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In the end we fed this thread, with opinions that really don't matter since the market still flourishes.
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Your opinions, our facts. But we know that's what you meant.
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Actually, a lot of the claims made by various folks in this thread can be easily checked by the size of the claimants' wallets. I may be wrong, but I'm rich...so I don't think so. 
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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Knight: I believe the weighting is on a 1-to-5 scale based on popularity at the time of the weighting, with some fudge factors added in. You're 5 times as likely to roll a LoTG: Recharge as a Trap of the Hunter triple.
How much more imbalance would you like them to add?
You can call a 50% increase (over "all good recipes") a drop in the bucket if you like. I see it as "half a bucket in the bucket" myself.
On the salvage side, I think the most expensive tech rare was about 100K before the change; it went up to half a million or a million. I don't remember the arcane prices but I think high-end arcanes went down by half a million or a million.
And on the costume side... well, I agree that costumes parts are fairly minor. That's why I didn't mention them in this context.
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Ok unless my math is totally off.....
Merits = 66% decrease in total supply. The remaining 33% got a 50% increase in "good stuff".
So I have a 50% higher chance of rolling something good coupled with 66% fewer opportunities to roll.
That doesn't sound like an increase to me. It sounds more like government weasel work where they increase taxes by 66% and then "give" you a 16.5% tax break afterwards that you are supposed to be thankful for. All the while telling you, "See! We cut taxes!"
So while my bucket used to be 100% full and 40% of it was fish and 60% water. I now have a bucket that's only a third full but 60% of that is fish? (using your previous junk to good stuff ratios) I'm a lot shorter on water but I'm still short on fish compared to where I was before.
Pre-merit total supply of Pool C's "felt" right. Most people had reasonable expectations, prices weren't really out of line, and there were enough of the top end things to go around if you wanted to put in a bit of effort.
Post merits there were neither enough recipes nor an adequate amount of "the good ones."
Post weighting there are more good ones but still not enough total supply.
Tickets..... well quite frankly, tickets are a mess, and will be until they get someone that knows something about economics working on the game.
-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
I don't know if pre-merit supply of pool C's felt right because it was what we were used to, or because there is some intuitive "rightness". (I don't know how to measure rightness, but there's probably a way that I'm missing. )
I will agree that merits had some gruesome unexpected results. Yes, I can do posi/synapse/sister psyche/citadel and get 12 rolls instead of 4. But for every one of me there's a whole lot of people going for the guaranteed LoTG. Or waiting till 50, Tragedy of the Commons-style. Or not knowing what to do with their merits, so doing NOTHING.
I think there probably are enough "of the top end things" (by I9 standards, certainly - top end builds didn't have any purples or PVP specials) to go around if you want to put in some effort, but only when you hit level 50.
How are you estimating "merits produce 1/3 of the total supply we used to get", by the way? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that I don't have a guess on that. There's some multiplier for "no more half hour katies", some multiplier for "people who have two hundred merits and don't know it", some multiplier for "taking the guaranteed LoTG" and some multiplier for "people who used to run Sister Psyche, and now run Sister Psyche for twice the number of recipes."
I dunno.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
I don't think the gruesome results or people saving merits was entirely unexpected. it was one of the very things that the devs touted as a feature of merits: you can save your way to whatever you want, but it is generally more efficient to roll randoms.
If there was an underestimation by the devs, it was in just how many people want the shinies, but HATE the market system. Like I was 3 months ago. Like the OP. People who don't WANT to use the market, and don't understand why prices are so high.
People who want the shinies that the devs wanted to be exceptionally rare. The devs underestimated the desire of a great many players to get the best recipes in the game (I don't know how they missed this one, though...) They ALSO misread how many people would go to any lengths to avoid the market.
Truth is, when prices reach tens or hundreds of millions, for every poster that comes here and complains about the high prices, how many people simply look, decide they'll never be able to afford market prices, and start hoarding merits? I don't know the answer, but I will say that the people who don't use the forums and think prices are too high, are not going to come here, they aren't going to learn anything, and they will simply abandon the idea of ever using the market at all.
