White salvage to order: a moral necessity

Inadvertent real time example of patient bidding at work:

Going for Field Crafter on a lvl 33 blaster on Infinity (where I have but 2 characters). I'd like to do the 35/40 recharges. They need spell inks and circuit boards.

Character in question has a fairly disrespectable 61 mil on hand.

Spell inks were showing a last 5 price between 50K-100K when I logged on. Since last 5 prices mean pretty much nothing on high turnover items, I placed 2 stacks of bids on spell inks for 5,125 (a very newbie-friendly amount). While traveling to Founders Falls to find Akarist and his coven, 1 order already filled. The other 19 should come in during the night (or at least one stack of 10).

I may have bid a bit too low on the circuit boards to come in overnight, but I can always rebid tomorrow night. I could also buy 2 stacks NAO, but I like having my 61 mil for when I finally re-enable exp.

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My lowest level toon is 18 and he has 40ish mil on him atm from drops.

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Good lord! I don't think I've ever had more than 35M on a level 50 character, ever.

Then again, I hoard drops and set recipes. I only sell what I am certain no character of mine will ever use, which means that most set recipes get saved and stored for the future.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

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Mainly I've gone for bronze rolls. I might think I must have gotten lucky except for the fact that we're talking over a dozen characters.

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I do not make a habit of wasting tickets on recipe rolls. Every time I've done that, I've gotten burned. It is vexing that I have to waste tickets to acquire white salvage also.

The Golden Rule forbids prices from rising or falling based on supply and demand. Even if I could make enough inf selling the junk I get for more than it's worth to buy it at auction for more than it's worth, that only compounds the evil. Better to have even common salvage purchasable for a fixed and known quantity of tickets.

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I'm about as far from a marketeer as you can get, and after an arc mission or two i spend all my tickets on the 70-ticket bronze random recipes, then crafet them up and sell them for 60% of the last 5 sales. I've seen a consistent, gradual, fairly quick rise in my toons inf. I don't even wait for the salvage for crafting them, usually, I'm too impatient.

Eco.

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

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I think it's become a moral necessity

[/ QUOTE ]... Can you do anything but overstate?

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

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My lowest level toon is 18 and he has 40ish mil on him atm from drops.

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Good lord! I don't think I've ever had more than 35M on a level 50 character, ever.

Then again, I hoard drops and set recipes. I only sell what I am certain no character of mine will ever use, which means that most set recipes get saved and stored for the future.

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Which is why you end up 'poor' in inf terms, sorry to say.

The blueside market is a very viable storage and conversion device. Sell what you are not using, use that inf to buy what you need (its generally available).
If you do in fact need what you sold at a later date, you can buy it back, usually at less than you sold your one for.

Redside this doesn't quite work as well, due to the lower turnover in the BM.

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The Golden Rule forbids prices from rising or falling based on supply and demand.

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In a battle between theology and market forces, I am afraid market forces will win as not everyone shares that outlook.

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The Golden Rule forbids prices from rising or falling based on supply and demand.

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In a battle between theology and market forces, I am afraid market forces will win as not everyone shares that outlook.

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Not in the last analysis.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

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The Golden Rule forbids prices from rising or falling based on supply and demand.

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In a battle between theology and market forces, I am afraid market forces will win as not everyone shares that outlook.

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Not in the last analysis.

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Different dev in charge of CoX, I'm afraid.

And I didn't post an update last night, but by 10:30 when I logged, 17 of my desired Spell Inks bid at a newbie-friendly 5,125 had come in, approximately 16 of the Circuit Boards bid at 12,125 (not newbie-friendly, but well under the last 5 prices) and 19 of the 35/40 recipes bid at silly low prices.

Since you are very set on referencing The Dev, I think you'll find in the operator's manual that patience is a virtue. Patience is the signature approach needed to use the market, whether dealing with white salvage or purple recipes.

So what we have in essence is a honour system predicated on the idea that people who have money and use it are immoral, and you need special systems in place to justify your behaviour?

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

There is nothing further I can add to this discussion without risking offending one or more individuals deeply held personal beliefs.

So I'll just refer people to my first post in this thread for my reasons against this suggestion

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There is nothing further I can add to this discussion without risking offending one or more individuals deeply held personal beliefs.

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Aw c'mon. You know you wanna go there.

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I do not make a habit of wasting tickets on recipe rolls. Every time I've done that, I've gotten burned. It is vexing that I have to waste tickets to acquire white salvage also.

The Golden Rule forbids prices from rising or falling based on supply and demand. Even if I could make enough inf selling the junk I get for more than it's worth to buy it at auction for more than it's worth, that only compounds the evil. Better to have even common salvage purchasable for a fixed and known quantity of tickets.

