The Purple Answer

I am once again starting to purchase at least some salvage with inf instead of tickets, unless it is obvious from the screen that the market is upside down[*] on that particular piece. Still, I'm on a wait and see mode.

That's the thing about hedging against inflation with goods of intrinsic value. Regardless of whether prices are trending up or down, a Karma -Knockback IO is still a Karma -Knockback IO. Unless the underlying game mechanic is changed, it's just as good a year from now as it has ever been; and if I need it, it's there. So I hoard, and I am not eager to convert anything to inf.

Given my play style and priorities, I find it easier to accumulate 250 merits on a character than 250 million inf. So if I want a LotG recharge, that's the way to go. What doesn't sit well with me is the implication that those who don't convert their drops and rolls to inf are irrational or undeserving. No character of mine is going to have enough inf to acquire the costliest set IOs on the market. Random rolls are too risky for me; you could always end up with an Edict of the Master.

[*] E.g. 2242 bidding / 186 for sale

Likewise, but it saves me a lot of trouble, so maybe I can get to work on time and keep putting food on my table. Thanks, Uberguy!

Still, just to say "dittos" on one point:

Maybe I'm missing something, but it appears to me that you're saying that the devs didn't intend for us to be able to solo team content. Can you then explain what the new difficulty settings are there for, most specifically the setting that lets you tell the game what size of a team you want to be considered the equivalent of when soloing?

And as he said, AVs spawn in solo missions. Are you suggesting that this is a bug, and we weren't actually intended to solo them?

(Edit: And to quote the issue 16 overview:

"Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can!"

Seriously, do we still doubt in some way that soloing team content wasn't intended? Do you think the devs are surprised that Scrappers ARE now soloing +4x8 maps?)

Out of curiosity, how long in actual hours played would it take you to get 250 merits?

Probably about 12-15 per character. If I really need merits, I'll join Positron or Synapse.

It specifically works better for me this way because generally I am more eager to build up lower level characters than farm with level 50s. The fully built 50s generally serve to fund my lowbies with their drops and merits. I'm a concept artist, and the chief pleasure I find in the game is in learning how to approach the same content with different tools.

This is another reason why direct merit purchase works better than random rolls; the results of a random roll, even if I get what I hope to get, may be outside the level range for the character I intend the IOs for, while direct purchases can be set to the appropriate level at will.

Edit: to Catwhoorg - no, it's not you, it's just the whole "you don't deserve purples and there's nothing wrong with the market, even if you have to play for inf instead of for xp to participate" attitude that vexes me. Though I do agree with the OP on one point. The market is another PvP zone, and as such it brings out the PvP attitude in some people.

I think maybe you're confusing that (sometimes overly strong) advice with your views on inherent value. In your post you mention holding on to -KB IO because it's inherent value, which I take to mean the value of access to a -KB effect, basically never changes.

Price and inherent value are related, but can't be interchanged. Price is just what someone is willing to pay for a particular thing with some presumably inherent value. Price changes with lots of outside forces, like how much currency is in circulation and supply of the item or suitable alternatives.

Advice that rolls and drops be converted into currency is based on the mathematically and statistically sound observation that over the long haul you earn the money to buy most things faster by rolling random drops and selling them, then buying what you want on the market. There are a few items for which this is not true - they tend to be the most expensive things on the market that merits can buy.

This advice really says nothing about the inherent value of what you want to buy. It is merely a bulk observation about the price of most market goods. The above justifications for the advice have no inclusions for objections to using the market in ways that optimize sale profit, which you have previously expressed (in other theads) that you hold. This, I think, is why its foundation in math and statistics doesn't really make it any more valid for you - you have additional constraints.

And as Cat said, I'm not denigrating those constraints. I'm merely trying to make clear where differences in perspective seem to me to be coming from.

Bill, I think we can safely say that that kind of inf generation rate is out of reach of most players. For some characters, running team-oriented content for merits is probably more profitable.

In a TF/SF or Ouros you could actually do both so you can get a lot of merits and a lot of inf.

There are two disagreements I have with your statements.

1) " You could always end up with an Edict of the Master." Anecdote is not proof, but when my last character hit 33, I had 250-300 merits and rolled 'em. I got three very, very good recipes (two LoTG,one Numina) which I turned into a quarter billion inf. They really HAVE weighted the drop tables. I understand that 240 merits into 1 recipe gives you exactly what you want, at the level you want it, as if there were no market; however, I think that 240 merits into 12 recipes provides BOTH more good things for other people AND more good things for you- whether that be "more things you can use" or "more things you can trade for things you can use."

