The Whole Inf System (troublemaker question)
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2009-05-21 14:37 in The Market and Inventions
1) Yes. Any time any IO'd out toon plays, an XP locked toon plays (especially if they are sidekicked up to a higher wealth earning level), anyone exemplars, every bit of influence created need never be spent. This is true whether the toon is level 50 (though 50s create a much larger total of influence) or not. More influence enters the system than leaves the system. I don't believe that the 10% transaction fees at Went's, fees for costume and difficulty changes, and enhancement costs, whether it be standard or the crafting costs for inventions, actually accounts for all the influence that is produced.
2) Maybe
3) Several ideas here.
a) Base empowerments could be purchased with inf rather than by using salvage. This would make base empowerments much easier to use. Instead of Crafting an Empowerment you are purchasing an empowerment from the Empowerment vending machine (similar to buying insps from the auto doc.)
I'd suggest somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 inf per character level per buff.
b) Temp powers could be made available also (the "fixed" section of the market comes to mind). Current examples include the Jet Pack vendor in the Shard (I personally think they should have charged more than 10,000 inf for 2 hours of flight time) and the Went's teleporter (10 k per one use). There are some temp powers that you can only get through Mayhem/Safeguard side missions that are fun (and some dev spent development time on it why not get more use out of it as an influence sink?) but most people never even see these temps.
They could also set it up so you have to "buy a permit to use" (and an associated badge for the badge hounds) to unlock the temp before you can buy the actual temp power. (Kind of like spending the money for hand gun training and a license to carry and THEN having to go actually buy the gun and THEN having to buy bullets.)
(I'd gladly pay repeatedly for a temp power that did absolutely nothing except raise the accuracy of all my OTHER temp powers to 95%)
They could also set the above up so that SG's could add a "temp power vending machine" with all the required "the SG members must do X, Y times to get the plans to build this vending machine" stuff that they did for unlocking other base items. (Perhaps it could be a number of completed AH transactions?)
c) Manticore's wedding was a fiasco the way they set it up. They could have solved the entire problem by "raffling tickets" through the AH at say 1,000,000 inf each, randomly picking out the lucky winners and setting it up so that the account that "spent the money" on "the winning ticket" (for multiple account holders) got an invite to the training room and only those accounts had access to the training room for that day. Poof problem solved and instant influence sink.
The devs could hold anual (or quarterly or holiday or anniversary) events like this. It would give the game an extra influence sink and the devs a chance to get their heads out of their spread sheets, have a little fun, and meet and spend a bit of time with the folks that pay their salaries and have enough interest in the game to go one step further than simply paying their monthly (quarterly/yearly) subscription fees.
They could also use the same system to "raffle a dev(s)" like PERC did.
The trick in all of the above is to make it so that players can opt out of all of it if they want that way new influence sinks are not seen as punative.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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Edit: I'd definitely use the charitable aspect.
$100 million = $1 or $5 to Locks for Love or Big Sisters/Brothers etc...I'd go for that! 
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It would add a whole new level to the market minigame. And couldn't you totally see "Invincible Kill-All ITF forming, all proceeds go to charity"?
@Mindshadow
Dont forget alot of people use inf to make new costumes and some people do that daily.
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Edit: I'd definitely use the charitable aspect.
$100 million = $1 or $5 to Locks for Love or Big Sisters/Brothers etc...I'd go for that!
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It would add a whole new level to the market minigame. And couldn't you totally see "Invincible Kill-All ITF forming, all proceeds go to charity"?
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Hell, add badges to it and you'll see NC Soft's coffers tremble in fear.
Check out these numbers.
Look specifically the "resale" column and how fast it scales up. Perhaps the "resale" column needs adjustment. That would put a significant hit in Inf generation and mostly take Inf out of 50s pockets... the players who get Inf rained on them from the sky.
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Obviously the inf system we started with was broken- before the market, level 50's had far more inf than they could spend.
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I don't want to derail a decent thread with what is essentially a quibble so feel free to ignore this post, BUT...
