Wentworth's - perfect player auction house or what?

If you look at the pricing of recipes just above and below the said IO recipe, you can often get a good idea of what something is worth.

Also, often (but not always) you will be able to see the lowball price some market flipper is bidding to 'catch' recipes at a low price and resell them, and then the highball price marketers have set them for 'buy it now' buyers. Anywhere in between the high and low will usually snag you the next recipe players drop on the market (or at least one soon).

If looking at the last five doesn't give you enough information that you are comforable with bidding, then just check it again later, and then bid.

I would feel more comfortable with the gizmos and gadgets we loot if it was handled a little more appropriately. If salvage such as 'clockwork winders' only dropped from actual clockwork, for example.

Heroes could earn only 'influence' from defeating mobs and use that to purchase upgrades, while villains could loot components and use those to develop weapons and 'enhancements'. As it stands today, it just feels like a bunch of nonsense cobbled together in order to give us something to 'craft'.

I dunno. Farming of any kind could be considered boring and lame depending on your point of view. Whether I have to fight a hundred clockwork or a hundred random mobs that don't mean anything to me, what does it really matter? Farming is killing things just for the drops; when did it ever matter to a farmer what the enemy model looked like?

Farmers have nothing to do with why it's important that it not work that way. It's everyone else that it matters to. Making components for crafting drop only from specific foes is a barrier to obtaining things crafted with them. Right now it doesn't matter if there are no farmers out collecting Hydraulic Pistons - you can go play a couple missions (any missions) and get some your self, and you can be completely confident someone else is probably getting some right now.

Instead, locking loot behind specific mobs means that someone, somewhere must be willing to run that content. Why create situations that practically beg for the creation of farmers who then essentially end up strongly influencing how easy it is for to craft certain things ?

The drop system was almost certainly not created to enable or promote that kind of play. It was much more likely created to create certain "average time to obtain" for certain classes of item. While the time to obtain salvage is usually a pittance compared to that for the recipes that need them, the whole thing amounts quite intentionally to some time spent by players mucking around with the system instead of doing other things. But because it's largely "equal opportunity", it feels more "fair" than locking obtaining certain things behind certain content.

We have our versions of that kind of gating. We have very fuzzy level-based gates around what level of foes drop certain things. We have incarnate stuff gated behind level 50. But overall, CoH's drop system is very open.

Yes, and as a casual player who doesn't want to turn the game into a second job, I am very much appreciative of this design choice. But in terms of in-world logic and immersion, the fact that Clockwork Cogs can drop Regenerative Flesh is a failure. At the end of the day I don't mind this too much because I realize that's the price to be paid for the overall convenience level I enjoy in the game. But it is still less than ideal, afaic.

I want items and I want to know how much they cost.
I want to pay 500 for my salvage or whatever anytime I log in.
I want to pay 100,000,000 or whatever for a LOTG 7.5 at any level.
I want to pay X for purples.

Having to bid, then re-bid, then re-bid, bores me.
Having to list, then re-list, then re-list, bores me.

That the Devs won't simply put all the IOs in the Paragon Store so I can just avoid the whole thing is infuriating to no end.

Don't get me wrong, I have enough inf that I can buy anything I want. I'd just rather get it from an ingame vendor than have to deal with the vagaries of the market.

As in-world game logic goes, that particular horse left the barn in CoH beta. Why are steam-powered robots dropping Facial Reconstruction tech? Why do Council drop training in Back Alley Brawler attack styles? Sure, with SOs and the like there's a nod towards appropriateness of drops in the very broad sense of origins, but some of that really makes no sense at all. Why is my fist brawler with the power of the netherworld slotting Internal Ammunition?

Given that we've had to accept such things all along, I hardly single the Invention system out for its lack of fictional sensibility.

Agreed. The whole "drop" system is profoundly flawed as far as in-world logic is concerned; I certainly didn't intend to make it sound like I was singling out the Invention component system.

Yeah, I've never liked the way salvage is handled. I think it's senselessly diverse and specific. If I had my druthers it would at least be condensed down to six pieces - generic Arcane or Tech salvage of each rarity tier.