2) There is a considerable difference between using inf for long-term wealth storage and using inf as an intermediate step in short-term trading. If, say, you got nine things you didn't want, that nobody wants, you could turn them into inf and then buy something tangible to store in your base- or could buy something tangible to slot on your character. If, on the other hand, you have some issue with the actual act of buying and selling, that should be the basis of your argument.

I typically run a TF or SF every night. Sometimes two. Since i16, you can level on anything you can run, so I have spent less time on level 50s since it went live than usual.

Wow. Farkabuncha that.

I know, anecdote is not proof. But last time I did a random roll, I did end up with an Edict of the Master. I crafted it and palmed it off on a controller I seldom play. (Her secondary is empathy, which is not much use solo, and no fun on teams unless you hide from /tells. I do believe that buff sets are not for me.)

Now, most of my merit purchases or rolls are intended for some character other than the one who has the inf or merits. The fact that random rolls get bumped up to their highest level for the merit owner rather than to the desired level means that even if I get what I wanted, it might not be useful until the target character hits 47.

I have designated one character on my main server as chief ticket farmer, salvage maker, and inf holder. When I do have a character with short merits who isn't saving towards a particular goal, I will roll them, craft the button, and if it isn't something worth saving I will pass it to this character to take to the market. And every so often she takes stock of the salvage needed to craft desirable or vendible drops, and stocks the shelves with it, mostly with MA tickets. So far, she's managed to accumulate around 70 million inf, an unimpressive sum here, and not nearly enough to buy any of the truly desirable recipes.

One problem I have ever had was that the inf and merits were scattered over multiple characters. This is what I am trying to remedy. If I occasionally resort to random rolls, it's for pooling purposes rather than for making every character rich. If I decide that a character needs a bonus or a set, the rest of them will pitch in.

The thing is - the stuff that nobody wants isn't going to help you accumulate inf. This is the issue I have with random rolls. You might end up with pet damage, immobilize, sleep or some of those other pool Cs that will fetch more inf from a vendor than from the market. 20 merits you could have saved for later down the drain. The burnt hand fears the fire.

I don't have an "issue with the actual act of buying and selling", though I do think that the Golden Rule applies and that no one should try to sell anything for more than what they are willing and able to pay themselves. But that's another screed of doctrine entirely.

Ha! I appear to have the reverse disorder. I often sell a rolled/found crafted 40 and buy the exact recipe at 39, thinking, you could've spent 40 million but now you've only spent 15....

Yes but the main difference here is that to get a HO, every player was subject to the exact same requirements. Simply you had to stop doing whatever you were doing, go and join a raid about an hour or so later you had a HO. that isnt really the case with purples.
No its not proof. And let me just say i am not in favor or nerfing Purples for their effectiveness. I dont recall saying i was, only that in comparing a enhancment that offered the level of balance you claimed that Purples offered, has in the past been determine to be game breaking and required a change. I am not saying i want them nerfed, or that they should be, only that by your very comparison to what they allow you to do, gives them their inherent value to ALL players, not just uber players. Even someone that commonly wants to run TFs or mission would probably like to have a character that is that strong when running a STF or LRTF and such.

It wasnt horrific no, but it was strong. I went from having a blaster that EVERY attack he had was at the damage cap to basicly one that did actually had a need for build up and aim again. Even slotting all dam/acc the nerf basicly took him from 300 percent damage and acc to around 200 percent. And yes i didnt scream about it, i understood it, it seemed odd to have a maxed out toon with no team support or even support powers needed.
You dont deserve more for doing less no. However your kinda nailing the point i was trying to make. In that three hours, your chances go up considerably for getting the drops you want. But not just because your soloing, and doing nothing but cranking out enemies. A bubble defender just plainly doesnt have the same killing capacity that your scrapper would. They are much more tied to team play. To running mission etc. This by nature then inherently lowers his chances of getting the same level of drops that you do. And why? Because someone enjoys team play and support characters more then the fighters?

This is what i would like to see changed. Simply put the chances to get the drops IMO are based on keeping the items rare. Im fine with that, but in doing so it seems their rarity has ot be,or has been based around what a tooled up toon can crank out on maximum. I dont mind items being rare. I dont even mind not having something like purples, as has been said if i really wanted them i could probably start farming out the same radio missions over and over, running solo, fighting the wall, running RWZ or whatever. I do choose not to, and i am cognitive of that choice.

And as has been said but i might not quote, im sure the idea of the sets are much more prevalent here in the forums then in the real game. But im sure there are probably tons of players in the real game that have just written off the idea of ever earning these rewards because of cost, or time, or how they would have to play to earn them steadily.

I agree its worthless to do, but it still has a sound to it that sounds neat.
I have had a toon that soloed AVs, its incredibly boring to do, and tedious. I dont much worry about it anymore. However i made that toon because i heard of others doing it. And it sounded cool to have a character that could do that. Especially since i was normally playing a blaster and just couldnt imagine standing toe to toe solo with an AV. So though i understand how useless it is, it still has a sound to it that entices other players to say you can do it.
Well here we will probably disagree. I personally feel that we got the new sliders because without them, the SSKing system would never have been accepted by the players. The SSKing system is a complete nerf for just about any player. It slows down xp for lower players, and for the higher players they suffer because the team is more close in level and therefore they lose some of the weight of being the in higher positions on the team.

The slider as postiron said in his post is the solution to that. Cause now you can still earn the +3 and 4 xp but you have to fight harder opponent to do it. So all those that would have been really pissed got somthing that sounded nice in comparison. It was kinda like ya your lowbie will level slower when you have him in tow, however you wont lose xp to pads, lose drops etc. So basicly sliders offset many of the complaints that would have errupted from the SSK.

Now thats purely conspiratorial on my behalf i admit it, but it is how i see it. When i looked up the xp effects of the teams running all within 1 level of a mission, most people on that team were lossing anywhere from 5-12 percent of the xp. Yet this seems to have slipped by alot because the options for customizing the missions seemed to over shadow it.

Where i have even once suggested that any change would effect your or anyone else and their ability to earn the drops at the rate they currently can earn them? If some poor bubbler gets a couple more purples here and there, does that take one away from you? Will only so many purple drop per hour and if he gets one that means you cant? I dont think farming is evil. I dont think earning is evil. I dont think overall building an uber character is evil. And i am not trying to plant such a seed in any players that it is. I do farm, i do work the market the best i can to get what i want. However i also, team. However i also like to run TFs, and dont spend my entire night logged in just doing things that increase my drops, xp, etc. It would be nice if it didnt take 4 month inbetween purple drops when doing these other activities to earn a purple drop.
If this is the case, again i will ask, how would effectively allowing players that dont play as you do, that do like to team, or do PUGs, or run more TFs or SFs to earn some of the same rewards that you do, effect your ability to do anything you have stated in that paragraph? It wouldnt. Nothing on this game is limited. Your chances to earn drops are not effected by how many people are playing, nothing given to player A or B takes anything away from you.

Now i am not saying its true, however the only reason i can see that just slightly increasing other players ability to achieve some of what you say is your intrest in this game, IS because you would feel less special for doing it. You might not want to lord over other players what your toons can do, but it just comes off sounding like you dont want others to be able to achieve it either. Just my opinion of that paragraph, it does just sound like its saying "even if i dont lord it over others, im special and if they are special also, im less special."
The devs have said over and over again that Bosses are considered difficult, EBs more difficult, that AVs were considered team content. I am not saying I agree with that, or that its even true, but it is what they say they follow. Companies make cars that can go 120 mph. And people buy them up. Why? No place in america atleast is it legal to drive a car on the road going 120. But nothing stops them from being able to do it other then police, or thier ability to keep the car on the road.

Same thing here, more options sounds great to players (unless its in the Sidekick apparently) so here is the new slider go nuts. The question is do the devs expect every player to be able to do it? Is the game now being designed around the idea that a standard everyday player can solo a mission set to 8? No its not. Its there just as the old slider was, to increase the difficulty to the level you wish to play at. But your talking about a mechanic that allows players the choice. The system of random drops of recipies that is not adjustable. But the slider being able to do what it does now, also just serves to ever increase the abilities of some to get things others have trouble with earning. My tanker can kill a mission set at 8, my blaster cant for instance. So again even running through normal missions, my tanker will get MORE opprotunity to earn drops then my blaster would, even running solo.
Wow i think we actually agree with each other on this one.
My problem over all i guess is what you have to do to earn it. Overall the desire to earn money in the game creates greed. Its a virtual world the only reason to have greed is to buy more and more stuff. Which creates the demand, which creates the cost, which creates teh need for more greed to keep up. Yes i drop things into the market, but i dont play the market. I store things i think i might want oneday, and i usually get most of what i want for a character.

But it does kinda feel like there is a tier of this game that is simply off limits unless i want to funamentally change how spend my time in game. And i personally dont feel that is the best design to follow for a game that has so little to actually use that next teir of abilities agianst.

