The Whole Inf System (troublemaker question)
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2009-05-21 14:37 in The Market and Inventions
The suggestion of creating more sinks has some merit if we feel that surplus inf is a true problem. Someone mentioned implementing badges and costume pieces the rely heavily on inf to achieve. I think this would be a sure fire way to eliminate a large pool of inf from the system. The great thing about the suggestion is that it would not only eliminate a huge chunk upon implementation but also continue to be a great sink over time.
Great suggestion! 
Also, restructuring the way costume pricing and availability works is another great way to eliminate inf from the system. As long as the pricing and structure is not too ridiculous (like the inf -> prestige conversion, thats just a crazy ratio) people will gladly use it. Everyone I know loves having at least one secondary costume and most people spend the time to use all their costume slots. I certainly wouldnt hesitate to spend 50-100 million in order to have a second costume; especially considering how quickly inf can be generated these days.
If that was an apology, accepted of course.
We all have our roles to play both in and out of game, some are good some are bad. It's up to the individual to judge for themselves. Fingers need not be pointed.
After all if there were no villians to fight what would Paragon's Heroes do?
-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
Worst. Forum. War. Evar.
And this KEEPS happening on the CoH forums. People disagree, argue for a while, and then... people see each others points, and it just evaporates. Now you're even discussing the original topic! What's WRONG with you people! 
(I love the CoH forums. Thank you everyone for restoring my faith in humanity and all that. )
Yeah, I'd blow lots of influence on good costume pieces. I'm already blowing real money on them. Why not influence?
"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
*smacks him hard along side of his head*
What are ya nutz? LOL Look if you have influence you just can't seem to find anything to spend then give it to me. Frankly the new systems that are in place now IMO are fantastic. You are right under the old system the only ones with any considerable INF were 50 levels. The rest of us slowly managed to enhance our characters, unless we had a REALLY good buddy that was a 50 and gave us INF, and longed for the day when we might actually have the best enhancements in every slot. To illustrate I took a 6 month break some time ago and returned when a friend from another game decided to give COH a try. While I was gone the IO system went into effect. I returned and found myself with brand new characters on Virtue because that is where my friend started his. Okay at first I viewed the IO system as a time lag set up to slow us down in leveling and make us play longer because every time I turned around I had all this salvage to get rid of, Then suddenly I realized all my characters had millions in INF and depending on their level were completely geared out in DOs or SOs and that included characters still in their teens level wise.
I decided to pay my old characters on Infinity a visit one day and found 30 and even 40 level characters still running around with a combination of SOs, DOs, and TOs.. yeah I said TOs as in training origin and the reason for this situation.. it was all they could afford at that time.
The invention system may have forced us to take time out to buy or sell or craft but it also created millionaires as low as level 12 or 13 and because of that those characters were stronger, faster, better and level quicker.
Then they added the Merit system and I jumped happily onto that bandwagon. At present I have 2 SG that I run and both have 8 inspiration collectors filled with 100 of each type of tier 3 inspiration know to "super powered" man. Once again the new system made the game easier.. salvage, recipes and now even inspirations could be obtained without spending any influence at all.
Now the MA system has begun and added tickets to the mix. I have completely enhances characters using nothing BUT tickets earned and saved countless amounts of INF which I am now using to purchase IOs, IO salvage and IO recipes to make my characters even faster, stronger and better.
Do I long for the so called GOOD OLD DAYS? No way! The game is a lot more enjoyable now than it used to be. Oh and as a small side benefit I can't recall the last time I passed through Atlas Park and saw someone standing around begging for influence in broadcast. Back in those GOOD OLD DAYS I can recall thinking and even posting.. "Here's an idea get off you lazy butt and go run some missions and earn some like the rest of us." Oh from what I hear the beggers are still out there but no where near as many and they do their begging in tells not openly because everyone else is so rich they'd be embarassed to admit they are dead broke.
With all the other bugs and small things that need to be fixed why pick an area that is working just fine in the opinion of, I am betting, the majority of the players. No one wants to go back to living at the debt cap so they can attempt to earn more INF before they level up and need new enhancements. No one wants to go back to trying to attack AVs, GMs, or whatever with nothing but training origin enhancements in their slots.. if anything at all.
Things are JUST fine the way they are let's not fix a system that isn't broken.. we have enough broken ones to deal with as it is.