Something I wish they'd considered long before, was different salvage for each recipe dependent upon the Origin that was viewing it at the time. That would diversify the 'need' enough that everything would fit.

What does my Tech character need with a "Luck Charm" in the 10-25 range? What does my Magic character give a damn for a "Scientific Theory" in the 30-40 Range? Yet because of the limitations of the system, they clamor and pay top dollar for each.

Oh, I have a level 30 Accuracy recipe. Alchemical Silver's are expensive if I wanted to craft it on my Magic Origin, but I'll send it to my Science Character. She only needs some Dangerous Chemicals and an Innovative Code to craft that Accuracy. And thus ends the excusivity and ease of cornering on certain items. At least without more effort...

The reqirements for each recipe should have been reflected on those it dropped (or were sent to) for the purposes of crafting.

This, in turn, would have a profound effect on the market and how it has been played since its introduction. Cornering or price-gouging would have reqired more footwork and effort than currently produced, as well as providing a more 'sensible' system around each character's design/desire to pursue needs.

Would it have 'fixed' everything? No. But it would have added another of level to the game to play for those with interest, and anther avenue to explore with those with no cash or desire to 'play the game'. They'd just buy the cheapest things and construct as necessary. win/win if you ask me.

As it turns out, adding bad data to bad data doesn't make it good data.

I too have had the same problem as you Lycantropus. It wasn't long after the novelty of the Invention system wore-off before I noticed the same oddities.

I've discussed in the past how I feel the current salvage system needlessly complex, and feels like a random hodgepodge of too many ideas and not-enough thought. It's one area that didn't need all of the detail put into it - more generic salvage types wouldn't have had the danger of impinging on somebody else's roleplay//concept of their characters. Sadly this didn't happen when Incarnate Salvage came around - the same needless complexity introduced, with salvage that makes absolutely no sense to me from any roleplay standpoint of any of my characters.

ah, be quiet and cut that living tattoo off of the arm of that hellion you just defeated.

And why doesn't the salvage tell me what tier it is, instead of forcing me to look it up every single dang time?

--NT

I don't understand the subjective association of good and bad with an intrinsically objective thing like data. Could you elaborate?

As it turns out, adding *more* data to a limited data set never makes it worse and almost always makes it better data. I don't offhand know of any exceptions.

You may not like the data, the data may be influenced by outside factors such as a person flipping that recipe you want so that it never goes below 80,000,000 Inf, but the more complete data may keep you from paying 120,000,000 Inf.

And Neuronia, the devs have put pretty much everything in a "store" now. You can buy various IO recipes and salvage with several different kinds of merits, from Alignment to Reward to Empyrean to AE. You may feel that its too much work to get IO sets together that way, but evidently the devs feel that that is "about the right amount of work". Anything that short circuits it, like using the market, is a bonus.

To the OP, I've seen one other MMO's auction house, and CoH's is vastly better. It only showed the prices people were asking on an individual item basis, no transaction history of any kind, and as another poster mentioned, that is much less useful information because if the item is still showing, unless you got really lucky timing-wise, it *must* be overpriced. Maybe a little, maybe a lot, but you have no way of knowing. And if you list something that doesn't happen to be for sale right now, you are completely guessing. Meanwhile, if there are a few for sale and you list at the price thats showing, you may be overpricing your stuff as well, and paying auction fees for nothing because it won't move. That game DID force me to keep records of stuff I was buying and selling.

Here, I can be reasonably sure that if I see a bunch of sales for X with bids up (another useful feature, though I realize that can also be manipulated) and I list at half that, I'll probably get at least 2/3 X. Meanwhile, if I list for 1, I'll probably get a reasonable price. It may be what the flipper is paying, not selling for, but they are taking the time to figure that out. My choice if I want to do the same, or just get back to playing the game. Not a bad deal IMHO.

It's a Nemesis plot

Hey, it takes money to make money.

Even vendors charge a fee for selling to them, anywhere from 60% to 86.8% of the "market value" (i.e., purchase price) of the enhancement. Wentworth's only takes you for 10%. You won't get a better deal anywhere else except perhaps direct trading with another player.