Why were the new Merits made to decrease TF Recipe prices and increase Purple prices?

Why were the new Merits created to decrease Task Force Recipe prices and increase Purple prices?
A) Intention
B) Oversight
C) Ignorance



Feel free to disprove/support this post with more comprehensive comparisons or with more up-to-date #s at a later time.

People are running 50s and farming, only they're farming Alignment Merits instead of Council Empire.

It's also been less than two weeks after the most tumultuous changes in the history of the market. A brand new 1-20 experience was added which makes it more likely that people will be rolling new characters instead of playing their 50s.

Also I'm not quite sure how they would have increased purple prices at all. If anything, this opened up more supply for purples so in the end their prices should come down. As others have said, it has probably more to do with people not playing their 50s rather than A merits.

A-Merits will get the market supply back to about where it was right before they decided to put merits in. It's going to get us very close to the ~20 minutes = 1 pool C hey day we had when Quick Katie and Quick Virgil were still the best way to go.

I can't say that that is a bad thing for the game.

Because by now, lots of people have had gotten a few Alignment Merits and used them to get the Rare Recipe they want, or rolled for Rare Recipes which drives the price down.

But it's unlikely anyone has gotten the 20 Merits needed to start buying Purple Recipes and drive those prices down.

And as mentioned above, when lots of people are starting new alts in Praetoria, level 50 gaming, which produces Purples, goes down.

Production goes down, costs go up.

As the costs of Purples go up, people will start farming for Purples again, since it's worthwhile to do so, OR, they'll save their AMs to buy Purples, since it will be worthwhile to do so. Both will drive the Purple Prices back down.

Quite the opposite, I would think. Purples cost a whopping 20 AMs, lotgs cost 2. So for 20 AMs you could get a purple or 10 lotgs, which at current rates would be worth over a billion inf, way more than any purple costs. Some people might very well buy purples with AMs, but they would be foolish to do so and they will be in the extreme minority. Either you make the smart play and go for pool c(even at reduced value it is still a good deal), or have the patience to wait for a premium pvp recipe, which is an even better value. If people are earning AMs they are probably earning purples at a lower rate than they were previously, especially if they used to farm. Pool C will continue to decline, eventually settle. Purples will get even higher. PvP recipes will stay random and 2B+

I have to go with c), ignorance. The devs have never shown they have any idea at all about how or why the market works. They cried doom for years at the thought of a market merge. Guess what, it happened and basically nothing of consequence has occurred. They were really possessed of some bizarre notion that villains would get run over by heroes in the marketplace.

Few unsorted notes:

1) Probably through coincidence, you picked the highest-price Hecatomb. (I stocked up on melee purples and I'm sitting on a lot of high bids.) On the other hand, Level 50 Numina recipes went down to 33 million [!!!] and you didn't happen to have that documented.

2) Are people really getting through 11 tip missions in 90 minutes? I'm startled but not, I guess, really surprised.

3) Tip missions are throttled. One farmer on one character will never add more than 7.5 rare recipes/day (2.5 through tips, 5 by converting merits) which is only 3x what they would have added just by doing 50 reward merits of work. Maybe there will be enough people doing enough tip missions, in a month or three months when it's grindy and not new, to make a huge difference in overall supply.

4) Playing with math in public:If you do six days of The Full Grind mentioned above, you have created 45 Pool C's and destroyed 120 million inf. Pure tip grinding- you've created 15 Pool C's and destroyed nothing. Old school grind of 300 merits - you would have created 15 Pool C's and destroyed nothing. I don't think you're going to generate a LOT more recipes, typically. We'll see if the demand for TF's picks up.

5) Quick Katies generated eight pool C's at a time; HVAMs are not inherently team-based so you're not dragging in bystanders. I think this will limit the size of the supply a little compared to Katie days.

6) I _think_ we will see Pool C prices drop by a bit more than a factor of 2 (twice as much per-merit, plus a convenience bonus because it's way easier to make 2 A-merits than 200 R-merits). We will not see purple prices change significantly, because I don't think the best purple is worth 10 times as much as the best pool C. I'm going to guess that PVP prices, except for the three or four items that are really really good, will go UP and for the good stuff they won't go down. (Alternate ways of getting the good PVP recipes may bleed off some of the PVP farmers.) I'm not convinced of that, though, because the supply of PVP-generated PVPIOs _and_ the supply of HVAM-generated PVPIOs are both small numbers.

7) I think we're going to see inflation drop off, finally. If 100 merits = 50 merits + 20 million inf = 5 rolls, that sets a merit to 400K. The previous value was roughly 1 merit = 1 million inf on the market (roughly 200 million for a LoTG) and that 20 million inf is 100% destroyed (instead of 10% destroyed, 90% transferred.) Now we have to create 50,000 HVAMs to destroy a trillion inf, and my very rough estimate is that we have between 10 and 100 trillion inf out there, but we're at least moving in the right direction. Add to that, the first HVAM reward per side REQUIRES a 20 million investment- so if you change sides, you have to pony up cash. Change sides twice, you're paying 2-3 times.

I'd also add that HVMs have been designed (unintentionally, I'd think) to affect uneven deflation.

As noted here and elsewhere, Pool C's are declining at some rate. However, Purples aren't declining and won't decline at anywhere near the same rate (due to design; 1 or 2 HVMs for a "C" compared to 20 HVMs for a Purple), so folks will have more INF to purchase these Purples.

Better said...folks have more INF to purchase Purples because Pool C's (the high value recipes in particular) don't/won't cost as much as they used to.

Without the benefit of any data analysis, perhaps 10 HVMs (a SWAG) would bring Purple deflation in-line with Pool C deflation, if that's what teh Devs desire.

Purple demand should spike a bit once a larger wave of new 50s arrive on the scene. Folks are distracted with school and school activities this weekend, but maybe late this weekend or the next (U.S. holiday) that spike will occur.

Armageddon purple set went down all around. At least down from villain side prices.

I'm going to agree with others, I think there has been a shift in playing patterns.
Look a lowbie salvage, most is much more supplied than previously.

Things will return to some equilibrium eventually, right now its too early to say what that will be.

Also, Going Rogue brought back a glut of old players and a bunch of new ones too (at least from what I've seen, especially with every server being in yellow or red during peak hours). So those people who are coming back from long hiatuses with level 50s will probably be buying up stock and driving up prices of purples.

I don't think the new merits will effect much in the long run. over the next month or so I think prices of the 1 and 2 HAM items will drop a little then creep back up when TIPS aren't the new hot thing; and it is only farmers than are adding their 5 TIPS to the end of their play session.

much like salvage prices adjusted when the masses stopped farming AE.

Holy cow people are blowing through 11 tip missions in 90 minutes? Share secrets please lol.

Oftentimes killing mobs to get a tip to drop takes longer than actually completing the tip mission, especially when most are just "kill boss" or "click glowie."

Do you guys customize which tip missions you play? Because a lot of them are not just ghost to the glowie. Especially with knives of artemis and rikti drones screwing with stealth. Or customized ambushes (for example, the villain one with you and frostfire against 12 malta ambushes, or the hero rescue the three debutantes from carnies.

So, what missions are you doing, because I don't know very many at all that are just click the glowie. Hell, the closest I've seen is the hero side combo of kills the boos and click the glowie where you fight the 5th column for bomb triggers.

Put me in the camp that thinks some voracious Redside appetites have hit the combined market.