What happened to the Market?

So I've recently returned from a long hiatus.

I've observed that hero & villain markets have merged. Also noted, that unless my perusing has been EXTREMELY circumstantial, it appears that all server markets have merged as well.

My question is, where are all the recipes? And WTF happened to salvage prices?

On recipes:

Used to be, in the old segregated markets, you could actually find collections of IO sets in the mid 20s. Focused Smite and such, were relatively cheap and common. Occasionally you'd have to wait a level to get the Acc/Dam IO, or dip down a level from your ideal. But the recipes were there. Now, seems I'm lucky to find just one or two of anything, and people want an arm and a leg...

And salvage...

Holy #^(%!

Common salvage... with thousands upon thousands on the market going for 50,000... 100,000 influence?!?! I get it when Mu Vestment is expensive, but Human Blood Sample? Iron? Spell Ink is going for 20+ times what it used to, and there's clearly not a shortage.

How the hell is anyone supposed to build out junk sets to level with? Even generic IOs are insanely expensive due to the salvage manipulation.

Merits can't be the answer... 24 levels of arc completions only earned me about 140 Merits... barely enough for a decent recipe or two. Much less the salvage to make it. (And clearly the way you use merits is on the uniques.)

What have I missed? What do people without hundreds of hours of high level farming do to while leveling now?

Right now is a bad time to look at the market. Most people are ToTing, which means they're not getting common salvage or recipes in any sort of quantity.

The addition of Alignment Merits also tweaks the situation. By spending 2 days doing tip missions, one can get a hero merit. Trade 50 reward merits and 20 million influence for another. Then buy almost any good rare recipe they want - oblit triples, LOTG +recharge, Numina unique, etc. That means that a lot of farmers are working on alignment merits on one character and then the next, rather than farming large maps for random drops and putting everything they find on the market.

Also, most people who sell on the market have realized that you can sell a recipe for 5000 if you're lucky, and you can craft that same recipe and people will pay 1m or more for it, over the cost of salvage, so less recipes get put on the market.

Personally, I've been running missions and dumping common salvage on the market this week because it's making a killing. It should settle down a bit when the Halloween event is over though.

The salvage market is probably wonky right now due to all the Trick or Treating going on. You only get costume salvage from that, not regular salvage. So that'll contribute to less regular salvage being available.

If you're encountering a salvage shortage try running a few Mission Architect missions. If you're new to it: the Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame missions are great. They drop tickets which can be redeemed for salvage or recipe rolls. Also there's an insp vendor and hospital just a few steps away from the MA mission entrance so it's a no-travel-time way to play the game.

Also, FWIW, the markets have been cross server, across all* servers, since they were added. The only innovation was removing the factional separation.

In many ways the merger improved the markets, but it's done relatively little to affect inflation. Really, the only way to do that is to add more ways to destroy influence. There are some players actually working at doing that by converting billions of their inf into prestige, and they have my approval and admiration.

Generally i dump any salvage i don't need onto the market for 5 inf. i also do some crafting and selling, so i rarely put commonly desired recipes on the market.



*Including the EU servers.

Common salvage goes through huge fluctuations during the day. As has been true since the market first opened, patience is a virtue. Put in your reasonable bid at the end of your play session and it should be fulfilled when you next log in. The same principle applies to recipes, just more patience is needed.

To clarify a point from the OP, the markets have been merged across servers from the very start, nothing new there.

I'm going to assume, when the OP refers to some "good old days" when you could find the items you want right nao that they are speaking from a hero only perspective.

If you're looking for "junk sets" for leveling up (as I usually do), plan your build out and make bids in advance. Put in your lvl 25 bids when you make your character. Your level 40 bids when you hit level 30, etc.

If you find slotting IOs to be too frustrating, SOs work perfectly fine and you can avoid the headache.

Thanks for the info everyone. Never knew the markets were server common before... though this is the first time I've actually played on more than one server.

I knew of the Architect Missions, but nothing about them. I'll give it a try.

My "good ole days" very much included the villain side. It was tougher to find some recipes, but the cost were so much more manageable. My villains were always better outfitted than my heroes for that reason. (Though "Frankenslotting" was more common.)

I guess I don't understand the merit system yet. I ran 10 tip missions to make my Stalker into a Rogue, but didn't notice any special reward for that... and tips seem to come in slowly. So that makes the "farming" of them less apparent to me, I'm sure.

In no particular order:

* If you have to buy it for 100K, you can also sell it for 100K.

* As mentioned, you don't have to buy it for 100K. Often you can buy it for 20K and sell it for 100K. See also: my sig.

* Tips are relatively hard for stalkers because they give every enemy individual attention and tips drop on a per-enemy basis. Much easier for people going through 6-10 badguys at a time like Brutes and Blasters.

* If you "reinforce" your alignment (do 10 villain missions as a villain, or 10 hero missions as a hero) you get a Villain or Hero merit. Actually, the first time you get 50 reward merits, but after that you get an Alignment Merit. You can get 5 random rare recipes with one AM. You can buy an AM with 50 reward merits and 20 million inf. So, inf aside , it's about twice as efficient getting rewards with AM's as it is with regular merits.

* There are two totally different things making the market extra-crazy right now. One is Trick or Treating, and all the associated madness. The other is [EDITED] something we shouldn't talk about.

* Just to repeat a point: Yes, everything's more expensive than it used to be, even without the current craziness. (everything but SO's, that is.) Yes, that includes selling AND buying.

Thanks Feycat. That's good info.

Go to the market section of the forum. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/forumdisplay.php?f=584

There are some great guides on how to make more than enough inf using the market to support any slotting you would like to do. Even if you use teh AE method suggested you will want to use some of the ideas in the market guides to get the most for your effort.

My reaction to the market changes can be summed up in the following:

These days, I'm finding myself dropping anything that sells for less than 1 mil onto the market for 1 inf. With things as they are, I put up about 19 inf worth of goods and can easily have several hundred thousand inf back in a couple of minutes or less. And that's without putting up anything of real value.

People are definitely overspending. In the last week I noticed I have around 1 bil inf across my account (not all on the same toon, though all of 'em, even the lowbies, have several million) and I don't even know where it all came from. No farming or anything, just walk up, drop goods, carefully price anything of value (craft if need be), and then walk away and go do whatever it is I feel like at the moment. If I can get that much inf by lazily tossing almost everything on the market for 1 inf, I can imagine what happens when people try to make inf.

Yeah, there's a ton of people with 50s, there's farming, there's occasionally an AE exploit, and all of these add up to tons of stuff on the market.

I think it's actually a lot better than it was pre-merge. Pre-merge, I had a toon who was making money by placing bids on brass at 500 and listing it for 250k. It sold, which means there were times when there was no brass up listed for less than 250k. !

Everyone has already covered the salvage case. It's typically very volatile,
and quite sensitive to various in-game events/playstyles (ToT in this particular
case).

As for mid-level recipes over the past year or so, there were some dev
changes to the game which (I believe) set up a vicious cycle that pretty
much tanked supply of most standard set recipes at all but at (or near) max level.

Specific contributors (imho):

* AE - two ways...
a> non dev-choice missions don't drop them (they only drop insps & tix)
b> AE PL-ing churns out a lot of L50s (who rarely, if ever create/contribute
mid-level supply since they aren't playing standard content)

* R-Merits - random rolls generate at your character level, so unless you
actively farm merits and/or level cap your toon (ie. shut off XP), that
typically means you don't get many random rolls until high level, so only
max-level recipes get generated with any significant frequency.

* Task Forces - they removed the random recipe for completing these,
and give R-merits instead. So, recipes generated at the tf level stopped
appearing.

All of these factors accumulate to substantially reduce the mid-level supply.

After awhile, persistent shortages at those levels helped foster a player
attitude that "it's easier to stick with SO's or Commons until high levels",
which in turn meant reduced demand, so even when there are some, sales
are slow and prices are low, leading to players simply deleting or vending
most typical mid-level recipes, and in-turn completing the cycle by
extending the shortages.

The end (and current) result, is that most mid-level recipes are pretty
rare or unavailable, and typically only include pure junk, or extremely
expensive premium recipes that are kept by players or snapped up very
quickly.

That said, it is still possible to get them, but it requires patience and lead
times of weeks typically... I usually start putting out bids for them around
L15 or so, and usually get most of them by the time I'm around L25-L30.

Most folks, simply aren't that patient and simply defer until their toons get
into the L40's or so (again, perpetuating the cycle).


Regards,
4

It all comes down to supply and demand.

I suspect its all of those common salvage that make high demand common IOs.

Just to clear things up a bit. Everything you're describing happened before they merged the markets.

The lower level recipes dried up considerably when they went to merits for TF's. It was a good change, but there was a big drop in the supply of lower level TF drops. The increase in salvage prices isn't what it appears to be. If you bid what you used to and wait 10-15 minutes, you'll still get your salvage. The buy it NOW prices for salvage went up in the last few months (there's 100s of contributing factors... pick one)... but the buy it patiently prices have not.

It makes sense that some of this would be people getting common IOs because other patterns aren't common enough. I guess it would help a lot if they made it possible to roll at a specified level from, say, AE tickets. That would get a lot more recipes at other levels.

Another factor that reduces the available lower level recipes: XP curve "smoothing" and a variety of other changes to the game have made it much faster to level up through the 20's and into the 30's. Folks spend a lot less time in those lower levels and therefore get fewer drops.

Along with Chaos Creator's point, I think the price histories disappeared one or two times as well. That caused some prices maybe to be lowered, but probably overall caused inflation on more common items.

Since you are returning, here's something you may not have heard that may help you supply your characters (and has probably affected the market too). It is now possible to e-mail your alt characters inspirations, salvage, recipes and Inf. Just send an email to your global name (with @ in front of it, like so: @Obscure Blade); you can drag and drop stuff into it, one item per letter. Very useful when prices spike and your scrapper has a pet recipe that your mastermind on another server really wants.

All good information and I thank the providers.

I too recently returned from a bit of a COH vacation. I welcomed the changed to the market, or so I thought. I find it harder to find and get IO's as well. I havnt shopped for my 50's as yet.

I am happy for the most part using SO's leveling up, there are some IO's though that are just nifty to have. Like call of the sandman's healing proc. They just arnt to be found.

I think another change, on that was defiantly for the good, that has affected the market is the ability to email items between characters. Now just one or a few characters can do the bulk of the buying and selling. And bids for dont have to be on just the character who needs the item.

Don't forget "flippers", people who buy stuff cheap and then resell it at absurd prices which will still sell to the "need it now" crowd. o_O When the markets merged, obviously the flippers increased, as they are all sharing the same resources now instead of just red and blue.

Generally speaking, if you need salvage, but don't want to pay through the nose for it, use AE, rack up some tickets, and random roll common salvage, or buy uncommons and rares as you need them. Also email yourself salvage and recipes from other characters on the same server.

Recipes... Hero and Villain Alignment Merits are great for this, when you need a specific one, but don't have the Reward Merits to either buy or random roll and it's selling for stupidly high amounts, such as say, a LotG 7.5%.