How you would balance the Market?

In the real world, most of us make a certain range of Dollars (or Euro, or Pounds or Renminbi). Sure, there's a huge range of possible incomes that people make, but, for example, something like 95% of the people in the US make less than $100k per year (according to tax software, anyway). We all have to take that income and spend it on things like food, a place to live, and other "basic necessities".

In the real world we might sit and think whether we can afford to spend $1000, because if we spend it, we may not be able to pay rent, buy food, or fix our car. In CoH, if we spend 10M inf on some set IO, we can't buy... some other set IOs. But set IOs are a luxury. We don't have to have them. Lots of us want them, sure, but we won't die of malnutrition or go to jail if we don't get them, or if we get cheaper, less powerful versions instead.

The cost of "basic necessities" in CoH is very low compared to what I expect the 95% income range is. Our characters don't need homes, or food. They don't have kids to care for, they never need a car. They never get sick, but if they get injured, they not only get free health care, they get teleported and resurrected to perfect health.

When people talk about equating Dollars and Inf, they mean someone looks at a price tag of 1B Inf and thinks, "my God, $1B is more money than many corporations earn in a year - how can I ever earn 1B Inf?" They're talking about translating Dollar sticker shock directly into Inf terms. Yes, Dollars and Inf are both used to buy stuff, but any true exchange rate between them cannot be used to decide what's out of reach for an in-game buyer.

In another MMO, when I heard people say they "needed" a particular item, I'd always argue with them. What do you mean "need"? Without it you'll die?

1. So what? You'll come back.
2. No, you won't.

We don't have needs. We have whims. For the most part, easily-satisfied whims.

Many computer RPGs have the same inflated price differences between the lower and higher levels. When you first start out the higher level equipment seems to have impossible prices. Clearly the designers who are setting these numbers are thinking very abstractly.

I must have played a dozen games where you go into the first store and see something like this

Terrible dagger (level 1): 5 copper pieces
Poor dagger (level 5): 10,000 silver pieces
Average Dagger (level 10): 1,000,000,000 jewel-encrusted platinum mega-pieces

CoX is no exception, and I can see why new players would balk at some of the prices they see in the market. It's a good thing that "Inf" is an invisible, intangible non-money thing, or we would need big animated wheelbarrows in the game to cart it around.

It's a good thing we're not playing Diablo, or we'd have to leave piles of it all over town.

I didn't read the whole thread. I think increasing invention salvage storage would help fix the market. Either make stacked invention salvage count as one inventory item, up to a number less than 100, or increase the overall storage size. The rest of the market is fine.

I've got something like five or six billion inf, and I have never once slotted a purple.

(I am, of course, cheating horribly here.)

I collect inf so that when I populate Basilisk's Gaze, I can get the level 30 quad, so I get some decent bonuses along with my recharge bonus. And so that every character I make can have a kismet +to-hit.

I use mostly the cheap purples too on my trollers and dom. My other toons i like to use 2. The damage and dam/rech, then franken the other 4 slots. That way i can maximize the damage AND get good end recovs.

I mainly get my rech from lotg 7.5s. Two of those are way cheaper than purple sets, and now with inherent fitness, its so much easier to find mule slots for them. That way i can spam the hardest hitting attacks.

Eryq2, my esteemed colleague. You have made a statement that is obviously wrong, and it is trivially easy to prove it so. To wit, "nobody" slots several sets, some of which I have slotted on at least ten characters.

Did you perchance misspeak?

@ Arcan, I know i said a billion per set. It may be a stretch for now. But it wouldnt be hard to argue that with the crazy inflation (supply/demand in CoH) over the last year that the "popular" stuff could be climbing to ever new heights, as it continues to do. I mean really, look at whats happened to those prices. Anything in the low millions has been hitting in the 100mil range. Inflation? That's a pretty steep inflation.

Like i said, i'd like to see an increase in recipe drops in missions and at various levels. So, say, a level 10 recipe could drop from a level 30 or 50 mission. Really, do some research on drop rates. It's easy for me to kill however many baddies in a farm run and not even pick up 3 recipes. Really, 3? Come on. And 2 of them were probably temp powers. lol.