2 billion per enhancer

When XP/inf exploits land, they tend to make a small percentage of the playerbase immensely wealthy relative to pre-existing prices through direct creation of new inf. That then trickles down through the rest of the players using the market, and inf fees remove 10% of that money every time. But the initial surge still represents short-term price inflation, because these wealthy players often start spending much more than they would have before for items, empowered by the sense that they can earn back what they're spending in a short time.

Even once prices settle on a new equilibrum, those new equilibrium prices will be higher than they were before. For aggregate outflow of inf from fees to match an increased aggregate inf creation, the either the number of transactions per time has to increase or the market prices have to rise to level where the 10% fee can balance the increase. More transactions/time is certainly possible, but higher price/transaction seems more likely to me.

I think what people have been seeing is that we've had a long series of changes that have, in fact, increased this aggregate rate of inf creation. XP smoothing made over-level mobs worth more per kill. IOs sped up the reward/time efficiency of characters. I16 difficulty settings made if far easier for each player to set the game to their optimal reward/time capability. The doubling of inf rewards is a clear doubling on top of all that. Now we have the Alpha Slot and, to some extent, even Inherent Fitness increasing the reward efficiency of existing 50s, and on top of that I19 is probably convincing more people to play 50s more of the time.

Between each of these changes have been relatively short periods between inf production rate shifts. The market may have achieved some degree of equilibrium between each one, but this is almost impossible to see with data players usually have at hand as other factors shifted both supply and demand for specific products around and AE exploits introduced jolts in inf rates of varying size and duration.

The main point, though, is that the total rate of inf creation has been trending upwards for some time. For a fixed market fee rate, that means prices will trend up over time as well. My own contention is that the only negative effect of this, generally, is sticker shock on people who don't want to use the market except as a store, for whatever reason. I think it would be nice if we could avoid that effect, but I don't feel, personally, that avoiding it is worth dramatic change for that sake alone.

I find it somewhat telling that a lot of people who DO seem to know what they're talking about when it comes to the market have given up on this thread, and/or have already put you on "Ignore."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Another_Fan Also you think that lower prices will happen when there are fewer players, because the game won't be generating as much new inf ?

Please don't put words in my mouth: never once did I say "lower prices" in all of this. Scroll back up if you don't believe me.

I said "I don't think we're going to see inflation stop", and "more influence sinks in this game to fight inflation." Continuing inflation and lower prices are like apples and tangerines. Same ballpark, but not exactly.

You're creating your own topics like that, you avoid other direct points: I'm SURE I read in multiple threads where the level 50 rewards were changed as a result of fixing a long term bug, you're convinced that the devs "decided to double the rate that 50s generate inf." (If someone else wants to link that, great. My search-fu is weak tonight and I've wasted more than enough time here.)

So congratulations -- you win the thread! Please find someone else to address your arguments to, since I'm done here. I should have recognized the "let's quote him in red!" as a troll baiting tactic but I did indeed fall for it -- bravo, sir, bravo!

Despite the well-intentioned sig floating around about not ignoring people because "you might miss something vital to your cause", I'll have to risk it. I think the long term reward will be my lack of head-shaking, face-palming, and the ever popular pounding my head on the desk.

"Let the Wookie win," indeed. And ignore him.