There is a large assumption right here that the inf system, pre-market, was "broken." You could say that it seems broken in retrospect now that there is a market, but I don't necessarily agree that it was straight up broken before there was a market. Before the first tweak to drops and inf you made enough money selling drops and such to the proper stores to refresh your DO's and SO's all the way to 50. I know, because I ran my first toon to 50, a blaster, back in the old days and I remember being impressed that I had, what felt to be, the "right" amount of money without making it worthless on the way to 50. Even when you factor in that a blaster has to buy the more expensive "power 10" SO's and such in larger quantity than most other toons.
One day I happened to look at that same blaster's ID card and saw she had somewhere around 200,000,000 inf. I know I had played her quite a bit and I surely didn't look at it and go, "zomg that's not right!" It's like real life, money comes to money. The only complaint you got in the old days was from folks that had more than one 50, and that complaint was basically, "Wow, you don't have a lot of money pre-25 or so but you can just twink over some bucks from your 50 and everything is fine." This statement only was said, obviously, by people that had a 50 already and therefore only noticed they were "a bit" short on cash the second time through and only around the time you are trading up DO's fro SO's for the first time on a particular toon.
Pre-market INF was a lot more RP too, having a bunch of INF just meant you were really famous and influential! I think the only things that were actually annoying about INF back then were more mechanical. Things like only being able to trade 9,999 inf per trade and all that. 
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I don't necessarily agree that it was straight up broken before there was a market. Before the first tweak to drops and inf you made enough money selling drops and such to the proper stores to refresh your DO's and SO's all the way to 50.
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You remember it your way, I remember it mine.
I clearly remember ...
... hitting level 23 and buying some level 25 DO's, because I had to slot something and that was what I could afford when the old ones went red. All my Accuracies were SO's, but only about 1/3 of my Damage was.
... people not buying TO's or DO's so they could afford their SO's. Level 21 and not a thing slotted except with drops.
... people farming Mary MacComber for the SO drops.
... personally hunting those few Family that hung out in Steel by the IP gate, because level 20's dropped 1/3 DO's (level 19s dropped like 1/100 or something) and I needed the money.
... Being really excited when I found out that I could combine three SO's already in the power to make an SO++, because that meant I could get by with delaying 1/3 of my purchases to level 28.
... going to a new server, and building a "sugar momma" toon who got on teams with high-level characters, and asking them for DO's or TO's they would otherwise delete. Yeah, I had a Force Fielder that went with strangers for tips. I'm not proud. I had an SG to feed.
... making enough inf for my 45 and 50 SO's during level 41. Not "40 and 41", even. I was making ten times as much as I needed.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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You remember it your way, I remember it mine.
I clearly remember ...
... hitting level 23 and buying some level 25 DO's, because I had to slot something and that was what I could afford when the old ones went red. All my Accuracies were SO's, but only about 1/3 of my Damage was.
... people not buying TO's or DO's so they could afford their SO's. Level 21 and not a thing slotted except with drops.
... people farming Mary MacComber for the SO drops.
... personally hunting those few Family that hung out in Steel by the IP gate, because level 20's dropped 1/3 DO's (level 19s dropped like 1/100 or something) and I needed the money.
... Being really excited when I found out that I could combine three SO's already in the power to make an SO++, because that meant I could get by with delaying 1/3 of my purchases to level 28.
... going to a new server, and building a "sugar momma" toon who got on teams with high-level characters, and asking them for DO's or TO's they would otherwise delete. Yeah, I had a Force Fielder that went with strangers for tips. I'm not proud. I had an SG to feed.
... making enough inf for my 45 and 50 SO's during level 41. Not "40 and 41", even. I was making ten times as much as I needed.
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Presently I'm lvl 39, I can sell stuff to vendors in between the 5 levels required for upgrade and afford my next SO's. I don't want to get into IO's until I reach a point where the only thing my Infamy is going towards are upgrades.
At one point the system was such that you couldn't get enough infamy through vendors to even do that much?