Your last sentence is the important one. You are choosing to change nothing about what you do in game yet wishing for the rewards to change to suit you.

It doesn't and shouldn't work that way. Scrappers in general are often overlooked for teams. Teams are generally better off choosing a force multiplier, right? Scrappers can't take down giant monsters while some of the squishie, team oriented ATs can.

Why do I bring this up? Because there are consequences to our choices. If you choose to play a character that can't pull in X amount of rewards in Y time, that is your choice. If you want X in Y, you build something that can do it.

That's how this game works.


EDIT: As for a drop rate boost while on teams? I wouldn't be against the drop rate being affected exactly as inf/xp rewards are affected as team size goes up. The question becomes can the devs do that without having it ALSO affect lone players when they crank up the virtual team size.

Perhaps they can. Should they? Perhaps.

I readily admit I am one of these players. The purples I've gotten as drops I still have as I haven't decided whether I might want them on some character somewhere. I think I have 6 or so amongst all my characters. Mostly, it's time. I don't consider myself overly casual, but I just don't enjoy logging in and "farming" a mission for several hours. It gets boring and tedious fairly quickly. I'm also not a marketeer... it's just not how I want to spend my time in the game.

This is pretty much the only reason I'd want purples or even heavy IO builds. The vast majority of my characters are outfitted with regular L35 IOs.

I have no problem with such a tier of the game existing. The fact that this game is not tuned to that tier is why I am still playing it. I still have a fair amount of fun creating alts and tinkering with powersets I haven't tried. Unlike another game I played (*cough*WoW*cough*) where the end game was a cycle of run content to get gear to run higher tier content. If content here starts to drift toward tuning around IO builds, or worse, purple builds, I will probably eventually lose interest in the game. Such a progression would do nothing but cater to a minority of the audience.

I applaud the market gurus and the purple farmers, because you have far more patience than I do for such things. The more of you out there doing it, the slightly more likely it is that I might someday have a purple or two to rub together on a character.

All the things you mention there hold true for that bubble Defender for much more fundamental rewards, like XP. For better or worse, this game revolves around a very central theme - defeating things in combat. We have extremely limited ways to interact with the game outside of attacking things. Any time one builds a character that can't fight well on their own they become reliant on allies for basically everything. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it's pretty fundamental, and since combat is about all we have, the devs have little choice to attach rewards (of all types) to combat ability. Building a buffer with little offensive capability is a give/take choice we all have to make. It can be fun to buff your allies, but in doing so, you may end up needing them heavily.

If there's any part of this I'm not nuts about, it's that it may not always be clear that a given powerset choice is better or worse than others in this regard. For example, while the Defender AT description is pretty conservative about its soloing ability, if you choose a Rad/ or Dark/, you can potentially solo really well. If you choose a FF/ or Emp/? Not really the same. A new player really has no way to know that. I'm not sure it's terribly important to try and address that, but it does feel ... unfortunate.

So what? This exists in pretty much every MMO simply because it is good business sense. Different people want different goals to accomplish in an MMO and having different tiers allows MMOs to attract a wider audience than they would otherwise. For some people the acquisition of high end loot that is hard to achieve is a goal, they feel a sense of accomplishment upon attaining and using it. For some of them the fact that it "proves" their superiority over other players is a factor but for the majority the simple fact that it is hard to acquire and is proof of their skill/commitment is all the reward they need (witness the popularity of hard to obtain items of no utility in many games). If the devs increased the drop rate of Purples it would no doubt increase the enjoyment of those players who have no interest in working towards acquiring top end loot (but want it anyway) but other players like them rare since it increases the enjoyment that they get from working to acquire them.

CoH is unusual amongst MMOs in that any activity that provides any rewards can be used to obtain top tier loot, the only variable is how long it will take to do so. There are no Bind on Pickup items so as long as your activities generate Inf (either through combat or marketeer activities) you can acquire the top tier loot.

Yes, certain activities do generate the Inf required faster than others but I really don't see that as a problem (although as others have noted the team drop rate probably could use a boost). There is no way the devs could make it so that all players obtained rewards at the same rate and I think that they are smart enough not to try and simply limit themselves to slapping down any cases where players are breaking the risk/reward ratio (i.e. Comm Officers).

that's kinda the crazy thing about a market, the stuff that does cool stuff everybody wants is highly sought after and thus more expensive and less available than other stuff.

99% of the stuff people complain about in here is WAI.


If you take all those merits you'll get for running all those TFs you think you need to grind to buy exactly what you want and instead roll random with them....guess what, you'll be able to afford anything you want.

