The Paragon Market - A Quick Update

We've had some recent discussions with the Community about the Paragon Market and our weekly offerings. Something I previously stated was that we're occasionally going to offer some new items to "mix it up" and see what piques your interest. Well, this week is no different and we're going to take a few minutes to talk about some of this weeks offerings.

In tomorrow’s Paragon Market update you'll see the following specials:

- SSA part 3: This isn't one of the "shake it up" items, but I figured I may as well let you know it's coming .

- 3 new Rare Melee DPS IO Enhancements (which will normally be found under the enhancements category sort by Melee and their respective max levels): Pulverizing Fisticuffs (10-25), Touch of Death (25-40) and Mako's Bite (30-50). Like our previous enhancement offerings, these Rare IOs cannot be boosted, are account bound and attuned and they will level with you, within their level ranges. We're going to be watching these items closely as they represent another convenience vs. time offering and we're interested in their reception. We'll let you know about pricing tomorrow, however this initial offering will be at 50% off of their normal price, both individually for those of you who like to mix and match for your builds and as a bundled set.

- 50% off the Time Manipulation Powerset: Beam Rifle has been one if our highest selling items amongst Free and Premium players, so we figured this would be a good solid buy for our Premium folks.

- A new path aura: this will be the first path aura we've offered in the Market (all other paths are either Paragon Reward unlocks or unlocked through Incarnate content) so we're looking forward to seeing what you think. While it will be priced a bit higher than a standard aura, it's not far off and is, IMHO, pretty damn cool looking. You'll have to wait until tomorrow to see it .*

On another note; we've been discussing the creation of a dedicated forum specifically for the Paragon Market and its weekly offerings, which is where a discussion such as this would go on the future. We'll have more on this in the coming weeks.

Please excuse any typos or wonky formatting with this post. I'm posting it from the waiting room at the doctor’s office. I've been out of the office today, however we wanted to make sure this was communicated to you guys this afternoon.

Thanks!

-Z

You've got to stop putting [censored] in your ear.

Seriously.

I think a separate market section for the forums would be a good idea.

And get well soon - or at least before the UStream broadcast

If you ask Mrs Z. That shouldn't be an issue since everything goes in one ear and out the other.

P.S. iPhone's are teh win. Working from the doctors office without my laptop. And the nurse is just shaking her head at me.

I don't particularly mind rare enhancements on the market. These three in particular are not that hard to get at auction, so it's strictly a convenience buy to get them from the marketplace, or great for Premium players who don't want to get IO and Auction licenses but still want to mix up their builds.

But "these three aren't bad" is the crux of that. If you'd offered a fantastically powerful and expensive set like Basilisk's Gaze or Kinetic Combat... well, personally I'd be cheering since I hate having to track down this unobtainium at Wentworth's, but I suspect some marketeers would be fuming. So take it one step at a time, definitely.

Get better, Z.


Feedback on the Attenuated Rares: Mostly missing the mark.


As one of the few people who actually gave feedback on the attenuated IOs in the market, you seem to have pretty much ignored everything I said except the part about the cost, which is yet to be seen what their pricing structure is. Let me refresh...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zombie Man New Level-Up-With-You Enhancements I like these new Enhancements. I like that they level with you. I understand why these are Uncommon, it would be too powerful with Rares. However, if even one member of the set is Rare, then the whole set is missing from the Store. This severely limits the number of sets Available, which in turn, severely limits their range of usefulness in several areas: 1. These categories have no available sets: Recharge Intensive Pet; Accurate Healing; Accurate Defense Debuff; and Accurate To Hit Debuff; 2. These categories have sets only available in the 10-20 level range: Knockback; Taunt; Endurance Modification; To Hit Buff; To Hit Debuff; and Defense Debuff. I'm sure the prices of these are just placeholders since sets that go from 20-50 are priced the same as sets that go from 10-20. And quite frankly, selling any one of these sets that only go from 10-20 for real money should be considering unconscionable unless the price was about 5 cents each considering how pretty quickly they'd become worthless compared to a simple SO. The ones that go from 20-50... now that's something I'd spend some cash on. But unfortunately, the sets that are left are rather restricted in their range. Some sets that go to 50 only start at 35. Suggestion: 1. Create two tiers of uncommon enhancement sets: one whose level is 10-40. And another that is 25-50. Readjust all uncommon sets' levels to belong to one or the other category. This will hopefully end uncommon set level slotting tetris. Then, charge more for the upper level set. 2. For categories of sets that don't have an uncommon set, please make one. 3. For sets that only have one or two Rares, and the rest uncommon, include them in the level-as-you-level store, but, you can charge a bit more for them.