That's a bad deal all around. The players who walk away aren't contributing to the market, and they aren't benefiting from it.
119088 - Outcasts Overcharged. Heroic.
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I don't think the gruesome results or people saving merits was entirely unexpected. it was one of the very things that the devs touted as a feature of merits: you can save your way to whatever you want, but it is generally more efficient to roll randoms.
If there was an underestimation by the devs, it was in just how many people want the shinies, but HATE the market system. Like I was 3 months ago. Like the OP. People who don't WANT to use the market, and don't understand why prices are so high.
People who want the shinies that the devs wanted to be exceptionally rare. The devs underestimated the desire of a great many players to get the best recipes in the game (I don't know how they missed this one, though...) They ALSO misread how many people would go to any lengths to avoid the market.
Truth is, when prices reach tens or hundreds of millions, for every poster that comes here and complains about the high prices, how many people simply look, decide they'll never be able to afford market prices, and start hoarding merits? I don't know the answer, but I will say that the people who don't use the forums and think prices are too high, are not going to come here, they aren't going to learn anything, and they will simply abandon the idea of ever using the market at all.
That's a bad deal all around. The players who walk away aren't contributing to the market, and they aren't benefiting from it.
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while thats true..all i can really say in response is..Tough cookies to them. Its not the dev's responsibility to give them loot they dont want to make the effort to get any more than it the government irl's responsibility to give out free ferraris to everyone who thinks they deserve one.
Its a luxury good, something you buy for the pleasure of because you can afford it, not a necessity.
You dont need IOs to be equipped for anything in this game outside more hardcore situations like the RWZ challenge or speedruns, which are hardcore gamer territory anyhow.
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
The point I was making, though, was that it isn't just them losing out. less people supplying the market means less overall supply, which leads to higher prices, which forms a barrier to entry in people's minds.
I'm not talking about people who aren't willing to make the effort, either. I'm talking about people who are willing to put in a LOT of effort just to avoid the market. And to be honest, responses like "tough cookies to them" isn't helpful towards getting people to use the market instead of walking away from it for good.
The TO/DO/SO sytem works just fine, so no need to change it. But IOs are better. The market and current drop rates work fine, but they COULD be better, encouraging people to use the market, rather than driving a number of players away from it. Which is why I still argue that "ultra rare" was a mistake. Of course, someone posted upthread that costume pieces were supposed to be high-dollar items originally too. The devs changed their minds there. I dont' think that making purples fall from the sky is a good idea, but I don't think that getting one should be the equivalent of winning the lottery either.
119088 - Outcasts Overcharged. Heroic.
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The point I was making, though, was that it isn't just them losing out. less people supplying the market means less overall supply, which leads to higher prices, which forms a barrier to entry in people's minds.
I'm not talking about people who aren't willing to make the effort, either. I'm talking about people who are willing to put in a LOT of effort just to avoid the market. And to be honest, responses like "tough cookies to them" isn't helpful towards getting people to use the market instead of walking away from it for good.
The TO/DO/SO sytem works just fine, so no need to change it. But IOs are better. The market and current drop rates work fine, but they COULD be better, encouraging people to use the market, rather than driving a number of players away from it. Which is why I still argue that "ultra rare" was a mistake. Of course, someone posted upthread that costume pieces were supposed to be high-dollar items originally too. The devs changed their minds there. I dont' think that making purples fall from the sky is a good idea, but I don't think that getting one should be the equivalent of winning the lottery either.
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well, I can kinda agree there. But Maybe I'm cynical to a degree. I just find a lot from irl experience, that people who actively hate something like the market for uninformed reasons rarely if ever will change their minds even if you nicely explain to them why you think theyre misguided.
Case in point being this topic itself. People DID explain to jdouble why his reasoning was flawed. They DID try to be patient. His response was the equivalent of plugging his ears and going "IM NOT LISTENING IM RITE UR WRONG"
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
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I am upset I was enjoying Comic Con and missed this thread.
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We could lobotomize you every week-end, so it would be like reading this thread over and over again. 
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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That's a bad deal all around. The players who walk away aren't contributing to the market, and they aren't benefiting from it.
