just a market rant

But I really do think the core question should be whether that is really a problem. I'm pretty sure that's not one we players can answer firmly, but rather only give opinions on.

I don't really think it makes much sense to support a pure consumer standpoint on the market without much more radical changes to the Inf reward structure the game has had from the onset. Even with none of the inflationary forces we have seen over the past two years, you really can't be a pure consumer on the market if you aren't level 50, because of the way the reward rates grow with combat level (even discounting the I16 doubling of level 50 rewards). A level 20-something doesn't earn enough Inf/defeat to compete with even a level 45. Fixing just inflation won't change that, so is it really that worthwhile to make it possible just for 50s to be able to treat the market as a store? Does that really address the concerns of new players?

I don't get this.

A friend of mine returned from a loooooooooooong break. He has a big family so he can't game regularly, but he re-subs occasionally to see how his Fire/Fire Tanker still fares against stuff. He saw the high prices at the market and didn't panic. He loaded up one of his farm missions, sold EVERYTHING...he vendored commons, listed everything else at the Market and made 60 million within a few days. He used that to get himself some KB protect IOs, a few Resist IOs and so on. Eventually he did some TFs, cashed in some Merits and sold that stuff...I mean, did he "dig into the market"? Sure, but this is as casual as it gets folks.

If a mid-30s man with 5 children can purple out his Fire/Fire/Fire Tanker, just by logging in once every four months...there has to be some goodwill put in by players too.

You can play the game normally and just vendor all your dorps and get SOs. Heck, you can get Invention: Accuracy, which probably works out better on your wallet since it won't degrade. The question is, what do you do with the five to ten million in pocket at level 50? You don't NEED to eat, pay rent (well, Prestige does this...) or buy clothes (well, free tailor sessions help...) and so on. Thus, you can tweak your builds. My Dark/Dark/Dark Def is the perfect example. I swore I would use drops and sales and that's it. She has uncommon sets, the odd rare set and so on but no purples, few rares and she plays great! Then I have my Kat/Regen with two purple sets, PvPIos, Lotg 7.5s...she solos +2/x4 at the moment and I wonder if that's underperformance for a Kat/Regen.

Just...when you see 200,000,000 for a LOTG 7.5 don't go:

"ZOMG soooooooooooooo expensive!"

Instead, go:

"Hey, I could run five tips today, five tips tomorrow and a Morality and buy one. Then I can sell it for 130,000,000 to 200,000,000 and buy stuff or just get SOs!"

The game REALLY does work fine on SOs. My Mind/Cold's primary build had ONLY SOs and I got TONS of team invites. No one kicked me off teams. I eventually added a Confuse purple set, then a few others...you'll be fine.
The casual player will be fine.

You only REALLY need IOs for three purposes:

i)PvP, where you need the uber maxed build.
ii)High-end, stress-test builds...soloing pylons, soloing AVs, soloing Lusca...
iii)Gaudiness of set list.

There are ways to get your stuff..A-Merits, Reward Merits, sales...I mean, the Market people here aren't even pricks. Even Nethergoat, whom is somewhat prickly, is helpful. So are Fulmens and the rest. There are guides, players will help.

Don't think players will help?

From Dec 1 to Jan 1 I've been Gleemailing, daily, 20,000,000 + random IO from my bins (everything from HOs to purples to PvP IOs to procs to...and yes I know HOs aren't IOs >.<).

That's...700,000,000 inf influence, billions in IOs (I gave Nucs, Purple triples, low-level LOTGs, high level LOTGs, PvP IOs)...and I *STILL* have TONS of inf just from selling drops! Just running a Lady Grey at +1 or +2 gets me tons of cash.

It's...not that hard to make money and to get rich in this game, really.
Compared to WoW and other games, the grind here is super, super easy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UberGuy But I really do think the core question should be whether that is really a problem. I'm pretty sure that's not one we players can answer firmly, but rather only give opinions on. I don't really think it makes much sense to support a pure consumer standpoint on the market without much more radical changes to the Inf reward structure the game has had from the onset. Even with none of the inflationary forces we have seen over the past two years, you really can't be a pure consumer on the market if you aren't level 50, because of the way the reward rates grow with combat level (even discounting the I16 doubling of level 50 rewards). A level 20-something doesn't earn enough Inf/defeat to compete with even a level 45. Fixing just inflation won't change that, so is it really that worthwhile to make it possible just for 50s to be able to treat the market as a store? Does that really address the concerns of new players?

