280 Million Inf. for a Purple IO? That's Insane!
By
8_Ball,
Posted on: 2009-07-13 10:24 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Don't want to be in on the AE hate really, but AE has cut into the supply for these quite a bit.
That's not me hating, that's just how it is.
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The AE hate is about people making farms to PL their way up to level 50.
If they weren't using the AE they wouldn't be getting purple drops anyway because they'd still be leveling to 50 the slow way.
QR
1) For all we know, the seller of that WAS a casual player.
2) It's a breeze to make billions of inf in this game. So easy, it's silly. Hell, I'm out of town for 5 days, and I guarantee I'll have made over 500 million inf by the time I get home. Without playing a single minute.
3) Why is 280 mil outrageous? How much SHOULD a purple be? Another player said it should be 280 mil. Why should your opinion (OP) outweigh that player's?
- Ping (@iltat, @Pinghole)
Don't take it personally if you think I was mean to you. I'm an ******* to everyone.
It's a penguin thing. Pingu FTW.
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Dual Builds and AE kinda played a hand in the price gouging of purples recipes.
[/ QUOTE ]That word you use... I don't believe it means what you think it means.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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You know, you can't make a particular purple IO drop. If you want a specific one, the odds are astronomical of getting that one any time soon. Or any time in the next few years, actually.
You can force specific IOs into your hands with merits, just by running task forces. You can random-roll IOs with Architect tickets.
But you can't get purple drops from the merit system, or from ticket rolls, period; and you can't get a specific one from drops either, in any mathematically significant likelihood.
But you CAN buy one with cash on the market.
Due to drop rates, not many of them become available on the market, and everything else in the game can be acquired through non-market, non-cash means. Theoretically the right purple on the market is worth an enormous amount of money, because that's really the only way you can get one, there aren't many, and everything else can be acquired in other, cash-free ways. If you want purples, they're the only thing you have to have money for, so in that sense at least, money exists only to buy purples. So of course it would take a lot to get one, bidding against someone else -- well, everyone else -- who's competing for the same purple.
Considering you can't get better IOs, and they last forever, I think they're undervalued, and have been for a long time.
For the record, I'm not saying this because I'm wealthy and buy all the purples I want. I've bought three purples ever, and the first two were confusion set pieces early on when demand was low for such sets. I have yet to recover financially from buying the third one, some weeks ago.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
Price gouging implies a disreputable practice of charging an unusually high amount of money for a good or service that is required to perform basic activities with knowledge that the good or service will be in high demand based upon an unusual outside influence driving up that demand.
High prices in the market are indicators only of demand, as the price is set by the buyer, not the seller. It is not possible in COX for a person who has something to sell to gouge someone who wants to buy that item, because:
A) The buyer doesn't know who is selling it
B) The buyer sets the price prior to the sale.
C) The seller cannot know if, when, or to whom his item will sell.
D) The actual transaction is created by a neutral third party based on an established rule set that does not vary according to any situation.
E) The high priced items are luxury items that are not required to complete or even be competitive in any ingame content.
The buyers as well as the sellers are responsible for high priced items.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson
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3) Why is 280 mil outrageous? How much SHOULD a purple be? Another player said it should be 280 mil. Why should your opinion (OP) outweigh that player's?
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Who said it does? Opinions don't carry weight with anyone...
That's the beauty of having an opinion - and using them to pose questions. 
That said, almost always the concept of "balance" has been cited as a reason for changing anything in this game - but balanced for whom? Farmers? Casual players? Year one players? Or RP'ers?
So let me turn your question back on you: why should purples be exempt from the discussion of "balancing" issues? And what makes you think 280 million (or even a billion) inf. is worth paying for a purple?
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Another way to look at it is that if you do get the right purple drop, you can sell it and be set for life.
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I've gotten a couple Purples in my time (well, 3 to be exact), and they weren't the high sellers. My Ragnarok: Chance for Knockdown barely sold for more than a Posi: Chance for Energy. It made my brute a fair amount of money but he was hardly set for life. ^^;
I sit in my zen of not being able to do anything right while simultaniously not being able to do anything wrong. Om. -CuppaJo
It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
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Beef Cake's TP Resist.
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Very nice....too bad I didn't save the IO that I got (same IO) till now/this weekend...with all the arena farming stopping/less of it. I sold my tp res IO for 400+ million a few weeks ago. Still makes me 
that I got 400 million hehe.
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So let me turn your question back on you: why should purples be exempt from the discussion of "balancing" issues?
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because they're already well balanced.
Their design goal was to be the best, most desireable IOs available and to appeal to the most hardcore players.
Mission accomplished!
Well, except their glory has been usurped by the PvP IOs, but that should chance once they start dropping again.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Which one was that?