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Therein is the crux of the complaint many in this forum had with the idea, even if we had no issue with the fundamental concept of letting people do what they want (avoid the market). When you create a parallel system, then by definition that removes actors from the market, because that's the point. The problem is that, if they don't want that mechanism to wholly replace the market, it has to be less efficient than the market.* The result is that that set of constraints mean that practically everyone loses compared to the original position.
[*] Avid market users see decreased sale volumes, because players are producing fewer items/time and fewer are selling what they are producing.[*] "Casual" market users (by which I mean ones with minimal market trend and/or usage information) see higher prices due to reduced supply and are apparently dissuaded from the market more[*] Players who do equip using merits do so, generally, at a greater average time to acquire each item
Of course, it's arguably an improvement for the people who refused to use the market, or were so woefully ignorant of it that they took a bath when they did use it. I would question the wisdom of giving everyone else a raw deal to "improve" things for these people, since it's an improvement only because they could not or would not use the system that worked at greater efficiency.
Unfortunately, we know that's not the only reason the devs created merits. They created them to allow more granular control of playerbase-wide median item creation rates. I very much understand why the devs would be interested in this, and merits are one of the most straightforward yet flexible means by which to implement such control. That more than anything surely guaranteed we would get them, market impacts be damned.
* In theory, you could try to strike a balance where it was just as efficient as the market so the two would be used equally. I don't see how that's practically possible for any real system where one side operates on fixed-prices like the merit creation costs for recipes while the other system is dynamic in response to supply and demand.
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
I don't know if it's just me, but I wonder if the challenge of learning how to use the market is really something so daunting as it seems. I remember when the markets were first introduced to the game. Of course prices were a lot lower all around back then, but I remember the thrill of excitement I had when I listed one of my first drops on the market for maybe 10 influence and winning 2,000.
To a former altoholic used to buying DOs for low-level toons, 2,000 influence was a lot. After that first sale, I went out and started accumulating more salvage and listing it on the market for higher prices to see if people would still pay for it. My items still sold! I was so excited when I reached my first million in influence and thinking the world was my oyster. Of course, i was still mostly ignorant of how IOs worked, so I was happy.
As time went on, I intuitively started realizing that this market was like any other: That when there is something people want, there is an opportunity for profit. Just from playing the game, I discovered which items were in demand just by how much people were paying for them. Items like luck charms and ancient artifacts were some of my main money makers back in the day. I'd buy a stack of 10 at low prices and relist to make profit.
Gradually, I became more aware of IOs and how they were the ticket to major influence gains. I started buying recipes, crafting and selling. Up till now, that has been my main means of accumulating more wealth than I can spend on my now completely IO'd (with 1 purple set of 5 Hecatomb and 4 LotG) out main toon.
When I set out to IO my main toon, I knew prices were high, but I also knew that there was a way to earn influence just by selling items I knew people wanted that I didn't need. I played the game, selling recipes if they were worth enough and crafting others that were even better. Eventually, over time, I was able to get every IO I wanted to maximize my build. It took time, it took effort, but I never let the prices daunt me away from getting what I wanted.
I honestly believe that anybody can get anything they want in this game, even if they are a casual gamer, if they just use a little bit of brain power. The mechanics of the market in this game are not that complicated for those who will take a little time to learn how to use them. If they are too obstinate and turned off by high prices, well, that really is nobody's fault but their own.
[ QUOTE ]
I don't know if it's just me, but I wonder if the challenge of learning how to use the market is really something so daunting as it seems. I remember when the markets were first introduced to the game. Of course prices were a lot lower all around back then, but I remember the thrill of excitement I had when I listed one of my first drops on the market for maybe 10 influence and winning 2,000.
To a former altoholic used to buying DOs for low-level toons, 2,000 influence was a lot. After that first sale, I went out and started accumulating more salvage and listing it on the market for higher prices to see if people would still pay for it. My items still sold! I was so excited when I reached my first million in influence and thinking the world was my oyster. Of course, i was still mostly ignorant of how IOs worked, so I was happy.
