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AE is a necessary evil. I'd be willing to bet that is where the most significant amount of incoming influence is generated. For my idea to have any significant effect, AE must qualify.
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Originally Posted by Dal
Double drops for PvE and PvP is alright. But for AE? Don't we need more incentive for people to play the other areas of the game? PvP surely could use some new players.
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The only thing I would add to this suggestion is to reduce the number of currencies to just Inf and XP. no more tokens or prestige, etc, etc.
Give us the option to buy various temp powers outright. In charges or time. Go ahead and remove them from recipes, it's pointless to have them as recipes atm. In return charge a fair amount for them.
Instead of say, 10k or 20k, charge 100k for the jetpack. + 5 endo temporary power? 500k for 6 hours in game time. Hand Grenades? 100k for the current amount of charges. Backup Radio? 500K. Power Analyzers? 50k. Stun grenades? 500k. A few charges of the temporary crafting table? 500k.
If you make people able to buy them outright and not have to craft them, not only will they not clutter up your drops but more people will likely use them because they will be 10 times more convenient.
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This, I could get behind. |
Originally Posted by Soul_System
Give us the option to buy various temp powers outright. In charges or time. Go ahead and remove them from recipes, it's pointless to have them as recipes atm. In return charge a fair amount for them.
Instead of say, 10k or 20k, charge 100k for the jetpack. + 5 endo temporary power? 500k for 6 hours in game time. Hand Grenades? 100k for the current amount of charges. Backup Radio? 500K. Power Analyzers? 50k. Stun grenades? 500k. A few charges of the temporary crafting table? 500k. If you make people able to buy them outright and not have to craft them, not only will they not clutter up your drops but more people will likely use them because they will be 10 times more convenient. |
I could also get behind an expansion of recipes - while removing some that just aren't used/just don't sell from the drop pool entirely, having them sold (for those that want to frankenslot) from the vendors. (See also Executioner's Contract, Calibrated Accuracy, etc.)
For instance, get rid of ... well,e very snipe recipe drop but Manticore, replace with one other - and decent - snipe set that drops, move the rest to the vendors/stores. Set price, if you *really* want that CA recipe - go buy it.
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Thing is. More drops is simply going to shift the problem from raw inf influx to more returns on the market from recipe and salvage drops.|
Originally Posted by Giant2005
The economy of this game is completely broken.
Far more influence comes into the system than what leaves - this is a major problem in any economy whether they be in a mmo or in real life. The inflation can be fixed by either reducing the amount of influence coming into the game or increasing the rate at which it leaves. I suggest doing both. We have the option of turning off our experience and gaining more influence. I propose doing something similar, but the opposite. Give us the ability to turn off our influence gain and in return, double our drop rates. All recipes have twice the chance of dropping (including purples and pvp IOs), vanguard merits and architect tickets drop twice as fast too. This not only halts the influence brought into the economy but it also gives us more to sell on the marketplace - further utilizing the biggest inf sink in the game and increasing the outflow of revenue. Edit: Just noticed the typo in the title. Won't let me edit it - fail lol. |
Already I can cap my recipes and salvage in a few short x8 sessions on my tank (who's at current max-salvage limits).
What I'd like is an option to reduce inf earnings and boost prestige earnings. In addition to cutting inf generation, it'll also give a boost to players trying to build themselves a base that's more than just the entry room and an oversight center.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
This, I could get behind.
I could also get behind an expansion of recipes - while removing some that just aren't used/just don't sell from the drop pool entirely, having them sold (for those that want to frankenslot) from the vendors. (See also Executioner's Contract, Calibrated Accuracy, etc.) For instance, get rid of ... well,e very snipe recipe drop but Manticore, replace with one other - and decent - snipe set that drops, move the rest to the vendors/stores. Set price, if you *really* want that CA recipe - go buy it. |
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Thing is. More drops is simply going to shift the problem from raw inf influx to more returns on the market from recipe and salvage drops.
Already I can cap my recipes and salvage in a few short x8 sessions on my tank (who's at current max-salvage limits). What I'd like is an option to reduce inf earnings and boost prestige earnings. In addition to cutting inf generation, it'll also give a boost to players trying to build themselves a base that's more than just the entry room and an oversight center. |
Because straight increasing the volume of drops will result in quickly capped inventories. And most of it will be junk that you either delete or (what we don't want) vendor it off for new inf.
