item and immediately relists it. A2 gets logged in, and goes to purchase the item. But since he cannot see who he is purchasing from, he ends up sending his 10 mil to player B instead of character A1.
This one has a simple solution: do not try to transfer more Inf at one time than you are able to list items for. This means that, if you want to transfer 10 million to a character who is starting with only 10,000, you will need to do it in a couple of stages, getting the poor character first to 100,000, then 1 million, and finally 10 million. This protects because at each step the item cannot be purchased for less than the amount that is intended to transfer. The only way to buy/resell will effectively give the poor character the desired amount of money anyway.
Same item interception
This one is harder to protect against, and the strategy designed to protect against the buy/resell interception actually works against defending against this one.
This one is based on the Interceptor seeing the transfer being listed, and happening to have a copy of the same item already in their inventory. While there are a huge number of potential transfer items, it is still a finite list. And some types of items are much more likely to be in the hands of random Inf-poor alts. Low level TOs of various types, for instance. The interceptor watches the consignment listings, watching for a listing that happens to match an item he already has. The moment he sees such a listing pop up, he immediately lists his own copy for sale at a minimum price. According to Positron, the low offers sell first, so when the transfering player logs back in with his rich alt and goes to buy the item, it will most likely be the interceptor's version that gets sold, not the transferer's poor alt's version. Listing high to avoid the buy/resell problem just makes it harder to avoid this one.
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How can you grief on this? You can't see the set price, right? Nor who's selling it? So, unless you know person X is selling item y for Z million influence, how can you deliberately intercept the influence laundering item?
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All you can see is what's for sale. You look for "unusual" items (off level TOs, low lvl salvage) because these are what people will use to transfer inf. If you just so happen to have one, offer it for a low price (10 inf minimum) and you will probably catch the sale.
If they truly did list the transfer item for millions and it's rare enough, then yes, it's a fairly secure transaction.
Not knowing the name of the seller or the price works against the person trying to transfer more than for them.
EDIT: Beat to the punch by Leortha, and with a magisterial response! 
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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That there's an "extra layer of challenge" to figuring out that you buy accuracies and end reductions first?
Must be, since you actually buy accuracy and damage first....
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I do? That's bizarre. I never have, and yet you seem so certain that I have. A wonder that you seem to know me better than I know me.
~Wyrm
edited to add: It is, in retrospect, possible that I've been leveling brutes so much that I over-generalized based on playing an archetype that goes non-stop activating powers. The point, however, is that there is no challenge inherent in figuring out what a given character most desperately needs in the low levels after you understand the archetypes and what they are supposed to be able to do.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
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There are things that are in slow supply, but nothing that ever 'runs out'. There are no penalties for underpricing an item, in fact you are rewarded. The buyer can sniff around for bargains (as far as we know).
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Well, the thing is that the things that are in "slow supply" are likely to be the only things that are valuable. TOs, DOs and SOs aren't valuable. You can buy any number of them from the stores at any time. IOs are slightly valuable. The ones that can be crafted directly from the Universities can be made cheaply and in any numbers. So the only things that will be TRULY valuable are HOs and Recipies. Which will be in slow supply, particularly for the ONE specific type you are looking for.
Truthfully, the only thing I am really worried about is Salvage, and that's because it's likely to just be sold for the lowest price possible since it has no intrinsic value. Rare Salvage items might be usable to "milk" the market, but that would encourage camping. So I'm guessing the devs will make no Salvage that is that rare, requiring camping specific AV or whatever.
I suspect, though, that when you go to list an item, you aren't given the market value or whatever the recent 10 most transactions are, but an estimated value set by the devs. So unless a newbie actually thinks to check what the item is selling for, he'll probably go with what the recommended value is.
Plus, it seems to me this recommended value will be what will used to determine the 10% listing fee, NOT the amount you actually list it for. In fact, I think I'll PM Positron to confirm this.
At any rate, if a lower limit on your bid is set of about 1/2 of the estimated value the devs give, then the market value CAN'T go any lower than that. And since you'll have to shell out 10% of the estimated value no matter what you sell it for, you'll be encouraged to ask more to cover the fee.
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I suspect, though, that when you go to list an item, you aren't given the market value or whatever the recent 10 most transactions are, but an estimated value set by the devs. So unless a newbie actually thinks to check what the item is selling for, he'll probably go with what the recommended value is.
Plus, it seems to me this recommended value will be what will used to determine the 10% listing fee, NOT the amount you actually list it for. In fact, I think I'll PM Positron to confirm this.
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Let me know what you hear, because I'm almost positive this is not the case. There has been no indication that we will see a "recommended" price other than the price paid for the last 10 items of a given type.
The listing fee has been established as 10% of your asking price.
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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Let me know what you hear, because I'm almost positive this is not the case. There has been no indication that we will see a "recommended" price other than the price paid for the last 10 items of a given type.
The listing fee has been established as 10% of your asking price.
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Well, it's possible that I may give Positron the idea, which would be good, too. I'm pretty sure I've heard somewhere that there is a recommended price somewhere, though.
After all, if there is no recommended price, what do you bid if no one has ever sold that item before? (Something that will obviously be a question when the Auction House first comes on line)
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You make a excellent point. I see all the confusion, speculation and frustration over one part of I9 and it just kind of turns me off to the whole thing. It would be nice to not have to buy all new enhancements every 5 levels or so. That alone could make the whole thing worth all this grief.
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I'm pretty sure you can ignore the big todo about how to abuse the system. From the general players perspective it looks easy. Go in see what your item is generally selling for and pick a price your comfortable selling it at.
As a buyer you see the price that the item generally is selling for and place an order at a price your comfortable with. In general you get the item you want they get some inf.
The main complexities of the system seem to be aimed at cutting off common abuses found in such systems. The main point of the arguements your seeing is people trying to find a way to still abuse the systems. No one posting how they will abuse the system seems to be taking into account all of the aspects of it. In general over time the system should be fine for casual use.
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
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