As time went on, I intuitively started realizing that this market was like any other: That when there is something people want, there is an opportunity for profit. Just from playing the game, I discovered which items were in demand just by how much people were paying for them. Items like luck charms and ancient artifacts were some of my main money makers back in the day. I'd buy a stack of 10 at low prices and relist to make profit.
Gradually, I became more aware of IOs and how they were the ticket to major influence gains. I started buying recipes, crafting and selling. Up till now, that has been my main means of accumulating more wealth than I can spend on my now completely IO'd (with 1 purple set of 5 Hecatomb and 4 LotG) out main toon.
When I set out to IO my main toon, I knew prices were high, but I also knew that there was a way to earn influence just by selling items I knew people wanted that I didn't need. I played the game, selling recipes if they were worth enough and crafting others that were even better. Eventually, over time, I was able to get every IO I wanted to maximize my build. It took time, it took effort, but I never let the prices daunt me away from getting what I wanted.
I honestly believe that anybody can get anything they want in this game, even if they are a casual gamer, if they just use a little bit of brain power. The mechanics of the market in this game are not that complicated for those who will take a little time to learn how to use them. If they are too obstinate and turned off by high prices, well, that really is nobody's fault but their own.
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Its honestly easier than most.
I started out with MMO-ing in the cutthroat world of ff11 markets, which are horrifically hard to profit in based on just manipulating the market or crafting.
I then moved onto CoH a few months before IOs went live, and at that point was not really trying but even then, had enough cash to at least buy my DOs and SOs with the market. Onto WoW where I finally started trying to make money..but mostly just by gathering junk and selling it.
Then I came back to CoH, and after a few months of roleplaying, levelling, and taking a bath on bad bid ideas and get rich schemes, I came to reading these forums a bit and having nothing better to do, i decided to actually try my hand at marketing.
Its been about two months and a half of semi-serious work, and I now have about 400 million in liquid assets with 200 mil tied up in bids or stuff listed for sale. On my main toon alone.
Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!
Arc ID 58363!
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The result is that that set of constraints mean that practically everyone loses compared to the original position.
[/ QUOTE ]
Which is why I view merits as little more than a supply nerf.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
[ QUOTE ]
Its been about two months and a half of semi-serious work, and I now have about 400 million in liquid assets with 200 mil tied up in bids or stuff listed for sale. On my main toon alone.
[/ QUOTE ]
There you have it. I know that I spent right around 1.4 Billion to IO out my main toon. I did transfer some LotG: Recharges from another toon so that cost would have been higher if I had been starting from scratch.
I am not an extremely hardcore gamer, as far as I know. I usually actually play the game around 10 hours a week. Most of that game time is on the weekend. I do check into my account daily to move around the items I am currently trading on, but that doesn't take more than 5 or 10 minutes of my time.
As it is, when I logged out today I had just over 1 Billion in liquid influence, some of it tied up in bids, and I have a good accumulation of some items I am planning on putting up this coming 2XP weekend. All that in addition to my nicely IOd out toon and a few current alts that are earning their WW badges as we speak.
It really is a shame that some people won't take the little bit of time it takes to really earn a lot of influence on the market, just because they see prices and deem them too high. Even more saddening are those who demand an overhaul of the system, just because it doesn't meet their schedule of being able to maximize their toons.
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The result is that that set of constraints mean that practically everyone loses compared to the original position.
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Which is why I view merits as little more than a supply nerf.
[/ QUOTE ]
It isn't really hard to see it that way when that's exactly the effect it had. I still get a little flare of agitation when I think of the release of I13, but that gets me nowhere. You just have to learn to adapt and roll with the punches, as painful as they sometimes are. Sure, it takes a good amount more influence to do what you could pre-I13, but it can still be done. The game hasn't been broken but merely tweaked to be a little more challenging, as I am sure the Devs intended.
The Devs vastly underestimated people's abilities to answer a leading question like Kirk instead of Spock.
"12 times the cost of a random roll is a really bad deal, so you should do what?"
" Complain about the ratio and do it anyway!"
" Work 12 times as hard!"
" Ignore merits, because they're obviously a trap!"
" Give up and only slot SO's!"