As for removing recipies from drop tables, that might be another method but then I have no clue what that'd do to the way things'll end up. I can only think of what may happen if you put some sort of value to what we have. For example:
Those snipe sets, there could be a section for recipies > conversion. Dump 50 uncommon snipe recipies for an uncommon snipe recepie of your choosing or a rare recipe random drop. Suddenly all those useless 1k snipe recipies will start selling, with demand increasing there'd actually a market for the surplus supply and you'd be increasing the supply or more desireable drops accordingly...
Basically, junk would be another currency, but it's more like bartering.
And hey, maybe there could be other options, like junk for prestige or holiday salvage.
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I LOVE this idea. Though double drop rate is a bit much. One of the new purchasable powers in i21, Windfall, increases drop rates by 50% (among other things). I'd say make this option the same, increase drops by 50%, and let the two of them stack.|
Originally Posted by Giant2005
The economy of this game is completely broken.
Far more influence comes into the system than what leaves - this is a major problem in any economy whether they be in a mmo or in real life. The inflation can be fixed by either reducing the amount of influence coming into the game or increasing the rate at which it leaves. I suggest doing both. We have the option of turning off our experience and gaining more influence. I propose doing something similar, but the opposite. Give us the ability to turn off our influence gain and in return, double our drop rates. All recipes have twice the chance of dropping (including purples and pvp IOs), vanguard merits and architect tickets drop twice as fast too. This not only halts the influence brought into the economy but it also gives us more to sell on the marketplace - further utilizing the biggest inf sink in the game and increasing the outflow of revenue. Edit: Just noticed the typo in the title. Won't let me edit it - fail lol. |
But generally anything that increases supply is something I fully support. Decreasing inf generation is just the icing on the cake.
As an added note about Windfall, while it does increase inf generation, it only does so by 25%, while it increases everything else by 50%. So overall you get more supply than inf coming in, compared to normal. I like that.
I don't know how imposing a cap on inf or the market would help anything. The OPs suggestion of increasing drops and decreasing inf generation would bring prices down, but it might not leave you in a better position as now the market is flooded with new drops and the price decreases, so your new drops are now worth less inf.
The people currently farming for inf are getting drops along the way and putting them on the market. So they are not only earning inf, they are increasing supply of recipes and salvage at the same time. All in all, as we reach equilibrium, what we are seeing are the true costs for some rare items. A kinetic combat might only drop once per 120M influence earned through play. Capping the price at the market won't work (as we've seen through the ultra rare PvP IOs that are bought and sold outside the market) and capping inf won't work because people will just hoard them.
What I would really complain about is simply the absolute rarity of some of these recipes. The +def PvP IO is dropping so rarely that it is simply worth 2.5B. If you cause deflation, it will cost less but you'll be earning less inf along the way.
As for myself, I'm trying to take the hard path and earn the 60 emp merits to buy a single PvP IO. Running a BAF and a LAM every night for a month would earn me that one IO out of a entire set (which would take half a year playing the same two trials every night). I started this journey after I had already played enough trials to T3 this character and tonight I stand at 28 emp merits. Tonight, when I logged in, I realized that I simply can't take it anymore. I've grown sick of the trials and sick of CoH. I do think that some of the costs for these items is simply extreme, but the devs feel that running the same content content 30 days is a fair price for a single item. I think it's a bit extreme and has left me ignoring the other content. I'm not totally blameless here, there are other ways to earn the merits, but playing the market and farming emp merits or not my cup of tea or not as efficient. There's not a whole lot of difference between farming trials or farming the same tip missions for 60 days. Think about it, running the same type of missions every night for an entire year is required for one set of some IOs.
Given the prices set forth by the devs in this context makes it quite clear that complaining about your inf purchasing power isn't going to do much. The only way to increase your relative purchasing power is to increase the drop rates, especially for rare and extremely rare items. I think the prices put on these items in terms of emp or alignment merits make it quite clear that they want these items to be exceedingly rare or expensive. This has sent some players, like myself, into behaviors that make me form a disdain for the game. I don't want to do another freaking trial in my entire life.
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You might think this would work, but it wouldn't. The problem is - there are still players who don't and won't use the market. Your suggestion would limit their options. How much, I honestly can't say, because I'm not sure how much more selling the rare salvage to the store rather than the market would impact their earnings. |
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
A slightly more drastic solution:
Completely cut influence gain for anybody with more than 100,000 on their character. No caveats, no exclusions. If you have 100,000 inf, you don't generate any more from mobs. Earn it through drops and the market. |
People say there's inflation - and I suppose that's true. One way to stop it is to remove influence from the game completely. All of it. You want a costume change - you go to Icon, get the costume you want - but you stay in your original until you perform 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 different things for Icon.