�We�re always the good guys. In D&D, we�re lawful good. In City of Heroes we�re the heroes. In Grand Theft Auto we pay the prostitutes promptly and never hit them with a bat.� � Leonard
�Those women are prostitutes? You said they were raising money for stem cell research!� � Sheldon
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Worst. Forum. War. Evar.
And this KEEPS happening on the CoH forums. People disagree, argue for a while, and then... people see each others points, and it just evaporates. Now you're even discussing the original topic! What's WRONG with you people!
(I love the CoH forums. Thank you everyone for restoring my faith in humanity and all that. )
Yeah, I'd blow lots of influence on good costume pieces. I'm already blowing real money on them. Why not influence?
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I could always start smashing them again to entertain you! 
<QR>
The auction house, save for it's lag filled slowness, works fine. Numbers are relative.
Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit
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From an economic point of view, CoH is suffering massive Deflation.
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I agree with the term Deflation (I was using Inf Surplus), but we mean the same thing. I question the use of "suffering" though. I'd like some elaboration there.
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2) Yes the Deflation is a problem, because it trivializes Inf.
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Along the lines of "suffering", I'd also like more elaboration on this statement.
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On every level ending in 2 or 7, I can upgrade every slotted TO, DO, or SO Enhancement I have without checking the price. Anyone who makes an effort (transfers from a 50, asks a friend, plays the Market, gets a lucky drop, or whatever) can do the same, which means a significant portion of the player base. It's no longer worth it to get debt or repeat TFs in order to earn more Inf as you level. Selling Enhancement drops is a waste of time. Earning Inf at low levels is a waste of time, because you earn a trivial amount compared to a level 50 char.
The game as designed increases difficulty gradually. At low levels it only takes one or two unslotted attacks to defeat a Minion. At high levels it takes several well slotted attacks to do the same. By constantly using the best Enhancements available, I'm beating the curve most of the time. I'd call it an "unintended statistical advantage".
In summary, Deflation means people run around with better Enhancements, and spend less time getting them. That means faster leveling, dogs and cats sleeping together, and the end of civilization as we know it.
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
I've moved on to Diablo 3, TopDoc-1304
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In summary, Deflation means people run around with better Enhancements,
and spend less time getting them. That means faster leveling, dogs and cats sleeping
together, and the end of civilization as we know it.
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Deflation means: earning rate > cost of living == greater buying power ie. an increase
in the value of inf wrt item prices (purples exempted).
I'm less sure about the Ghostbusters allusion (although it did make me smile).
I'm pretty sure you've not made me see how deflation is a problem.
Regards,
4
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
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In summary, Deflation means people run around with better Enhancements, and spend less time getting them. That means faster leveling, dogs and cats sleeping together, and the end of civilization as we know it.
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In the scope of recent intentional dev increases in leveling speed, I'm not sure we could even perceive the effect of that power shift in a statistical analysis of leveling speed across the playerbase. That doesn't even include (other) potential unintentional increases.
Edit: It's also worth noting that the whole "my enhancements are expiring" was one of the more consistently mentioned dislikes of the legacy enhancement system. I wouldn't be too sure in assuming that the devs didn't swamp it intentionally.
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
[ QUOTE ]
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In summary, Deflation means people run around with better Enhancements, and spend less time getting them. That means faster leveling, dogs and cats sleeping together, and the end of civilization as we know it.
[/ QUOTE ]
In the scope of recent intentional dev increases in leveling speed, I'm not sure we could even perceive the effect of that power shift in a statistical analysis of leveling speed across the playerbase. That doesn't even include (other) potential unintentional increases.
Edit: It's also worth noting that the whole "my enhancements are expiring" was one of the more consistently mentioned dislikes of the legacy enhancement system. I wouldn't be too sure in assuming that the devs didn't swamp it intentionally.
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That's a good point.
The benefits from IOs vs SOs do seem to say "Hey, you can use SOs if you want but that's just crazy."
I still recall thinking IOs were overpowered when introduced and I expected them to get nerfed across the board but it hasn't happened. They have tweaked some here and there but the basic benefits are still there.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Long post warning. Tl;dr is the last line.
1) I am not an economist but having lived in the 'low income' bracket for most of my life I feel qualified to speak on it.
