'casual player' earning power
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2010-02-23 11:45 in The Market and Inventions
312M sounds on the high end of things, unless I'm hoarding more than I thought I was or drops are generating more inf (could be the case with inflation). That's how I typically play - solo, selling or crafting drops, etc. I think I've had one toon break the 100M barrier, and most seem to finish in the 50-70M range. My WM/Shield brute is almost level 48 and hasn't even reached 30M yet (though I think he's largely unlucky; my Widow is only 36 and she has I think 70M).
As for the hoarding, 99% of the time rare invention salvage goes straight into base storage for later crafting (whichever character needs it). I'll also do this with some inventions if I know I have another build that requires it.
edit: Though I will say that the brute has both a Numina unique and a Kinetic Combat D/E/R slotted; I think both were his own rolls, and he'd be a bit wealthier if those had been sold rather than slotted.
Suggestions:
Super Packs Done Right
Influence Sink: IO Level Mod/Recrafting
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lol.
meh - IOs and the market are not really for the casual player so their earning power is mostly meaningless as long as they can afford SOs, which IIRC only requires maybe 20 million for all your SOs as you level up.
I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.
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As this is the only character I've done this with (so far) I have no idea if 300 over or underperforming the 'norm'. I didn't get any spectacularly good drops and he didn't start at level 1, so my feeling is he's about average. |
Originally Posted by gec72
312M sounds on the high end of things, unless I'm hoarding more than I thought I was or drops are generating more inf (could be the case with inflation). That's how I typically play - solo, selling or crafting drops, etc. I think I've had one toon break the 100M barrier, and most seem to finish in the 50-70M range. My WM/Shield brute is almost level 48 and hasn't even reached 30M yet (though I think he's largely unlucky; my Widow is only 36 and she has I think 70M).
As for the hoarding, 99% of the time rare invention salvage goes straight into base storage for later crafting (whichever character needs it). I'll also do this with some inventions if I know I have another build that requires it. |
All his drops were sold on the market, except for a few recipes that I crafted and slotted. I saved up his merits until he hit 50 then rolled them all and sold the good stuff- I don't have time to run TFs and I finished him off before they bumped up the merit rewards for running story arcs, so he was definitely on the low end of that spectrum.
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My City Was Gone
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I'm using the definition of 'casual gamer' popular with a certain segment of our forum population- people who refuse to take action to build their wealth and yet still desire powerful IO enhancements. =P|
Originally Posted by Lohenien
meh - IOs and the market are not really for the casual player so their earning power is mostly meaningless as long as they can afford SOs, which IIRC only requires maybe 20 million for all your SOs as you level up.
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I've proven to my own satisfaction that basically anyone can IO out with 'good' sets without having to lift a finger on their own behalf, aside from trudging to the market and selling the junk they get from running contact missions.
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Out of curiosity:|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
...I remembered to check his bank balance last night and he ended up with 312,000,000 inf and a build packed with a bunch of "good" sets (Gaussians, Positrons, etc.)
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Is that 312M before or after you IO? Was that a completed build or 2-3 pieces of a "good" set in a power here and there when there were inexpensive pieces and filled with commons or other sets otherwise? How many merits did you end up with @ 50? Spend any time in AE that accumulated tix?
I'm just wondering....though I agree with your thesis completely, I think you might do something that I don't, or are a bit luckier. As a point of reference I'm a half bar from taking my dom to 50, and she has about 100m, and has ~250 merits, no sets, never marketed or farmed, and those numbers are more typical to my experience. That leaves me, roughly, with 250 mil from 1-50.
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Selling those drops on the market probably will fetch a fair chunk of change. I tend not to sell any recipe drop if there's a good chance that any of my other characters might be able to use it; and I often just vendor common IO recipe drops if the vendor price is higher than the WW/BM price, which it usually is.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
All his drops were sold on the market, except for a few recipes that I crafted and slotted. I saved up his merits until he hit 50 then rolled them all and sold the good stuff- I don't have time to run TFs and I finished him off before they bumped up the merit rewards for running story arcs, so he was definitely on the low end of that spectrum.
