GR and market ruminations...

So Posi announced that your inf goes into "escrow" when you switched sides, same for prestige. So, the obvious response is to just buy up a bunch of expensive stuff and re-liquidate after you cross over.

This could open up a lot of opportunities for true arbitrage. We have two discreet markets w/sometimes wildly varying prices on some items. Of course, they'll be an evening out of prices as more ppl do this, but depending on how long it takes you to switch factions, and thus access the other side markets, and the fact you can only carry a few items at a time should provide enough of a barrier that it'll take a long time for prices to equalize. Then again, prices might equalize in anticipation of such arbitrage moves, which is to say previously cheap (on once side) items will rise in price to meet new demand.

Of course, the real question is why Influence/Infamy can't just cross over. RP reasons are silly. Joe Schmo, bank robber will have crap infamy; if he suddenly embraces Jebus and goes good, he'll have equally crap influence. When Magneto or Lex Luthor become "good guys", their enormous infamy transfers to their hero reps as influence as well. If Superman goes rogue, you're gonna tell me his words won't have a bit more cred in the Legion of Doom than Captain Boomerang? Sure, there'd be distrust, so create some penalty (say 20% hit on inf, hell even up to 50% if you really wanna destroy inf), but there's no reason to just re-start at zero.

tl;dr version: Merge the damn markets already!

allowing infamy/influence to cross sides is the equivalent of a market merger.

noting how ridiculously easy it is to gain merits heroside as compared to villainside, bringing over money from villainside after producing drops heroside in order to buy things heroside would create a ridiculous imbalance in prices both sides (temporary of course).

Allow porting influence over, but say, at 50% rate.

Hey, Fulmens, I found you a money sink!

( actually, I'd be ok with this solution. We do need to kill off some inf in the system, and it does represent the idea you suffer a hit to your influence/infamy for swapping, and it will help discourage people hopping sides constantly)

Posi said something about how merging the markets would eventually be a Very Bad Thing according to their economic forecasts, and that they have plans in the works to fix the markets.

I have a feeling that this means an automatic system which satiates both outstanding demand and supply, which might be bad news for marketers but good news for everyone else. Kind of like how they tried to fix PvP so that no one has too huge an advantage over anyone else, which resulted in a lackluster system. We'll see though.

The thing that interests me is the question: Which way will the most people go? Will it be Brutes and MMs headed heroside? Or will it be scrappers, controllers... what WOULD people bring V-side?

I have a financial stake in the outcome:I'm going to be doing currency exchanges and hopefully lots of them. I'm quite sure I'll end up with all my money on one side and I'm trying to figure out which side.

I figured out how the devs are gonna 'fix' the market. Theyre gonna lower 'the price cap' to 200 mil, instead of 2bil.


makes about as much sense as anything else they think about the market.

It's occurred to me that I'm only moving from red->blue, and in fact just rolled up some vils to play them in Prae & blue-side, so really, there's very little reason for me to get them very wealthy. I got them to around 50M mark, basically just walking around money, but I can prolly wait to get them to Wents (and my blue-side SG) before outfitting them w/all the expensive stuff (which I already own in abundance).

I'd really like to know what bad scenarios Posi & co. imagined up for a market merger. They've never been very good at forecasting market trends in the past; I can't imagine they have a better grasp on things this time, esp w/their "fixes" coming down the pipe. *shudders*