I'd be willing to believe they also have much longer date ranges in the last 5 sales redside too.
"Come to the Black Market where you can pay more and wait longer."
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Quote:
More people that participate, the better it will be. It really is not bad now, trust me.
|
Originally Posted by SwellGuy
I'd be willing to believe they also have much longer date ranges in the last 5 sales redside too.
"Come to the Black Market where you can pay more and wait longer." |
Quote:
I play both sides. My current PB vs VEAT experiences in the 40s and my new DP corrs vs my new DP defender and blaster tell me it is that bad.|
Originally Posted by The_Coming_Storm
More people that participate, the better it will be. It really is not bad now, trust me.
|
So trusting you would seem to be a foolish thing to do.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Quote:
This is true, if you compare the current redside market to what the redside market is going to look like after GR launches...
|
Originally Posted by The_Coming_Storm
More people that participate, the better it will be. It really is not bad now, trust me.
|
@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Smurphy
The data collected here is NOT...
accurate. comprehensive. scientific. the whole story. ideal. a perfect representation. a random sample. I've collected the data in a spreadsheet. It's 16MB. I took screenshots of the market window for the item, cropped the picture, and then pasted it into a spreadsheet. The process went faster than you think and I was watching high quality Nickelodeon programming while I got things down. Link to the file hosted on a random file hosting site. Obviously, I hope to apply this data to the market merger discussion. It's an Open Office file. I'm open to posting other versions and having it hosted on other sites. Feel free to steal, change, alter, repost, plagiarize, or otherwise use the information there in any manner you feel like. [/code] |
Thanks Smurphy, will you be doing a comparative spreadsheet a few months after GR hits? Would be interesting to see how bad the market gets redside.
Quote:
This. It takes me 4 times as long and roughly 30% more influence to IO out comparable builds (Defender/Corruptor) red side compared to blue.|
Originally Posted by SwellGuy
I play both sides. My current PB vs VEAT experiences in the 40s and my new DP corrs vs my new DP defender and blaster tell me it is that bad.
So trusting you would seem to be a foolish thing to do. |
If IOs are supposed to represent post 50 development then there is problem that needs addressing since there is this large a disparity.
-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
Quote:
I'll believe my lying eyes instead of your bafflingly confused observations, thanks.
|
Originally Posted by The_Coming_Storm
More people that participate, the better it will be. It really is not bad now, trust me.
|
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
So Smurphy opposes combining markets? *boggles*
The best comics are still 10�!
My City of Heroes Blog Freedom Feature Article: "Going Rageless?"
If you only read one guide this year, make it this one.
Super Reflexes: the Golden Fox of power sets!
WARNING: I bold names.
Quote:
I'm curious how you came to that conclusion.
|
Originally Posted by Daemodand
So Smurphy opposes combining markets? *boggles*
|
Quote:
I'm wrong then. Good.
|
Originally Posted by Smurphy
I'm curious how you came to that conclusion.
|
The best comics are still 10�!
My City of Heroes Blog Freedom Feature Article: "Going Rageless?"
If you only read one guide this year, make it this one.
Super Reflexes: the Golden Fox of power sets!
WARNING: I bold names.
Quote:
I'm also curious how you came to this conclusion.
|
Originally Posted by Daemodand
I'm wrong then. Good.
|
Dodgy!
Member of:
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Current Team Project: Pending
Quote:
The data given along with your comments so far, and your questioning of my being wrong all lead me to think you've gone to the Americas.|
Originally Posted by Smurphy
I'm also curious how you came to this conclusion.
|
So what is your stance on market merge (thought you were for it given your excellent understanding of the market)? I'm in favor of it myself, but if there is a good argument against it, I've an open mind on the subject.
The best comics are still 10�!
My City of Heroes Blog Freedom Feature Article: "Going Rageless?"
If you only read one guide this year, make it this one.
Super Reflexes: the Golden Fox of power sets!
WARNING: I bold names.