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Now, from the other perspective, I sat down and calculated the maximum price of a level 50 SO build. Our character is Sure Shot, a hypothetical empathy defender who hates to miss and objects to ED as a matter of principle. Sure Shot slots all of his healing powers with 6 Heal SOs, and all of his attacks with 6 Accuracy, and wants everything at peak +2 performance. He has 27 basic slots and 67 placeable slots to fill.
Sure Shot is spending just under 17 million inf. ((27+67)*3*60,000 = 16,920,000). This is the costliest possible pre-i9 build. (I'm not figuring out the failure of the chance to combine, or the fact that many SOs are less expensive than accuracy and heal.) The inf dropped from mobs is designed to make earning this amount of inf something a dedicated player can only do with difficulty. Those who use WW/BM only for purchases are indeed going to be hard pressed to afford anything.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
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Saving the merits for 50 could well be the difference, though now that I come to think of it, my Dom (the 100M+) might be the only toon that leveled up largely in the age of merits, and that's probably not completely.* I'll also buy my share of recipes, which I guess does add up.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
All his drops were sold on the market, except for a few recipes that I crafted and slotted. I saved up his merits until he hit 50 then rolled them all and sold the good stuff- I don't have time to run TFs and I finished him off before they bumped up the merit rewards for running story arcs, so he was definitely on the low end of that spectrum.
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*forgot my DB/WP scrapper. I can't remember if she has more or less inf than the Dom, but it's probably close.
Suggestions:
Super Packs Done Right
Influence Sink: IO Level Mod/Recrafting
Random Merit Rolls: Scale cost by Toon Level
The one thing that always makes sure I am flush. Getting Common IOs early
At level 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 buying a single ACC SO at each 5 level increment (so no 'greening up') = 266 112 inf
Crafting from memory including buying the salvage at a reasonably patient (ie overnight cost) is ~60 000 inf.
200K inf saved per slot at 22. Usually more for me, as in addition to having a field crafter I normally have the characters put patient bids out at below my cost to craft
Even as late as level 40 crafting commons is a saving over buying a level 40, 45 and 50 SO.
That really adds up over time.
Two Acc DOs at 12 and 17 is 14 175, if you can snipe a acc IO at 15 for less than that, you come out ahead in inf as well as with a better enhancement value.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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The 312 is what he had left after kitting himself out, which I did mostly as I went along. The first thing I did was outfit him with generics so he'd at least be playable, then I slowly replaced them with set IOs. I was able to keep costs down with patience- I wasn't in a hurry, so waiting for someone to hit my price wasn't a big deal. I was more patient with recipes than salvage- if I got the recipe before my salvage bids filled, I'd usually BUY IT NAO so I could craft and slot before I logged off.|
Originally Posted by Mandur12
Out of curiosity:
Is that 312M before or after you IO? Was that a completed build or 2-3 pieces of a "good" set in a power here and there when there were inexpensive pieces and filled with commons or other sets otherwise? How many merits did you end up with @ 50? Spend any time in AE that accumulated tix? |
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| I'm just wondering....though I agree with your thesis completely, I think you might do something that I don't, or are a bit luckier. As a point of reference I'm a half bar from taking my dom to 50, and she has about 100m, and has ~250 merits, no sets, and those numbers are more typical to my experience. That leaves me, roughly, with 250 mil from 1-50. |
But even so, that 300 million is pure surplus- he's IO'ed out with 'good' sets, so he could have ended his journey with 100 million, or 10 million, or 1 million and still support my thesis.