So, these new Rare Sets have some of the same problems, most importantly, they cover too short a range. I'd pay serious money to slot a set at 20 and forget about having to update it because it levels up to 50 with me. Of the new rares you're offering, Mako's Bite is the only one I would even consider bothering with at any price because of the level range benefit.

This is a tiny, tiny bandage on a much bigger problem of the inanity of IO level restrictions. I'm guessing you're not really selling any of the Uncommon Sets, and I've explained why. Instead of fixing them, you hope to grab some quick cash by offering a few of the popular Rare Sets, some of which have the same limitations as the Uncommons.

This is really missing the mark.

And the sale of level 10-20 Attenuated IOs, considering how almost completely useless and worthless they are, is still unconscionable. Shame on you all.

No Titan Weapons yet ? So that leaves pretty much the path aura for anyone not dumb enough to buy for real money some IO sets you can get in a day or two of playtime at lvl 50 considering they're average at best. I guess the price of those will be worth a laugh though as usual. The whole Paragon Store and the marketing plans behind it are really a shame. The only decently priced items are powersets and some of the costume pieces. It's beyond me how anyone can buy some IOs that aren't even worth putting on the market because they're crap anyway. I guess i'll start giving them for free on my server channel instead of deleting mako's when i loot them, at least it will save some players' money.

Whoever is behind that should get some serious reality check, or play the game for more than 2 hours before joining the marketing team, seriously. This would be like selling common white no-stat vendor armor in your average fantasy MMO for real money. Anyone i talked in game about the shop only makes fun of it and of the total non-sense it can be. Most of the junk between 100 and 800 points would barely sell at 20 or 40 points for a laugh or to finish a build here and there, i won't even comment on the costume toggles and stuff like that, that's a dead horse. If you really want to sell some stuff at least put some dev effort behind it and come up with something that can somewhat pretend to be worth it instead of aiming to rob the newbies with such "deals".

Personally, I really don't mind IOs - any of them - going for sale on the Paragon Market.

Sure, they may reduce the demand in the auction house a bit, but... whatever. I'd rather see real money in Paragon's pockets than fake money in my characters' (as I stand to gain a lot more from the developers getting more funding than I do by having another billion influence chilling out on my account).

Also, as a note, I'd probably be willing to pay $5 apiece for the PVP uniques, like the Gladiator's +3%. That's relatively competitive with the RMT spammers' rates, too, I think, and might do some good in putting them out of business (and believe me... nothing would make me happier in this game than seeing the death of the RMT spammer market).

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

Another neat thing (and maybe scary thing if you're not into the idea of in-game performance boosts being for sale) is that ToDs obtained this way will scale up to level 50. The existing ones stop at 40.

I am pretty into min/maxing, but even so I can't see myself spending money on that, partially because I don't have a hard time obtaining most stuff in-game. But I do think it would be neat to have ToDs that worked that way.

Question: Since these enhancements level with you, does that mean the set bonuses are not always available?

I usually use lvl 33 IO sets. Would I still have the bonuses when exemp down to level 30, or would I end up only have the bonuses when exemp down to lvl 37 for the Touch of Death and 47 for the Mako's?