Influence sinks - brainstorming thread
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2009-08-20 23:18 in Suggestions and Ideas
Base item options:
new room item: pedestal
new room item: plinth
new decoration: bust (head and shoulder thingy) (small or large)
new decoration: holographic projection (small, medium or large)
new decoration: statue (stone) (small , medium or large)
new decoration: statue (bronze) (small , medium or large)
new decoration: alcove (small)
new decoration: alcove (large)
sold as recipies in the Auction Houses (BM or WW) for inf and no salvage requirements, just inf. once crafted, they can be added to a base. the statues busts etc are taken from a selection of stills (the character's costume slot images) and rendered in whatever material. busts and small statues can be stored in small alcoves (1 per height level per wall block) or medium statues can be displayed in large alcoves (lifesize statues). large statues can only be displayed in a room and reach to full ceiling height. (1 storey)
some way to apply standard emote poses would be good as well. A wall of SG member statues would look pretty cool or a magical crystal displaying a holograph of the hero posing (tech: holograph projected).
would cost a nice packet too!
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Actually, my lv5-10 characters make their starting chunks of inf (50-100k) by selling a few select pieces of salvage into the inflated market. |
Originally Posted by Heraclea
If a piece of level 10 common 10-25 invention salvage sells for 5000 inf on the auction house, and a level 10 player gets 10 inf per minion defeated, this means that the player is going to have to defeat 500 minions to afford it.
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Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
What's a L10 character doing buying salvage?
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They could implement a sliding-scale tax on Auction House sales. Depending on the sale price, the tax goes up or down. If you want to sell an item for a billion, that's your prerogative bidding high just guarantees you first place in line but 75% of that goes into taxes and the seller only sees 25%. That'd bleed off a large amount of Influence quickly.
They could make Common Salvage available for sale at a certain fixed price point. Yes, that would kill the exorbitantly high prices at the Auction House. So what? The problem isn't that there's too much Influence, the problem is that items are unavailable to the casual player; fix the problem, not the symptom. The in-game vendors for SOs and Common IO recipes hasn't hurt the Auction House; there's still a brisk trade on both those items.
They could make an in-game item email system available. You could mail yourself Enhancements, Recipes, or cash ... for a price.
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As long as the seller never sees less than 90% of their asking price I think that this could work. Effectively you end up with a higher tax rate on the difference between the asking price and the purchase price.|
Originally Posted by Hertz
They could implement a sliding-scale tax on Auction House sales. Depending on the sale price, the tax goes up or down. If you want to sell an item for a billion, that's your prerogative bidding high just guarantees you first place in line but 75% of that goes into taxes and the seller only sees 25%. That'd bleed off a large amount of Influence quickly.
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| They could make Common Salvage available for sale at a certain fixed price point. Yes, that would kill the exorbitantly high prices at the Auction House. So what? The problem isn't that there's too much Influence, the problem is that items are unavailable to the casual player; fix the problem, not the symptom. The in-game vendors for SOs and Common IO recipes hasn't hurt the Auction House; there's still a brisk trade on both those items. |
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The way I see it, there's a narrow window for profitable trading on SOs and common IO recipes.|
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
I'm not sure I agree that there's a brick trade on SOs and Common IO recipes. Some movement yes (especially for the common recipes) but as I alluded to in an earlier post the number of people buying SOs on the market is pretty small and is generally people selling them at a loss compared to the vendors (presumably to get badges).
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Drop: for free.
Sell-at-the-store price: 50,000.
Buy-from-the-store price: 150,000.
In other words, you could sell at the store for a guaranteed 50K, but you could potentially make up to 149K if you sell to a human on the open market. People aren't doing this, as a rule, because your profit is maxed out at 99K or thereabouts (unless you can find someone dumb enough to purchase the item for more than the store price).
The really hardcore buyers and sellers prefer to operate on items where there is no "maximum" price, for things that cannot be bought at a store: salvage, IO sets, purples. The sky's the limit.
That's why I say all salvage should be available at stores. It wouldn't kill the salvage market completely, but it would put a serious damper on the sky-high prices. You could hope to get the item for free as a drop; if you don't, you can check the auction house, where the price should be somewhere between the SATS and the BFTS prices. If there's none available, you can buy it for (at a maximum) the BFTS price.