" Threaten to self-destruct the ship! " (self-destroy the ship?)
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
[ QUOTE ]
How are you estimating "merits produce 1/3 of the total supply we used to get", by the way? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that I don't have a guess on that. There's some multiplier for "no more half hour katies", some multiplier for "people who have two hundred merits and don't know it", some multiplier for "taking the guaranteed LoTG" and some multiplier for "people who used to run Sister Psyche, and now run Sister Psyche for twice the number of recipes."
[/ QUOTE ]
Emprically rather than scientifically since I don't have access to dev datamining tools. Unfortunate but there it is. I'll give you my numbers, observations, and reasoning and you can decide from there.
It started out from sometime before EvilRyu's "are the drops equally weighted thread". I had been tracking my drops and the TFs that I was running to get them. I expanded it later on to include the "X TF forming" tells in the 5 very busy global channels (across 3 servers Freedom, Virtue, and Justice) I was in. (2 of those channels were at capacity, to give you an idea of how busy the channels I was referencing are). I don't remember when I started keeping track as I didn't write down dates or anything. I just had a note pad file that I kept open and added tick marks to then tallied at the end of my play sessions, to track how many of which TF was forming. At that point in time I was playing ~ 2 hours a day on week days and as many as 4-6 on weekends.
1) Out of the 3,128 TFs that I tracked, Speedens (14% of the total) and KHTFs (83% of the total) accounted for 97% of the total pre-merit task forces, over the 3ish months that I tracked it. That percentage would have been higher except that I started many of the non-KHTF/Speedens myself so that I could get TF Commander accolades on several of my toons. I was responsible for starting ALL of the Positron TFs that were formed during that time period and I counted the 3 Posi's that my wife and I Duo'd in that reckoning.
2) When Merits were first introduced, (if I am remembering every thing correctly) their standard was 1 merit per 5 minutes of the mean time of the data mined TF. Eden was 2 merits (10 Minutes), KHTF was 7 (35 minutes), and ITF was 20 (100 minutes). Random reward rolls cost 20 merits making the ITF the new standard.
Factoring in (1) and (2) we went from ~31 minutes per random roll to 100 minutes per random roll. That's less than 1/3 the of the previous supply levels.
3) Mid-High range recipes that I was tracking jumped in price and stabilized at about 275% higher than previous. LotG +7.5s went from about 20 million each to about 60 million each in that time frame.
4) I discounted Merit rewards for Oro arcs since post merit global chatter indicated that Oro was less than 1% of the team run content.
5) I discounted Merit rewards for Story arcs since my experience soloing 10 characters in Story arcs alone (excepting enough radios to get each bank and temp power) from 1-35 resulted in an average of 256 merits. It was slightly higher than that average on characters that stayed at heroic difficulty from 1-35 and markedly lower on characters that could (and did) increase difficulty. (Usually 1 bump at level 12 and DOs and then another bump at level 20 and Stamina, followed by 1 or 2 bumps at level 22 with SOs and 3 slotted Stamina depending on the character) additionally only the arc holder got end of arc reward merits further reducing this item as a possible extra supply of Pool C/D recipes.
The reasons that I discounted any merits gained in 4 and 5 were:
6) Failed/abandonded TFs.
7) Diminishing returns on repeat TFs. Pre-merit you could run 2 back to back KHTFs, claim one recipe, log off with the award screen still up and log back in 3 hours later to claim another recipe. Dimishing returns hits immediately, increases with multiples of the same TF and is on a 24 hour timer instead of a 3 hour timer.
8) Players that save to purchase exact recipes. Judging from posts in this forum at that time there were a statistically significant number of players that were going to be using this option and burning up multiple random rolls worth of Merits on single recipes.
9) Merits are non-transferable in units of less than 20. That means that as an example if all players ran 3 KHTFs and gained 21 merits, random rolled one recipe and then they had 1 merit left over. Multiply this by a player base of approximately 100,000 players and then again by 12 characters per server and this alone equals 60,000 random rolls that aren't making it to the market any time soon if ever. That's for a single left over merit but the numbers can go as high as 19 left over merits per character.
