2 billion per enhancer

I set up a Hamidon Raid this weekend while away from the game. I logged in this morning to solo the Hamidon. Many of the Mitos I were looking at were 2x as many as STARTING OUT. Do the developers really think that people want to play a game that only grouped raiders get stuff in? I have 42 months in this game, most of my toons are SO'd, and one, ONE, has a participated in Hami. These Mitos are splitting for 2 each, so, let me think, I would need to game about 20 years at my current rate to get one toon to solo Hamidon.

Do the developers really believe this is what makes for a happy gaming community? I think I am gonna log for a month or two. I can workout, play music, do art, but I'll be damned if I sit and solo Hamidon for 3 months to accomplish like 3 of the things that I figure i'll need 18 of.

Holy cow, it's one of those immortal, self-repeating frankenhorses!

/horsebeat


I've skipped much of this, but drawing from the OP:

Good play beats a fancy build every time. I've played with plenty of purped-out players who lacked fundamental understanding of game mechanics/strategy and therefore contributed far less than, say, an intelligent player running SOs. If you had actually put in the time and effort to make a fancy build, you would understand when people say that it really doesn't make that big of difference in 95% of situations (as opposed to sound tactics and good inspiration management).


Read the market guides, learn how to make money without even playing the game. A few posts ahead of me, Fulmens was nice enough to direct you to some profitable niches--but they are seriously EVERYWHERE. Learn how to find them and exploit them


Farming is completely unnecessary, if you don't find it fun, don't do it.

Also, as MANY have pointed out, a solid, fun build can be made cheaply and easily via the frankenslotting technique. Consider running one of these builds while you accumulate "the good stuff". That's what I do.


If you want a fancy build, you earn it. It is not a reward for subscribing to the game for a prolonged period (those are under "Badges---->Veteran Rewards"). The bottom line is, no matter which method you choose (or ignore), some expenditure of effort is required. Best of luck.

The reality it that this game is a long-term business. If players could get what they wanted NOW, the devs would lose their clientele in a matter of months. MMO's live off of the carrot on the stick, giving a good time now, but something more that will take some more time/effort to get.

A good friend in-game is a badge fiend, he'd play all the time. Then he got down to one badge missing, and lost interest. The chase had ended, the content had been done.

But not everybody wants all the badges.

Some want the best possible builds. Just as with the badges, you can get a lot easily, but sooner or later you will find some that take dedication to gain. These can be obtained several ways:
1. Play PvP a loooong time (or a bit, if you're crazy luck) until you are lucky enough to gain the items in question
2. Play Morality arcs a long time to get the purple merits for one of those recipes (Provided they have GR)
3. Play PvE a while to get the merits/money to buy Purple merits for one of those recipes. (Provided they have GR)
4. Play the game a loooooong time to get enough to pay the price other players offer it for
5. Get acquainted with the market system to buy/sell stuff and get enough to buy the recipes from other players. (This will also take time, both in game and perhaps out to learn markets workings)

The commonality? Time. The OP has encountered the rarest items, the carrots that take the longest to get, and would like them. They are so expensive simply because of that fact. The time to get them is enough that many would rather pay than go through the process to get them, sacrificing literally the maximum a character can carry (sometimes more) for them.

The devs want these carrots to take a grand chase to obtain. Shortcuts to them would be faced as exploits. Why? To get the best, to reach the pinnacle, you need to play for awhile. And y'know why? Because once you've reached the pinnacle, and did all that you could, what's left to do? Not a whole lot.

That's why you must go on their merry chase.

If the chase isn't worth it, there are still other means of reaching similar goals. Say the OP wants to be 'softcapped.' Other sets/powers can help get there, it'll just take a bit more work. The rare sets are, of course, the 'optimal' ones. If the bonuses they offered were trivial or inferior, nobody would work for months to get them.

Incidentally: The WORST PERFORMING BUILDS made a million an hour. Cash and equivalents. That doesn't count lucky recipe drops, that doesn't count rare salvage. There was someone in there with a lemon as bad as mine [I tried it with a FF/Elec defender, soloing] and they made a million an hour too.

I can make 100-200 million an hour in Wentworths, on stuff that's too low end for the serious players, and I told you what recipes I was using to do it. You don't need a level 50. You can make money on a level 17- I accidentally played my main marketeer and he's level 26 or 30 now, but my first few billion was at level 17.

I just barely have a billion total, and I haven't got a single character over 35. I'd guess half my characters are under 20, maybe more. (Okay, let's see... Yes, just under half have made level 20.) But that's a billion after spending, I forget, maybe 112M for a miracle +recovery proc, which was Buy It Nao.

Actually, something just clicked for me:

Is the OP talking about prices for enhancements, or about prices for recipes? Because I'm pretty sure that, for most of the desireable stuff, the enhancements cost substantially more than the recipes. So that could explain why the OP is seeing a ton of stuff at "2b" that other people are saying goes for less.

Okay, you guys have stopped swearing and are now tempting me into going off topic asking about things like 600 mil a day marketing. Not gonna do it. ask that is, I believe you make that much, and i'm curious, but lets stay true to the post)


there have been some interesting posts made about long term rewards, rarity, etc. Now we are getting to it. I feel, that after nearly 42 months in city, if I brought all my cash to one toon (which I did) I should be able to get just about anything the game has crammed onto it. I definitely understand that feeling is not echoed by this crowd.

But seriously, from a marketing perspective I am wondering how the Devs can justify this to themselves. Come play this game, and after 42 months, you still cannot even completely pimp out one character. Even if you strip everything else in the game. That is what they are offering. It does not make sense to me. I have yet to hear one solid line of reasoning, taken from point A to point Z, that justifies this as a development strategy.

CoH is rather unique in that having the best loot possible isn't a requirement for doing high-end content. You can do just fine with SOs. How do you think the first teams completed the STF? Likely as not they weren't IO'd to the gills, as IOs were introduced the same issue and we were only scratching the surface of their potential.

There's not a single piece of PvE content that, at base difficulty settings, requires high-end loot. Their mere presence in the game does not entitle you to them. The length of time you have been subscribed does not entitle you to them either if you haven't put forth the effort to acquire them. You can hike the foothills of a mountain all you want, but you can't reach the summit unless you actually do some climbing.