Doc Mech-Nec (Exalted): 50 Bots/FF MM
Crey Radiation Tank (Exalted): 50 Rad/Rad Corr
Servers: Exalted, Triumph, Champion
Alts: 32
Steam Profile
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I don't necessarily agree that it was straight up broken before there was a market. Before the first tweak to drops and inf you made enough money selling drops and such to the proper stores to refresh your DO's and SO's all the way to 50.
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You remember it your way, I remember it mine.
I clearly remember ...
... hitting level 23 and buying some level 25 DO's, because I had to slot something and that was what I could afford when the old ones went red. All my Accuracies were SO's, but only about 1/3 of my Damage was.
... people not buying TO's or DO's so they could afford their SO's. Level 21 and not a thing slotted except with drops.
... people farming Mary MacComber for the SO drops.
... personally hunting those few Family that hung out in Steel by the IP gate, because level 20's dropped 1/3 DO's (level 19s dropped like 1/100 or something) and I needed the money.
... Being really excited when I found out that I could combine three SO's already in the power to make an SO++, because that meant I could get by with delaying 1/3 of my purchases to level 28.
... going to a new server, and building a "sugar momma" toon who got on teams with high-level characters, and asking them for DO's or TO's they would otherwise delete. Yeah, I had a Force Fielder that went with strangers for tips. I'm not proud. I had an SG to feed.
... making enough inf for my 45 and 50 SO's during level 41. Not "40 and 41", even. I was making ten times as much as I needed.
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I do remember this, good times. 
I also remember daily Hami Raids and trading Micros for PLs and such. Ah, the Days when Ribos meant you could SO out multiple alts forever.
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes
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You remember it your way, I remember it mine.
I clearly remember ...
... hitting level 23 and buying some level 25 DO's, because I had to slot something and that was what I could afford when the old ones went red. All my Accuracies were SO's, but only about 1/3 of my Damage was.
... people not buying TO's or DO's so they could afford their SO's. Level 21 and not a thing slotted except with drops.
... people farming Mary MacComber for the SO drops.
... personally hunting those few Family that hung out in Steel by the IP gate, because level 20's dropped 1/3 DO's (level 19s dropped like 1/100 or something) and I needed the money.
... Being really excited when I found out that I could combine three SO's already in the power to make an SO++, because that meant I could get by with delaying 1/3 of my purchases to level 28.
... going to a new server, and building a "sugar momma" toon who got on teams with high-level characters, and asking them for DO's or TO's they would otherwise delete. Yeah, I had a Force Fielder that went with strangers for tips. I'm not proud. I had an SG to feed.
... making enough inf for my 45 and 50 SO's during level 41. Not "40 and 41", even. I was making ten times as much as I needed.
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Presently I'm lvl 39, I can sell stuff to vendors in between the 5 levels required for upgrade and afford my next SO's. I don't want to get into IO's until I reach a point where the only thing my Infamy is going towards are upgrades.
At one point the system was such that you couldn't get enough infamy through vendors to even do that much?
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Yep. There were no invention salvage or recipes to sell then. We only had our TO, DO and SO drops to sell. If you want to painfully check it out, delete all invention drops and only sell the enhancement drops to the vendors.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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Look specifically the "resale" column and how fast it scales up. Perhaps the "resale" column needs adjustment. That would put a significant hit in Inf generation and mostly take Inf out of 50s pockets... the players who get Inf rained on them from the sky.
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It would make 50s earn at something a little over 2/3 of their current rates, at least outside the MA. While that's a real and significant effect, I don't think it's significant enough to cause a major dent in things. Unfortunately, it would likely make market life harder on the "Jonses", since they seem to insist on using the market like a store. You can successfully treat the market like a store on raw L50 PvE earnings, even just playing on large teams. It's just not the most efficient way to do it. I think chopping it down by 1/3 would have a pretty negative reaction from those people, while not doing much to the marketeers and active sellers.
I'm not sure why they made it exponential like that. I don't object - it's just curiously different from the previous rewards.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Every 5 levels you get about 2.5 times the XP, so you earn about 2.5 times as much inf "straight up". As well as getting about 2.5 times the shinies that can be converted to inf.
