The Whole Inf System (troublemaker question)
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2009-05-21 14:37 in The Market and Inventions
[ QUOTE ]
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).
[/ QUOTE ]
Okay fair enough, given what I said, you make a good point. I think I failed to express my point as intended though.
The point I was trying to get across is that everyone can benefit from the market (in this game) without anyone feeling like they're losing. This is because there are so many people out there who don't CARE that they're throwing inf away. They pay millions more for crafted items than they're worth just because they can. As Nethergoat said, if I take 1m inf from everyone in the game with 1b inf, I'm rich and they're STILL rich.
So, technically speaking, the market in this game is actually LESS than zero-sum because of the transaction fees. However, the way the economy works doesn't make it feel like that at all. People can get rid of stuff for good prices and people can buy stuff they normally wouldn't have access to. It's a win/win in that sense.
[ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
Count me in both these subsets. 
I couldn't have been happier when they made Merits, thus allowing me to obtain a part of my shinies through staggered gameplay. I was proven wrong when they also made Pool As, Pool Bs, Pool C+D and specific rare salvage available though the Ticket system.
Now, if I find prices for salvage too high on the Market, I just drop 540 tickets (a laughably low amount) for a Rare of my choice. Or I might just dump a bunch into Pool A rolls and collect my millions later on.
The only thing that could make things better would be costume pieces, purples and Respec recipes through Merits or Ticket vendors.
[ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
Perception does not meet reality in many cases, sadly.
I still hear, many many times each day, my sgmates in global saying stuff is 'too expensive' on the Markets, that they'll 'never get my shiny or IO out my toons'.
Yes, yes, the game is designed around SOs. Unless you want to do hard tasks in which case IOs make it a breeze. Unless you want to speed run ITFs/LGTFS/STFs/LRSFs in which case IOs are required. Unless you want to be part of the 'gang' when your sgmates and friends have set bonuses all over their character descriptions.
Sadly, notion was set aside when IOs were not only launched but made available through random drops in normal gameplay, the Market and other sources. Add in the "grass is greener" syndrome and the innate competitiveness of some players and you will get your "standard IO build" for various tasks.
Anyway, getting far afield.
I'm not going to point fingers at people that make cash off the Market as I do it myself every day. I am glad we have alternate sources for stuff though, so that the complaints I heard from various quarters about IOs being unavailable or at least too expensive have subsided a bit.
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
Hey guys,
Look at the price of Second Wind in the market hero side.
My wife just sold one for 888,888, and there are a few that sold for 1,111,111. Crazy peoples 
Comicsluvr said
[ QUOTE ]
4) I heavily favor taxing the rich, in RL and in the game. Why? Because they can afford to pay it pure and simple.
[/ QUOTE ]
Interesting parallelism. So you favor taking the inf earned at wentworth's and putting it into... better roads? Education? What exactly are we getting for these increased taxes in game?
... or is the point in RL not so much that we could spend their money, but that they would not have it?
I'm curious.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Taxing players for going ROUGE would be stupid. Just transfer all your wealth to another character then go ROUGE 
Unlikely they would place a high flat fee to go ROUGE either imho. Money earning are so different from one char or one player to another. So the fee would be likely of no consequences in the big scheme of things or it would be prohibitive to many players.
Going ROUGE will not likely be a Inf sink. Do we need an Inf sink anyway?
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
They already tax players for going rouge. Icon.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Having come back to CoX after a long hiatus, I was also surprised by how easily inf could be made, especially for entirely brand new charas on new servers.
It was actually quite enjoyable having that "freedom from want" (i.e. freedom from grind) that comes from increased sources of inf income from various drops, easier gameplay with free patrol exps, and plethora of inspirations (and combinable inspirations.) In the end, I would say that ease-of-entry for a potential new player would justify to me the game's current economic situation.
That being said, just from looking at various Black Market/Wentworth's transactions it is quite clear that there is a huge excess of inf, if only indicated by gracious/generous/bored high-levels purposefully paying out hundreds of thousands of inf for common salvage and recipes with the intention of helping out some random strangers.
While that kind of philanthropy is virtuous, it does go a long way in indicating there is a gross inflation of inf at the highest levels where it is created so easily. So while a few inf-sinks were suggested, there are always plenty more. Also suggested were ways to stabilize the market to avoid gross manipulations, and other MMORPG economy-models feature tools that make it slightly more fair for everyone.