2) I see the current system as unfair to the 'little guys' (new players or players new to the Market...not always the same thing). More on this below.
3) All arguements of 'Market PvP' are wasted on me because every other facet of PvP in the game is voluntary. Yes, you can still choose not to use the Market but unlike PvP the Market is such a large and pervasive part of the overall game now ignoring it would be like driving a car with 3 tires.
4) I heavily favor taxing the rich, in RL and in the game. Why? Because they can afford to pay it pure and simple.
5) My problem is not with just the Market but the manner in which it functions with the Crafting System as well.
6) The Markets from redside and blueside should have been merged from the start. Barring that they should have been merged some time ago. As it is the redside Market, a big attraction to some players, is very sluggish. This directly the number of redside players which directly affects the amount of redside content.
Ok, on to the meaty part. I personally think that the Crafting system is borked because some higher-level Recipes require salvage attainable only by lower-level toons. When a lvl 40-something toon needs an Alc Silver or other piece of Common Salvage he thinks nothing of paying 50-100k for it because he can earn that much in a few minute's of play. If a character in the teens or 20s needs it they may have trouble competing with the price and get shut out.
A real world analogy would be bread. Yes, the wealthy still buy bread, however some of them buy the ultra-pure and expensive designer bread (yes, designer bread...) that lower or middle income people avoid simply due to the price. You never hear of someone buying all of the bread in town and then flipping it at a huge profit.
Personally I think that all recipes should require salvage that only drops in the level range of the recipe. Purples need more high-end salvage and are a good example of this to me.
My other problem with the Market is manipulation. I have always felt since I9 launched that there should be Market controls to prevent a few characters from cornering the Market on a single commodity. Something listed as Common should always BE Common in that there should ALWAYS be a supply of it on the Market. No one player or cartel should be able to bottom the Market on anything.
Another RL bread analogy: If Don Trump came to my home town and decided to buy all of the bread in town in a single day he likely could...and at the store's price. Wow...no more bread for anyone else...for that day. More bread would be delivered that day or the next. If he continued to do so the local bread makers would see the golden goose for what it was and begin making more bread because the stores hate running out. In the real world supply always increases to meet demand unless the supply in controlled by the powerful few.
Now in-game we have the problem that supply does not increase with demand thus prices can be manipulated. This often hurts the little guys more because they do not have the earning power of the bigger ones. I think this stifles the whole Crafting system. Sure, you might get lucky and sell a recipe or salvage for a million at lvl 10 and be rolling in it. But what if you want those lvl 20 IOs a few levels later but can't afford to craft them because all of the salvage for them has spiked over 50k?
To sum it all up I think the Market should be designed in such a way that there is ALWAYS a minimum number of salvage pieces available. If the amount gets too low the Market generates more to meet the minimum number at whatever the Vendor price is. Common items would have a minimum of 1000 pieces, Uncommon 100 and Rares 10. This would also benefit Redside with it's sluggish Market.
I don't think we should increase fees or anything like that at all. I simply think that the best way to curtail the amount of Inf in the game is to reduce the amount that can be earned at the top end. Since many more times the Inf can be earned in the Market than actual play I feel this is where it needs to begin. Lower the amount of cornering the Market on Common Salvage the the overall Inf amount in the system will go down. This holds true for anything that would only be useful for lower-level toons like common IOs under lvl 25 or so. If the 45-50 level guys want to have massive bidding wars on purple recipes and whole sets of 45-50 recipes let them...none of it will reflect on the rest of the playerbase at all.
As I see it the easiest way to reduce the amount of Inf in the system is simply to lower the amount that the uber-rich can earn.
"Comics, you're not a Mastermind...you're an Overlord!"
<QR>
The economy, as it is in real life, is borked.
The super rich will continue to mock the poor for their lack of vision and inability to manipulate.
The poor will continue to envy the rich their money, while being glad that they're not pretentious pricks.
Class warfare keeps on rolling.
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Long post warning. Tl;dr is the last line.
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This going to be a long response. I think you make some good points, but I think you are also confusing several issues that aren't related.
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1) I am not an economist but having lived in the 'low income' bracket for most of my life I feel qualified to speak on it.
2) I see the current system as unfair to the 'little guys' (new players or players new to the Market...not always the same thing). More on this below.