Why do I say this? Because now, bases use Invention salvage.
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Selling the salvage at the stores would put a hard cap on market prices that would be too dramatic, in my opinion. Sell brainstorm tokens (already in the game... base salvage converts to it) which can be cashed in for a "roll" (which it already does) would provide more of a soft-cap. You aren't guaranteed you'll get what you want, but if the item you want costs 100,000, and tokens cost 5,000, you can "roll" twenty times and even if you don't get the item you want, you'll probably make up much if not all of your losses selling what you got.|
Originally Posted by Hertz
The way I see it, there's a narrow window for profitable trading on SOs and common IO recipes.
Drop: for free. Sell-at-the-store price: 50,000. Buy-from-the-store price: 150,000. In other words, you could sell at the store for a guaranteed 50K, but you could potentially make up to 149K if you sell to a human on the open market. People aren't doing this, as a rule, because your profit is maxed out at 99K or thereabouts (unless you can find someone dumb enough to purchase the item for more than the store price). The really hardcore buyers and sellers prefer to operate on items where there is no "maximum" price, for things that cannot be bought at a store: salvage, IO sets, purples. The sky's the limit. That's why I say all salvage should be available at stores. It wouldn't kill the salvage market completely, but it would put a serious damper on the sky-high prices. You could hope to get the item for free as a drop; if you don't, you can check the auction house, where the price should be somewhere between the SATS and the BFTS prices. If there's none available, you can buy it for (at a maximum) the BFTS price. Why do I say this? Because now, bases use Invention salvage. |
When prices drop, motivation to take the chance drops.
Thus, it increases market supply when its most need, provides an influence sink, and puts a softish cap on extreme prices
I say sell "brainstorm tokens." It's not a guarante
That's an interesting take on it it provides both an influence sink and a salvage faucet.
In any case, whether salvage or brainstorms are sold, the developers would essentially be setting a price cap. It would either be $price of salvage, or it would be derived from $price of brainstorm divided by P (probability of getting the one you want).
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Right, along with the value someone puts on the inconvenience of rolling that many salvage attempts and managing the excess resources. That's why I was thinking THAT might be a "softer cap" than a direct price comparison.
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Originally Posted by Hertz
That's an interesting take on it it provides both an influence sink and a salvage faucet.
In any case, whether salvage or brainstorms are sold, the developers would essentially be setting a price cap. It would either be $price of salvage, or it would be derived from $price of brainstorm divided by P (probability of getting the one you want). |
Yes, the price tag on convenience. We have that now, actually ... and we would have it with salvage stores, depending on where they were located and how difficult they were to find. Salvage is tiered by level, so compare the cost of zoning back to Galaxy City for low-level salvage, versus buying it at the auction house in Talos. Similar to what we have with SOs, really.
Some quick thoughts:
1) Buying "brainstorm tokens" (the things that you cash in base salvage for and can spend on "rolls" of regular salvage & stuff.) Since they allow rolls for salvage, but not actually a guarantee of a salvage piece, they offer a moderate "safety valve" to the marketplace without giving a full certainty that you'll get what you need. (I already kinda do this, buying up base salvage, converting to brainstorms, crafting commons, uncommons, & rares, & selling back what I don't need for profit.)
2) An in-game presence. For example: a drawing, with the winner getting a statue (a smaller one, like the villain cape mission) at location X based on their character. In game story (heroside) is that some "widows and orphans of the Rikti war" is set to honor one of the most influential heroes in their cause. Rather than being a top-bidder thing, its a lottery. X,000 inf per ticket, buy as many as you'd like. You can even buy them to "nominate" someone else.
Do this every few months, shaking up the prizes- statues, billboard signs, movies marquees, your costume on the "costume dummies" in Icon, etc, a "scarecrow" in Croatoa's farms, or even a small throng of fans that talk of your exploits that randomly spawns in city areas... even when you're not there.
3) Buyable auras... a) money or b) gold coins just fall out of your pockets constantly....