Killing the Game?

Except that the market is the greatest idea ever for the casual 2 - 3 hours a week person. 5 - 10 minutes each week is all it takes to have the low time available casual rolling in dough. A couple minutes at the beginning of your session and a couple at the end for clean up is all you need.

The rest of the time while you are off line the market works for you. You can literally buy and sell the exact same item for a ridiculous sum by taking advantage not only of the hourly high/low price swings, the daily high/low price swings, and the weekly high/low price swings.

The longer you know you are going to be away the greater your potential for profits since you can offer less for buys and demand more for sells. With low time availability you don't have to worry about high/fast turnover on your slots.

And, as is also true in real life, the poor are often poor simply because they don't know how to manage money. You could give a poor person a million dollars, and chances are, within a year or two they would be right back where they were before they got it.

Amen. Recently, I read how a lottery winner had blown something like 300 million by starting their own fish food franchise. "What can I say, I like to eat fish." I heard an interview the other day with a lottery hopeful. She said the first thing she would do if she won the lottery was...start a radio station that played "good music" and not that "crap that kids listen to these days."

Funny, first thing I'd do if I won a few million is hire a financial adviser, an accountant, and an estate attorney. Call me crazy.

Err... How would you know if they're any good?

Plus, with all due respect to everyone, it's not just lottery winners, heirs, etc. who aren't immune to stupid ideas that seemed good at the time.

You're crazy!

But seriously it would suck to win so much that I would have to hire people to manage the money given how many professional athletes find themselves ripped off years later by money managers so I would also have to go to school to learn how to do those things myself so I wouldn't have to rely on others.

You and you damnable logic.
If I won the lottery, first I would buy a HUGE gold necklace that read, "I'M RICH, B****!". So everyone would know that I was The Man.
Then I would hire 2 bodyguards to protect me and the necklace, since I am The Man.
Then I would get a huge car to carry me and my bodyguards to where I wanted to go, GOLD plated, so they could see I am The Man, from a distance.
Then I would hire some more bodyguards to protect me and my car.
Then I would get them a car to ride behind my gold car to protect it and me, The Man.
Then I'd have to get a bigger house so my bodyguards would have room to roam and "protect".
Then I'd get guard dogs to patrol the grounds....

Then I'd buy more Lottery Tickets, because this **** is getting F****** expensive, and I need mo' money!

We already have someone like that.

Did he?

But it's not. It's also not required (which I still greatly appreciate).

Yah, the market can be daunting to the new/casual player, I'm sure. But we've a whole forum here that can be of service to them, replete with guides and information supplied by articulate and thoughtful people. The advice around here is very helpful (sometimes a little too helpful, in my opinion). When backed up by the input you can get here, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to get started on the road to wealth, whether you're casual or not. This thread alone is brimming with helpful tips.

So did the OP really come to the wrong place? The 'venting of his frustration' seemed to revolve around insulting market regulars and blaming them for all his woes. Despite that, he's been offered advice on how to address his issues. Looks like he came to the right place to me.

The market and inventions weren't always here. We were all new to them at one point or another. Personally, I took my own sweet time in getting familiar with them. IOs had been around for a couple-few months before I really started looking at them, and it took even longer for me to delve into the market.

It's easier now. Anyone new can benefit from people who've already made the mistakes, taken the risks, and figured things out.

So while I agree that the market can be overwhelming to anyone new to it... I don't find there to really be any excuse for letting that impression defeat you before you even try.

True enough, but there was both a downside and an upside to that simplicity. As the greater complexity is entirely optional, I don't have any problem with it at all. I play with it when I want to and when I don't... I don't.

I think it's frickin' great that I can do that.

Depends on what you're buying, but yep, things change.

Be aware that the buying power of that 1 billion Inf is likely to increase (perhaps substantially) in the very near future.

See? Helpful.

Now, see, I would merely hire my accountant brother.

And if he ripped me off, that would be okay--the money's still in the family.

It took me almost a full minute to figure out that it wasn't a franchise that sold Fish Food.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

But I always find it hilarious when someone says, "I've been playing 5 years and still don't have a purple."

It sort of makes up for there being no more 60 day complaint threads.

I've managed to keep my nose out of this thread for a near record amount
of time, but alas, my willpower has crumbled.

To address your points:

1> It IS discouraging for casual/new players to deal with market Sticker Shock.
I too needed a change of underwear the very first time I set foot in the market.

That said, OP (and other marketears) have choices, namely:

a> Stick with tried and true SO's which still work fine, and haven't inflated by
so much as a single inf since the game was released.

b> In conjunction with (a) only SELL your stuff on the market - those same
exorbitant prices the OP is crying over can be IN HIS pocket, simply by selling.

c> The number 1 thing newbs *should* do is: LEARN. Smart players actually
ran the game tutorial to learn how to play the game. Smart players ran the
University tutorial to learn how to craft. Smart players dabble with Mid's and
the test server to learn new AT builds/powers. Smart players read forum guides.

d> Instead of (c), sadly, the most frequent choice that we tend to see here
is uninformed rants about market manipulation, casual gamers (supposedly)
getting screwed, and how little Johnny can't purple his warshade for a pittance.

2> I disagree with your assessment about it "used to be simpler". If you mean
that the game should have stuck with just SO's, that's one thing, but quite
simply, playing the market has NOT gotten any more difficult than it ever was.
The same fool-proof strategies that worked way back when still do... For instance,
the Guide I wrote nearly a year ago is just as effective today as it was then.

3> I'm still having a major issue with the entire "inflation" FUD. SO's have been
fixed in price since Day 1. Common IO recipes are also fixed in price since they
were introduced (buy from a crafting table). Inspirations are fixed price since
Day 1. Salvage is very volatile and fluctuates from 10 to 1M (loosely). Unless
you pay NAO prices, it's generally flat if you're even modestly patient.

So... the only thing that is raising/inflating are sets (and only certain of those),
purples, and PvP sets. The latter are new, so I'm not sure Equlibrium price is fully
established in that segment yet, but the others are pure Luxury items, and a BIG
chunk of the so-called "inflation" can be pegged directly to AE and the drastic
drop in supply it has lead to (in conjucntion with Merits which did the same thing).

On the flip side of the coin, the rate at which inf is being made is at the highest
it's ever been... On a *fun* note, we see more posts from newly minted Billionaires
every day in this forum, which blessedly, helps offset the marketear posts.

I've yet to see much evidence that prices are increasing faster than income.
In general, purchasing power is higher than it's ever been with only a few exceptions
in the Luxury segment (as previously pointed out).

4> In conjunction with point #2, as Milady's Knight rightly points out - the market
is hands-down the greatest boon to the casual player this game has seen. Think
about it. I have all the farmers, TF grinders, and SG's *working* for ME. They do
a lot of the things I prefer not to do, and they provide me the goods that I DO want
but couldn't get otherwise (I've run TWO tf's (ever) in the entire time I've been
here, but I *still* can get all the Pool C drops I can afford for ANY of my toons).

If the tone of my post seems a little harsh, please accept my appologies, but
quite simply, those are the actual facts of the situation.

The ONLY reason a player is poor in this game is directly due to a conscious
(or unconscious) decision to be that way - pure and simple.

That might not seem very friendly to the poverty-stricken but that doesn't make
it any less true. Consider it cough-syrup for the financially challenged...


Regards,
4

I know someone in the game who regularly complains that they have no INF ever on their characters. They also horde salvage and recipes, and start crafting IOs at level 10. They craft and slot every single IO that it's possible for them to use, and slot them over existing IOs. Anything they can't use, they still horde as much as they can, and sell what they can't to QMs. It's like they're allergic to the market and afraid to sell something they "might" need later.

Then they wonder why they're broke at level 20.

Sell! Sell! Sell! is definitely a good message for newbies.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

I am of the opinion that if it came to that, CoX would sing this

I have a great deal of trouble accepting that figure. 1 million, yes. 3 million, possibly. But 300 million? I can't think of any way you could lose 300 million on a single fast food franchise without really trying or taking a very, very long time to do it. I mean, you'd have to run promotions like "A free $100 bill with every order!" to lose that much.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

Actually you're confusing cause and effect here. While it's true that, in most cases, if you give a poor person 1 million dollars, they'll end up poor again very quickly, and while it's also true that this is because they don't know how to manage money, it's a leap to say the reason they are poor is because they don't know how to manage money. It's the other way around, really. They don't know how to manage money BECAUSE they are poor. To learn how to manage money, you have to actually have enough to manage, which means being above poverty level. Otherwise you have no opportunity to learn money management skills.

I know this to be true, because I'm practically a case study.

Up until about 12 years ago, I was pretty close to dirt poor IRL. I was very, very close to being homeless a one point, sleeping in an unheated basement in the dead of winter. I owned a car but couldn't afford to put gas in it.

Today, I make quite a bit of money. Quite a bit more than I ever expected to, to the point I don't even really need to worry about money or bills at all anymore. I expect to clear six figures for the first time this year. I've been working my way up here over the past decade or so, a little at a time.

I didn't climb out of poverty with money management skills. I did that with marketable skills. I'm actually STILL learning money management skills. I've had to manage a 401k for the first time in the past several years. I've had to do things like budget and manage a money market account. But when I initially started making alot of money? Yeah, I blew most of it. I had no money management skills. Because until then, I had no money. I was still in the "survival" mode of thinking, living hand to mouth. When you live like that, you develop habits based around a "here today, gone tomorrow" reality.

I can see how a massive windfall for someone who is still in that mindset can evaporate pretty quickly. The further down the poverty ladder you are, the more likely that is to happen. If I were to receive a million dollars today, I have a very good idea what I'd do with it to put it to work for me. If I had gotten it 15 years ago, I'm not so sure I would have. I'm sure I wouldn't have. I don't think I'd have done something too stupid with it (probably buy a house, car, survival type things - I'm smarter than the average bear, I wouldn't have blown too much of it on luxury items), but I am sure I wouldn't have any of it by now, it'd be long gone.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

*checks market guides*

*notes that the link to my little one is broken by the migration*

*fixes that* (both mine and Squezes linked from the same post)

is everyone sitting comfortably ? The I'll begin.

By a following my 'Small Steady Income' guide, my lastest alt redside broke 25 million inf before hitting 20. Fully slotted with common IOs and now just 22 last night, she just gave away millions to her partner in crime (my wifes character) who is stuck on using SOs for now.

More than ever people pay silly inf for commons. Feed the demand and make ink hand over fist. Or be PART of the demand and give me (and others) your inf hand over fist. The choice as they say is yours...

As Fourspeed said. LEARN. A little bit of learning gets you a whole lot of inf.

Total and utter rubbish. How hard is it for the casual player to spam bids for Crushing Impact recipes at 200K and sell them for 1M? Sure, Purples and PVPIOs are pricey, but ultra-rares are, you know... I'll give you a hint.. two words... first one starts with 'u', second one starts with 'r'...

Oohh oohh I know, I know....

*raises hand fast and eagerly*

Uli Ribbity, Frog Hero of Zandor!

Ultimately Required?