I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. On one hand, I believe that "using" the market should cover both selling and buying. And that if there is anyone who wishes to utilize it, they should know how to utilize it both ways. Honestly, I also think forcing new players to learn how to both buy and sell efficiently would be good for the overall health of the market.

On the other hand, I feel like keeping track of salvage prices, visiting the market after every few missions to check prices, sell items that would be profitable, vendor the rest, making sure to do 5 tips a day, and conserve normal merits to use them wisely on Alignment Merits on the most profitable range of random rolls, and all that "efficiency" jazz is too much for some people to worry about in a video game, and I'm not sure if that would or wouldn't make the game hostile to some users.

Ultimately, you're right.

I don't think any of the players can firmly answer this question of whether or not this is a good or bad thing.

If I really thought it took that much effort to do pretty well at using the market, I'd be far more likely to think there was a problem. But I don't do most of that stuff, and, well, I'm doing pretty darn good.

What I think you need to do that sort of stuff for is to make as much money as humanly possible in as little time as possible, like if you want to outfit a character with purples and/or PvPOs from zero reserves or forward planning. I think I'm OK with that. I don't think we should worry about supporting new players who want to do that, any more than we should try to support new players who want to race to 50.

This times a bajillion. Getting there isn't an insurmountable task. I'm not even sure I'd consider it work.

I don't think we've had a new player go nuts about market prices since that one fellow started calling out Fulmens and threatening marketeers with RL violence because player-controlled prices were too high.

I imagine most new players won't really come into contact with the market until they are well along the path, since it's not mentioned in the tutorial.
There may be some sticker shock on items, but once that goes away and some experience is gained, the millions will outfit their play style and they'll either go back to playing the game or find a way to maximize their market work.

The Devs have given casual players a lot of safety valves:

• Purples drop from any 47+ mob.
• Alignment Merits are easy to get.
• Reward Merits are obtained from a variety of in-game tasks.
• Rare salvage and recipes can get you decent income...two to five million for salvage and much more for recipes.
• AE lets you get recipes and salvage in another vein.

There isn't a lot more that can be done here. At some point a player needs to decide if they want to put in "effort" to get stuff or just go with SOs.

Ah, okay- that explains much.

I apologize for getting snippy with you, I thought you were being deliberately contradictory.

r/e the topic at hand, here's my perspective.

The only genuinely expensive things in the game are purples, pvp IOs and to a lesser extent the uniques + LotG recharges. They're all nice to have, but not required even for efficiency-crucial stuff like bigtime farming. My 'best' farmer is my fire tank and while he's nicely kitted out I'd be shocked if his build cost more than 1b total. He has no purples other than the chance for fire damage proc, he has one LotG recharge I stuck in combat jumping just for the heck of it, and the only reason he's got the Numina and Miracle uniques in Health is because he's a toggle heavy end hog.

Everything else is slotted with good but not outrageously expensive sets. And he can ticket cap an MA farm map in 10 minutes.

Would he be better with a l337 Mids build full of super expensive stuff?
Sure.
Would doing that *dramatically* improve his performance at the stuff I use him for (farming MA, running tips)?
Not really. He'd be better, sure, but not OMGWTFBBQ!!!11 better.

As one of the regs noted a while back (Fulmens, I think?) the performance jump with the biggest WOW! factor is between an SO build and a solid IO build.
And that is well within the reach of anyone who plays 'normally' to level 50- missions, story arcs, a TF now and then, some tip missions....the inf piles up fast.

Okay, I think I see your point.

Interesting observation. It's easy to get some IOs, but you pretty much have to play the market game some to do it. A-merits and the like provide a sort of high-end cap on the most expensive things -- there comes a point where you can get them by effort instead of for money.

So you end up with one game, where you get random drops sometimes and you buy things with merits, and another where you get everything through the market, sort of. And they have weird interactions, but if you don't want to play with the market, you're playing the first game, and will get stuff slower.