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Unlike real life, there are no barriers to entry in this game. You get exactly as much as you put into it. A person may be low income their whole life because there's just no opportunity to change that due to the way the RL works. In CoX, you can start a new character and have a million inf by level 6 easily. I've done this on several characters at this point and I've been playing for less than two months.
It's important to keep this distinction in mind...we're talking about a video game, not RL, and the rules are different.
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3) All arguements of 'Market PvP' are wasted on me because every other facet of PvP in the game is voluntary. Yes, you can still choose not to use the Market but unlike PvP the Market is such a large and pervasive part of the overall game now ignoring it would be like driving a car with 3 tires.
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The concept of "market pvp" is a fallacy. Before WW2 and Bretton Woods, the world was fully Mercantilistic...RL market pvp if you will...and believed the market was a zero sum game, i.e. my gain was necessarily someone else's loss. We've since discovered that that's completely untrue and that's why you're seeing a proliferation of free trade agreements all over the world. I'm not gonna go into details, there are plenty of macroeconomics books that talk about this. Suffice it to say, the idea that all marketeering is "market pvp" is a fallacy.
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4) I heavily favor taxing the rich, in RL and in the game. Why? Because they can afford to pay it pure and simple.
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*sigh* I'm not gonna touch this one, it's far too emotionally loaded. It doesn't make sense in the context of this game for multiple reasons tho. Refer back to my first point.
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5) My problem is not with just the Market but the manner in which it functions with the Crafting System as well.
6) The Markets from redside and blueside should have been merged from the start. Barring that they should have been merged some time ago. As it is the redside Market, a big attraction to some players, is very sluggish. This directly the number of redside players which directly affects the amount of redside content.
Ok, on to the meaty part. I personally think that the Crafting system is borked because some higher-level Recipes require salvage attainable only by lower-level toons. When a lvl 40-something toon needs an Alc Silver or other piece of Common Salvage he thinks nothing of paying 50-100k for it because he can earn that much in a few minute's of play. If a character in the teens or 20s needs it they may have trouble competing with the price and get shut out.
A real world analogy would be bread. Yes, the wealthy still buy bread, however some of them buy the ultra-pure and expensive designer bread (yes, designer bread...) that lower or middle income people avoid simply due to the price. You never hear of someone buying all of the bread in town and then flipping it at a huge profit.
Personally I think that all recipes should require salvage that only drops in the level range of the recipe. Purples need more high-end salvage and are a good example of this to me.
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I think this is a great point, but not for the reasons you specified. Read back on some of my other posts in this thread for why people can't really manipulate pricing effectively in this game. Basically, all you have to do is leave a buy order up for like a day and you can get any salvage you want for a reasonable price. I still agree think that this is a great idea, it would cause people to be less dependent on the market and give people less reason to irrationally hate it.
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My other problem with the Market is manipulation. I have always felt since I9 launched that there should be Market controls to prevent a few characters from cornering the Market on a single commodity. Something listed as Common should always BE Common in that there should ALWAYS be a supply of it on the Market. No one player or cartel should be able to bottom the Market on anything.
Another RL bread analogy: If Don Trump came to my home town and decided to buy all of the bread in town in a single day he likely could...and at the store's price. Wow...no more bread for anyone else...for that day. More bread would be delivered that day or the next. If he continued to do so the local bread makers would see the golden goose for what it was and begin making more bread because the stores hate running out. In the real world supply always increases to meet demand unless the supply in controlled by the powerful few.
Now in-game we have the problem that supply does not increase with demand thus prices can be manipulated. This often hurts the little guys more because they do not have the earning power of the bigger ones. I think this stifles the whole Crafting system. Sure, you might get lucky and sell a recipe or salvage for a million at lvl 10 and be rolling in it. But what if you want those lvl 20 IOs a few levels later but can't afford to craft them because all of the salvage for them has spiked over 50k?
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Again, price spikes for common salvage last hours in this game, not days. Leave a buy order up overnight and you'll be sure to get them at a normal price. And again, it's really REALLY not hard to make enough inf at early levels to invalidate the whole "50k for common salvage is too much!" argument.
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To sum it all up I think the Market should be designed in such a way that there is ALWAYS a minimum number of salvage pieces available. If the amount gets too low the Market generates more to meet the minimum number at whatever the Vendor price is. Common items would have a minimum of 1000 pieces, Uncommon 100 and Rares 10. This would also benefit Redside with it's sluggish Market.
