Serenading teh Inf Sink

This game needs useful ways to destroy inf. It has been written many times. Anyone that thinks about it seriously for 2 seconds will agree.

Maybe this is an old idea, it's such a good one that it most likely has been posted before:
Transferring inf between toons on the same account.
I have a scrapper on (server1) with a bazillion inf, I want to transfer some to a blaster on same (server1).
Same server, same faction, what would be a fair 'cut' for the transfer? 10% I'd say, same as our market fees.
for a different server, say another 5%?
different FACTION. (hero -- villain) add another whopping 10%?

People would do this, wouldn't they? I know I would.
Say I want to transfer 2billion from a hero to a villain on a different server.
base transfer rate 10%
+ different server 5%
+ different faction 10%
That's 25% of 2 billion sunk into the Great Null.

Maybe the cross faction transfer % wold have to be more, but the option would be a good thing at alomst any rate. I have a feeling it WOULD be used.

Oh great Dev/Null, take my inf
In the name of Eeeebil; I do implore.
20 percent or 50 percent,
metaphysical toilet, the flush we adore!

-Morty

The links appear to be having issues but...

Issue 17 Overview

I transfer inf cross-faction (10% fee, plus 10% went-fee if on a a server other than Freedom and Virtue.) I know, it's a private service with limited scope, but it's there.

... anyway. I agree, we need more inf sinks.

I agree with the post last week (was it you, Fulmens?) that said that adjusting the influence --> prestige rate so that you buy MORE prestige with your influence would probably result in a lot more people using it, and thus destroying influence.

Maybe they need to introduce a few new things that you buy with influence, that people will want, but that won't dramatically alter the game. Again I say, an ebil badge that costs 2 billion influence would be a start. ^_^ But other things... more temporary powers, something the equivalent of "epic mounts" if they ever consider adding vehicles, or perhaps new craft-able costume recipes that you can only buy from a special vendor for influence/infamy.

Or the Fulmen's Co-Op Task Force, with an entrance fee of 5 million. Entrance fees for actual missions to be sold separately.

Smurphy gets his own Smurphy Task Force, with multiple AVs and every enemy set to +4. No, wait, you can set it to +4 (or even higher? ) if you pay enough influence. Also, you can have the task force renamed for your own character, with your character as the contact, for a modest fee of... One Beeeeellion Dolla... I mean influence!

There is something new with craftable temp powers coming.

I forget if it is in I17 or GR though.


In general /signed to more inf sinks.

Part of the problem with having high value Inf sinks is that while they remove Inf in large chunks they only do it for a small-ish percentage of people. The also result in complaints from people who can't afford them but absolutely have to have them.

Personally I think what we need is more Inf sinks at all levels of the economy. Personally I like the idea Fulmens proposed in another thread of changing the sale fee from a straight 10% to 10% for the first 10million and 12.5% after that.

We need inf sinks that aren't badges or costumes. The people who "have to have" badges or costume pieces aren't always the ones with a gazillion inf to blow on this stuff. Meanwhile there are people farming up ludicrous amounts of inf with names like I Kill Stuff, hardly any badges, and unimaginative costumes. Those are the people that inf sinks should target.

I would suggest putting back the fee for changing your difficulty. Add a fee for e-mailing inf or items (a flat fee for items, just to keep it simple, a percentage for inf.) More buyable temp powers of the convenience variety. Stuff that isn't "necessary" for anyone, but useful for everyone.

Unfortunately, while a costume contest removes personal wealth from you, it does not remove inf from the game. (Conversely, selling at an 11.2% profit removes inf from the game without removing personal wealth. )

Hmm. Newb tours (Who wants wings? Who wants a jetpack?) wouldn't remove MUCH wealth from the game. Seven jetpacks = 70K gone from game. That's the equivalent of crafting, like, a level 40 IO. I'm trying to figure out how to give "tours" that would make money go away, and encourage people to make money go away on their own.

Generic IO Crafting Lessons?

I'd prefer inf sinks to be totally optional stuff, not something players could view as core functionality, like changing difficulty.


Not that a slider fee would impact me at all- I didn't know it was gone until I read this thread.

But IMHO it's philosophically cleaner to attach it to completely optional, ideally frivolous things.

I got a few ideas:

A temp power vendor in RV: Items cost a million inf, but offer good buffs: +Perception, + recharge, + resist, + damage, w/e.

Purchaseable Merits: 1:100,000 ratio. I wouldn't expect people to buy craploads of merits and try for a random roll (that'd be stupid!), I'm thinking more like "I'm only 3 merits short of that lotg but i don't feel like getting on a GM-hunting team..."

Increase the costs at the tailor (esp for lvl 50s). Everyone and their grandma aleady has a zillion free costume tokens, and there's a day job to get coupons. No harm in paying a little extra.

Scale inspiration costs to level: So that by the time you're level 50 a t1 insp costs 2,500 instead of 100. They drop free from enemies anyway, can be transfered on the market, and it's not like you don't have the cash.

Finally, a blank statue pad in Atlas Park... that, if you pay 250,000,000 Influence to the city rep, gets you your statue there (client-side effect only). Dunno what a v-side equivolent would be... wanted posters all over town?

Also, more stuff for bases and lower the inf/pre cost like someone else mentioned. Definitely a winner there!

Make Vanguard start accepting bribes for merits. A completely optional inf sink that I'm sure some people will use.

Something I dragged up a while back, that I think is worth reconsidering for merits:

How about charging at least the vendor buyback price for emailing goodies across an account? That would eat up a little bit of inf.

Many good ideas here. I wonder if the Devs really see this as a problem? Hopefully they'll look into it eventually.

-Morty

100k for a portable workstation temp power at BM/WW, no recharge time (so ppl can spend more often).

Rentable storage at BM/WW. 1m/enhancement or recipe space/week, 1m for 10 salvage space/week.

Purchasable sale slots in BM/WW. 100m/slot, max 10 available/toon.

Recipe conversion: Change level of a recipe, cost related to merit price. 100k/merit.

If you want inf sinks, they should make 'unique' shinies available at the AH.

When I mean unique, they could be anything, but they all pretty much do nothing but add garnish for characters, they are limited number (per server) and/or they expire.

The stuff could be a gold title, a different costume change look, costume piece, emote, temp power, whatever, as long as it is recognizably unique.

The only thing it would do is make people pay for the luxury items that last a week, month etc. and nothing much else.

Eg. If they implemented a highest bid auction for 1 Statesman mask costume piece, usable only once for one toon, I could easily see that going for 10+ Billion (if you could go past the 2B caps), if that costume piece would only be available once per year (across all servers). Costume codes that were given out could be auctioned off that way as well.

If you ran it ebay style it wouldn't be bad, but if you ran it swoopo (each bid incurs a set charge) style you could destroy inf on a massive scale. The only thing is that you want the devs to invest the least time on this for the most return, so the less work they'd have to do to implement unique/new shinies the better.

Ok, here's a thought. What about removing the common IO recipes from drop pools (and decreasing overall recipe drop rates appropriately so we still get about the same number of set recipes)?

The high level common IO recipes sell for quite a bit at the vendors so this would reduce the amount of new inf entering the system and increase the amount of Inf removed by people working on the crafting badges.