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Riiighhhtttttt.

Well, I'll tell you what. Before you penalize most of the player base go out and convert the large majority to your moral code, then you can have what you want.

Until then your idea does not work.

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There is nothing further I can add to this discussion without risking offending one or more individuals deeply held personal beliefs.

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Aw c'mon. You know you wanna go there.

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Well, I will, since some folks I hung out with back in college would cast into doubt whether recreating in general was licit in the first place.

And this is more of a food for thought post than getting up in one's face. The suggestion in the OP hinges on an unstated principle, that The Golden Rule is the critical aspect to be focused on in the development of and the enjoyment of a recreational activity.

However, and this is the food for thought bit, I did a quick mental inventory in the shower this morning of what I humorously called the Operator's Manual above, trying to find strictly recreational activities (activities done to pass the time in an enjoyable fashion; activities that were not ordered to be done, one is not trying to "get" something, etc. Just fun stuff).

I came up with 4 possibilities:
1) Party after a wedding that happened in Cana
2) Noah brews a tasty alcoholic beverage
3&amp;4) (At least I think it was 2 episodes) Abraham, uh...enjoys some PDA time with his sister. Uh, wife, um...oops, perhaps the truth should have been told

3&amp;4 might have to be tossed since they are more love-oriented than recreation oriented, but it's interesting to note in all the examples that

1) Any culture's literature arts classes could dig in an analyze these 4 stories. The characters therein have some foibles, the settings are well described, and the outcomes not necessarily predictable.
2) There are lessons to dig in and unpack in all 4 cases if one chose to do so.
3) There is a time and place for recreating, though things can and often go wrong.
4) No mention of the Golden Rule; other matters are being discussed (see #2).

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress. And in the interest of full disclosure, I would ask the devs not to implement the suggestion. My lowbies like selling those drops; it's a lazy way to build up some bank with which to do other things (like buying back those cool drops around level 15-22 or so, crafting things with them, and selling again). And I happen to be a big fan of lazy.

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The Golden Rule forbids prices from rising or falling based on supply and demand. Even if I could make enough inf selling the junk I get for more than it's worth to buy it at auction for more than it's worth, that only compounds the evil. Better to have even common salvage purchasable for a fixed and known quantity of tickets.

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If everyone followed the golden rule, and supply and demand did not affect pricing, then the distribution of goods would be based solely on a first-come, first-serve basis. While there may be categories of goods in the game for which one could argue this makes sense, for the broad in-game market it is nonsensical from the perspectives of game balance and time-invested goal setting which the devs necessarily desire.

What do I mean by that? Consider set recipes, which have tiers of rarity, and (often) the more rare the item is, the more powerful the benefits of the crafted IO or/and set it is a part of. If all the prices were equal, there would be no sense in this scheme, because an uncommon recipe would be the same cost as a purple one, despite the clear reality that the purple has far lower supply (much less likely to drop) and potentially much higher demand (everyone who could use one would love one).

Price, be it in inf on the market, merits at a vendor or tickets in the MA, is a proxy for time invested to obtain something. The various goods have different prices because of multiple interacting factors:

1) The devs set the average time to obtain powerful items higher than less powerful ones, in an effort to give inclined players something to strive towards. The price is high because it is an alternative to grinding the item out yourself - you have to grind out the price instead. As it turns out, even very high-priced items are often a steal compared to the time it could take you to earn one as a drop.
2) There are not enough of these goods for everyone who wants them. If the price is not high, you will have to wait in a very long line to get one.
3) If there is flat pricing, most people will get in the line for the best goods, hoping to score them instead of and ignore the less rare/powerful ones. With a pricing scheme based on rarity and functional value, items instead fall into strata which naturally divide people into different lines, based on their income levels. People with more modest income can still benefit from the less rare, less powerful goods, while those who have more income can buy more powerful, more rare goods.

While that may sound like some elitist environment, where only the rich and powerful deserve to be rich and powerful, what such a perspective would overlook is that anyone in this game can be rich and powerful. The only barriers to entry are typically intellectual interest and time invested. Of note is the fact that the rich in this game tend to radiate off their wealth in ways that would make a star envious. All you have to do is be a solar panel for that radiation and others will transfer that wealth to you. Indeed, you can use the stratified rewards to climb a ladder to success - each "tier" of reward helps propel you towards access to the next.

Ultimately, I find heavy appeal to moral imperatives in everyday market use to usually be specious. There is the implication or sometimes direct accusation that using the market to earn in-game wealth is wrong on the basis that it is "stealing" it from others. What that view ignores is that there are plenty of characters, especially those level 50 characters who see a lot of playtime, have so much wealth that they're happy to part with gobs of it not just to be more powerful, but literally because they have nothing else to do with it than give it away. Such level 50s are the engines that drive the market prices for nearly all goods.

Edit: that wasn't a list of two factors...

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What that view ignores is that there are plenty of characters, especially those level 50 characters who see a lot of playtime, have so much wealth that they're happy to part with gobs of it not just to be more powerful, but literally because they have nothing else to do with it than give it away. Such level 50s are the engines that drive the market prices for nearly all goods.

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Read: a good number of people will throw 25 or 30 million inf at multiple items listed for 14 million when the bid history is 15m, 15m, 15m, 15m, 30m without trying to get it for 15m. Or in the case of white salvage list something for 278 and then it goes for 3k-20k five minutes later.

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The devs set the average time to obtain powerful items higher than less powerful ones, in an effort to give inclined players something to strive towards. The price is high because it is an alternative to grinding the item out yourself - you have to grind out the price instead.

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I don't see how it's ever going to be possible, within the time for actual play that I get, to ever acquire the 200M+ price tags on the most expensive IO recipes on a single character. As you note, all the Devs can do is set an average drop rate for those items. Who actually gets rich from them is a function of pure, dumb luck --- the same way it works in the "real world".

Over the course of play, I have sold exactly one purple recipe: a Fortunata Hypnosis, I think it was --- whatever it was, it was something that no level character I'm that interested in IOing up could ever use. This did not command that high of a price, either; and my ability to set its price higher was limited by an inability to pay a higher listing fee. I have received several other purple recipes; but all were crafted and handed off to characters that could actually equip them.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

We have some statistical data on purple drop rates. It's not perfect, because, among other things, foes of multiple ranks were defeated, and the chance that a minion, LT or boss will drop a purple are believe to be different (because they each have different chances to drop anything, after which we presume the game determines what you get).

If I am remembering it right, based on that analysis, we're looking at something like 3100 mobs defeated on average to generate a purple. There's a 1/TeamSize chance for you to get any drop while on a team, so you have to multiply that drop rate by your usual team size if you usually team.

Solo, I have gotten 5 purples in the last 4-5 weeks. Three of them were in the last 10 days, since I decided to spend some time each day poking the wall in Cimerora while waiting for low-ball bids on purples I want. Sadly, all the last 3 were comparatively junk: one Confuse, one Pet Damage and one Sleep. The sleep was true and utter junk - it sold for 3M inf. The other two sold for 50M apiece though. Not so wonderful when I'm buying things that sell for 175-300M (this is a villain), but I'll certainly accept it.

As for earning the money to buy purples outright, if you don't see how you could earn it, I have to wonder what you're looking at.

Just about every day I play, I get at least one thing I can craft and sell for 5-10M inf. I typically earn 3-5M inf just from playing the game, defeating foes and stuff, over the course of a few hours of being logged in. (A lot of time is lost forming teams for TFs and stuff.)

If I solo, I can earn a bare minimum of 1M inf/hour. I am much more likely to earn 2-3M inf/hour. That's solo, but to give you an idea what a team can do for you, clearing most of the mobs on an invincible ITF with a team of 8 takes about 1 hour and earns me around 8-10M inf.

So on any given night, I can earn between 5 and 20M inf, split somewhere between 1:4 and 3:2 between direct earnings and market earnings. At that rate, it takes me between 5 and 20 days to earn 100M inf. That's with no "marketeering" - just selling what I get at what it looks like I can sell it for.

That's also not using the AE. I want a chance for purples, so I'm not in there.

Qr - in regard to time, my mains got 300mil at present, up from around 50mil when the AE went live. I'm not trying at all to really go for inf.

As a total market noobwho thinks marketeering is horribly boring, i think that making inf frim the AE is easy and plenty fast enough.

Eco

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

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It's funny that thanks to being able to buy the exact rares and uncommons I need I've taken to hoarding common salvage and selling off everything else for 10 inf a pop. Most of the racks in the base and personal vaults are crammed with commons as a result.

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While I haven't gone as far as you I have been able to stock a good supply of commons, sell off the rest, and reduce the number of bins I used to keep for yellows and orange. That has allowed me to store more crafted recipes.

I love this new system.

Heraclea: If you think of this as a moral question, you can consider selling to be moral because you are providing more IOs to the populace. You can then buy IOs.

Try a lot of bronze rolls. The expensive ones are fairly easy to earn. NPC the rest. Considering that you can get hundreds of tickets per arc that's a lot of rolls.