Same with anything else you might want from a store. You're level 25 and you want SO's - get them, slot them - but they don't work until you've clobbered enough baddies, done enough missions.
You want a set of a given purples, be prepared to do a multitude of tasks.
There's no real reason influence, prestige, merits or any of these currencies have to be used.
It can all come down to time spent on the toon and performance.
Realistically, this will never happen. The problem is you've got new players who don't have billions and other players who do. The ones who do can buy what they want - and they can afford to let their inf sit in Wentworths while their 15 to 19 bids for bargain priced recipes and enhancements work for them. And they get richer.
Ultimately, what they end up doing is funding their alts - giving a large chunk away either at costume contests, or just e-mailing it to random names they see in a global channel.
Until there is a solution - you have to join them - buy low, sell high. Level later.
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase
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Well, "have to" is relative. The Best Stuff (like purple IOs) is easiest to obtain by playing the market game. If your goal is to get the Best Stuff and quick, then you have to either farm or play the market to reach that goal. But if you just want to play the game, then you can do that.|
Originally Posted by Ukaserex
Realistically, this will never happen. The problem is you've got new players who don't have billions and other players who do. The ones who do can buy what they want - and they can afford to let their inf sit in Wentworths while their 15 to 19 bids for bargain priced recipes and enhancements work for them. And they get richer.
Ultimately, what they end up doing is funding their alts - giving a large chunk away either at costume contests, or just e-mailing it to random names they see in a global channel. Until there is a solution - you have to join them - buy low, sell high. Level later. |
I just play my characters and sell the stuff that drops. I also run Hero and Villain Tips on those characters who are Heroes or Villains, and use the Alignment Merits to create recipes that sell for a lot, and market those at "patient seller" prices.
I've never felt particularly poor. Sure, not all my 50s are purpled out. But I always have enough Inf for my next SO set, and if I put in the time to figure out a frankenslot IO build then I never have to buy SOs again and any Inf that character earns is pure profit.
Character index
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No it wasn't, that's an internet joke claiming to be a study by Cambridge. The closest thing to truth in the paragraph is a PhD thesis from Nottingham University.|
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Yes, that was done by Cabdirmge Unevsitiry.
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Before I go on, here's an article from Matt Davis at the Cognition and Brain Sciences unit in Cambridge University, UK talking about the paragraph and breaking it down on the technical level, from someone who's actually qualified to talk about such things. The link also has the paragraph in Spanish, French, Dutch, Danish, German, Czech, Icelandic, Protugese, Swedish, Bahasa, Russian, Albanian, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, and Polish, as well as two links to a Finnish version, and a link to a Hebrew version. According to the people who sent the Finnish and Hebrew versions to Matt, they're totally unreadable.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?
Red is a word unchanged in the text
Green words have a single pair of adjacent letters transposed
Black words have a single letter shifted more than one space
That leaves 11 words which are jumbled more than a simple typo we've been trained all our life to fix automatically.
- Aoccdrnig = According
'rd' and 'in' have been transposed, and the 'o' has been shifted two places. - rscheearch = research... right?
Except the best correction for rscheearch produces 'researchch'. If you cut the extra 'ch' from the beginning of the 'jumbled' word, you get 'rseearch', which is research with the 'es' transposed.
Note that in addition to the misspelling of the misspelling, the sentence doesn't make much sense: "According to a research at Cambridge...". It could be fixed to become "According to a researcher at Cambridge...", but that would require an additional 'er' added to the jumble. - Cmabrigde = Cambridge
'am' and 'dg' have both been transposed. - Uinervtisy = University
'ni' and 'si' are transposed, the v and t are both shifted two places. - iprmoetnt = important
Again, this is misspelled -- the 'e' should be an 'a'. However, this is more jumbled that the previous 'hard' words, since one of the transposed pairs ('or') has a shifted letter (m) put in the middle after the transpose. 'et' (really, 'at') is also transposed. - wouthit = without
There is no transpose here, the 'ou' is simply shifted three places. - porbelm = problem
'ro' and 'le' are both transposed. - bcuseae = because
Like 'important', this one is trickier than the rest, because the order the changes were made matters. Transpose 'ec', and shift 'us' two spaces to sit between 'ce'. - istlef = itself
'ts' and 'el' are both transposed. - wlohe = whole
'ol' is transposed, and 'h' is shifted two spaces. - Amzanig = Amazing
'az' and 'in' are both transposed.