See, I think what threw people is this: We get people in here all the time claiming that it should be quick and easy to get purples, and that's obviously silly. You've got the more interesting point that, while it's quite easy to use the market to get the money for decent IOs, it's the only practical way to get a decent IO build. People who aren't playing the marketing game will have a much, much, harder time.

The only way I can see to fix that is massive inf sinks.

I don't know for sure what the devs really thought, but I believe they probably always intended us to use the market to obtain "decent" IO builds. I think the whole system is predicated around it. No one is expected to really get all the things they might want as drops, so people who get A and want B have a place they can "trade" A away and get B instead. But since A and B may not be of equal value, someone may have to trade let's say 20 A's to get one B. We actually trade in currency so that, among other things, we don't have to find someone who wants 20 A's all at once. We can sell an A to 20 different people and save up the results to buy one B.

The notion that the inf we get selling 20 A's and the Inf we get defeating foes need to be equivalent is not clear to me. I think there are some advantages of simplicity to having it work that way, which gets back to making things easier on new players, but I am not at all sure it's important it be that way.

I think Bright Shadow has made an interesting point:

Imagine that we define "genuinely expensive" in terms of "the amount of money you end up with if you don't really marketeer at all".

At some point, inflation will reach a point where a "solid IO build" has become "genuinely expensive". If the price of that solid IO build doubles, but the amount of money you get from punching dudes doesn't...

That said, there is a secondary interesting consideration: Because the market inf sink scales with prices, there exists a theoretical point (possibly outside the inf cap) where prices are high enough that the market fees are now matching inf creation.

I think the key is that if the gap is too large, but the inf you get from selling As isn't very consistent, it is quite easy for someone who just lists unwanted stuff at 1 inf to end up unable to afford the typical going rate for B.

That said... You might not be able to get a complete IO build for reasonable prices, but I'd bet you could get a fair bit of it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat As one of the regs noted a while back (Fulmens, I think?) the performance jump with the biggest WOW! factor is between an SO build and a solid IO build. And that is well within the reach of anyone who plays 'normally' to level 50- missions, story arcs, a TF now and then, some tip missions....the inf piles up fast.

Everything you said, I pretty much agree with. But here what I'm trying to pin point...

Right -now- a solid IO build is well within the reach of anyone who plays normally. Right -now- I can get a cheap Frankenslotted IO build in the mid-30s with only the money I earned up to that part. My concern is that in future, this won't be that easy anymore. Then you will HAVE to to start using market efficiently and get some know-how in how to use your resources and make very smart choices. I'm not complaining about "now" at all! And again, you could argue that maybe nudging the players into using the market more efficiently and make smart decisions on their money is a good thing. It could very well be true! But I'm just unsure of that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by seebs See, I think what threw people is this: We get people in here all the time claiming that it should be quick and easy to get purples, and that's obviously silly. You've got the more interesting point that, while it's quite easy to use the market to get the money for decent IOs, it's the only practical way to get a decent IO build. People who aren't playing the marketing game will have a much, much, harder time. The only way I can see to fix that is massive inf sinks.

I rarely visit this forum, so I'm probably gonna have a rough time getting in. It's cool! xD

And yes. Introducing more inf. sinks would help slow down the inflation, something that I think would greatly help everyone.

How many methods of destroying inf. is there right now, anyways?

There is the conversion to Prestige. There are market transaction fees. I think tailor costs would count too...wouldn't they? What else?

Quote:

Originally Posted by seebs Imagine that we define "genuinely expensive" in terms of "the amount of money you end up with if you don't really marketeer at all". At some point, inflation will reach a point where a "solid IO build" has become "genuinely expensive". If the price of that solid IO build doubles, but the amount of money you get from punching dudes doesn't...

That's pretty much exactly what I'm trying to say!

If you mean 'don't interact with the market at all', then there would be a fairly serious discrepancy.

But you can make a vault full of inf not using the market at all other than as a place to dump your junk. Assuming a very minimal level of 'reward seeking' behavior (some TFs, filling up your tip bar every so often, maybe a ship raid or two) you will end up with a very respectable pile of inf just 'playing the game'.