Next, I might play him at 50 for a while and see how fast the inf piles up at the level cap.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I would classify having a field crafter as outside the bounds of "casual". Admittedly I don't craft many common IOs*, but I've never once memorized a recipe on any of my characters.|
Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
The one thing that always makes sure I am flush. Getting Common IOs early
At level 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 buying a single ACC SO at each 5 level increment (so no 'greening up') = 266 112 inf Crafting from memory including buying the salvage at a reasonably patient (ie overnight cost) is ~60 000 inf. 200K inf saved per slot at 22. Usually more for me, as in addition to having a field crafter I normally have the characters put patient bids out at below my cost to craft Even as late as level 40 crafting commons is a saving over buying a level 40, 45 and 50 SO. That really adds up over time. Two Acc DOs at 12 and 17 is 14 175, if you can snipe a acc IO at 15 for less than that, you come out ahead in inf as well as with a better enhancement value. |
* I usually figure - perhaps mistakenly - that I'm better off marketing the salvage, vendoring the recipe, and saving the crafting cost than making the IO.
edit: 40/45/50 SO are 200,448. Vendor price + craft cost for a 40 ACC looks to be 115,425, so I guess you'd need to clear about 85k selling one Alchemical Silver and one Scientific Theory. Perhaps that won't always be possible. But, a lot of the time I am hoping to slot Set IOs rather than common IOs by level 40, so...
Suggestions:
Super Packs Done Right
Influence Sink: IO Level Mod/Recrafting
Random Merit Rolls: Scale cost by Toon Level
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Oh yes.|
Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
The one thing that always makes sure I am flush. Getting Common IOs early
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That was the first thing I did.
On my stalker I grabbed them at 15 and then 25, saving bundles by picking up cheapies dumped by badgers.
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My City Was Gone
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Originally Posted by gec72
I would classify having a field crafter as outside the bounds of "casual". Admittedly I don't craft many common IOs*, but I've never once memorized a recipe on any of my characters.
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Neither have I, but I always pick up ultra cheap generic IOs from badgers.
With a little bit of patience you can grab most generic IOs for less than crafting cost. The one exception is End Mod, and of course damage and acc are more challenging because everybody wants them.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Originally Posted by eryq2
lol.
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I understand your reaction. My own first reaction was something along the lines of sociological researcher manages to find evidence to support pet theories.
Then I remembered a thread in the blaster boards.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I've started playing my AR/Dev again, who I retired in disgust after ED but never deleted because I really liked everything about him except for his crippled primary & secondary.
He's an OLD character. He was built to a theme, but predates the original nerf to caltrops, let alone smoke grenade. He made it to 35 before getting shelved. I logged him in to move him around for day jobs, started doing a little marketeering (as an old school character he was ridiculously poor, so I made a few moves), decided to franken-slot his attacks as an experiment to see how cheaply I could do it, and then of course wanted to see how well they worked with my el cheapo enhancements. And although he's not what I'd call a 'strong' character, his current incarnation has been pretty fun to play. Which got me thinking. Up to now I've used IO's to make already powerful characters somewhat comically more powerful, notably my fire/rad controller & the Goat, a fire/dark corrupter. But what would happen if I applied "the good stuff" to a generally underperforming character? Could throwing money at a 'gimp' set make it a (relative) powerhouse? I've decided to find out. So, assuming an unlimited budget (he's still not rich, but it won't take me long to get him there) what's the best way to make him a killing machine? My initial instinct is to pile on the +defense and seek the legendary "soft cap" (which I know nothing about other than hearing the phrase bandied about by various power gamers and IO gurus). Anybody have any advice, either general or specific? He's got respecs to burn and I can make him look however he needs to. Right now he's primary heavy, with only web grenade, caltrops & gun turret (unslotted, he just picked it up because I wanted to check it out) from his secondary, plus Aid Other & a heavily slotted Aid Self. I'm looking for a place to start and a general direction to pursue. |
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fixt? i hope.....
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Originally Posted by Heraclea
Selling those drops on the market probably will fetch a fair chunk of change. I tend not to sell any recipe drop if there's a good chance that any of my other characters might be able to use it; and I often just vendor common IO recipe drops if the vendor price is higher than the WW/BM price, which it usually is.