Note that using a limited number of these simple changes and using fairly short words, you don't even have to maintain the first/last letter of the word. Try: Alptop. Hint: that's one transpose.
If you use long words and follow the written rules of the paragraph (keep first/last letter, randomize the rest), things become completely unreadable. Try: Mliamoganea, or maybe Ducaosbltimboe.
Sorry for the large derailing post, but this paragraph just annoys me to no end.
(That's Megalomania and Discombobulate for the curious)
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
I joined an SG a while back and I'd like to propose maintaining the 'No XP, Double Influence' option and adding 'No Influence, Double* Prestige', and perhaps even 'No XP, No Influence, Triple* Prestige'.
* Double and Triple - I have no idea how 'overpowered' this would become. I just figured that as Bases are getting no love (that we know of) anytime soon, why not give us an option to make 'em pretty for those that want to? It would be a boon for a 'Solo' SG too.
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I think the best way to give it an in-game rationale is to connect it to SGs again - not every character would want to work for Vanguard or whoever.|
Originally Posted by Rodion
The OP's suggestion is sort of like running in SG mode, where you get prestige in exchange for cutting your inf in half.
If you could encapsulate that idea with some in-game rationale it be more logical. Perhaps actually joining the Midnighters and running in Midnighter mode, or when running secret missions for Vanguard (which, since they're secret, won't give you any influence/infamy). |
Just make it a super-SG mode - enter Super-SG mode, and you get NO influence, but double (or more) the rate of prestige. Possibly with improved drops.
*edit: should probably read the whole thread before I post. This is just Arctis_Princess' idea.
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Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn
Typos happen. Also, I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out. Brains are odd like that. Wasn't there a study done recently that showed that people would automatically put the letters in the right order when they saw them, anyways, as long as the first and last letter were correct?
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Also, there was a Firefox add-on I had a while back that would transform every word on the screen into a jumble, but you'd still be able to read it.
Prices would normalize if drop rates were increased. Things like purples were soooooo much cheaper pre AE and then something broke the droprate and they made stupid decisions to remove or nerf purple drop rates from things people farmed alot and now pretty much everyone farms AE instead for tickets.
Money sinks aren't going to help the problem and the problem is supply. Multibillionaires are always going to be able to bid billions on purples no matter how many inf sinks you add and at that point it just makes things even more inaccessible to other players.
Friends don't let friends buy an ncsoft controlled project.
1. Double drop rates? I doubt it would happen but maybe a slight improvement to drop rates. Maybe an improvement to the chances of getting a drop by something like 33% or in the ballpark of a quarter. But then improve yields more. Not an expert on rewards tables but something like a disproportionate improvement to chances of getting uncommon or rares vs commons. So that rather than completely filling your inventory with common junk 2x as fast, you'll gain everything slightly faster and a better chance at uncommon junk.
2. End of mission/arc bonus. Possible point of exploit; turn off inf there or to kill a boss and improve the drops just for them. So how about a kind of inf debt that you incur upon turning the option on? At this point you don't earn inf or get improved drops but the drop bonus will turn on after paying the debt with dropped inf you'd have gotten.
3. Coupons! This option could come with the bonus of adding coupons to the drop tables and even really nice stuff like merits! So tailor cupons, crafting coupons, and other stuff that might cost you inf to use.
4. Vendors. They still give you inf for your junk. So how about changing that chatty vault secretary into someone that wants our junk (*smirk*)? There'd be progress bars on stuff you can get rif of (like badges) and when you get to 100%, you get the prize and start over again. Ex: trade 20 temp power recipies for a basic IO of your choosing. trade 15 pieces of random common salvage for a random uncommon drop. trade 25 pieces of any common salvage for a piece of common salvage of your choosing.
2. Yeah I wasn't really thinking about end of mission bonuses, my idea was mostly with kill drops in mind which is why I said Vanguard and Architect merits only, otherwise there would be people doubling their reward merits for completing a TF and other similiarly chaotic events happening.
3. Could be a good idea, probably take more time to code though. Also those coupons have to be worth losing your influence for or the feature would not be used. I don't like the idea of using them for currently established influence sinks either, that change would be pointless.
4. Awesome idea.