10) Merit hoarders. People that don't spend their merits. I know there are some because I am one (I have over 7000 unspent merits across all my characters, there are currently no Pool C/D recipes that I want/need to complete builds, I don't need to make random rolls to craft and sell since I have more inf than I can currently spend and I know how to easily get lots more, I can't use merits to buy Purples and PvP recipes, and I have 3 1/2 SG storage bins full of the Pool C/Ds and Purples that I might use on any future alts) and there have been a few threads in this forum about other folks that hoard their merits.
I am making an educated guess that 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 consume significantly more merits than 4 and 5 create. On February 10th Synapse changed the numbers of merits awarded by various tasks, in most cases they were increased slightly with the exception of a few outliers and merit/unit time was changed from 1 per 5 minutes to 1 per 3 minutes for TFs, from 1 per ~4.5 minutes to 1 per 2.5 minutes for trials, and from 1 per ~14 minutes to 1 per 7.5 minutes for Story Arcs. I'm making another educated guess that this change only makes up for the greater loss of merits from 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 than 4 and 5 produced. Close enough for me to call it a wash.
That leaves me with 1, 2, and 3 above and supply levels approximately 1/3 the pre-merit levels.
This is getting to be a novel but let me finish with tickets and just a couple reasons why they blow merits and standard drops completely out of the water.
Here are the merit costs for the various items available.
[*]Large Inspiration: 1 Merit [*]Single Origin Enhancement (levels 20-50 only): 8 Merits [*]Invention Salvage (three "tier" options: Levels 10-25, Levels 26-40, Levels 41-50): [*]Random Rare Salvage: 20 Merits [*]Random Rare Magic Salvage: 30 Merits [*]Random Rare Tech Salvage: 30 Merits [*]Common Invention Recipe: 12 Merits [*]Invention Origin Enhancement Sets (select specific recipes): [*]Uncommon Enhancement Recipe: 50-75 Merits [*]Rare Enhancement Recipe: 125-275 Merits [*]Random Rare Recipe Roll: 20 Merits
Pre-per mission ticket cap it was ridiculouly easy to hit the 9,999 ticket cap in under an hour (I was able to do it consistantly). Post per mission ticket cap it is still possible though more difficult to amass those 9,999 tickets in an hour.
[*]9,999 tickets in an hour is almost 3 gold rolls. That's 3 hours worth of TF merit gains.[*]3 minutes worth of merit gains will buy you a single tier 3 insp. AE boss farms drop more tier 3 insps than you can use without spending a single ticket.[*]An SO is 24 minutes of Merit gains. An SO is 75 tickets. You can get more than enough tickets to buy 1 SO each minute.[*]A Random Rare Salvage with merits takes 60 minutes of TF time (90 minutes if you want to narrow it down to tech or arcane). You can get 18 of the exact rare salvage you want for less than an hour's worth of tickets.[*]Merits are rewarded for only certain specific content. Much of the easy and quick dev created content rewards less than 1 merit per 3 minutes. Radio and Bank missions award none. Player created MA missions that are equivalent to (or easier than) Dev created story arcs, radios and bank missions award tickets at faster than TF levels and award them to all players on the team not just the mission holder.
There's lots more here but I believe my point has been made.
-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
(*sigh* All this thread needs is for someone to mention merging the markets and then it will be the THREAD OF PAIN! 
)
FWIW my guess is that the devs don't really look at inf levels in the game, past perhaps the three stats of total inf in the game, inf creation rate and inf destruction rate... although given the inflation we've seen of late I doubt they even look at these.
I suspect they actually look at the amount of items in the game, and also items/time played.
Inf doesn't unbalance the game. Stuff does. If I never spend my billion influence, it may as well not exist. More to the point, if one day I suddenly do decide to spend 1B inf, the item I want has to be in the game for me to buy it. If the devs control the stuff, then the inf will look after itself.
P.S. Everyone should stop the personal attacks or I'll request that a mod lock the thread. I'm serious. I'm like a crazed weasel! I could explode any minute like an overripe paint tin!!! Inside a weasel!!