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It's the 3+Defence all plus TP protection unique
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Seriously! That's what I saw this weekend in the auction house when I went looking for an Apocalypse IO and a few other purples to complete a set I'd begun slotting several months ago.
How is *anything* going for 200 million plus inf. on the auction house? Is the system that unbalanced now? [u]There's just no way the casual player is ever going to afford a purple recipe now - or is that the idea?[u]
*edit*
Deleted the $ sign - sorry about that!
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"Casual" is subject to far too many differing intepretations to have any meaning. However, some purple recipes go for as little as a couple of million inf (primarily the control sets) so I don't believe that purple recipes are out of the reach of any level 50 player.
The most popular sets go for extreme amounts. As it should be.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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The buyers as well as the sellers are responsible for high priced items.
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You're ignoring the "supplier" factor - who controls the availability of a product. As a result, they too are responsible for high-priced items.
In this game, the "supplier" is an NPC which means its beyond either the buyer or seller's ability to claim responsibility - and only the Devs can make a difference and they're not vested in the economy like a "for-profit supplier" would be (ie the supplier *wants* your money). This is where and how "the gouge" comes into play - long before the buyers and sellers start playing their own little "hording" games with each other.
The NPC supplier isn't 100% vested in profiting from the system its supplying for...
Incidentally, this is where the base storage nerf also failed. It regulated any and all "hording" opportunities for salvage, however it failed to deal with rare enhancements and/or recipes that are horded in base storage tables and auction house inventory slots.
The market system should force players to keep all "loot" products moving until they're utilized - either slot those puppies, trade 'em or sell 'em, but stop storing and stockpiling them indefinitely (less they be lost forever if/when a player account goes inactive or is outright cancelled).
You can have all the money you want (its only money after all; you can earn more) - but don't expect to get away with hording all the product (especially when there's limited supply...). I say if a 10-slot enhancement storage tray limit is good for toons, then there should be a 10-slot storage limit per toon on the auction house and in base storage units as well. One SG member should not be able to place 100 enhancements in a 100-limit storage table.
This may or may not resolve any "purple" pricing issues but it would help re-balance the rest of the market and put a more reasonable perspective on how players should value a "rare" item like a purple IO against more commonplace items.
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Another way to look at it is that if you do get the right purple drop, you can sell it and be set for life.
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What is this 'set for life' concept of which you speak? I'm unfamiliar with it.
Seriously, I have 300 mil on my main character right now and I don't feel set for life at all. I've never even slotted a single purple before. I have a very nice IO build (about as nice as I could create short of purples or Beefcake's billion influence PvP plus defense item, which I'd slot if I had one) and it probably cost me 300-400 million all told. And you know what? I want to do the same to several other characters. So... 300 million is not enough to make me happy. 
I *might* be happy once I get multiple billions spread across multiple characters. We'll see.
At the same time I was on a team the other night with my level 34 (now 36) MA/Invince scrapper, and someone asked me what epic pool I was going to pick. I said I wasn't enamored with scrapper epic pools, and several people tried to convince me of the merits of a few of the powers, such as Focused Accuracy.
I explained that FA was only a 20% accuracy bonus and was a big endurance hog, and I could easily get more global accuracy with IO set bonuses... and I don't think I convinced anyone because most of my teammates did not slot set IOs at all. One said, "But with FA you can remove an accuracy IO from each attack and slot for more damage!" Yeah, I looked at it that way 2 years ago when I had that power too. ^_^ Back then 280 million WOULD have set me for life. Now? I need more than that to fix up just this one MA scrapper the way that I want... and I have so many other alts....
my lil RWZ Challenge vid
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Seriously! That's what I saw this weekend in the auction house when I went looking for an Apocalypse IO and a few other purples to complete a set I'd begun slotting several months ago.
How is *anything* going for 200 million plus inf. on the auction house? Is the system that unbalanced now? There's just no way the casual player is ever going to afford a purple recipe now - or is that the idea?
*edit*
Deleted the $ sign - sorry about that!
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I've seen a recipie go for 800mil infamy, son.
200mil is tame on my server.
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So let me turn your question back on you: why should purples be exempt from the discussion of "balancing" issues?
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They're not saying they should be exempt. They're saying that "balance" is achieved through letting the market set prices. Theoretically an equilibrium price is eventually reached which reflects the true value players place on the item.
See, in theory, we all want it. How does one quantify who wants it more? Theoretically we all want it equally badly. How does the system allocate this scarce resource (scarce because it was intentionally designed to be scarce -- they wanted something to be rare)? I submit that "first come, first served" is unfair, and "random drops" is unsatisfying -- you're unlikely to ever get the one you want. "Willing to pay" is fair-ER, and a decent measure of differing levels of desire.
