Sadly, it's my opinion that poverty is both subjective and a state of mind. Someone believes they are subjectively "poor" if they cannot afford what their version of the "middle class" character's equipment is. What other people tell them doesn't really change things unless someone manages to actually convince them that the poverty line is somewhere else - a feat that I've rarely seen.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
poverty in game is merely a sub state of laziness. The less lazy you are the less poor you are.
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.
Poverty as we experience it here in the market forum seems to be the purview of casual gamers who can't purple their warshades.
On any objective scale, poverty is now completely voluntary.
Because if you use the market to sell your junk you'll have enough inf to provide your characters basic needs (be they SOs or generic IOs or non-l337 set IOs) by the time you hit level 20.
ps, digging the new avatar BBQ.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Poverty in this game is something nobody would declare of themselves but always of someone they imagine to be worse off. Nobody comes here to champion a cause against their poverty, just against someone else's. That the solution to this poverty happens to line their pocketbook and give them a moral fluffing is wholly coincidental.
I've encountered folks on Virtue who stick with SOs. One of them, I learned, is OCD: she uses SOs because she simply cannot handle opening the market interface at all. She vendors everything because those prices are the same. It's unfortunate, one supposes, but she never needs for money - even vendoring things and subsistance living, she still has all her characters SO'd or DO'd out comfortably enough, after having enough momentum to have a 50 from a year or two ago. She changes costumes on her 50s, which speaks to a rather massive cost (more than you'd think, since in some cases she makes unnecessary changes just so the amount spent will be the 'right' number). And so on.
Even this, she's not poor. She can always afford to screw with her costume or pay for a newer character's SOs.
If you are not being aggressively - and I do mean aggressively - wasteful, if you are not competing for the multi-million pieces and trying to do it as quickly as possible, it is functionally impossible to be poor in this game.
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Emphasis on the word "now". I remember being poor. I mean, like, POOR. Poor enough that I had to respec multiple times while leveling so I could sell back my SO's in order to afford new ones.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
On any objective scale, poverty is now completely voluntary.
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(In the snow, uphill both ways. Now get off my lawn!)
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Poverty in COH terms
Not being able to afford DOs at 15 and 20
Not being able to afford SO every 5 levels from 25-50
It USED to be very common.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
Back when I started playing, I couldn't afford DOs and SOs on my first character.
I had to think really hard about visiting the tailor once I unlocked my seconds costume at level 20. I started obsesively selling drops to the right shop to raise a bit more money.
I felt incredibly poor.
The effects were noticeable in game, many of my powers were doing half the damage they should (for want of 3 damage SOs) and missing more than they should for want of accuracy. I'd be putting out less than 50% of the damage I should, which is real bad news for a Blaster.
When IOs came out, I couldn't afford Crushing Impacts. I slotted Focussed Smites and the like instead, and maybe lost 5 or 10% efficiency in doing so? I felt a bit poor, but nowhere near as bad as it used to be.
So I'd define not being able to slot SO's as the breadline. You feel that for every minute of gameplay.
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I remember those days. I'd fly all over Talos to sell SOs at their proper origin store to get the most money possible. My most recent toon had over 200 million by the time he reached 22. What a difference an in-game economy makes.
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Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
Poverty in COH terms
Not being able to afford DOs at 15 and 20 Not being able to afford SO every 5 levels from 25-50 It USED to be very common. |
@Demobot
Also on Steam
Quote:
Or doing the KHTF before they nerfed it the very first time to get tray full of at level, origin specific, SOs from farming MARY .
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Originally Posted by Demobot
I remember those days. I'd fly all over Talos to sell SOs at their proper origin store to get the most money possible. My most recent toon had over 200 million by the time he reached 22. What a difference an in-game economy makes.
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-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
Being unable to have enhancements would be my benchmark too.
I don't suffer from altitis, I enjoy every minute of it.
Thank you Devs & Community people for a great game.
So sad to be ending ):
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A truly casual player probably won't care that he can't afford the best enhancements out there. In fact, he probably wouldn't get involved with the invention system enough to know the full extent of what he's missing.|
Originally Posted by BBQ_Pork
As we obsess about the Casual Player and his ability to support his little pixel-based family in these times, what is Poverty?
At what point is a character truly "Broke"? Too poor to afford a bucket to **** in or a window to throw it out of? Is it that line where he has enhancement slots that are empty (or slotted with enhancements that have gone red...same thing) and he is unable to afford to replace them with his spendable wealth? Or is the line somewhere higher? |
If a casual player does get involved with the invention system and the marketplace, he can potentially do very well since he can afford to be patient with bids and sales.
I think you might be obsessing over the wrong thing.
just what we need. a 1000th post about being broke or why and the same thoughts from the same people about it. find a new topic this month please.