Ultimately the market issue from what I see stems from a number of things:
a) influence is just too damn abundant
b) The drop pools are just too damn big. the odds of you getting what you want are low and the odds of getting yet another pacing the turtle is high
c) players have no options to work towards what they want specifically except for reward merits. And frankly the prices to get specific recipes is just ludicrous
If the drop pools could be broken down into smaller selections to roll in that would help make the odds a little more forgiving towards getting what you want.
If reward merit specific choice prices were HALVED that MIGHT help. It would also give folk some incentive to step outside of AE and do some TFs/Story Arcs/Flashbacks.
Its just frustrating when you're WILLING to put in the time and effort to get something but have only 1 avenue to get anything specific (not counting purples of course) and that avenue requires and extraordinary amount of play to get even 1 thing unless you're chaining TFs.
Ultimately prices would go down on things if the odds of getting the stuff people actually want went up. I honestly wouldnt mind the devs taking a pass at the crap that always seems to drop and maybe making this recipes/set bonuses suck less. But thats just me.
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#13809065 - 07/27/09 04:36 AM
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(*sigh* All this thread needs is for someone to mention merging the markets and then it will be the THREAD OF PAIN! )
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#13805361 - 07/26/09 03:23 AM
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Unfortunatly, playing the market is part of the game, and the Dev's do it as well. I believe it was Ex Libris who said that playing the market adds dynamics into the game. It was the reason she gave as to why not to merge markets, and it fits quite nicely into why not to add a price cap into the market. That and supply on many items would be zero, and I would start selling my purple recipes for 400mil via posts on the market forums
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#13805607 - 07/26/09 06:38 AM
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4) Unmerged markets. More transactions available to more players make a less dynamic, more stable market, that has lower prices for the same amount of goods. If the devs wanted lower prices, especially red side, they would have merged the markets long ago.
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Heh.
I've actually dropped my opposition to a market merge... since AE I don't think the markets are different enough in character to keep them separate. The good news (for me) is that they are more like the pre-AE redside market than the blue, IMO.
It could, however, just be that I've been marketing less and don't notice the difference any more <shrug>
I still think Going Rouge will end up in a market merge, or at least a defacto merge. What market will Rogues buy from?
QR: The Market in Praetoria, where they'll get the new salvage (some was spelled out on the Market earlier) and so on?
If it can be made more plodding and inefficient, then...
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Its just frustrating when you're WILLING to put in the time and effort to get something but have only 1 avenue to get anything specific (not counting purples of course) and that avenue requires and extraordinary amount of play to get even 1 thing unless you're chaining TFs.
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Actually, the market itself is a second avenue to get the top-tier stuff. And to be honest, the market is several times easier and faster. Gathering merits for a specific recipe will, by the statistics, LOSE money (effort, time, INF- it's all the same) over rolling randoms, crafting them, and selling them on the market, earning INF and buying what you want.
And yet people still do it. The problem isn't that it's time-intensive, the problem is, people either don't understand the cost/benefit of buying specific recipes, or they hate the market enough to do it even though it will take longer. People who hoard merits may eventually spend them. People who save towards a single, specific recipe don't generate all those random rolls for the market.
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In other words, people will happily cut off their nose, just to spite their face.
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Milady's Knight said
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This is getting to be a novel
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... and I was like "Yeah! It's great!"
It's always nice to see someone with one actual fact, never mind several, in a discussion like this.
Factless opinions: I agree with you that your points 6-10 almost certainly eliminate more than 4-5 create. (I was a little surprised that the 1-35 non-TF game creates as many merits as it does, but I think you said those were optimal conditions- nearly every XP thing you did created merits.)
It'd be interesting to know what percentage of merits were created by dedicated experts [minimizing 6,9, and 10] and what percentage were created by relatively new people doing the TF for "a variety" of reasons [minimizing 7 but giving more weight to 6,9, and 10.]
8 is the killer.
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So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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In the end we fed this thread, with opinions that really don't matter since the market still flourishes.
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Your opinions, our facts. But we know that's what you meant.
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I honestly think he really thinks he knows what he's talking about. Its sort of funny in a "how the hell did he survive highschool" way.
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