Everyone is on a semi-level playing field to earn cash -- it doesn't have to take a lot of logged-in playing time, and although people who were here first have a leg up, it's been shown a new person can make a billion in a month from scratch. What vet badge are you on?
So we are left with the imperfect, but better than the alternatives, market price method for allocating purples.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
I'm always curious about the answer to these questions:
If you want purple recipes and you think purple prices are too high... How many Purple recipes have you ever found? How many are you trying to buy?
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I've seen a recipie go for 800mil infamy, son.
200mil is tame on my server.
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You somehow have access to a single server market? Interesting.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson
Much more elegantly stated than my post, Sailboat.
*thumbsup*
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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The game's monetary system is inherently flawed. You can create money by fighting enemies to spend on the market. However when you spend it on the market you're just giving it to another player.
Very little money is -leaving- the system while millions more is being added per hour. And since the market is cross-server I'm comfortable saying millions per hour. Even the really SLOW hours. :P
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I don't "blame" players for buying and selling these things for as much as the market will bear.
If someone's willing (dumb enough?) to pay a billion INF for a single recipe then more power to them.
But this point about INF being generated far faster that it's being destroyed is a valid point for concern as far as a balanced game economy goes. There are really only two ways INF gets sinked out of the game: the market transaction fees and the "INF to Prestige" conversion outlet. It's completely arguable that these two methods are not being used (or used enough) to prevent a general inflationary trend which could end up making -everything- in this game cost 100s of millions of INF.
I'm not against the market setting the value of things but I am against runaway inflation.
If nothing more is done about removing excess INF that's exactly what we may be faced with. 
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I've seen a recipie go for 800mil infamy, son.
200mil is tame on my server.
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You somehow have access to a single server market? Interesting.
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Oh crap! Forgot Black Markets are server wide @_@
Well I've seen stuff go for WAY more than 200mil recipie-wise, so it's not really much of a problem.
Some marketeers, that are ebil, make 200mil+ in a day or a couple of days.
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In this game, the "supplier" is an NPC which means its beyond either the buyer or seller's ability to claim responsibility.
[/ QUOTE ]No, the NPC is the raw and unprocessed supplies. It's not the seller (which is what the supplier is). Only a small percentage of the crude (NPCs) will result in any products (the purples). No price gouging is occuring.
If you're going to try to blame the drop rate, the closest analogy would be government regulations, not the concept of "price gouging" which most definitely does not mean what you think it does.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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It is possible to be "set for life" on a per-character basis if you have attained your optimal build and only do PvE. On Extor Prime, I have both builds fully slotted for perma-everything and a great many other bonuses. I can kill anything that is theoretically solo-able by an Ill/Rad, if I have enough patience. The only things I can't do on my own require teams to begin with (ship raids, high-level TFs, etc.). Even if a new purple set with amazing bonuses is released, chances are I won't buy it only because every bonus and every slot I have from my current sets has its place, and improving anything will probably cause me to lose one or another bonus I've grown fond of.
I have 300M on hand and nothing to really spend it on, besides maybe tailor, but then again, I have a ton of free tailor session coupons. I could retire from market right now and probably never dip below 300M even if I decide to act all charitable - I generate side income running missions as the "part of life" of the character.
PvP is a different story, everyone's always jockeying for the absolute best, even if the second best lags by 0.05%. But "PvP is a silly place".
That said, I'm going to torture the market until I get to 1-1.5B in liquid cash. By the way, I'm a casual player...
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Dollars you say?
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There's just no way the casual player is ever going to afford a purple recipe now - or is that the idea?
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Correct, casual players do not care about purple sets, because they are not needed. In fact, I'd say most casual players don't care about IO sets at all.
(If you do care about purples, you might want to re-evaluate if you're actually casual or not 
)
I'm not a casual player and even I only have a few sets dotted on various characters.
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Hi my name is Enigma Black, I'm a casual player and I care about purple sets...
I guess that's why I have so many spam emails whenever I log in...
Who do I have to *&^% around here to get more Targeted AoE recipes added?
Arc Name: Tsoo In Love
Arc ID: 413575
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Dollars you say?
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There's just no way the casual player is ever going to afford a purple recipe now - or is that the idea?
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Correct, casual players do not care about purple sets, because they are not needed. In fact, I'd say most casual players don't care about IO sets at all.
(If you do care about purples, you might want to re-evaluate if you're actually casual or not )
I'm not a casual player and even I only have a few sets dotted on various characters.
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Hi my name is Enigma Black, I'm a casual player and I care about purple sets...
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I'm casual too with 10 level 50s and 2 billion infamy.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Dual Builds and AE kinda played a hand in the price gouging of purples recipes.