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I recall running the CaP SF for much the same reason. 2 SOs from AV defeats plus the one for the TF complete.|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Or doing the KHTF before they nerfed it the very first time to get tray full of at level, origin specific, SOs from farming MARY .
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My Stalker had recall available at 20 just for doing this.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
That's a good objective standard. As far as subjective, I had a character who was suddenly down to 5 million and I felt poor. Not "food vs. medicine" poor, or "SO's or Insps" poor, but a startling narrowing of opportunities.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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Originally Posted by Ironblade
Emphasis on the word "now". I remember being poor. I mean, like, POOR.
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I have a couple of blasters that languished unplayed for many months after I9 launched. When I finally dusted them off and started playing them again they were BUH-ROQUE in a way I'd already forgotten. We're talking level 29 and still using TRAINING enhancements in some powers. Yellow DOs. A couple of accuracy SOs and a damage or two and that was IT.
And bankroll? lol.
So yeah, in the old days poverty was a substantial problem (or rather, design choice).
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Quote:
This isn't necessarily true. A while ago, I started a thread in the General forum asking for a definition of a casual player and whether or not the forum goers would fit that definition. My definition was that a casual player didn't play that many hours per week and didn't focus on the market. |
Originally Posted by Intrinsic
A truly casual player probably won't care that he can't afford the best enhancements out there. In fact, he probably wouldn't get involved with the invention system enough to know the full extent of what he's missing.
If a casual player does get involved with the invention system and the marketplace, he can potentially do very well since he can afford to be patient with bids and sales. I think you might be obsessing over the wrong thing. |
The responses I got back indicated that while many self described "casual players" didn't play that many hours, many indeed worked the markets. In fact, they felt that the market actually allowed them to be competitive with their more active brethren since they could gain inf while being offline. "Casual" players do play the market and many players who play hundreds of hours don't.
the # of hours you play doesn't necessarily have any bearing on whether or not you're a "casual" gamer.
I'm playing maybe 5 hours a month lately, and I'm far from casual.
Someone else could be playing 30 hours a week but doing it in an unfocused, inefficient way that would meet anyone's definition of 'casual'.
Casual is a mindset and an approach to the game, not temporal measurement of time played.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Quote:
I wouldn't consider someone who played the game 30+ hours a week to be casual by any definition. So I disagree. There is some correlation between time played and this intrinsic quality that we refer as "casual".
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
the # of hours you play doesn't necessarily have any bearing on whether or not you're a "casual" gamer.
I'm playing maybe 5 hours a month lately, and I'm far from casual. Someone else could be playing 30 hours a week but doing it in an unfocused, inefficient way that would meet anyone's definition of 'casual'. Casual is a mindset and an approach to the game, not temporal measurement of time played. |
I think that people's self-definitions as casual have SOME effect on the definition of the term. Obviously people don't 100% get to choose their own definitions (what is it, 75% of drivers consider themselves in the top 50%?) but I think there should be some correlation .
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
I wouldn't consider someone who played the game 30+ hours a week to be casual by any definition. So I disagree. There is some correlation between time played and this intrinsic quality that we refer as "casual".
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Not necessarily.
Yes, more play time tends to 'educate' a player in efficient methods gameplay, pulling them away from the sort of inefficient, haphazard behaviors that I use to define 'casual'.
but I know several people who's approach to the game is entirely casual (in that they don't really care about 'good' builds or careful slotting or fast levelling, they take whatever powers look fun, slot whatever is handy and play whatever missions fall in their laps) even though they've accumulated thousands of hours of play time.
Playtime can certainly be an indicator of 'hardcoreness', but behavior is the defining boundary separating a casual player from a 'serious' one.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Quote:
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Originally Posted by eryq2
just what we need. a 1000th post about being broke or why and the same thoughts from the same people about it. find a new topic this month please.
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If we dont ask the question repeatedly, the only answer we will get will be the ones we've had before....the ones from the same people for the 1000th time. Asking the question over and over is the only way to challenge perceptions and potentially change the status quo.
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Are we there yet? |
Originally Posted by Frogfather
If we dont ask the question repeatedly, the only answer we will get will be the ones we've had before....the ones from the same people for the 1000th time. Asking the question over and over is the only way to challenge perceptions and potentially change the status quo.
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Poverty is not having enough to get SOs every 5 levels.
If you have one to five million dollars at 50, you're likely poor (contingent on not having blown a ton to IO out/contests).
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes
As we obsess about the Casual Player and his ability to support his little pixel-based family in these times, what is Poverty?
At what point is a character truly "Broke"? Too poor to afford a bucket to **** in or a window to throw it out of?
Is it that line where he has enhancement slots that are empty (or slotted with enhancements that have gone red...same thing) and he is unable to afford to replace them with his spendable wealth?
Or is the line somewhere higher?