I've sort of stalled out on my 'regular gameplay' stalker, what with all the distractions of the past few issues, but at last check he was level 34 or so with 60 million in the bank, and that's *before* earning power really starts to ramp up.

When anyone (literally anyone) can make a fast, reliable 100m+ with amerits the bleating of the "too expensive" crowd sounds ever flatter and less convincing.

You will still be benefiting from those 'outrageous' prices every time you sell a drop. The amount of inf you make dumping stuff on the market always has and always will dwarf the amount you make from defeats.

'Outrageous' prices aren't as long as your earning power rises along with costs.


And if the argument is "people should be able to kit out with l337 gear just by using the inf from defeated enemies", I don't think that's a reasonable or desirable direction to go.

What exactly do you mean by "don't really marketeer at all"?

Here's why I ask. To some that means use the market. I have a problem with that definition because if someone isn't using the market then complaining about the market prices is like complaining about the local favorite dish on the other side of the world which you never eat.

To others it means flipping by which they mean making a profit in the market.

The other thing I would bring up is there is nothing that would ever cause the garbage to be expensive. People aren't going to slot garbage IOs over SOs or common IOs.

Speaking of Common IOs, as long as people can get common drops or use tickets to get common salvage common IOs have a relatively fixed price. So those are inflation proof as long as people don't shoehorn themselves into only using common salvage bought from the market.

And I believe reward merits and hero/villain merits also work against the upper prices of what they can buy. If I see Steadfast Protection's KB protection going for 100M you can bet I will buy it with reward merits not inf on the market.

So I find this discussion to only work in theory but the current game reality only puts PVP IOs on the top shelf.

Merits (Reward and Alignment) are the path to get without marketing. Yes, you will have to play a long time but while playing to earn your merits you will be getting other drops which you could and should sell if you don't want them for yourself.

But when have we realistically seen that happen? How long has it persisted?

I can think of one time something like that has happened. It was relatively recently, and it has since receded. A-Merits lowered the price of all pool A/B/C/D recipes, but did nothing to the price of purples or PvPOs. It became noticeably more time consuming to sell drops or merit-bought goods and use the income to buy purples.

But we're talking about purples and PvPOs in that example. I've never seen that happen to stuff that is available at the regular Merit Vendors, because I think the small dynamic range on Reward Merit prices for everything they can buy helped damp it. Possibly more importantly, prices on high-end pool A/B/C/D recipes have all risen again, and are actually at some of the highest levels I've ever seen them outside of ongoing exploits. (Unless, of course, I've missed the popularization of a new exploit. I've been attributing it to a big increase in the number of people playing 50s.)

I just don't see the inter-pool prices doing things like that. If LotGs become 10x more valuable, it's likely that Crushing Impacts do too, or at least something proportionally close.

To which I add if they aren't interacting with the market at all then they really have no leg to stand on complaining about the market prices.

Especially since we get more for drops than just inf. I know the RNG hates me so I know I will have to take my time to get the premier IOs but this isn't rocket surgery to figure out.

I will spell it out for those who don't get it by re-quoting the Goat:
You play to your hero alignment merit. You buy a LotG recipe. You sell it. You profit. This takes 22 missions.

The is a valid concern but in general the trend has been that while the price on the very good IOs (defined as purples, PvPIOs and the better rares such as Kinetic Combat) goes up the price on the "average" IOs remains the same or drops. We seem to be getting a higher percentage of the total wealth chasing a few specific recipes rather than a general increase in prices. For example Positron's Blast (a solid set favored by anyone with a targeted AoE) has held pretty steady in price for the last 6 issues or so (the recipes are generally <10 million each while the crafted IOs tend to go for <20 million).

Unless something changes we're actually looking at a situation where the buying power of a new player looking at the low or medium desirability sets is increasing, not decreasing. Even if they act as a consumer only (vendoring their drops) there are plenty of vendor-trash recipes to use in Frankenslotting (especially if they stick to uncommons which don't need rare salvage). If they are willing to buy and sell then A-Merits allow them to take advantage of the increasing price gap between "excellent" IOs and merely "good" IOs

Quote:

How many methods of destroying inf. is there right now, anyways? There is the conversion to Prestige. There are market transaction fees. I think tailor costs would count too...wouldn't they? What else?