Uh....so stop sniveling about being poor?

Only if you're really stupid.

Case in point, I had a bunch of purples in storage for my fire/rad because I was too lazy to respec him and didn't want to overwrite the good sets he already had slotted.

Come MA and the Purple Drought, prices went sky high.
Come the announcement for I16, I noted here (and other places) that purples were going to start falling the minute the farmers bailed on MA for their old farm maps spawned for 8. So I sold all mine for about a billion in profit, and in a few more weeks I'm going to buy them all back for a fraction of that bankroll.

And nearly everything on the market can be picked up at a substantial discount if you're patient. If you insist on valuing everything according to the BUY IT NAO price you will get fleeced. If you don't mind waiting a week or two, you can often get that uber-expensive recipe for a huge discount. The more patient you are, the less inf you have to spend.

You remind me of those clowns back in the early market days who bragged about all the rare arcane salvage they had in storage in case they needed it, because by gum they weren't going to pay any 4 million for a Prophecy!

When the ITF hit and running the wall in Cimeora became a farming hobby and rare arcane salvage went into the toilet, I laughed really hard.

Inf is the most stable thing in the market, the least prone to sudden devaluation because the devs changed this or that and the herd stampeded to some new pasture.

Good luck with that.
personally, I'd rather have crafted IO's sitting in my characters builds helping them kick butt, crafted IOs that I purchased with inf I got from selling the junk they didn't need on the market.

But maybe that's too simple for you.
In fact, I'm sure you'll be better off with your wily scheme of never selling anything good and sticking it all in base storage and thus being too poor to buy any of the stuff you want.

He got fired, so who cares what he said?

The guys running the show now have executed their program more competently, efficiently and with more foresight than that clown Emmert was ever able to

the wet paper bag you were carrying your brain around in broke, you stepped on it, and you've been getting along ever since with a few gelatinous chunks stuck in the treads of your boot.

Or do you have some other explanation for one of the most ridiculous things ever said on this forum?

Have fun on my ignore list with all the other delusional mooncalves.

I understand choices, its why i have choosen to make the multiple toons i have made. And as i have said, i DONT mind the idea of rare content. However that being said your last edit is really what i think applies the most to my feelings. The essentially lower rewards that a player earns while teamed limit the ability of that player to recieve rewards an upper tier loot far beyond the differences between say what a blaster can farm vs. a scrapper.

So essentially the gap between wanting to dedicate yourself to only seeking rewards, and choosing to take a limit by teaming becomes larger and larger. My personal belief is that reguardless of if i choose to team or solo, neither choice should penalize my rewards that greatly. As so many call out in so many other threads, this is an MMORPG. the MMO standing for massively multi-player. So that being the case, why then are the reward structures going to so vastly favor people that choose not to team or take part in the social climate of the game?

But the archtypes exist that was the the devs made them. Some are simply killing machines some are not. I dont believe its fair to simply say "oh well you should have made a scrapper" The game would not be fun, or probably even playable for most teams without defenders of some type, With out controllers, blasters etc. The game should be designed around the principles for the genre game it is, a massively multi-player game.

Now im not saying that i want to have purples raining from the skies like skittles. I am simply saying it would be nice for the devs to look at what they would consider to be the optimal rate of an assured drop and in their judgement find a way to make mostly sure it drops at that rate for all players. Not that it cant drop more often if the randomness takes it that way.

This is why i thought the strike breaker method seemed to work the best. It would not effect in any way those that wanted to keep making concentrated efforts for rewards. It would not make your drops any harder or easier. It would only make sure that at whatever ratio the devs say a drop mathematicly shouldhave been earned, that one got earned. If you got one before that point, great, but if you had hit a dry spell, then atleast there is an end in sight.

Support players and squishie make just as much of a contribution in time and play to the game as anyone else does. They choose to make it in such a way that is contributory to the enjoyment of other players by nature of thier ATs being more reliant on team play. And for that they have a much harder time earning the rewards that more solo capable characters or ATs can earn. I personally would just like to see this adressed. I dont want rewards given away for nothing, it would just be nice if the wealth of the games content was more widely open. Addressing the issues of limited rewards on teams would definately IMO be a step in the right direction.

Actually Cryptic sold the game to NC SOFT who then hired those devs that wanted to come over to work for them and continue to develop the game. Jack still works for cryptic. Not defending him, but he wasnt fired. But hey great post that offers no opinions or information other then your attempts at snide insults.

I welcome the company i will find on your ignore list.