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Admittedly I have only been around for a couple months, but this seems really off to me...I have NEVER tried to buy any salvage that WASN'T available on the market in the amounts you just specified. Using a technique like this to control prices is a waste of their time because market forces do it for them. I just haven't seen the type of massive manipulation you're attempting to correct with this idea. I think that if it were put into the game, it would have no effect whatsoever on prices because you're basing the idea off a false premise.
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I don't think we should increase fees or anything like that at all. I simply think that the best way to curtail the amount of Inf in the game is to reduce the amount that can be earned at the top end.
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True, since this is the main place that all that inf is generated, as has been stated many times in this thread.
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Since many more times the Inf can be earned in the Market than actual play I feel this is where it needs to begin.
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Whoa back up. Earning info on the market isn't the same as generating inf by killing things. When you play the market, you're destroying inf thru transaction fees. You're not actually contributing to the inflation or deflation or whatever it is this thread is about.
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Lower the amount of cornering the Market on Common Salvage the the overall Inf amount in the system will go down.
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Huh? This doesn't follow logically. See my last point.[ QUOTE ]
This holds true for anything that would only be useful for lower-level toons like common IOs under lvl 25 or so. If the 45-50 level guys want to have massive bidding wars on purple recipes and whole sets of 45-50 recipes let them...none of it will reflect on the rest of the playerbase at all.
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Common IOs are already price controlled since you can buy the recipes at a set price. Common salvage price is determined by the drop rate, and cornering the market just doesn't happen for more than a few hours at a time. As someone's sig says, "If you didn't leave the bid up for a day, you didn't actually try to buy something." It's already been stated multiple times in this thread that purple recipe prices are going up and everything else is pretty much the same as it's been.
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As I see it the easiest way to reduce the amount of Inf in the system is simply to lower the amount that the uber-rich can earn.
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There is a limit to the amount the uber-rich can earn. It's 2bil per character. Are you suggesting lowering that limit? What does that have to do with the rest of your post?
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As I see it the easiest way to reduce the amount of Inf in the system is simply to lower the amount that the uber-rich can earn. . Since many more times the Inf can be earned in the Market than actual play I feel this is where it needs to begin.
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Your TL;DR version sums up a massive and (IMO, pretty inexcusable) lack of understanding of what the market does.
The market doesn't create any Inf. It doesn't add inf to the system at all. The only things it does is move inf around and delete 10% of it while doing so.
Making it so being uber-rich can't be attained on the market essentially guarantees that most inf will be laying around on whatever characters earn it. Note that this does nothing to stop the existence of the uber-rich. Instead, what it does is limit the ability of people who can't play thier [censored] off to become uber rich through the shuttling of money. The uber-rich will still exist - they'll just be the people who log tons of time in game. Things like having mutliple accounts or spending time farming will be the premier ways to make money since you can't concentrate wealth from other players.
Consider that every 50 in the game that plays 100 hours at level 50 probably creates a bare minimum of 100M inf. If there were only 1000 level 50s played 100 hours this way, that would be 100B inf in the system. If I can use the market to earn just 1M inf from each of those 1000 players, I end up with 1B inf (900M after market fees) and they all are left with 99M. No one got scalped, and I got way rich.
There's too much emotion-laden focus on people who get like 100M per sale on something, as if that's the only way to get rich in this game. It's not.
Fundamentally, you want the market to be a store. You believe that inventions should be provided to anyone who asks for them. This overlooks the notion of IOs as alternative progress for characters. They are not something that everyone is supposed to automatically attain simply by asking the interface for them. They are intended to be something attained through effort and play. Whether that effort is spent at the market or through long hours of play isn't particularly relevant - what matters is that it takes personal investment in some activity to attain it. The devs need us to spend calendar time on that investment. They don't care if we're logged in or not, just whether we're engaged enough to stay subscribed. I guarantee you that chasing IOs is keeping a subset of the playerbase engaged and hanging around.
I am not a "marketeer" in the sense that I rarely ever flip anything. I track the market fairly closely and I sell drops and buy shinies as smartly as I can. I have 5B inf on my villains and around 3 on my heroes. Even if we accept that inventions are now a pervasive part of the game (hard for me to accept since they are still not required), my own experience allows me to categorically reject the notion that we have to become marketeers to get rich enough to by damn near anything. Nor do we have to suffer unduly because of those marketeers that are out there. If we did, I wouldn't be both heavily IO'd and stupid rich.
