Weird "hero merit" paranoia

Sounds interesting. What server?

Well, that's the way the random number generator goes? On the other hand -- long term -- there's a reason a lot of people like to roll with merits, and why Fulmen's was buying merit rolls from people and still turning a profit.

Then again, a few days ago I was in a hurry to burn some AE tickets and decided to gamble on two Gold Rolls there. If I'd gotten two Scirocco's there I'd have made twice as much money as I actually did -- one recipe wasn't even worth crafting.

I guess it's like Vegas: a lot of people swear that there's money to be made at blackjack IF you know what you're doing, but if someone loses the first time they play they might not go back.

Actually I'm pretty sure I was losing about half my money overall. But I was paying people to make suboptimal rolls, so it would be surprising if I did anything else. I did have long dry spells of recipes that were all worth 1-10 million, but then I'd get a couple of 100-200 million inf items.

I don't think it's like Vegas, because all those giant buildings you gamble in have made their money back and it wasn't by giving away money at Blackjack. (Of course, free drinks for gamblers have a really high ROI for the house...)

Late to the party, but yes.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Ouch -- I didn't know that you were losing money on that deal, actually, but I can see how rolling at certain levels would result in a loss.

Actually, I picked blackjack [and qualified it with "IF you know what you're doing"] because yes -- those huge casinos ARE built with other people's money, and they keep raking it in. In all of those games, the house has an edge, or win percentage built into the games. If an infinite number of monkeys, er, players bet on roulette the house is going to win about 5% of the money that crosses the table.

The house percentage at blackjack is even smaller, but someone who can successfully count cards can not only reduce it to zero, but actually turn it slightly in their favor. (While not illegal in Vegas, there's a reason suspected card counters can be banned from casinos. Those casinos aren't in the business to lose.)

From what I've read here about the original merit system, I could have sworn that the overall player "win" percentage was higher with crafting and selling random recipe rolls, then buying what was wanted, as opposed to saving and buying a recipe for 250 merits.

At least our market is better than many other games where the crafted items are worth vastly less than the components, because everyone wants the components to level a crafting skill and there is no demand for the resulting product. I always hated that when it happened.

Every tip you run expires in 20 hours. It's not cross-character, so if you've filled up your tip-o-meter for Captain Awesomesauce, feel free to switch to The Mighty Spatula and erun some on him, too.