Quote:
The only reason a player that understands the mechanics wants them separate is to exploit the low population on red side. It's very easy to corner a certain good because there is such a small pool of goods available there.|
Originally Posted by Daemodand
The data given along with your comments so far, and your questioning of my being wrong all lead me to think you've gone to the Americas.
So what is your stance on market merge (thought you were for it given your excellent understanding of the market)? I'm in favor of it myself, but if there is a good argument against it, I've an open mind on the subject. |
There are several reasons (like RP, "my HERO would NEVER buy stolen goods from a VILLAIN') not to merge the market if you DON'T understand the mechanics.
-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
Quote:
This sure sounds awfully close to: "Anyone who disagrees with me must be a bad person and their opinion is worthless."
|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
The only reason a player that understands the mechanics wants them separate is to exploit the low population on red side. It's very easy to corner a certain good because there is such a small pool of goods available there.
|
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Quote:
That's an impressive misinterpretation!
|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
This sure sounds awfully close to: "Anyone who disagrees with me must be a bad person and their opinion is worthless."
|
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Let's do our part to help the devs and pull down all bids/listings and cease all Black Market activity so they can just shut it down and link the BM interface to Wentworths. Then no technical hinderance would exist.
<--- a team player
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Quote:
I think part of the reason why they are being kept separate is the amount of effort needed to merge the markets. It doesn't sound non-trivial to do it.|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
The only reason a player that understands the mechanics wants them separate is to exploit the low population on red side. It's very easy to corner a certain good because there is such a small pool of goods available there.
There are several reasons (like RP, "my HERO would NEVER buy stolen goods from a VILLAIN') not to merge the market if you DON'T understand the mechanics. |
The flip side then is if you are surmising that it costs 30% more to equip a toon redside than blue, it usually means that whoever is selling the items is making 30% more on the items they sell as well. I know my villain, who I played a lot less of, hit the inf cap way faster than my hero did. There's a lot of other things like drop rate/mob types and not just population that would reflect the higher prices red side.
The other question is, are villains performing worse than heroes on average? That is, are these builds 30% worse because the market isn't balanced?
Personally I think the markets should be merged but if you can't prove substantial harm (not benefit) to villains I don't think the devs will see it as a problem.
Quote:
Inventions is a major game system and villain participation is limited by poor game design.|
Originally Posted by PumBumbler
Personally I think the markets should be merged but if you can't prove substantial harm (not benefit) to villains I don't think the devs will see it as a problem.
|
If villain participation in MA was limited by some game mechanic that wasn't present hero side, everyone would agree it was a "substantial harm".
Market participation is no different.
My villains deserve and expect a experience roughly equivalent to my heroes and they aren't getting it.
Earning power is irrelevant when there's nothing to buy.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Quote:
The only things that can't be bought outside of the market are PvP IOs and Purples. Using merits and tickets is an alternative to items you can't find on the BM.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Inventions is a major game system and villain participation is limited by poor game design.
If villain participation in MA was limited by some game mechanic that wasn't present hero side, everyone would agree it was a "substantial harm". Market participation is no different. My villains deserve and expect a experience roughly equivalent to my heroes and they aren't getting it. Earning power is irrelevant when there's nothing to buy. |
I still don't see where being PO'd because there are fewer goods becomes substantial harm.
Quote:
I don't know about harm but it isn't any fun using the BM compared to seeking comparable items from WW so much to the point I will move my villains to heroes come Going Rogue. |
Originally Posted by PumBumbler
The only things that can't be bought outside of the market are PvP IOs and Purples. Using merits and tickets is an alternative to items you can't find on the BM.
I still don't see where being PO'd because there are fewer goods becomes substantial harm. |
It seems unlikely I am the only one but certainly there are people who play villains less due to that very frustration.
There's already a shortage of villain players over heroes on the servers for a variety of reasons.
So the shortage is likely to grow due to behavior inequities between the two sides' markets.
Now certainly CoV can work with just 1 active player per server at any given time but that hardly seems like a good situation so you could argue that there is no harm in that situation but it would seem like something a game developer would want to address. So at what point does it become something to address? The same question holds for this situation. At what point does the disparity become something to address?
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Quote:
How would we quantify substantial harm? |
Originally Posted by PumBumbler
The only things that can't be bought outside of the market are PvP IOs and Purples. Using merits and tickets is an alternative to items you can't find on the BM.
I still don't see where being PO'd because there are fewer goods becomes substantial harm. |
At what point would it become imperative to do something about it? Would it be too late when we reach that point if something isn't done sooner rather than later?
I doubt once I have made the effort to move my villains blue side through Going Rogue I would go through the effort to move them back even if the situation were later rectified.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Quote:
Tickets are not a substitute for a market, because they remain a random drop generator. At best they allow for a larger number of rolls, but you still cannot make any determination about what you will get. The exception is for uncommon and rare salvage, but other than the occasional gripe about prices, I don't see many people complaining that they can't obtain salvage. The market's main utilitarian function is to allow people getting random things to sell things they got but don't want for things they want but didn't get. Having more random rolls doesn't get rid of a need for that function unless you make the number of rolls so high that everyone just gets everything they want almost by fiat.|
Originally Posted by PumBumbler
The only things that can't be bought outside of the market are PvP IOs and Purples. Using merits and tickets is an alternative to items you can't find on the BM.
I still don't see where being PO'd because there are fewer goods becomes substantial harm. |
Merits required to buy an item outright from a Merit Vendor often take substantially longer to obtain than it takes a level 50 character to obtain the inf to buy the item outright on the market. This may not seem relevant if you aren't level 50, but it does matter, because you may be able to convince a level 50 to give you that money for something you sell... assuming a market liquid enough that 50s bother looking for your goods. Indeed, this cost for merit investment appears to have been by design - on the hero side you would have to be sort of daft to consider buying a whole build with merits. It appears that merits are intended to be a spot solution to wanting things, where you can use them to buy a few items which you deem too expensive at going market rates. This makes them a sort of "pressure valve" on upward price pressure.
If one of the root causes of an illiquid Black Market is lack of players, this has implications for teaming, which has implications for merit earning. TFs are far and away the best potential merit/time. The only current crossover TFs are the ITF and LGTF, meaning this pressure valve, already slower than buying items on the blue side, is now potentially even slower for a villain player until they hit level 35. Even then, a hero player is more likely to find a team for TFs other than the two co-op ones, meaning they may have more opportunities to earn merits per day than a villain relying on the two co-ops with hero teammates.
The implication here is that the villain player gets to choose between the Black Market and an even slower merit-based IO accumulation.
The main complaint here is that, if you play both sides of the game, and if you want the same ability to IO characters on those two sides, right now the villain version of that ability is slower and/or more expensive. You either have to accept that about the market and pretty much only seek max-level shinies, or you have to soak time into merits. When you soak time into merits, not only is that time a hero generally not have to spend, but it may actually take longer in both hours played and real calendar days to obtain the same number of merits a hero would due to greater teaming and TF-running access.
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
Uber has summed it up pretty well.
I build to exemplar on both sides of the fence. That means that I take the time to slot IOs in the 30-37 range depending on toon and build.
It takes at least 4 times as long in both market wait time and merit earning time on the red side as it does the blue. That's not an exaggeration that's from observation. I don't care about how much it costs from one side to the other because I know how to use the market on both sides and generate inf faster than I spend it anyway.
My typical MO is to play only content that generates merits all the way to 30.
Red side I lose out a bit as I have to do Mayhems to open contacts. Blue side all I have to do is run to the shard to buy a jet pack.
Once I hit 30 I roll all my accumulated merits. All the IOs generated in this process that can be used by my build are crafted and slotted (or held), any that I can't use but can be used by an alt (of mine or my wife's) are crafted and dropped in an SG base bin, all other IOs are crafted and sold.
I then freeze the character at level 30 and put a bid in that's about 80% of going rate on the IOs that I want and just let it float while I play and rake in merits/tickets. If I happen to generate one of the IOs that I have bids on I slot it and retract the bid. When I get down to 1 or 2 IOs in that tier that I need, I accumulate merits and buy the recipe(s) out right.
I then unfreeze and move on to the next tier (35-39) and repeat the process.
The final tier is 40+ and I follow the same pattern to 50 and build completion.
Blue side that freeze at the 35-39 range isn't even needed most of the time. Red side I'm still stuck in the lower levels and don't have a VEAT because none of my villians are 50s.
The problems are not just lack of population. It's that plus a lack of content in the appropriate levels to generate merits at TF rate rather than at story arc/flashback rate.
All these things together mean that my villians arrive at 30 with fewer merits, it takes longer after that to earn merits due to lack of content/teaming opportunities, the market is slower so fewer bids are filled, which means that I have to spend more merits in direct purchase of recipes and all of that means that my villians IO out at 1/4 the speed of my heroes.
If IOs are supposed to be end game content then I would expect the speed at which my villians complete their end game content using similar methods to be roughly equal to the speed of my heroes. Especially in the case of similar/identical builds (like defender/corruptor). This is not the case and the difference in speed is 400%.
How big a difference should there be between the sides before corrective measures are taken? 10%? 15%? As much as 25%? Even if you take a 100% variance for my methd compared to the methods of others I don't think a 300% difference is equitable, do you?
-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
The data collected here is NOT...
accurate.
comprehensive.
scientific.
the whole story.
ideal.
a perfect representation.
a random sample.
I've collected the data in a spreadsheet. It's 16MB. I took screenshots of the market window for the item, cropped the picture, and then pasted it into a spreadsheet. The process went faster than you think and I was watching high quality Nickelodeon programming while I got things down. Link to the file hosted on a random file hosting site. Obviously, I hope to apply this data to the market merger discussion. It's an Open Office file. I'm open to posting other versions and having it hosted on other sites. Feel free to steal, change, alter, repost, plagiarize, or otherwise use the information there in any manner you feel like.
Issues/Concerns
The data collected and the information I provide is acquired by looking only at the number of items listed for sale at one instant in time. This method of collection is flawed. I do not focus on the number of outstanding bids. I don't belief that is a very important and meaningful number because anyone with 1 Inf and a market slot can make that number go up. One needs the specific item and the Inf to place it on the market to list the item for sale.
Ideally, the volume of items traded would be tracked over a period of time. A player could get some of this data on low volume items by watching the last 5 history of an item and recording the quantity and dates of the transactions. That method of collection was beyond my capabilities to acquire. If someone is able to collect data in such a manner then I would be greatly appreciative.
The number of items listed for sale at one point in time does not necessarily correlate to the volume of items being placed on the market. Items may be in a shortage on the market. An exaggerated example of a possible shortage would be Miracle:Recovery Uniques only being listed for 100 Influence on the market. The price of 100 is below their value. The Miracles that reach the market and are listed for sale would sell very quickly. Inspecting the market at any point in time would show that very few, if any, Miracles are listed for sale. Volume of Miracles may be very high but data collection only focusing on items listed for sale would not indicate that volume. Conversely, a Surplus could exist where items are frequently listed for above their value. In a surplus the number of items listed for sale on the market at one point in time would indicate a larger volume of items being traded than is truly present.
Purples
I collected information on recipes and not enhancements. I collected the information on two dates: Friday March 12th and Wednesday March 24th.
Percent of purple recipes that have X for sale.
12th
Salvage
I collected salvage data on two dates. I only collected a sample of the salvage and only at one instant in time on each date. I selected my sample by going to http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Salvage_Tiers and selected the top 2 of each column. I didn't inspect salvage prices.
Percent of salvage that have X for sale.
12th
Pool C Recipes.
I only collected the data once on the 24th. I also took a count of how many of each recipe were listed for sale at levels below the maximum level. Prices are generally higher redside. Many of those higher prices exist on items that have a constant and sustained amount of items listed for sale. I'm not doing analysis on how many on each side are currently listed for sale at max level. However, sub max level on my non-random sample...
Data collected same as Pool C.