Arbitrage in GR

I blame high prices on arbitrators.

about what I expected, time wise.

A week's worth playing how much a day, I wonder.

I don't expect it has much to do with how much you play. The term "cooldown timer" just tells me it won't let you migrate your alignment faster than a certain real-world calendar day rate.

Considering just how much farming still occurs...*sigh*...

There will always be someone who is constantly running the vigilante/renegade missions to change status and 'gun-run' recipes between markets.

I think they *want* some permeability, just not so much that it ends up creating a de facto market merger.

depending on how much actual gameplay is required to move one alignment peg it might still be something an efficient player might try.

If it didn't take long to do the 'work' and the cooldown was the sticking point (and assuming they even let us haul 'gear' across in our inventory), someone could arrange a conga-line of alts they don't play regularly to ferry stuff around.

I expect the process to be tedious enough to discourage casual use but not so arduous as to totally eliminate cross-faction portaging.

One way, or as a pure mule I can see it. It just definitely doesn't seem worth attempting ongoing (edit) bi-directional arbitrage.

If one is looking at it from a limited time played perspective, same-side, straight up marketeering seems like a better investment for limited online time. Especially since you can't directly fold profits on one side into purchases on the other. You have to port something to sell for a profit on in both directions, which is going to eat deeply into margins (if you can even make a profit in both directions). I suspect the main use will indeed be muling.

I intend to ... "reverse mule"? I'll probably take a villain or two heroside, earn wealth over there and equip with it, then transfer back later. That might be especially attractive since they also said you will keep your epic/patron selection until your next respec, depending on what epic pool powers they make available to villains.

Actually, as I see it the one week per shift timer is completely irrelevant if you have 14 characters. Set them up so one finishes switching each day. Before completing the shift load the character up. You're moving goods fast enough that they're relevant when they arrive. Essentially all the timer does is determine how many characters you have to have going through the process.

which makes Silas' question the most relevant. One week, playing how many hours per day?

I mean, it's not like we care which character has the money since we'll be able to email it around. As long as one character completes the shift each day you get a full inventory load of goods swapping sides per day.

But it's not simply a process of click a button then wait a week. You have to go through an arc to change alignment. Given the week cooldown, I'd expect the arc to be aiming for at least 3-4 hours of play. To run your 14 character conga line, you'd have to run a multi-hour arc EVERY DAY.

P.S. I'm guessing on the time, but they TOLD US it would be an arc.

If people do smuggle and the marketears kry about it, it is a first. As in the first time they correctly used the term "arbitrage."

Any of my toons I actually play will be the blue-ish that can do both content sets and use blue markets (I think vigilante but I don't care enough about concept to check).

Yep I won't be doing anything redside at all except moving to blue permanently. I had a bunch of pet recipes on blue side to take over but it won't be worth the effort and I'm not altruistic enough where the Black Market is concerned to waste my time shuffling them over.

If a Master Mind wants them he/she can spend the 3 or 4 weeks required to come get them (and then go back). Anything that hasn't sold in the first 6 weeks of GR will get pulled and vendored.