Now, from the other perspective, I sat down and calculated the maximum price of a level 50 SO build. Our character is Sure Shot, a hypothetical empathy defender who hates to miss and objects to ED as a matter of principle. Sure Shot slots all of his healing powers with 6 Heal SOs, and all of his attacks with 6 Accuracy, and wants everything at peak +2 performance. He has 27 basic slots and 67 placeable slots to fill. Sure Shot is spending just under 17 million inf. ((27+67)*3*60,000 = 16,920,000). This is the costliest possible pre-i9 build. (I'm not figuring out the failure of the chance to combine, or the fact that many SOs are less expensive than accuracy and heal.) The inf dropped from mobs is designed to make earning this amount of inf something a dedicated player can only do with ABSOLUTELY NO difficulty. Those who use WW/BM only for purchases are indeed going to be hard pressed to afford anything. |
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Yep, you're right. If you know what you're doing it's easy to go from level 1 to level 50 kitted out with decent IOs at the early levels and getting yourself great sets by the time you're 50, and still have 100+ million when you're done.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Neither have I, but I always pick up ultra cheap generic IOs from badgers.
With a little bit of patience you can grab most generic IOs for less than crafting cost. The one exception is End Mod, and of course damage and acc are more challenging because everybody wants them. |
The problem is that the casual player doesn't know how to do this. They don't have the hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of hours of experience that you have in the best way to accomplish every aspect of this game.
You have to realize that something we think of as trivial is totally opaque to the majority of players out there. The early game steers everyone down the SO road, and IO mechanics are very confusing to most people. And if you don't have Mids, figuring out how to build a character with IO sets is a major project.
So, us telling them that this is actually very easy to do doesn't really help them -- they'll need to spend the hundreds of hours themselves getting familiar with the system to learn all the things you know. And in this instant gratification universe, that's a message that doesn't go over well.
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I used very little of my game experience in this little experiment- buying cheap generics is about the only thing I did that would fall outside the generally accepted definition of 'casual gamer' know-how.|
Originally Posted by Rodion
The problem is that the casual player doesn't know how to do this. They don't have the hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of hours of experience that you have in the best way to accomplish every aspect of this game.
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And even if I'd paid the going rate for crafted generics, or bought some salvage and made my own, the difference to my final bankroll would've been negligible- what, a few million inf at most? I don't pay retail or do much crafting, so I'm out of the loop on what generics "should" cost.
Again, all I did was run missions from contacts and sell drops on the market. Anyone can do it, there's no trick or secret involved.
Run the content, sell all your drops, get filthy rich.
I don't think it can be simplified any further.
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My City Was Gone
Then it MUST be gospel. Grats and ty we'll all go out and do that nao.
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I'm a little baffled by the sarcasm in your posts. Nethergoat's experiment was pretty straight forward, and I confirm his results. On the few characters I've soloed, drops were plentiful, and all of them had between 100-300 million Influence left after the final batch of IOing at level 50. |
Originally Posted by eryq2
Then it MUST be gospel. Grats and ty we'll all go out and do that nao.
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I can only speculate that your soloing includes duel boxing to powerlevel your characters via farms. There are two distinct differences. One is you will get less drops on your lower level character. Second, you won't receive any Merits. Random rolling Merits is a powerful way to get either wanted recipes, or ones that you can sell for very good income.
Nethergoat didn't mention Merit spending, so I can reasonably assume(since his final Influence number is at the high end of my own solo projects) that he received a few lucky drops. This isn't surprising in that even one lucky drop can make a 70 million Influence difference...or more.
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No. My recollection of the pre-i9 game is that a character alone was constantly struggling to keep SOs out of the red until well into the 40-something levels. Since base storage for enhancements preceded i9, the usual method was to dump surplus level SOs into a bin to be sold by levelling characters.
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Originally Posted by Sharker_Quint
fixt? i hope.....
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<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
Out of curiosity, what was the time frame for this experiment? How long did it take to bring the AR/Dev to 50 and accumulate the amount of INF you did?
