Obtaining recipes and salvage on test

I use the test server to test character builds using IO sets from time to time. Some of these builds use sets or enhancements that are in short supply on the live servers. Sometimes I'm lucky to have some of the enhancements already available in my inventory, but sometimes I've yet to invest the influence into obtaining them.

Is there any way supplies for, well, everything on the market to be readily available rather than someone filling an order for a new round of testing or relying on drops/copying from live/etc.?

Tools like Mids are invaluable in planning builds, but I'd like to test drive things before committing to a respec or plunking down a ton of inf to invest in enhancements. I feel having all of the resources such as recipes and salvage effectively freely available in the testing environment would benefit in at least this aspect.

Unfortunately something like this is unlikely to ever occur for two reasons that I can think of.

1) Code may get sent to live accidentally thus utterly destroying the markets.
2) This isn't technically what the test server is for.

That said I too would be interested in something like this happening.

Only time things like this happen is when the market gets seeded with stuff, usually during closed betas. In the case of the I16 closed beta, we got 9999 merits instead, which was helpful for buying all the recipes we'd ever need, but didn't really help in the salvage department.

EDIT: 6666 posts! >:O

I don't know how much extra work it would be to do this, since I don't know anything about the game's code, but it seems to me that adding something to the market itself to seed every recipe and salvage piece with a perpetual 9999, or even a regenerating 9999, specifically with a hook that makes the code called only when the environment is development or test, and just have those pieces be seeded for sale on the markets for 1 inf.

As it stands, there shouldn't be any form of economy on the testing server, but all of the shiny bits should be easily available (even ultra-rares and pvp sets) for taking these into account with testing, not only using the test server like a living Mids, but with power-related testing. I'm sure there are more reasons why this is a good idea, but since I don't know the code, I don't know what sort of level of effort is required. If I knew who to poke about such a thing, I'd poke them.

They could set it so you get 9999 merits each time they post a new build, and also give 9999 AE tickets as well. These are numeric quantities they could set to a script to run after they patch up the servers during the downtime.

You could buy recipes with merits, and salvage with AE tickets. Anything that drops that you don't need you can drop on the market for 1 inf each in cases anyone needs it. It was free to you anyways... so why not.

They did have a bot that would search out bids on a special game account they made and would fill them. Yet it took alot of resources to run... I.E. it lags the heck out of a server. So they don't prefer to use that unless they can dedicate an entire system to it or some such like that.

With merits and tickets though... you should be able to get anything you want... especially with that many. Wouldn't that be the case?

x Jeremy M.

With merits and tickets, one could get most things. However, that still excludes ultra rare and pvp. Since the drop rates on those are so low even on live, they would be nonexistent on a test environment without someone filling orders. Not being able to obtain these two categories of enhancements is what prompted me to suggest just seeding the test markets with 9999 of everything that could be obtained for, say, 1 inf so as to not require resources beyond the crafting costs.

They've done this before.... When they came out with PvP recipes, they announced on (I think) the beta tester in-game channel that they were going to seed the market with them, so if you wanted them for testing, you needed to post a bid (1 influence was ok)...

So, I know the capability for this exists.... It just might be not what the Devs want to spend any time on.

"Alien"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades The way you play changes your IO slotting..

I remember seeing that but I thought that was something which required some sort of manual intervention. If a redname were to respond to this thread, it would definitely help answer my questions about the testing environment.