Repairing the merit system and the markets

You're saying if a bunch of players think something is a nerf the devs would NEVER do it?


That's an interesting perspective.

Well as long as it isn't really a nerf they want to do. Like ED.

I think it's the only one, but [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Coercive_Persuasion]Coercive Persuasion[/quote] has the highest ranged defense in the game.

And more on topic. I understand the concept of letting us pick the level we roll at reducing the power of specifically choosing a recipe via merits. But at the same time, I wish we could do it. I'm not convinced that choosing has to be "better" or even "as good" as rolling. I'm fine with it as an option, but if the mechanics encouraged rolls, I'd be all for that.

@Uberguy: I love Croatoa and on Virtue there were Katies advertised in broadcast almost three or four times an hour during prime East and Central time hours. It was not at all uncommon for two or three groups to be competing for players to try and get a full team. Rather like when ITFs were new.

Not necessarily. I think they weigh the level of grief.

The amount of grief for not implementing a forced roll is probably less than doing so.



EDIT: To be serious I think the likelyhood of forced rolls is as likely as a merged market.

Hmm... I was gonna say something about this, but I think I'll hold off on my feelings about this statement until after I've established my stock portfolio in real life.

I'm serious; I'm getting bored with merely growing the amount of play money I have in a single game. I'd much rather do this for real!

Annnnd how many calls for Katies are there now compared to then?

Alright, you win. There is a purple set that gives +def.

Since I view a merger as an inevitability once all their half-measures fail miserably, I'll disagree....just because there are viable alternatives to forced rolls.

=D

In my experience, far fewer, but I don't have the numbers listing how many of each SF/TF get run. You still have to complete that TF if you want the Geas of the Kind Ones accolade or at least beat up Mary MacComber for the witch's hat or free Katie's soul for Amy's Ward. It's not without its shinies.

Also, I'm not quite sure why you asked that question.

Ideally, choosing a recipe should be worth less on average monetarily than rolling randomly. It's the easy way out - you eliminate any risk (even if 10 rolls on average would net more than 200 merits, it wouldn't always), you make less effort and you don't do anything to help overall supply. Fine - if you really want to ensure you get what you want, take the purchase route. But do so knowing that 7 times out of 10 you'd have made out better the other way.

Has anyone ever crunched numbers (using market prices vs the random roll project numbers) to see if it's even close?

heh. Clever goat.

True enough.

to be even more honest I have as much faith in them getting the market/economy perfect in this game as I do in me winning the lottery.

Love the game, love the devs, but market design is not something they are good at (*cough* I17 market interface *cough*)

Just curiosity.

It is indeed worth less than rolling randomly.

If I buy something for 200 to 250 merits, I might make like 200 to 300 mil.

If I were to roll those, I could get multiple items that make me 200 to 300 mil multiple times.

This for the average joe is pointless, as they:
1. don't want to mess with the market
2. don't want to spend all the time crafting the items they didn't want
3. Could care less about making inf and just want that one item.

Of course for 3, if they did craft a few they could probably buy that item several times over, depending on their rolls.

It depends on the recipe. There are recipes that absolutely blow the curve, so that it's better to buy them outright than it is to depend on average returns.

The idea that it should always be better to choose a random roll than to choose a specific recipe assumes a few things. In particular, it assumes that the price of an item on the market should have some proportional relationship to how frequently it appears (on average) as a random roll. For example, something that's twice as rare as a Widget: Damage/End should also be twice as expensive as one. We all know though that the weighting isn't that specific, and probably never could be. We have items that are wildly expensive in relation to the number of merits it takes to produce them, and items that are wildly worthless even though they are relatively rare. Those two factors and the merit price of a random roll can work out such that the average inf/merit of a random roll is worse than a specific buy.

It gets even more complicated when you start considering short term strategies rather than long-term returns. If you have some shopping list goal that you want to complete as soon as possible, you might look at what the fastest way to earn enough money to buy what you want. One way to do that is to determine what items sell for the most inf, and use merits to create them. It may not be the best return per merit, but it might be the best return per merit you can achieve in, say, a week. Getting enough random merit rolls to hit the average can take a while, unless you're lucky, and that's exactly the sort of determinism people use merit purchases to lock in.

The word 'could' is the difficult part. Rolling a dozen times isn't a guarantee that you'll get a really good drop nor a drop that you really want.

Of course it is also level dependent. I don't think any rolled drop has gone that far above 200 lately either?

The last bought recipes I crafted went for 350M and 500M respectively, and I only needed to buy enough salvage for 2 items.

Personally, I think it's a wash. Rolling isn't that much better than choosing when you factor in the overhead of crafting and selling those items. Of course, I view the crafting part as a hassle nowadays so YMMV.

Right - it's the curve-blowers that are the concern. It shouldn't be a better bet to buy LoTG +7.5 day-in-and-day-out as opposed to rolling, at least in my opinion.

I'd throw in desirability in there with rareness, but sure. I guess what my hope would be is that someone on the dev team would be looking at the drop frequency, desirability based on market prices, and merit purchase prices. Then use those to adjust. They'll never get a perfect balance. But I think they can make things a little tighter than they did with the initial weighting.

Probably no way getting around WANT IT NAO. But profitability should probably be sacrificed for turn-around.

The thing is, I doubt they're worried about this. Just look at the per merit costs of things. Broadly, the biggest spread in merit costs is a factor of 2. Making merit costs track market costs effectively negates one of the stated purposes - for merits to act as a "pressure" valve for prices. I have no way to prove it, but I'm quite sure they do act this way - if random rolls were the only source of LotGs (for example) I suspect their prices would be far higher, both because supply would be lower (people buy them with merits just to sell) and because demand would be higher (people who currently "buy them nao" with merits would have to buy them off the market.

But this goal would conflict with that pressure valve one. Merit costs would come under supply/demand pressure just like market prices (probably because of market prices). I'm basing this on an ideal where, somehow, merit prices tracked market ones to ensure that outright purchases were always worse than spending merits outright. Of course, I have no idea how you'd fully keep people from gaming this on the purchase side. If there hasn't been a level 47 widget sold for 6 months, you could probably create that level instead of a 50 and save both time and money.

I am convinced they will never merge the markets. In 10-15 years when it is down to one game server they still won't.

ZOMG You heard it here first! SERVER MERGE!

Get with the program, you must spread the wealth, don't you know that the lazy must be given that which the diligent and hardworking earn?

This is America! This! Is! Paragon!

The thing is the market is so simple even the lazy and shiftless (like me) can make gigantic fortunes.

when you're being sarcastic you gotta not sound like the dozens of people we get in here running that same shtick with a straight face.

=)