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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The super rich will continue to mock the poor for their lack of vision and inability to manipulate.
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Actually, I mock them for their laziness and desire for the best rewards without putting in the effort to earn them.
Well, except for the ones I help earn vast sums...
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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As I see it the easiest way to reduce the amount of Inf in the system is simply to lower the amount that the uber-rich can earn. . Since many more times the Inf can be earned in the Market than actual play I feel this is where it needs to begin.
[/ QUOTE ]
Your TL;DR version sums up a massive and (IMO, pretty inexcusable) lack of understanding of what the market does.
The market doesn't create any Inf. It doesn't add inf to the system at all. The only things it does is move inf around and delete 10% of it while doing so.
Making it so being uber-rich can't be attained on the market essentially guarantees that most inf will be laying around on whatever characters earn it. Note that this does nothing to stop the existence of the uber-rich. Instead, what it does is limit the ability of people who can't play thier [censored] off to become uber rich through the shuttling of money. The uber-rich will still exist - they'll just be the people who log tons of time in game. Things like having mutliple accounts or spending time farming will be the premier ways to make money since you can't concentrate wealth from other players.
Consider that every 50 in the game that plays 100 hours at level 50 probably creates a bare minimum of 100M inf. If there were only 1000 level 50s played 100 hours this way, that would be 100B inf in the system. If I can use the market to earn just 1M inf from each of those 1000 players, I end up with 1B inf (900M after market fees) and they all are left with 99M. No one got scalped, and I got way rich.
There's too much emotion-laden focus on people who get like 100M per sale on something, as if that's the only way to get rich in this game. It's not.
Fundamentally, you want the market to be a store. You believe that inventions should be provided to anyone who asks for them. This overlooks the notion of IOs as alternative progress for characters. They are not something that everyone is supposed to automatically attain simply by asking the interface for them. They are intended to be something attained through effort and play. Whether that effort is spent at the market or through long hours of play isn't particularly relevant - what matters is that it takes personal investment in some activity to attain it. The devs need us to spend calendar time on that investment. They don't care if we're logged in or not, just whether we're engaged enough to stay subscribed. I guarantee you that chasing IOs is keeping a subset of the playerbase engaged and hanging around.
I am not a "marketeer" in the sense that I rarely ever flip anything. I track the market fairly closely and I sell drops and buy shinies as smartly as I can. I have 5B inf on my villains and around 3 on my heroes. Even if we accept that inventions are now a pervasive part of the game (hard for me to accept since they are still not required), my own experience allows me to categorically reject the notion that we have to become marketeers to get rich enough to by damn near anything. Nor do we have to suffer unduly because of those marketeers.
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Best post I've seen in the market forums for a while.
I can't believe that there is still this fundamental lack of understanding about inf earning and the market that you responded to.
Then, again now that I think about it, doesn't surprise me at all that some still think the market plays a sig part in inf generation or is necessary to advance.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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The super rich will continue to mock the poor for their lack of vision and inability to manipulate.
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Actually, I mock them for their laziness and desire for the best rewards without putting in the effort to earn them.
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As well they should be. Reward without effort seems to be a common desire in games, for some reason. I'm not sure where the sense of entitlement comes from.
But I equally reject the stance that all things can be answered by more money, and that anyone not pursuing that goal is a fool who deserves to be gouged.
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The super rich will continue to mock the poor for their lack of vision and inability to manipulate.
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Actually, I mock them for their laziness and desire for the best rewards without putting in the effort to earn them.
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Amen. Also, how this applies to real life is beyond me. I can't go to Target; buy pants, a shirt, shoes, and a hat for $20; stand outside and say, "Outfit, $25;" and have someone say, "Man, I'm just lazy. How about $150?"
Because that would just be awesome.
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
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The super rich will continue to mock the poor for their lack of vision and inability to manipulate.
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Actually, I mock them for their laziness and desire for the best rewards without putting in the effort to earn them.
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As well they should be. Reward without effort seems to be a common desire in games, for some reason. I'm not sure where the sense of entitlement comes from.
