What is obscenely rich?

Oh dear, I appear to have killed the thread with words!

Or are all the marketeers just too busy trying to drink away the pain of the i17 interface? I know that's where I am ... <pours another shot of Ardbeg>

The new interface would be fine if it didn't run slower. I prefer the old one but I'm sure I'll learn where everything is here too...the issue is it runs like at 1/2 the speed of the old one. And I've already bought something for more than I should have because of price autofilling....but thats my own fault I guess.

I would say that true wealth is being able to get whatever you want, whenever you want it. By that standard, per Rhygadon, no amount of inf equates to wealth, because even with amounts of inf I've never seen in one place he still can't obtain the things he wants. It's better to have a base well-stocked with crafted enhancements. And to the extent that this is true, the market is a failure.

Though the new interface doesn't help either. :/

Obscenely rich?

A bin (100 count) full of Glad Armor procs
A bin (100 count) full of level 20 Miracle +Recovery
A bin (100 count) full of Jav procs

Or...let's see 40 billion in email assets, then 2 billion x all your Market slots, then 2 billion x all empty character slots (36 per server of course).

Basically, having inf is great but I'd rather have the crafted IOs stored so I can have something valuable on hand. With PvP drops these days, it's much faster and easier to make money so I'm not sure even a billion on one character matters much anymore.

Hopefully those new Enhancements people have spoiled are saleable and/or selectable so we can get sell them for well beyond inf cap.

You know, I would guess that there are probably 100-200 accounts with over 20bn of purely liquid assets and 500 more that could get there by liquidating old 50s and selling the proceeds. Of course, someone would need to buy those assets.

Man, just saying that reinforces how badly we need a voluntary influence sink.

I'm positively destitute by your standards I guess.

I'm happy when I break 100 million on a character (I can actually count the number of times it's happened).

The most I've ever had at once was around 600 million. I got a purple drop redside and sold it. I spent the majority of it almost immediately on that character's build.

Being rich just isn't that important to me in the game. I've tried farming, and I've tried playing the market. The first bored the hell out of me, and I don't have the patience for the second. I'd rather spend my time doing stuff I enjoy and not worrying about the money. It annoys me slightly that I can't afford a lot of the stuff that is on the market, but doing the stuff required to afford it annoys me more, so I guess it works out.

I have just over the infamy cap and two 'no expense spared' characters - a purpled-out Fire/Fire Dominator with some PvP procs and a purpled-out DM/Ninjitsu Stalker.

I used to think I was rich, and then I read this thread.

I'd say that 'Obscenely Rich' is 'can fully kit out a character with purples and PvP IOs, paying Get It Now prices, without significantly affecting your overall wealth.' Evidently, some people can do that. Not I.

Obscenely rich is likely defined in my opinion as the point where you don't post here a SS of your bank, for reasons other than to the stretch ones ego, "ebilness" or whatever.

Fury

meh 10k AE tickets only takes a few hours to acquire.

Does it? I really don't know. I've stayed the hell away from AE as much as possible except when it first appeared to check it out, and only recently again to get some badges. Subsequently, a few of my toons have several thousand tickets on them, and most of my toons have zero.

It seems to me you'd have to by actively avoiding opportunity to hit level 50 with less than 100 million inf. In my experience playing 'normally' and just selling drops on the market with no special effort at marketeering will clear that number, sometimes by quite a large margin depending on the vagaries of 'good drops' once you enter the range where purples are available.

With prices where they are now, maybe. I have several characters with less than that, or who only recently topped that as a result of selling one or two lucky drops at the current highly-inflated prices.

The game itself doesn't produce nearly that much inf through normal play. Before the market opened, it was common to have to rely on inf dumps from higher-level characters just to be able to afford a full set of SOs at 22. But that hasn't been an issue for years, and these days just one sought-after drop can pay for all the SOs a character will need to 50.

I define "normal play" as running missions, story arcs, and task forces. It is my understanding and belief that the total influence rewarded by defeating foes, completing missions, and selling unwanted TOs, DOs and SOs to vendors in the process of leveling a character from 1-50 is in the mere tens of millions - an order of magnitude less than can now be earned by placing a single lucky drop on the market.

I would assume from your join date that you are well aware of this, having played the game for three years before the market was added to it.

It is also my perception that the inflationary spiral has accelerated in the last year or so. It was formerly rare to see recipes going for more than 5 digits; now it is common. The prices of many rare salvage items have doubled or tripled from the ~1 million rule of thumb that once held true. A character who has been recently played will have more inf from selling their drops at the current prices than those who were last active when prices were lower.

Not to denigrate anyone's play preferences by any means, but I'd have to
agree with the Goat that you'd have to take steps to actively avoid
earning inf to keep from getting ~100M on a character by L50.

Common IO recipes at L50 vendor for 100K each, without even going near
the market, so if you play a L50 character at all, you're going to earn 1M - 5M
an hour just from killing mobs and vendoring any L50 IO recipes that drop.

Any appreciable effort beyond that will double that rate.

Any decent drop at all, sold at market, will multiply it significantly (and
I'm not even talking about "rare" or even great drops).

Speaking of rare, many rare pieces of salvage sell on market for 1.5M - 5M
each, and 540 AE tickets (about 2 "normal" 15 minute mission runs) earns
you one... Doing this, all by itself would probably net 5M - 15M per hour...

To be sure, that's not what OP is talking about in his question. I think the
minimum there is 10 Billion and up, but I'm left scratching my head in wonderment
when folks say they struggle to make 100M -- Unpossible!


Regards,
4

Prices wouldn't be obscene if players didn't pay them. Simply put. And players wouldn't pay if the money wasn't there. People sold stuff, made money, paid more than other people for stuff because they "had to have it" and they had money afterall, and this created supply and demand. Except that you have no price reference.

This is currently not a real economy, no matter how you look at it. It's better, but without a price reference there's no way to balance prices. Sadly, people will pay 10mil for an IO that they could buy the recipe and mats for 2mil. There's no skill for creating IOs, so an 8mil service charge is unwarranted. People are just stupid.

if the price history was more like a stock ticker with a day's median price and volume, and showed the top 5 bids and sells, prices would self-mediate. It has been done (rather successfully) before (Eve-Online). As is, it's a chip off the old WoW block(EDIT: Except COH doesn't have the Auctioneer mod). If I wanted to play a system based on WoW, I'd play WoW.

Luuk Guis! Epix! Lets sel em an maek munies!

But... if you don't want to buy things off the market, you don't need 100 million influence. As I said, "rich" is being able to get whatever you want whenever you want it. By that definition, if you ignore the market entirely, a full set of level 50 SOs with enough inf left over to lend the odd million to a new alt is plenty wealthy.