Having played on other (Korean, Chinese, Japanese) MMORPGs that favour both subscription models and also micro-transactional "free to play/cash shop" models, I was surprised at CoX's relative lack of in-game-money sinks. Some of the more traditional (read: sometimes fun, sometimes devious) cash-sinks that I've seen in other games include:
* Crafting Risk
A lot of Korean and Chinese games, in particular, feature "high risk/reward" curves for crafting. Meaning there will be a chance to craft something "greater/high-quality" given either patience or investment in crafting skill, with a significant risk of losing something (either destruction of the base materials or loss of all materials.) In CoX this would mean increased level of the final IO, perhaps, with a chance of completely wiping it (maybe with a lower % for those that craft more often, attain certain badges, or memorise so many sets of recipes.) CoX's "100% sure thing" crafting system is actually quite unique among MMORPGs.
In some games like Final Fantasy XI, the risk/reward curve was purposefully shallow so that players wouldn't lose their shirts on a bad crafting attempt. In others, like free-to-play Rising Force Online, the curve was set so high that players would blow up items left and right, causing them to run back to the game-provided cash shops (just as the so-evil developers hoped they would!)
* Convenience Perks
While the devs already introduced a mission-teleporter, an influence-powered mission teleporter (prices scaled to level) would be a great influence-sink. This would have to be priced high enough that people would still want travel powers (would still need them for maps, and for at least getting missions, but you know some will be super lazy.) Other convenience features might be influence-fed teleports to Vault storage, etc.
* Pay-to-Enter
In some games, this is a huge money-sink. Paying each time at the door to enter some big battlefield that has the potential of great drops, or to have clearance to enter a certain zone or player-event, is a staple of Asian MMORPGs. Of course, doing this retro-actively in CoX will only serve to tick off the playerbase, but can be used in any newly-created zone or content as a "barrier of entry for the undeserving" and also "inf sink" at the same time. Already mentioned above was the Manticore/SP marriage event, so anything of this nature could be easily made "pay per view".
* Daily Fees
CoX players, again, would groan at having to now pay influence for things they are used to getting for free, but many many other MMORPGs traditionally charge daily or weekly service fees (of in-game money) for things like storage of items. Others, like FFXI and RFO as mentioned, even charge fees for later removing items. They nick you when they can.
In regard to the other topic discussed, the Black Market/Wentworth's, I think the thing that has always been missing that would stabilize transactions far more would be simple tools such as an expanded "last sold" history, an indication of high/low/mean/average prices, etc. When I first played CoX, I was shocked at how short the historical price section was.
By contrast, this is what I was used to...
http://www.ffxiah.com/item.php?id=11...=7&stack=0
This is from the site ffxiah.com, created by a player of FFXI. The information is actually derived from the in-game data via accounts that take snapshots of the market (on all items) at set times. This allows for a full system of tracking transactions (thus the high/low/mean/median numbers mentioned for each item) as well as a much larger transaction history listing (you can use the interface button to maximise the transactions shown.)
This also allows for things like this (for my character):
http://www.ffxiah.com/player.php?id=147272
...that is, a database of sellers and buyers and their activities. With this many tools, it is still very very much possible to "play the market" (and watch for trending) but at the same exact moment allows for manipulations (and manipulators) to be spotted more easily. It shows suppliers and buyers, and lets the two come together shoud they decide to make their own arrangements. While half the transactions are done by "alts" because they wish to maintain anonymity, most normal and meaningful transactions are conducted by "mains"...and either way the validity of the transaction is retained no matter what identity is used.
As a final word to all this talk of inflation or deflation or money-sinks or market-stabilisation, I think one of the more important points to mention is that with a huge ready supply of influence to both casual and hard-core CoX players, the developers neatly avoid the situation where RMT (Real Money Trade) becomes a pervasive problem. Yes, we all receive the annoying email spam in this game, but really...if you put in too many game-cash-sinks into your game you *readily* invite RMT to come supply that same cash to players. Having a huge excess of influence means there is less external-demand from the playerbase when they can make all that influence themselves--meaning RMT issues are far less problematic than in games like FFXI or WoW or RFO.
[ QUOTE ]
This is from the site ffxiah.com, created by a player of FFXI.
[/ QUOTE ]
... we tried publishing "Average weekly prices" for salvage in the City Scoop. Sadly, it was boring as [tedious thing] to actually do- I did it a couple times- and it got abandoned after a while.
If you'd like to come up with a player-generated snapshot of the market, I applaud your efforts.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Points of clarification:
1) Decreasing value of inf is INFLATION not DEFLATION
2) Inflation can be decreased by directly decreasing the money supply (most measures to do this, like a "tax" are likely to be unpopular) or by increasing interest rates, which (basically) decreases the relative attractiveness of spending versus saving.
[ QUOTE ]
... we tried publishing "Average weekly prices" for salvage in the City Scoop. Sadly, it was boring as [tedious thing] to actually do- I did it a couple times- and it got abandoned after a while.
If you'd like to come up with a player-generated snapshot of the market, I applaud your efforts.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, yes, in this regard the ffxiah.com site is a player-run database that essentially uses bots to take real-time snapshots of the market conditions. But as the OP was talking about doing high-level and scaling adjustments to the economy and how the Market works, which would naturally require developer-time to put into effect, I was making the suggestion to similarly enhance the Market interface with those types of tools (increased transaction history past 10 records, high/low/median values on sales, perhaps included buyer/seller identification, etc.) which would also require dev-time to implement.
On the topic of inf-sinks, it is notable that the 'other' Market-related influence-sink aside from the % fee--i.e. the complete *wiping* of sold items and accumulated influence if a player didn't interact with the market system for a given length of time on a character--was removed recently. While players certainly applauded that choice, at the time it did exist as a potentially huge black hole in which to remove large amounts of influence and drops from the servers' 'economy'.
I'm late to this party, but I got my feathers ruffled, so here we go.
[ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
Uh... what? High level characters paying 50k for my lowbie salvage is how I can afford everything on my lowbies. I only transfer influence when I hit the cap, and it isn't so my lowbies can afford common salvage. What are you DOING in the game that you NEED the salvage? And why don't you get it the way my lowbies do by PLAYING?
[ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
OK, here's your analogy. Ultra-pure and expensive designer bread rains from the skies, but only in poor neighborhoods. The poor can eat it if they want there's plenty. Or they can sell it to the rich for MASSIVE amounts of money, and go buy all the regular bread they could ever eat, plus a nice used car, plus pay the rent, plus put their kids through college. And you're COMPLAINING?
[ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
LOL people that believe players and cartels are cornering the market on commons for profit.
Dude, I don't have TIME for commons. I either delete them or dump them at one influence. Even if I COULD control the market for profit, and I can't, they'd be chump change. I'd control the market on rares or purples or something.
[ QUOTE ]
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?
[/ QUOTE ]
Then do what I do, yeah, me, the ebil rich marketeer. I BUY DOs. Are you serious? You take the time and effort to craft level 20 IOs that will be outclassed in just a few levels? There's your problem right there.
Look, I don't buy TOs at all. The low levels go by too fast. Then I do DOs. Then I do SOs. Some time in the 30s, if I'm having endurance trouble, I'll frankenslot my attacks, or maybe not. If common IO prices look reasonable, maybe I'll buy some instead of SOs. If I think they're inflated higher than they should be, I pass.
I'm not saying that what I do is numerically optimal, because it isn't. But I've got faces to smash in. Optimizing my slotting every few levels is something I'm not going to waste my time and influence on. Perhaps you shouldn't either.
"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
[ QUOTE ]
I guarantee you that chasing IOs is keeping a subset of the playerbase engaged and hanging around.
[/ QUOTE ] Like me. Don't get me wrong, I love playing this game. But if it weren't for inventions, I wouldn't be playing anymore. The invention system added so much depth to the game for me. As far as I'm concerned, ED and Inventions are the two best things that have ever happened to this game.
Werner, great post. I agree with everything you typed. But I'm willing to wager you're banging your head against a brick wall.
Werner: The tragedy is, a couple of people ARE spending terrible amounts of effort keeping the prices up on pieces of common salvage. They probably discovered what they think is a great and terrible secret, that they can make a quarter million inf per stack and they can do it on forty stacks a day. TEN MILLION INF A DAY and it only takes them like an hour of miserable boring work.
(Actually, the one time I saw it, provably, it was 6 million a day on eighty stacks. *wince*)
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
[ QUOTE ]
Then do what I do, yeah, me, the ebil rich marketeer. I BUY DOs. Are you serious? You take the time and effort to craft level 20 IOs that will be outclassed in just a few levels? There's your problem right there.
[/ QUOTE ]
Or do what I do, buy those DOs for dirt cheap on the market (I get mine for under 10k, usually WAY under).
Badgers are our friends!
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
[ QUOTE ]
Werner: The tragedy is, a couple of people ARE spending terrible amounts of effort keeping the prices up on pieces of common salvage. They probably discovered what they think is a great and terrible secret, that they can make a quarter million inf per stack and they can do it on forty stacks a day. TEN MILLION INF A DAY and it only takes them like an hour of miserable boring work.
(Actually, the one time I saw it, provably, it was 6 million a day on eighty stacks. *wince*)
[/ QUOTE ]
The only reports I've seen on driving up common salvage prices have been for entertainment. People just want to see if they can (spoiler: they can). Or sometimes, even for spite. I've not heard any first hand reports of people actually sustaining any sorts of profits by doing so. And I assume that Smurphy would still be happy to fund anyone's attempt to do so, and reward them handsomely if they succeed.
So... you saw someone actually sustain minor profits on eighty stacks of commons a day?
"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
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Werner: The tragedy is, a couple of people ARE spending terrible amounts of effort keeping the prices up on pieces of common salvage. They probably discovered what they think is a great and terrible secret, that they can make a quarter million inf per stack and they can do it on forty stacks a day. TEN MILLION INF A DAY and it only takes them like an hour of miserable boring work.
(Actually, the one time I saw it, provably, it was 6 million a day on eighty stacks. *wince*)
[/ QUOTE ]
The only reports I've seen on driving up common salvage prices have been for entertainment. People just want to see if they can (spoiler: they can). Or sometimes, even for spite. I've not heard any first hand reports of people actually sustaining any sorts of profits by doing so. And I assume that Smurphy would still be happy to fund anyone's attempt to do so, and reward them handsomely if they succeed.
So... you saw someone actually sustain minor profits on eighty stacks of commons a day?
[/ QUOTE ]
I've done it before. It was fun. At one point A fellow market channel person and I completely bought out ceramic armor plate a few issues ago. Now; there were thousands to start with so we just deleted them as we bought
See, exactly. It's easy to drive up prices just keep buying and deleting. Making a profit on it is a much harder proposition.
"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
[ QUOTE ]
See, exactly. It's easy to drive up prices just keep buying and deleting. Making a profit on it is a much harder proposition.
[/ QUOTE ]
You can make money as long you create waves and ride them. Buy and vend to fuel the initial operation.
[ QUOTE ]
See, exactly. It's easy to drive up prices just keep buying and deleting. Making a profit on it is a much harder proposition.
[/ QUOTE ]
You can make a profit on a lot of stuff in the short term.
Although you're not really raising anything except the price floor- you have zero impact on the 'market price', or what people are willing to pay.
But it isn't sustainable over time.
My experiment on Ancient Bones is a case in point. Over the course of a few days I "raised" the price floor and made a tidy profit, but people follow profits and before long the market was flooded with supply, much more supply than I could deal with.
I abandoned the niche, and a few days later everything was back to 'normal', meaning extreme swings in supply and price.
You can do it, but not over time.
Smurph's standing offer will remain standing for eternity.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
The Luck Charmer situation was unusual. All numbers in this post are rhetorical- I don't remember the true numbers on anything except the "Drive 'em out" pricing.
There was a stable-ish price when we started- 45K or so.
Then we bought a couple thousand and prices went crazy briefly. They settled to "buy at 65K, sell at 80K".
Now we were slowly buying during this, if I recall, although at this point we were generating almost all of our LC's by going to Dark Astoria and hitting zombies with fireballs, going to Perez and hitting Hellions with glinting blasts, etc.
At one point we decided that if we were going to fill all the bids at once, we would have to drive out some flippers. Because when we started there were 2500 bids and 1500 for sale, and now there were 4000 bids and 2000 for sale, or something.
So we bid on "A lot" of LC's, and sold "a lot" of LC's. I wasn't the only one in the Luck Charm conspiracy doing this and I was flopping 500 a day. Buy at 66K, sell at 69K. Then after a few days, buy at 65, sell at 67. Buy at 63, sell at 66. When we got to "Buy at 58, sell at 61" we had a heck of a time breaking the 60K barrier- I think we had to throw in four hundred Luck Charms temporarily- but shortly after that 800 bids just disappeared in about an 8 hour window. The corresponding "Sell" didn't disappear, of course.
There were other attempts and experiments in there before the "Squeeze the profits" plan. One morning or afternoon, I bought several hundred at 80K and instasold them at 60K, only to find out that someone was live, on the other end of the transaction, selling them right back to me. It was like "I've filled 800 orders. How come the number of bids only dropped by 200? Oh." The winner in that particular experiment was Mr. Wentworth.
So, yeah, there are people flipping in a price band that may be entirely artificial. My suspicion is that Alchemical Silver is being artificially supported right now- because it's massively more expensive than anything else, and it has more than twice as many bids and sales as anything else in the priceband. Eight thousand people aren't bidding on that stuff. Not with a straight face they're not.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
[ QUOTE ]
So, yeah, there are people flipping in a price band that may be entirely artificial. My suspicion is that Alchemical Silver is being artificially supported right now- because it's massively more expensive than anything else, and it has more than twice as many bids and sales as anything else in the priceband. Eight thousand people aren't bidding on that stuff. Not with a straight face they're not.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, if someone is keeping the price higher than it would naturally be, thanks Mr. Ebil Manipulator! I sell way more of them on my lowbies than I'll ever buy.
"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
[ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
All things?
No.
l337 IO's?
Definitely.
And things on the market are only worth what people will pay for them. It isn't possible to "gouge" anyone- if you price something beyond what the playerbase values it at, you're gonna get stuck with it.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone