New "Market Myths" Guide?
By
Abigail Frost,
Posted on: 2009-05-29 10:45 in The Market and Inventions
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Right. I just checked, and I have 5160 hours invested across all of my characters, about half that time playing my 50s, plus plenty of time on the forums and in Mids' and spreadsheets.
So when someone with, say, a couple hundred hours in the game and one level 50 thinks they should have everything that I have, I start feeling like they want to get paid for one month of work the same as I get paid for two years of work. And suddenly I start getting a little cranky. I paid my dues. I earned what I have.
And frankly, you CAN have what I have for only a couple hundred hours invested. You just have to invest that time wisely, and some of those hours may well include activities you don't find fun.
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ROFLMAO!!! Guys! This isnt work! Its a GAME! It's supposed to be FUN from beginning to end!! WHAT THE HELL?!
When I log in, its to have fun and enjoy something for a little while. I work all day! All this talk about spreadsheets and numbers and all that, what?! WOW.
And this means no offense to you or anybody else cuz I dont know you personally and to each his/her own. Whatever floats your boat. You wanna look at spreadsheets and stuff, hey, do yo thang! 
But here's what I dont get...
How come when people come in here to "complain" as you guys say, about the market, yall jump down their throat. THEN when they go to defend themselves and others like them, you feel like you need to force your opinion down their throats and sway them. Now, I agree, yes, knowledge of the system DEFINATELY helps. But just because I understand the inner workings of, lets say, some other country's government, that doesnt mean I like the way it works.(bad analogy? sorry couldnt think of anything else at the moment lol)
Thank you Giant for having my back instead of telling me in so many words that my perspective is wrong and "do what I do you market-hater!" Hell, Goat, you could have even asked me what specifically I didnt LIKE about it and how YOU could help, look at my questions and posts elsewhere in this forum, I take advice VERY receptively even on things I really dont like only because I cant quite figure them out.
I've read some things here and there,I understand the market, I use the market(ask Tekada if you know him)...RARELY to drop stuff off yes, but I STILL dont like it very much. Not a market "hater" per se, just feel like maybe it could use some work or a different system.
I dont want to take away the market or anybody elses fun if you like it as is, thats not my goal. Again, its to help add to the voice of people who thinks theres just a better way to DO the whole market thing, thats all.
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Well, they do have 2 stores of a kind now. Merits and tickets.
So obviously they believe people should invest time in earning tickets, merits or inf or invest time in the market.
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I don't call it a 'store' unless you can walk up and buy what you want.
They're more a way to turn 'time' into 'stuff'.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Hell, Goat, you could have even asked me what specifically I didnt LIKE about it and how YOU could help, look at my questions and posts elsewhere in this forum, I take advice VERY receptively even on things I really dont like only because I cant quite figure them out.
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I guess I could, but...
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Not a market "hater" per se, just feel like maybe it could use some work or a different system.
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Unless you're a fan of merging the markets, or abandoning the lame half measures of merits and tickets, we don't have much common ground.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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You're extending the analogy to the point it's not functional. The reference to treadmills is to make clear that it's a time-consuming activity. Inf on the market is a proxy for time. You can do other things and get the stuff randomly, with merits or with tickets, or you can earn inf and buy it on the market.
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They are different activities. The market is key to equiping your character with top end gear. I took a look at one of my wealthier characters a while ago. The badge progess indicator had shown earnings of a little over 100 million inf (Does prestige factor ?). My total liquid on that one was a little over a billion and assets of maybe another 2 billion or so.
I had put in 400 hours + of play time on that character, By the time I would have achieved that by just playing the game would be over.
So yes I had to use the treadmil before I got my weights.
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It's outrageous and dismissable to take exception to things taking time to achieve in an MMO. It's fair to argue about how much time, but only to a point.
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Once again how much and doing what ?
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This is pretty complicated and difficult, but try to stay with me:
If they wanted a store, they wouldn't have made a market.
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Hmm. For 8 issues, we had stores and no market. Guess the devs are allowed to change their minds. Sometimes, no matter how great an idea seems, it needs reworked once its been out for a while. and sometimes, ideas need scrapped altogether. The market is neither. It should stay as it is, for the most part. But the reward structure of the REST of the game, should be brought in line with the market. Y'know, Positron was all about "reward per time spent" a while back, and the market breaks that. A store is the easiest way to restore some parity. (and the worst way, absolutely the worst way, is to limit marketeers even more than available slots already do. The devs should be trying to get MORE people playing on the market, not less.)
119088 - Outcasts Overcharged. Heroic.
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The downside is, well, less time on the treadmill. But honestly, CoH has always been supportive of playing alts.
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It still is.
You just aren't personally satisfied with the time scale that's involved.
Your disatisfaction is not proof of a problem. It might be an indicator of a problem.
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As it stands, making enough to IO-out a character takes a lot of time
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Define "IO-out a character". Frankenslot? IOs that currently cost 10M apiece? IOs that cost 100M apiece?
They cost varying amounts for a reason. The better ones are supposed to take longer. And they do.
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the treadmill is NOT the only reason people stay
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Of course it's not. The treadmill is a means to an end. However, it also inproves the sense that achieving the end is an actual accomplishment. It improves your personal investment in the character, the game, and your continued subscription.
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I would actually bet that a large number of people would be MORE willing to stay if they believed they could make a character, level them, and IO them out, all in a timeframe they considered reasonable. The next step is, for many, simply make another character, not leave the game.
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Then why do they need to "IO out" their existing characters before making a new one? I don't even alt that way, and I'm a serious monomaniac. And again we get back to "IO out" as a vague term. You think everyone should be able to purple out to the max, get LotGs and Miracles, on every character before they feel like moving on to the next character?
Why? What justification can you offer for such a massive flattening of the time investment? What would be the point in all the options for intermediate builds? Why have commons and uncommons if purples and kick-[censored] rares are laying around in stores? Why should we be left with such easy access to the concept that a character is "done", so we can run off and alt another to the same level?
I'm sorry, but this just continues to sound like a massively overdeveloped sense of entitlement.
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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Hmm. For 8 issues, we had stores and no market.
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Which was a terrible design choice they fortunately chose to rectify.
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Y'know, Positron was all about "reward per time spent" a while back, and the market breaks that.
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Cue merits and tickets.
Which have satisfied their urge to meddle, at least temporarily.
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The devs should be trying to get MORE people playing on the market, not less.)
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The devs seem to view the market as a necessary evil.
I don't expect them to do any proselytizing on its behalf, or to replace it entirely with some other system.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Y'know, Positron was all about "reward per time spent" a while back, and the market breaks that.
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No it doesn't. At all. The reward per time spent is an average (or perhaps median) value, measured across various strips of the character base. They control the available reward per time spent available through the market by controlling drop rates, including those from random rolls.
Did you see what happened when the MA was being farmed like mad? Prices hit the floor on nearly everything except purples. That's not what the devs wanted. They fixed the masses' easy access to ticket farms and prices went back up. The devs control the average rate of access for the overall playerbase.
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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Hell, Goat, you could have even asked me what specifically I didnt LIKE about it and how YOU could help, look at my questions and posts elsewhere in this forum, I take advice VERY receptively even on things I really dont like only because I cant quite figure them out.
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I guess I could, but...
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Not a market "hater" per se, just feel like maybe it could use some work or a different system.
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Unless you're a fan of merging the markets, or abandoning the lame half measures of merits and tickets, we don't have much common ground.
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*Looks down at Goat's feet*
Hey, that ground is the same ground I'M standing on! lol
Yes! Yes! Oh for the love of HALLE BERRY yes they need to do something about the merit situation, and in MY opinion, the ticket situation too.
And for now, lets just agree to disagree about the market I guess.
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They always suspect they're being taken advantage of when dealing with the market (and sometimes they're right).
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How so, when THEY determine the price they pay?
Or are they somehow griefing themselves, in your bizarre alternate world?
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Not if everyone lists the item for a certain amount, and that is my fundamental problem with the Market. I can list what I WANT to pay till I'm blue in the face, but if no one sells it for that, I'll never get it, even if it is a reasonable amount.
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If no player in the game is willing to sell to you for your offer, or if every other player in the game is willing to pay more than your offer, then I would conclude that your offer was not reasonable, even if it was the most you were, yourself, willing to pay.
"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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No it doesn't. At all. The reward per time spent is an average (or perhaps median) value, measured across various strips of the character base. They control the available reward per time spent available through the market by controlling drop rates, including those from random rolls.
Did you see what happened when the MA was being farmed like mad? Prices hit the floor on nearly everything except purples. That's not what the devs wanted. They fixed the masses' easy access to ticket farms and prices went back up. The devs control the average rate of access for the overall playerbase.
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I was gonna disagree with ya Uber, but you're right.
I'm too used to blaming merits for the pool C die-off, when the real cause was the Katie nerf it camouflaged.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Anyhow, I'm done with this thread and probably the whole market forum for a while. I'm off to go make casual players miserable, steal from the poor, manipulate prices, force the devs to make the game less fun for everyone else, block reasonable changes to the game that would make it better, and club some baby seals. o/
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I was on your side right up to the baby seals part. That's just wrong!! Now if only we could get some baby seal mobs for MA.
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How come when people come in here to "complain" as you guys say, about the market, yall jump down their throat. THEN when they go to defend themselves and others like them, you feel like you need to force your opinion down their throats and sway them.
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Here's my analogy, and it's one I used before. Let's say that many of the people in the game believe that if a tanker taunts an enemy, then they get all the XP, and the other teammates don't. So they go to the tanker forum to complain, and to insist that all tankers stop selfishly using taunt. At first, the tankers just explain that that's not how it works, and then in more and more detail as more and more people complain. Guides are written explaining the XP and aggro mechanics of the game. How taunting onto the character best able to handle the incoming damage benefits the whole team and makes XP flow faster for everyone. But the misconception turns out to be very persistent. I was on a team, and the tanker leveled when nobody else did! How can you horrible tanker regulars steal XP from the casual players like that? No amount of explanation makes it go away. Eventually, the tanker forum regulars just give up and resort to mockery. They start calling themselves ebil taunters. Some brag about all the XP they've stolen even though they don't believe it. No thread is safe. Everything devolves.
Now, I've certainly phrased that in such a way that the truth is on the side of the taunting tankers. But we could assert the opposite. Maybe the tanker taunt haters are actually right, and the taunt tankers are suffering from some sort of mass delusion. Maybe they have a great general understanding of aggro and XP mechanics, but are missing some critical flaws in their analysis. Some of them may even be misrepresenting the situation intentionally. But even if so, the vast majority of the taunting tanks don't believe it to be true, have a serious understanding of aggro and XP mechanics, and feel that they're not just in the right, but are obviously in the right with a vast bulk of evidence to back them up.
So regardless of where the truth stands, what do you expect to happen to people going to the tanker forum to discuss XP and their dislike of taunt? They're going to get mocked. The tankers are SICK of it. They've heard it all before and they're ready to scream they're so sick of it.
"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
Indeed!
If we're short tempered, it's only because we've heard it all a million times before, and debunked it a million and a half times.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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This is pretty complicated and difficult, but try to stay with me:
If they wanted a store, they wouldn't have made a market.
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Hmm. For 8 issues, we had stores and no market. Guess the devs are allowed to change their minds. Sometimes, no matter how great an idea seems, it needs reworked once its been out for a while. and sometimes, ideas need scrapped altogether. The market is neither. It should stay as it is, for the most part. But the reward structure of the REST of the game, should be brought in line with the market. Y'know, Positron was all about "reward per time spent" a while back, and the market breaks that. A store is the easiest way to restore some parity. (and the worst way, absolutely the worst way, is to limit marketeers even more than available slots already do. The devs should be trying to get MORE people playing on the market, not less.)
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We had no drops and no crafting for 8 issues.
The entire pre-I9 game still exists including the stores. You don't have to use the markets to get inventions either, but you may be spending an awful lot of time beating up badguys and running TFs to get them.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Nethergoat said
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I'm too used to blaming merits for the pool C die-off, when the real cause was the Katie nerf it camouflaged.
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Merits have TWO flaws.
1) You can get exactly what you want at a ludicrously high price, compared to getting random things including exactly what you want. People read "You can get exactly what you want" and then assumed that the price was set wrong. They paid the price and complained about it.
2) Near-infinite storability. It's a decision to spend merits, it's not a decision to store them "for a while longer." Especially when you aren't comfortable merits ... if you never spend them, you never find out that you've made a horrible mistake and wasted the reward for twenty hours of your life. That combined with a situation where, right or wrong, max level is most valuable; the system actually penalizes people for generating anything at any level but 50.
I found a few people willing to sell me merit rolls for cash at sub-50 levels . Some of them had never cashed in merits for a roll before, and had hundreds of merits. Some of them had notoriously bad luck (in Minotaur's case, the reputation was magnificently well deserved.) People didn't want the "I screwed up" no-prize.
In short, merits would have worked if humans figured out the obvious right thing to do, and did it. They did not.
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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Here's my analogy, and it's one I used before. Let's say that many of the people in the game believe that if a tanker taunts an enemy, then they get all the XP, and the other teammates don't.
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Interesting analogy, Werner. Like most, this thread has been fun to read from beginning to end and there are a million places I wanted to hit the 'Reply' button, but by the time I got to the end pretty much everything I could have said has been said.
I'll just add my two cents that as long as there is a monetary system in the game, it won't matter how it is configured. Somebody out there will find something about it they don't like and wander here to complain about it. That's just life. There is no such thing as a perfect system. The only thing you can do is to satisfy as much of the player base as you can. I don't see anything with the market that requires further change.
There are now two systems that make it so that interaction with the market is minimized: Merits and tickets. Whether you spend your time in the market, grinding merits, or earning tickets, it all takes some investiture of time. What you choose to do with that time is completely up to you. You say you don't like the market? Well then, be prepared to spend your time waiting for something to drop or work on earning the tickets or merits needed in order to roll what you want. In my opinion, the market is the easiest way to get exactly what you want because the only randomness involved is whether somebody has listed the desired item lower than your bid.
One of the simplest marketeering strategies I know if is that when you find a recipe you want, buy more than you need and sell the extra crafted IOs for profit. In most cases the crafted IO will sell for a good deal more than the recipe itself. It doesn't take that long to look and see a particular recipe will turn a profitable IO. Combining this strategy with selling your drops along the way should ensure a steady stream of income to net whatever you might fancy.
The whole point of the game isn't to to be fun (sorry to burst that bubble), the point is to make money. In order to make money, the game has to attract and keep subscribers (which does denote that some level of enjoyment is involved). One of the main ways to keep subscribers is to have a loot system that provides incentive to remain involved in the game. It is a delicate balance to provide the rewards in a way to keep subscribers playing as long as possible before deciding it isn't worth the time. Reaching this balance is why I see the Devs doing what they have been doing since the inception of the market and with the implementation of the merit and ticket rewards. Everything is designed with the intent to bring in revenue, period.
It seems like the casual gamer always comes in to these discussions, and while I once felt some degree of sympathy for them, I have lost it. There are any number of ways to earn influence on the market with a remarkably small investment of time once you have learned the mechanics of the system, all of which come up regularly in any number of threads on this forum. If they look at the cost of a recipe and curse the whole system instead of seeking a way to earn it, there really isn't anything that can be done to help them. If they want a build that can solo AVs or solo TFs, I think they have moved out of the realm of the casual gamer.
I realize this has turned into a little more than a two-cent post, but just as others have felt the desire to add their voice to those who oppose the system as it stands, I felt the desire to add my voice in support of it.
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Actually, I've thought of a few ways the devs can address the inherent advantage of marketeering. First and easiest: put in a store that sells recipes. Uncommons 10 million per. Rares 20 million per. Ultra rare and PvP: 50 million per. The market would still be the cheapest way to get everything (after an adjustment period), but it would also effectively cap prices (without any way to work around it: the price caps would be set by the market as it adjusts.)
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You might be surprised at just how uniformed (read that as stupid if you like) many of the market haters are. Several of us here have made influence by buying Common end mod recipes from the invention tables and listing them higher than table + 10%. They sell too and many times they sell immediately.
-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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This may fall short of my standard of concrete fact, but it is IMHO the most reasonable explanation of why they would spend a lot of time and energy building an alternative supply chain when they already had a perfectly viable one in place.
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Try this for an different explanation for why alternate supply chains were devised for aspects of the game:
Perhaps the developers were looking at building a comprehensive peripheral to add to the game. One that provides additional rewards beyond experience and the usual drops.
If anything can be learned from the example of PvP, it is that adding a peripheral aspect to an existing game without any tangible rewards won't draw players to that aspect.
Adding a merit system to TF/SFs/story arcs and ticket rewards to MA enriches those different aspects of the game, so players can exercise greater choices in how they play the game. I don't believe the "market is the game." It is a peripheral aspect of the game that players can choose to particpate in. If the developers are guilty of anything, it is failing to ascertain the many different effects that one peripheral would have on other peripherals i.e. the effects merits and tickets would have on the market.
While complaining about the dev's decisions and decrying DOOM has become popular sport, it is far from the objective reality. Continuing to add rich peripherals to the already established game makes good business sense for a company trying to stay alive in a very competitive MMO market.
Global: @FuzzyOne
Find me playing these servers: Champion, Justice, Freedom, Virtue and Pinnacle
Excellent points, Ful.
Trading a guaranteed roll for a handful of redeemable tokens that may or may not get lost in the couch cushions in the base definitely had an impact.
Katie generated a ton of recipes, merits just generate a ton of merits.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Adding a merit system to TF/SFs/story arcs and ticket rewards to MA enriches those different aspects of the game, so players can exercise greater choices in how they play the game. I don't believe the "market is the game." It is a peripheral aspect of the game that players can choose to particpate in.
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You make a good point about game depth.
My issue is I look at the time and energy spent on a largely superfluous system and imagine it going to something compelling.
Which I realize is silly, it could just as easily have been spent on something equally redundant, or just downright dumb.
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If the developers are guilty of anything, it is failing to ascertain the many different effects that one peripheral would have on other peripherals i.e. the effects merits and tickets would have on the market.
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They can't say nobody told them, because we did.
Quite loudly.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
I'm sorry I didn't notice this thread earlier. I can't read it all now, but I'll toss in my two cents: most of the "myths" about the market are taken as articles of faith by the people who believe them, and nothing will ever "bust" those myths as far as they are concerned.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
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[But here's what I dont get...
How come when people come in here to "complain" as you guys say, about the market, yall jump down their throat. THEN when they go to defend themselves and others like them, you feel like you need to force your opinion down their throats and sway them. Now, I agree, yes, knowledge of the system DEFINATELY helps. But just because I understand the inner workings of, lets say, some other country's government, that doesnt mean I like the way it works.(bad analogy? sorry couldnt think of anything else at the moment lol)
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How about a more appropriate analogy?
Someone comes into our back yard. Looks at the immaculate landscaping we spent 4 years of careful cultivation and research to do even to the point that we even have our own hybrid roses.
If they ask a question like, "how do you get roses like that to grow?" We will spend hours telling you exactly how to get roses just like this, or maybe even roses better than this, or roses that are almost as good but don't take nearly the effort. You are welcome to stay in our back yard and watch us work and if you want you can even help us transplant stuff, we might even give you a cutting.
If you instead come into our back yard that has immaculate landscaping we spent 4 years of careful cultivation and immediately say," Those rose flowers smell funny, I only want periwinkle blue ones, with out thorns, that smell like pancakes and syrup. I don't want to have to use fertilizer, weed, or in other ways dig in the dirt because dirt diggers are second class citizens. Oh and I want all this in 2 days capice?"
GET OUTTA MY YARD!
-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
Hawr!
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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This is pretty complicated and difficult, but try to stay with me:
If they wanted a store, they wouldn't have made a market.
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Well, they do have 2 stores of a kind now. Merits and tickets.
So obviously they believe people should invest time in earning tickets, merits or inf or invest time in the market.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.