Inflation and Availability

Lol I just thought of something Ragman. I bet you aren't in favor of market caps any more. Scenario:

A market cap of 20 mil is placed. The way it has to be placed is per market transaction slot. Therefore..... you no longer have any place to store multibillions of inf because a slot now only holds 20 million max...........

it would be easier to get stuff on the market that and Everyone Wins, the only Winners right now are The farmers and that only because farmers farm for Stuff like pvp and Purple Drops. Not Everyone wants to spend there game hours farming all day just to make Money, we just rather want to have fun. Well they are changing the market Design for Issue 17, So who really no whats going to happen.

Put a price cap on market transactions? That'll just take the high-priced goods out of the consignment house, reducing market efficiency, decreasing availability, and increasing prices. The ability to purchase things will no longer depend simply on how much you're willing to pay, but also on who you know. We're seeing this already with the high-end PvP IOs, where prices have gone above the current market cap of 2 billion.

Quick fact: in all of recorded history, price caps have never reduced prices. They've either resulted in prices going up or goods becoming unavailable.

He wants all those things to happen so he can make gazillions in profits by selling items he obtains off market to the desperate.

It's been proven time and again that you don't need to farm (at least on blue side where the market is healthy). All you have to do is play the game and sell (or craft and sell) your drops. The problem is that everyone that complains is only looking at the buy price. Just like any other economical trades when prices are high you should be come a seller, and when they drop its time to buy.

Unlike in the real world everyone in CoX that uses the market is both a buyer and a seller and the size of the market is entirely determined by the number of players using the market, how many characters they have using it, and how high level (ie: how many transaction slots they have). One way that the devs could take some pressure off the market and make it healthier is just to triple the number of transaction slots every toon has available.

Well, you can't get PvP IOs with merit rewards because PvP IOs are supposed to be recipes you get from PvPing (gaining merits is not PvPing, obviously). However, this means that the only way to get PvP IOs is on the market or by getting them as a drop, which is not the case for any other recipes than purples. Still think turning PvP rep into "PvP merits" which could be redeemed for random rolls or recipe purchases would be a nice addition there, but that's neither here nor there.

PvP IOs are a special case, even, because they only drop off other players, who are generally trying to avoid dying and at the same time are trying to kill you (NPCs do the same thing but obviously players are better at it). In a balanced PvP scenario, it shouldn't be "both sides racking up kills against each other," it should be "both sides having a fairly low score." In essence the PvP IO drop rate suffers during good PvP combat. Then there's the "drop is tied to rep" thing, which PvE drops aren't restricted by, and then there's the paradox with farming: the drops were tied to rep to prevent rampant arena farming like the kind which happened from I14 to I15, but it's still possible to farm these. People farm them because the drop rate is so low, and because a good drop can sell for hundreds of millions of inf, but Castle says they won't raise the drop rate because they're too easily farmable. (wtf?)

That's because drop tables are weighted common -> uncommon -> rare -> very rare. Simply put, more common IOs drop than set IOs because they're, well, common. Set IOs are supposed to be rarer (and hence, more expensive) in theory but it doesn't always work that way in practice.

Then the options would become "buy set IOs, or replace SOs every 5 levels." I like having generic IOs available because it means I can buy enhancements once without having to spend a lot, especially if it's a character I may not be playing often.

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They'd still be available through two mechanisms: buying off the crafting table and crafting memorized ones.
I've personally crafted over 20,000 generic IO's and used dropped recipes for probably less than a hundred of those.

Drops work like DnD tables. Beat critter get fixed exp, inf and prestige (divided by teammates). Then it checks a random percentage for the various drops available which include recipes, salvage, enhancements and inspirations.

www.paragonwiki.com has the known drop rates.

You do not need to farm to get purples you just need to defeat enemies who can drop them which is level 47+ minions, lieutenants and bosses. Once you are 50 the minions need to be 48 so they are at least green to you. So you can play with your friends as long as the selected content has enemies that will drop purples.

Here is why a fixed price reduction would not help you:
a) if the devs also went and crushed every possible out of market transaction so we could only sell to the fixed market maximum then you would be in line with everyone else who could afford them. People would not sell as many of them, they would save them for their alts and friends. Afterall if I am only going to get X million I may as well make sure my friends or alts get them not some market bidder I don't know.
b) if the devs didn't close all the means of out of market sales that is where people would sell them for much more than the cap to people who would be bidding at the cap to get them. And again you would be in line with them waiting for your chance.

There is only two ways the devs could accomplish what you want.
1. Implement stores that sell the items like SOs
2. Change the currency of the markets to something no one has and all would have to re-earn.

Well sure...that I know, I just don't know the exact drop rates. I wouldn't say switch them, but if common is 1:20 and uncommon is 1:50 (again, just pulling numbers for the sake of illustration), maybe tighten that up some to 1:25 and 1:45. Nothing huge, just change each flow a little.

edit: especially considering that if anyone really really needs a common recipe they can just purchase it at a table

Recipe drop rates can be found at http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Recipes
Salvage drop rates can be found at http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Salvage

Heh. Well, there you go. I kept searching for things like "drop rates", which pops up Leo's project but lists the other things further down. I looked at various IO pages but not the simple Recipes page. Thanks.

So maybe start slowly and rework that to something like 30:10:1 (73.2%/24.4%/2.4%)?

Did you read my OP? I am not proposing any kind of a cap, just if there was a store that sold everything then no one would have to pay over those prices.

I will say it again, I am not suggesting any kind of cap--either market or personal inf limit.

Could you please differentiate
"just if there was a store that sold everything" (What you said in the section I quoted)
and
"1. Implement stores that sell the items like SOs" (What Swellguy said, which you quoted and I assume responded to)

Yes, and that was covered on page 1 all the problems it would cause and they did introduce stores for recipes except for purples and PvP using merits and MA tickets.

BTW it may have escaped your notice but people often pay more for common recipes than it costs to buy them off the invention tables. And for a while in I9 beta the devs didn't have those recipes on the tables either.

Rereading the original post... he **IS** saying "implement a store that sells everything." You, said "There is only two ways the devs could accomplish what you want.
1. Implement stores that sell the items like SOs, 2...".

Sounds like you both agree that creating a store that sells everything would give the original poster what he wants.

Yes but that was in response to the moving target as the OP was replied to and different comments in response to the responses.

I wouldn't have bothered posting that if the only responses were "I want a store. Period. Not open to discussion of what that means or would do."

That snippet he quoted and then asks if I read his OP is a complete re-contexting. My quote was a response to his later writing "What I would like to see is a reduction in prices so that I could spend less time farming/marketing, and spend that extra time actually playing with my friends."

My answer makes sense in context but not in the snipped quote he created.