There are, pretty much, five inf sinks in the game (in order of how much I think they sink:
1. Market Fees
2. A-Merit Conversion fees
3. Crafting Fees
4. Prestige Conversion
5. Purchasing Inspirations/SOs or paying the Tailor

In general I think Market fees make up the vast majority of inf destroyed in game, the others are all small fry compared to that. A-Merits conversions does sink some Inf and it's hard to say exactly how much, still at 20 million a pop and only doing it once per day it's probably not sinking a huge amount. Crafting fees are even less, outfitting a character with a complete set of of level 50 IOs will destroy less than 50 million Inf, the market destroys almost as much on a single purple recipe sale. Prestige conversion is similarly hard to quantify, I put it in 4th but that's just my gut feeling, it could well be higher (especially given recent events). The last one, vendor and tailor costs is pretty much negligible in terms of Inf destroyed, tailor fees are negligible (even ignoring all the free costume tokens people have) and the cost of a full set of level 50 SOs is less than 6 million IIRC.

When I was on trial account, I still had loads of fun despite an inf cap of 50000. Yes, a measly 50000. Even when I subbed and got my first 50, I didn't really care that I didn't have any purple IOs. Heck, even now, my Alpha slotted lv 50 with a Master of the 5th Column Strike Force title doesn't have a single purple IO. I have a lvl 50 corr that cost around 300 mill to outfit BEFORE hero/vill merits and he wears the title Master of Lord Recluse Strike Force.
For me, purple/pvp IOs are icing on the cake. More power to anyone who has them. One can outfit a toon for under a bill and still have decent performance. IMHO, one doesn't need purple IOs to enjoy this game.

Key point.

I don't understand the mindset that thinks "fun" requires some kind of uber-build.

I have fun *whichever* of my characters I play, from my tremendously expensive fire/rad controller to my mid-level fire tank to my generic IO'ed grav/TA controller or kin/dark defender. Or even my lowbie dp/ice corrupter, who's slotted with whatever drops I get running missions.

I make enough inf to do whatever I want, but I've found more enjoyment setting my inf on fire than using it to kit out my stable of regular characters.

YMMV, of course, but the point is the game provides many different roads to the destination of "fun" and you can explore nearly all of them on SOs or SO equivalents.

1.) How do you (or anyone) frankenslot w/o using the market? I can't imagine how long it would take for every io I want to randomly drop. however now that we have A-merits I guess it would take somewhere less than 288 days to earn all the recipes assuming that is all you did and in doing so never got a usable drop

2.) The market is self adjusting becasue there is an infinite amount of drops and influance to be earned. Maybe if I put it this way:

" The more things cost to buy on the market, the more they sell for on the market"

3.) honest to goodness real new players are going to be so overwhelmed learning the game and the story and what not that by the time they even realize how to start in min/max a build and then realized the best stuff costs a lot. Hopefully they were smart enough to learn a.) how to make a lot AND b.) they don't need to top stuff to be a good effective player.

You'll make more than enough inf for pretty much any but the most intentionally outlandish build using this method.

It'll be *slower* than actively marketeering in an efficient manner, in the same way that PLing will get you to 50 faster than running missions, but in both cases the destination is completely achievable by 'regular' means.

I'm completely baffled by this.

Unless by "made" you mean earned from defeats?

Sure you can, because if the amount of inf players generate becomes insufficient to sustain 'inflated' prices, those prices will come down.

I want to sell stuff, not sit on it, and so do the vast majority of sellers.
If Enhancement X stops selling for 50 million but I can still get 20 for it, that's what I'll do.

The market is constantly in flux. Nothing is worth one inf more than what somebody will pay you for it- if you still want 50m when everyone else is pricing theirs 20, what's gonna happen?

Also, high prices are a RESULT of inflated 'real earnings' from punching dudes in the face. 50's out earn everything else by a huge margin and right now EVERYBODY is playing their 50's. If/when that behavior dies down, prices will do likewise.

/edit
Basically, no price on the market is "locked in". If people stop being able to 'afford' 500k for a level 30 generic recharge, they'll stop paying that and the price will drop. Ditto for everything else in the game.