Every 5 levels your cost of SO's goes up by about 30%. (number of slots goes up, cost of SO's goes up.)
They're both exponential but they're not even remotely matched. So you went from utterly starved for cash to totally rolling in it, in the good old days.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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Look specifically the "resale" column and how fast it scales up. Perhaps the "resale" column needs adjustment. That would put a significant hit in Inf generation and mostly take Inf out of 50s pockets... the players who get Inf rained on them from the sky.
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It would make 50s earn at something a little over 2/3 of their current rates, at least outside the MA. While that's a real and significant effect, I don't think it's significant enough to cause a major dent in things. Unfortunately, it would likely make market life harder on the "Jonses", since they seem to insist on using the market like a store. You can successfully treat the market like a store on raw L50 PvE earnings, even just playing on large teams. It's just not the most efficient way to do it. I think chopping it down by 1/3 would have a pretty negative reaction from those people, while not doing much to the marketeers and active sellers.
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This is very true. I rely mostly on raw earnings, mainly from TF's, and this would mean I would have to more actively play the market to fully sate my expensive tastes.
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Every 5 levels your cost of SO's goes up by about 30%. (number of slots goes up, cost of SO's goes up.)
They're both exponential but they're not even remotely matched. So you went from utterly starved for cash to totally rolling in it, in the good old days.
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What you described is not exponential. Going up by a (basically) consistent factor of 2.5 or 1.3 is a linear increase. The scale factor for IO recipies does not follow a linear progression. It is either geometric (the scale factor used increases by level) or exponential (the price is a function of some constant raised to a scale factor of your level).
When IOs came out I studied the progression in that table conlcuded that it was exponential, but I don't actually recall what I did (and I'm not free to check it right now), so I won't swear to the correctness of that now. Maybe this evening.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Every 5 levels your cost of SO's goes up by about 30%. (number of slots goes up, cost of SO's goes up.)
They're both exponential but they're not even remotely matched. So you went from utterly starved for cash to totally rolling in it, in the good old days.
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What you described is not exponential. Going up by a (basically) consistent factor of 2.5 or 1.3 is a linear increase.
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It's exponential. Increasing by 30 each time is a linear increase. Increasing by 30% each time is an exponential increase. To make the example more obvious, assume that every 5 levels is goes up by 900%, which is the equivalent of x10. So at level 5, it's 1, at level 10, it's 10, at level 15, it's 100, at level 20, it's 1000. Exponential.
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
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It's exponential. Increasing by 30 each time is a linear increase. Increasing by 30% each time is an exponential increase. To make the example more obvious, assume that every 5 levels is goes up by 900%, which is the equivalent of x10. So at level 5, it's 1, at level 10, it's 10, at level 15, it's 100, at level 20, it's 1000. Exponential.
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Except that's not what the price of SOs does. Look at the tables. The price of a damage or heal SO (the most expensive type) is level * 1200 inf. That is linear. I guess my wording was poor given what Fulmens said, but the problem is that what Fulmens said isn't correct. Because I knew how SO prices work, I thought he meant constant slope, not constant scaling of current value.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Common IO recipies' price progression is ... strange. It is a piecewise function that isn't very smooth, and may have heavily rounded values, neither of which is making the fitting tools I have on hand very happy with analyizing exactly. However, it does look essentially exponential.
(Edit: I originally said it wasn't monotonically increasing, but it is. It's just a jerky line and I thought it jogged down at one point, but it was just a trick of the eye.)
The price of level 25 common IOs is just plain odd.
I used damage recipies to do the analysis.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
It's linear per-SO. The number of slots you need to fill is also [roughly] linear.
So technically the cost of a full set of SO's is quadratic with level.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
That's fair.
Now think about what that means that the price as a function of level for outfitting yourself with common IOs at table prices.
"They've gone to plaid!"
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
The devs should make real estate available,... I want my apartment, i.e. mini-base, overlooking Atlas Park. 8D
The "I spent 500M and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" costume option would appeal to some people.
Purchasable costume objects and badges would sink a fair amount of inf knowing the people that play this game.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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The "I spent 500M and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" costume option would appeal to some people.
Purchasable costume objects and badges would sink a fair amount of inf knowing the people that play this game.
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Take note that they are not removing the "Payoff" badge from AE
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1) Do you think that we have, truly, inflation? Most of the "middle class valuables" (Detonation Acc/Dam, to pull an example out of the air) are about the same price they were a month after issue 9 hit. Those may be priced at "round up to a nickel" levels, however. Recently I've seen people rounding up to the nearest 100K for common IO's, and lots of them.
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Dunno- I'll leave this to the people who understand 'real' economics. I'm only an expert on the game.
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2) Do you think that inflation [should it exist] is a problem?
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Nah.
If for no other reason than recent history suggests we'll have big shakeups and changes with each new issue creating it's own 'new normal'.
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3) What tools are there for fighting inflation of this sort?
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One think WoW does that I like is letting people "buy" reputation with this or that faction by plying them with marketable goods (cloth, wool, pelts, whatever). It serves the dual purpose of sucking up stuff that used to be junk and making it worth something, and also destroying currency.
Basically, we could use some inf sinks that JUST destroy currency without also increasing the supply of random other goods.
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a) Increase the Wentworth's fee to 12.5% . Money only lasts through 8 "spendings" instead of 10, cutting the effective supply by 25%. I think.
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I don't like this because it isn't fun.
I mean it'd work, but I'd prefer something that worked and was also fun.
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b) Add new services and/or new fees. A guaranteed inf transfer for 12%, for instance, or a influence-to-infamy (and vice versa) transfer for 15% or 20%. There are individuals offering this service now, but a feature of the game would be used by more people, and be more convenient.
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I'd love a variation of the 'email stuff to yourself' system in WoW. It'd make a lot of things a lot simpler, and I'd be happy to pay a fee/% in return for the convinience.
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c) This one I'm not sure about... but a graduated Wentworth's fee would be an interesting idea. 8% for small transactions, 12% over 1 million, 16% over 10 million and 20% over 100 million. It would have the advantage that it would destroy the inf where it existed, rather than hitting "the casual player [sic]"
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Not fun = no vote from me.
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d) This one is kinda wacky... 10 million, or 100 million inf = NCSoft donating $1 to a real charity. If someone dumps 20 billion into that at 100-million-to-1, that's $200. If a trillion [there are trillions out there] gets dumped, that's $10,000 which seems like a financial hit that NCSoft could take. I know, I'm spending other people's money with a fine and generous hand.
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Great idea, but I can't see NC letting us trade our play money for their real stuff.
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Ideas? Opinions?
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How about badges you can buy with inf.
100 million for a badge, 500 million for a badge, 1 billion for a badge.
You know people would do it.
How about making Icon a real store where you can buy stuff off those models they have. Like costume pack stuff, only bought with inf instead of cash. This new cool headband, 1 million inf, etc etc.
I doubt they have the stomach for this option given their swift and complete surrender on the issue of costume drops, but it makes a lot of sense.
just a couple off the top of my head..
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My City Was Gone
I just nocied recently that you can buy Prestige with Inf. That seems like a pretty solid inf sink to me....
We definitely need some money sinks.
I've used the Markets less and less since Merits and tickets have arrived. These days, salvage and purple purchases are the only sinks, with salvage decreasing because of tickets making those available.
I've always been in favour of some sort of taxation system ingame, but it would be virtually impossible to maintain since players would just pass off their influence or blow it all on the Market. No one would want their stored goods or cached items subtracted from either.
Don't know how much an increase in Went's fees would help either. I already dislike having to pay fees for those transactions. I'd likely just use a third party to trade items or inf if the Went's fee got 'too high' (being entirely subjective as something I wouldn't be comfortable with on the spot.)
I do like the idea of an ingame Infamy-Influence-Infamy transfer, cross-server. I'd gladly use such a service.
Edit: I'd definitely use the charitable aspect.
$100 million = $1 or $5 to Locks for Love or Big Sisters/Brothers etc...I'd go for that!
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes