2 billion per enhancer

I was going to post this in my other reply to him and didn't, but this was too nice of a segue.

From Wikipedia.

Prima facie (pronounced /ˈpriːmə ˈfæsiːa/, from Latin prīmā faciē) is a Latin expression meaning on its first appearance, or at first sight. The literal translation would be "at first face", prima first, facie face, both in the ablative case. It is used in modern legal English to signify that on first examination, a matter appears to be self-evident from the facts. In common law jurisdictions, prima facie denotes evidence which – unless rebutted – would be sufficient to prove a particular proposition or fact.

In most legal proceedings, one party has a burden of proof, which requires it to present prima facie evidence for all of the essential facts in its case. If they cannot, its claim may be dismissed without any need for a response by other parties. A prima facie case might not stand or fall on its own; if an opposing party introduces other evidence or asserts an affirmative defense it can only be reconciled with a full trial. Sometimes the introduction of prima facie evidence is informally called making a case or building a case.

B_C is trying to claim that the behavior of these high priced items is obviously evidence of manipulation, presumably because no one sane would willingly pay these prices. Prima facie, since the prices are preposterous, they must only exist because someone is manipulating the situation.

Unfortunately for B_C, there have been multiple rebuttals. There is other evidence, which other posters have presented, which indicate that the self-evident nature of his claim are untrue. They have included the market theories of supply and demand; historical, real-world behavior of the prices of goods with price caps set below market prices, and in-game information about off-market sales of goods with apparent "market" prices above the in-game market's price ceiling. The implied supporting position that prices so high are preposterous has been brought into question.

A prima facie case can survive when rebutted, but doing so requires either additional supporting facts, or further explanation about how the facts already presented show the case. In my view, B_C has done neither.

And there ya go. Thats the final straw for me. If people ask for proof, you call them petty criminals. You speak of insults hurled at you while insulting others, you talk of indignant response while you respond in kind....you are exactly what you despise. I can no longer subscribe to your newsletter.

Welcome to ignore

--Frog

The only one with access to spreadsheets of buy/sell data are the Devs. i am not a Dev. Therefore i do not have this data at my fingertips to show you. You know that, so you keep demanding it. What you are trying to avoid, is the stated purpose of the OP. 2 billion is too much for any enhancer. Anyone selling at this price (or above) is a greifer. By greifer I mean someone trying to mak the game worse for another player. We clear?

However, there is data, collected by people other than the devs, showing that controlling the market is impossible for longer periods of time and that the system is not FIFO as you claimed. We have shown facts that disprove your claims, something we shouldn't have needed to do in the first place because you had no data to back them up in the first place.

I only keep demanding facts, because assertions that cannot be proved have zero validity.

I'm not trying to avoid anything except ignorance.

Who are you to decide that? If people pay 2 billion for them, they have accepted the price which means it is not too expensive. No one forces anyone to pay that. I wonder what is so hard about this concept.

Ehh... People accept to pay that price so how is it making the game worse for other players? By the same logic, I could claim that the devs are making the game worse for everyone because we can't get what we want right now for free, because I think any price higher than 0 inf and any amount of time above 0 seconds required for "pimping out toons" is "too much". Thus, devs are griefers.

Oh wait, this "thread of logic" doesn't work, does it?

Not at all.


I suggest reading what I wrote about the burden of proof again. After that I suggest thinking about it. When you've done that, I suggest learning the rules of the market game. Then? I guess I'd like you to re-evaluate your own thought processes in this thread, but I doubt you'll make it that far.

So, maybe I missed that post. Could you repost where somebody in this thread gave historical real world data of this price cap situation. Beyond that, it seems you missed one post of mine. If the Devs presented a buy it now function in the markets, this would effectively cap all prices on all items SUCCESSFULLY. Cause if you try to sell an enhancer for 2,500,000,000 when your customer can buy the recipe for 500,000,000 you will be standing there a very very long time. That is why I keep getting flamed, called ignorant, told off, and suffering the slings and arrows of the malcontents. It has the possibility of ruining their abuse of the market, making the game more fair, and more fun.

Not according to the people who pay 2 billion (or more) for them.

Nor, apparently, according to the devs, who very recently had an opportunity to increase supply when they introduced A-merits, but chose not to do it. PVP +def IOs had been selling for 2 billion for a long time when A-merits came in.

Sure, a store would put a cap on prices and increase availability. But unless you're assuming that the devs aren't capable of looking at the market, then I don't know why you think 'I can't get rare stuff' is going to be such an overwhelming argument to them that they'll decide to fundamentally change the way the invention system works. They already KNOW how rare and expensive stuff is, because they're the ones who set the drop rates (and, as you say, have complete access to the market data). They already KNOW it would take 70 days to buy a PVP IO with a-merits, because they just set the a-merit prices.

I guess, really, my question is, why do you think that your idea of how long it should take someone to get hold of stuff in the game is going to be more convincing to the devs than their own?

It would stop what you think is abuse of the market. The market, as made by the devs, by design allows you to sell items for as much as you can carry influence. It is not a bug, nor a glitch, thus selling items for this much is not abuse.

If you could sell items for negative influence or have both the seller and the buyer gain influence in a sale that would be abusing. As far as I'm concerned, the devs shouldn't think it's wrong that people sell items for the influence cap. I think the situation where things go for above the inf cap is slightly broken, but only because it needs more than one trade to complete the transaction.

Off the top of my head, there are maybe 3 posts in this thread (with at least one of them including a link) describing the result of price caps in real life. I think you should pay more attention to what you read so that you'd learn more and have to complain less.

EDIT: The reason why you're getting told off is because you refuse to learn and continue with your preposterous claims.

Which one would you like?
My theory is that the less than friendly reception is the result of you doing things like not reading / acknowledging posts. It's not because of the bad ideas you bring up.

Oh and also possibly because of the misinformation you keep posting.

Posts 306-312 in your OWN thread. Maybe a couple more posts after that.

I don't have a problem with ignorance, because it can be cured. What we have here is willful blindness.

It may be petty or idealistic or something, but I explain to people why I put them on /ignore. I'm putting you on /ignore because you aren't responding to input. You're a write-only device. A conversation happens when two people talk and two people listen, and if you're not listening I don't have to waste my time.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=308
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=312

Would the recipes/enhancements be supplied by the game or by players?

Actually, the marketeers are quite content. It seems instead that you are the one who is a malcontent.

No one is abusing the market.

At what cost? Then what you would have is everyone running around with the 'ultra-rare' items which won't be that rare anymore.

There is a reason why the items are rare: the Devs want them to be. Flooding the market with supply would be cutting off your nose to spite your face because there would be nothing to work towards anymore.

Your idea of anything trading for more than 2B being your definition of griefing, must make you a graduate of the Je Saist School of MMO design.

No one has argued that that would not work, simply that price caps alone will not work (which was your first "suggestion"). In response to this claim the response (which several people already made) is that based on the observable evidence the devs do not want these recipes to be more common than they are now.

Unlike in real world economies the devs are fully in control of the rarity of each and every item in the game. When they recently introduced the Alignment Merits system they were basically saying "this is what we believe the relative values of items should be". Alignment merits function as an effective soft cap for prices, if the price of an item on the market gets to high relative to other items then is becomes cost effective to buy that item with Alignment merits and sell it for profit.

In fact this is exactly what we are seeing happening at the moment. Take a look at the cost of a level 25 LotG 7.5% on the market at the moment (this serves as a good indicator of the value of using A-Merits in a direct buy since it is popular and produced almost exclusively by direct buys). It costs 2 Alignment Merits generally goes for between 110million and 150million.

Now take a look at the Gladiator's Armor +3% Defense IO. It costs 30 Alignment Merits and sells for 2billion on the market or between 2.1 billion and 2.5 billion off market (based on recent auction threads).

So compare the market value of the 15 LOTG 7.5s you could buy for the cost of 1 Gladiators Armor +3%. It works out to between 1.65 billion and 2.25 billion. So using the relative pricing scale set by the devs the Gladiator's Armor IO has about the value you would expect compared to other IOs people could spend the same rewards on. It is a little on the high end but there are a few factors to explain that:
1. Commitment. It takes a lot more effort to get the alignment merits for one Glad Armor than 15 LOTGs since you have to do it on a single character over the course of at least 20 days whereas the LOTGs can be split up on different characters
2. Lack of existing supply. LOTGs have been supplied by reward merit direct buys for some time so the relative increase in supply was small whereas before A-Merits the only source for Glad Armors was PvP random drops which trickled them onto the market in very small amounts, as the existing demand is sated they will probably drop in price to closer to the middle of the range.

If the devs want to drop the price of them they don't need to muck around with setting fixed prices, they can simply adjust the alignment merit price to increase the supply generated by players. The fact that they have not done so would seem to indicate that they are happy with the relative supply of items.

Congratulations Genius,

The game has only *existed* for 6 years.

The market, for considerably less.

Using your brilliant mathematical prowess and flawless calculating skill,
nobody could possibly have a purpled out toon of any sort until next year
at least, according to your math.

You just keep racking up the credibility there, champ...


4

So you're telling us you're making an argument based on data that you know, for sure, no one involved in the discussion can possibly have?

On what grounds do you make this claim?

I know people who have paid 2.5 billion for enhancements and been quite happy about the results.

I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't know how you come to that conclusion.

How do you determine what is "too much"? Why is it "too much"? Why is 2 billion too much, but 1.9 billion not "too much"?

Imagine that we find an enhancement which is worth one billion (a price which is not "too much".) Now imagine that some other enhancement exists which is better than it, and which is rarer. Obviously, it will be worth more. Lots more. Maybe twice as much...

Basically, I've seen people who are offering to sell these enhancements for 2B and up, and it does not appear to me that there is any malice in their actions. They are trying to get a fair price for something, and selling something for hundreds of millions of inf less than the going rate hardly seems like a "fair price".

Houses cost money. A fair bit. Many people can't afford a house. Your argument seems to be that, therefore, $500k is "too much" for a house, and anyone selling a house for that much is a griefer, doing it in order to make house-buyers suffer. Never mind that it's a three-story mansion which has lakefront access and is a block from a particularly well-respected school; $500k is "too much for a house", because you can get a perfectly good house for $110k.

I'm going to break this down, B_C, and you tell me what point you disagree with:

1) There are rules in the game against griefing that carry penalties like having your account suspended.
2) Both devs and forum mods read this forum.
3) There have been many announcements in this forum of items for sale above the 2 billion cap.
4) Mods have the ability to remove posts that go against official policy.

Do you believe any of those statements to be false? No? Then what must we conclude?

Conclusion: the devs don't consider selling something for 2 billion or above to be breaking any game rules.

Now, you may consider this to a bad policy but that's not the same as claiming that it's somehow griefing.

Next, you have proposed to add a "Buy It Now" button to the Auction House interface. Setting up a fixed price purchase mechanism is creating a store. Your proposed store mechanism is redundant:

1) A store exists to buy recipes using AE tickets.
2) A store exists to buy (currently only generic) recipes at University crafting tables for inf.
3) A store exists to buy recipes using Merits.
4) A store exists to buy recipes (including purples and PvP IOs) using Alignment Merits.

When you buy a recipe using any of those methods, the game creates a new one for you. What's the other existing mechanism that creates recipes where they didn't exist before? Drops from defeats.

To drive down prices, the devs could increase drop rates or lower the Alignment Merit prices, or make all recipes purchasable from University crafting tables.

Can you agree to the truth of that statement B_C? The devs don't need to create yet another store. I know you don't know much about how the market works, but surely you can see that if they make something more plentiful, the price drops?

The devs have not changed drop rates nor changed existing store prices. I believe there are only two possible conclusions:

1) The devs are sadly ignorant of the rarity and resulting high prices of purples and PvP IOs. If only they could be made aware of this problem, they'd take action to correct it.
2) The devs are well aware of the rarity of these IOs and do not perceive it as a problem because their intent was to have them be ultra-rare the whole time.

B_C, I think you cling to conclusion #1; the rest of us believe conclusion #2.

Troll equals Troll. Debate with a troll is pointless. Agreeing with a troll equally pointless....whats the saying on the defender forums, "Cant heal stupid", well you cant debate someone who refuses to listen

While I never came to the boards and so gloriously espoused my beliefs, I thought the market was full of manipulators and evil ness as well. Then I sold my first wing recipe for more than i could afford to list it for and a lightbulb went off. Wait...you can sell to the market as well? Madness ensued. I made my billions and continued on. It is daunting at first, but you get over it and learn.

With that in mind this kind of "I have a wonderful purpled build" vs "the market is full of evil people manipulating things so the casual player cant purple their warshade" is obvious trolling.

Really, selling for more than 2 Billion is griefing? For the record thats Petty Criminals, market masterminds, and now griefers....did I miss any other specific insults that marketeers have been called? But he's been insulted.

Pfft

Let the unwashed masses flock to this nutbag. They only reap what they sow.

You edited my comments to support your nonsense. So before I put you on ignore I will point out how you lack the ability to comprehend what you read and to critically think which will do no good for you because you lack the ability to comprehend what you read and critically think.

Regarding ulcers. I logically assumed your angst over the ridiculous will lead to ulcers. This happens quite often in real life for people who worry too much. I was not wishing ulcers on you. I was recognizing your attitude will bring you ulcers. This is much like saying you smoke too much and are likely to get ill because of it and you twist it in your failed ability to read as me wishing lung cancer on you.

I explained I spent one year playing to get purples on my warshade but for my grav/rad controller I purpled him over 3 days spending his earnings of 2 billion made over the course of a year. Again your failure to comprehend what you read. I didn't contradict myself but you see one because you have the reading skills of someone of subaverage intelligence. Note I do not accuse you of having subaverage intelligence I point out your reading skills are comparable to a person with subaverage intelligence.

Regarding 2 billion per enhancer and my supposed 'admission'. Why yes, if you think you need multiple 2 billion enhancers and the only means of getting them is to buy them on the market then yes that would be the case. However once again you pick and choose what you read and understand and ignore all other realities of the game. All of my experiences were pre-alignment merits.

If you need one or more of those few enhancers you have moved from a CASUAL player living on planet Earth to an extreme player living in another galaxy.

So I will put it as simply as I can so anyone who isn't willfully ignoring things will get it.

Casual players have no need, have no right and have no expectations of getting ultra rare enhancements/recipes. When a Player has the expectation or perceived need of getting those enhancements/recipes they are NO LONGER A CASUAL PLAYER.

However since you are either willfully ignoring things or incapable of grasping simple truths and have repeatedly unrepentantly misstated things without correcting yourself I can only assume you aren't here for an honest discussion of the matter.

Honestly I wouldn't think they would be fooled long by him unless they are cut from the same cloth.

Of course it is. While he froths and fumes we get to have fun playing the game.

We also get the added benefit of amusement when we read his posts.

I know that I for one await his next post.

Me too. I'm not sure whether I'm more excited of I19 or his next post.