But I equally reject the stance that all things can be answered by more money, and that anyone not pursuing that goal is a fool who deserves to be gouged.
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I think the sense of entitlement comes from single player game cheat codes.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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The concept of "market pvp" is a fallacy. Before WW2 and Bretton Woods, the world was fully Mercantilistic...RL market pvp if you will...and believed the market was a zero sum game, i.e. my gain was necessarily someone else's loss. We've since discovered that that's completely untrue and that's why you're seeing a proliferation of free trade agreements all over the world. I'm not gonna go into details, there are plenty of macroeconomics books that talk about this. Suffice it to say, the idea that all marketeering is "market pvp" is a fallacy.
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Just a small issue, you seem to recognize that not all RL economic models work in the game enviroment, then you try to use a RL model to claim that the market in our game is not a zero-sum game.
This is just not true.
The reason why RL isn't zero-sum doesn't have an equivilent in the game. Market PvP is not a fallacy, and it is a zero-sum game.
If you take two players and they only use the market, and do nothing else in the game, their only profits can come from the buying and selling of other player's drops. They can not add to the total Inf supply, they can not add to the total number of items available, they don't perform any of the functions that in RL makes trading a better than zero-sum affair.
So, I'd say on that point, it is just flat out wrong to say there is no Market PvP. I can't take the proceeds of my marketeering and open up a more efficent Enhancement factory. I just keep buying and selling the enhancments that come out of everyone else's factories (their actual playing of the game), and those factories churn out at a fixed rate (essentially).
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So, I'd say on that point, it is just flat out wrong to say there is no Market PvP.
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I agree.
Here are some forms market PvP can take:
1. Buyer vs Buyer - I need to outbid you
2. Seller vs Seller - I need to underlist you
3. Seller vs Buyer - I need to get you to pay me the most I can
4. Buyer vs Seller - I need to get you to take the least amount I want to give you
5. Varied forms of playing with the different groups (like painting the tape though I no longer recall what that means) to trick them
I enjoy the dynamics of 1-4 as they intertwine.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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So, I'd say on that point, it is just flat out wrong to say there is no Market PvP. I can't take the proceeds of my marketeering and open up a more efficent Enhancement factory. I just keep buying and selling the enhancments that come out of everyone else's factories (their actual playing of the game), and those factories churn out at a fixed rate (essentially).
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Ummm, actually you CAN make a more efficient 'factory' with the procededs from the market.
Spend some of that Inf you've collected on the market to get nice high bonus sets for your toon and you become a more efficient 'factory' next time you got out and bust criminals' heads or commit some villany.
Granted the change in efficiency is not major, but it must be noticable otherwise prices wouldn't be SO high on the nice enhancements.
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I enjoy the dynamics of 1-4 as they intertwine.
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Definitely. How cheap can I buy my ingredients? How much can I get for my product? I'm a casual marketeer, as much as I consider myself a casual gamer (though it's been explained that the two are kind of exclusive ), and my Useless Goal of inf.-capping one of my mains is pretty darn close. Now, well, I guess I'll start on another one.
If anything, a quick visit to the market takes ten minutes. Lately, getting a lot more enjoyment/minute out of that than running missions, and it's more in line with my availability. 
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
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I enjoy the dynamics of 1-4 as they intertwine.
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Definitely. How cheap can I buy my ingredients? How much can I get for my product? I'm a casual marketeer, as much as I consider myself a casual gamer (though it's been explained that the two are kind of exclusive ), and my Useless Goal of inf.-capping one of my mains is pretty darn close. Now, well, I guess I'll start on another one.
If anything, a quick visit to the market takes ten minutes. Lately, getting a lot more enjoyment/minute out of that than running missions, and it's more in line with my availability.
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Not the first time I've seen that posted, in terms of enjoyability of the market vs missions.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
Milady, I did take the time to read your post. You seem to take the word I used, "superior", in a much more aggressive manner than I intended.
I certainly dont look down on crafters or people who stick to using the Market. I dont feel as though I am a superior player or person because I produce massive amounts of goods and new influence which allow them to enjoy their respective niches. Swell merely wanted to assault my views and force me to use forceful replies in hopes that people like you would join in and help run me out of this thread.
I will refrain from starting it up again. It was silly to pursue it the first time. It would be a complete waste of time, at least within this forum and thread, to doi so again.