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Not a bad question. I'd specifically wonder about how much patrol xp was or wasn't collected. I'm guessing that also has cut into the earning potential of my brute; a good deal of the time he's had patrol xp, leading to fewer mob defeats and I'd assume fewer drops.
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Originally Posted by Godpants
Out of curiosity, what was the time frame for this experiment? How long did it take to bring the AR/Dev to 50 and accumulate the amount of INF you did?
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Suggestions:
Super Packs Done Right
Influence Sink: IO Level Mod/Recrafting
Random Merit Rolls: Scale cost by Toon Level
Quote:
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Originally Posted by eryq2
Then it MUST be gospel. Grats and ty we'll all go out and do that nao.
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I'm not saying it's gospel, I'm saying "this is what I just did".
What link in my chain of logic don't you agree with?
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My City Was Gone
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Originally Posted by Godpants
Out of curiosity, what was the time frame for this experiment? How long did it take to bring the AR/Dev to 50 and accumulate the amount of INF you did?
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I'm not sure.
It took a LONG time for him to get to 35- he's one of my oldest characters and the first phase of his career was spent in the 'good old days' of endless bars of debt streching off to the horizon. I never rode any of the popular ar/dev levelling methods (pre-nerf caltrops, borked smoke grenade), and he mostly soloed which was much, much more tedious for a blaster back in the day.
The trip from 35 to 50 was, comparatively, a breeze. Newfiance meant I didn't need a tray full of break frees to finish most missions, the debt nerf and XP smoothing and difficulty settings meant good xp, good drops and steady advancement.
My play time these days is scattered around- I rarely have more than an hour at a time for gaming. It took a couple of months to hit 50, playing very sporadically (which was actually very helpful for buying my set IO recipes cheap- it enforced market patience).
The one advantage he did have was a plethora of AoE attacks, which meant he could mow through big spawns of whites in missions fairly efficiently, so he generated more drops than you'd expect to get from a more single target oriented character (although, they don't come any more 'single target' than my ninja blade stalker and he's already got 30 million inf at level 30, so....).
This is making me want to start up my stalker again, to see how he fares at the upper levels of earning power...
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
A while back in some thread I've forgotten the name of I was going to post the earnings of my ar/dev, who was retired for a LONG time and who I decided to drag to 50 to satisfy my curiosity on a couple of points:
one, how much inf would a theoretical 'casual gamer' pile up playing the "right" way to 50- running story arcs, selling drops, no marketeering, no farming.
two, would the performance boosts available from set IOs make my ar/dev fun to play again.
The jury's still out on #2, but I remembered to check his bank balance last night and he ended up with 312,000,000 inf and a build packed with a bunch of "good" sets (Gaussians, Positrons, etc.)
I played him mostly solo and more or less 'straight up'- he ran contact missions and story arcs. He started out more or less dead broke in the mid-30's kitted out with a mix of SOs and DOs, so I would expect his final total to be slightly higher if I'd started him from level 1 (I'm still running a similar experiment with a stalker red side- he's at level 30 now and has almost 40 million in the bank). I did run a few Dev's Choice missions in AE, figuring a 'new' player would want to check out the FOTM content, and he also hooked up with a ToT team for a while because I wanted the badges (and again, a 'casual' player could be expected to be caught up in the seasonal frenzy).
This reinforced my longstanding opinion that nearly all the rewards of the IO system are readily available to our friend the 'casual gamer'. Right now he's 'finished' from a casual perspective- he's hit the level cap, he is entirely outfitted with "good" sets and he has a comparatively giant bankroll.
The next tier of performance above where he's at would be vastly more expensive, yes, but the way inf piles up at 50 it would be entirely achievable were I to keep playing him in the 'casual' style for a while longer, certainly less time than it took him to reach 50.
And if I'd played him differently, his final earnings would have been vastly higher- if I'd farmed or enegaged in some marketeering while on the road to 50, he'd certainly have between 1 and 2 billion in the bank right now.
So, here's a data point for what its worth. Nearly everyone in the game can afford nearly any build they want without recourse to farming or marketeering.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone