The lone marketeer

So I was goaded to increase the SG ranking of my solo SG, over a month or so I spent ~125 billion to get the #2 spot on Infinity, and the best part in doing so it encouraged the #1 sg to spend a little north of 150 billion to secure their #1 status. with nearly 400 million between #2 and #1 there spot is safe from the likes of me anyway, for long while.

You'll make Fulmens proud.


Cheers,
4

Your prediction is precisely correct!

I was going to try and scrounge some inf for the 88s on virtue so I can keep my senseless race going... but you've put any of my possible efforts in the shade.

Well done, good sir/madam/tentacled creature .

Anyone have good estimates of the total amount of liquid inf in the game at the moment? I'd like to think that 250B at least removes a measurable portion of the excess (0.3%?). Or are we at the point now where we're in the low quadrillions of inf?

I don't have any good estimates.

I'm going to try for the kind of calculation that could be off by a factor of 10, easily. And I'm going to do it several different ways and see if they're anywhere near each other.

TL;DR I think there's about 100 trillion inf in game.

1. Let's assume that Topdoc is the average of the "top 0.1%" and that the inf distribution in this game roughly follows this distribution: the bottom 90% have as much total inf as the next 9% has as much total inf as the next 0.9% have as much inf as the top 0.1%. Also we will assume 50,000 players of note [non-VIPs are not "of note" for our purposes because they're inf limited. ]

So the top 0.1% is 50 players, each with 500B cash for 25 trillion inf.
The next 0.9% is 25 trillion inf (averaging 55B cash)
The next 9% is 25 trillion inf (averaging 5.5B cash)
The next 90% is 25 trillion inf (averaging 550M cash)
TOTAL: 100 trillion inf.

2. The "most expensive IO in the game": TopDoc caused, temporarily, a crash in the price of Glad Armor uniques to the point that some recipes are selling for less than 2 billion inf. Now there may have been some others who followed his lead in selling off before the Great Revaluing but that means something. I'm not sure WHAT but something. He put a 20 billion inf dent in demand and that moved the market. There are, say, three "really big" PVP IO's and he moved two of 'em. Unsupported assumption #1: There is 10 times as much inf "out there" as people are willing to actually spend on big builds. Unsupported assumption #2: there is a market for 100 Glad Armors at about 2 billion each (1.8 to 2.2, say.) Unsupported assumption #3: There is therefore a market for 100 "top end builds" at (#4) about 7 billion each. Unsupported assumption #5: The people who can afford top end builds have half the inf in the game.
So we get 7 billion (#4) * 100 (#3) * 10 (#1) * 2 ( #5) = 14 trillion inf.

That's really low, considering that there was 3 trillion inf when issue 9 hit and PEOPLE HAD NO USE FOR IT. Therefore some of my guesses are wrong and this is no good.

3. The high-end build was 300 million when I9 went live- that's 0.01% of the total inf in the game. So if a high-end build is now 7 billion and the same ratio holds: there's 70 trillion inf in game. There may be more inf now, because there were VERY sharp peaks in income at the time; people had no reason to accumulate more than a few million inf in I8, except for badges. It could be 100 trillion.

4. This one's almost circular logic and I don't like it. It's fairly easy to get a group of marketeers [or even one!] together to burn 100 billion inf for no reason. These forums have maybe 10% of the players, so the market forum has 10% of the money. People burn inf because they don't need it, and so it's a plausible guess that 1% of the inf "marketeers" make, they burn in big public shows*. So a 100 billion-inf show is 0.1% of the total inf by definition: 100 trillion inf total.

* this is "As a group"- I may burn 95%, but I'm saying there are 18 people as rich as me who burn nothing.

I'm going to stop because I think I'm starting to aim for a number instead of just starting with a blank sheet of paper and seeing what I get.

Just to note, when Topdoc estimated his total worth I think he was including more than just cash. That doesn't necessarily mean your assumptions are way off, though a person would have to be really dedicated to the task of squirreling away inf to amass 500B of it.

Liquid Inf and valuable items are different things. Between all my built toons, stored IOs (across all servers), stored recipes, and stock on market at any time I estimate that I have about 700 B in valuable items. However, I only have about 125B in liquid inf at this moment.

I'd gather that as long as the game has been out that 100 Trillion is a reasonable guess especially since the market is a semi-inf-sink.

I don't think we actually have any way of knowing though.

As Intrinsic said, my 500B was total net worth. I've got I think 100B Inf stored in bids that are not meant to ever fill, 50B in active bids, 10-20B in sold items, and the rest in slotted or stored IOs. If you still use me as the basis for #1, the total Inf in the game comes out to around 33 trillion.

Glad Armors are still up there, but Shield Walls are between 1.5B and 2B now, and Panacea procs dropped to under 1.5B. I haven't kept track of them to see if Panacea's have recovered. But I don't think the Inf is necessarily tied so tightly to people who want high end builds. Generally those people SPEND THEIR INF! I certainly do, which is why my net worth is significantly higher than my available Inf. I got a bit bored with CoH for a while, which is why I wasn't slotting up chars. My liquid Inf is due to selling lots of those PvP IOs and expensive purples, in preparation for Enhancement Converters. Previously my total Inf was closer to 50B. But in general your item #2 has just way too many assumptions.

For #3 I don't think the same ratio holds. Some builds go out of style and get looted. The ability to level up chars has increased, but probably not as fast as the ability to earn Inf. But mainly there's no reason for a top end build to be the same 0.01% of the Inf in the game. Inf concentration means maybe the ratio has gone up to 0.02% or higher, because people can pay more. But maybe people have more characters now and can't afford even 0.01%.

Here's another thing to consider. People leave the game, and sometimes they don't give away their Inf. So Inf is building up on unplayed accounts. It could be building up on unplayed characters as well. I could have a couple lowbies sitting around with 1B on them that I've forgotten about. There could be market sales where the Inf hasn't been collected. There's probably a lot of lost Inf in the game.

Also I disagree with the statement by Honcho that "By far the fastest way to make inf in this game is to use the market." One day I made over 6B in AFK PvP IO farming. Granted that was a very lucky day. I've heard that during the AE exploit involving Mastermind pets staying at high level when entering low level missions, people could inf cap in a single mission. That said, I will agree that Marketing is a great way to earn Inf when you're doing something else.

At one time I had an idea for calculating the total amount of inf in the game by comparing an estimated rate at which inf is being created to an estimated rate at which it is being destroyed. My model quickly ran into two problems:

1) I don't farm, so I have no idea how much inf an average farmer generates.

2) Even if I could estimate inf creation under normal circumstances, I don't have a handle on how much has been created due to AE bugs. I wasn't playing CoH when most of these were discovered, but from other people's recounting it seems to have been considerable.

And nowadays we're given less data about sales volume in WW, which makes estimation of inf destruction much more difficult. I just abandoned the idea. I've reached the conclusion that the total amount of inf in the game is 'a whole lot,' and we probably won't get a more accurate figure unless the devs give it to us.

I play with a dude who was recently holding 160 billion in liquid inf, stored on 80 toons. This is a guy who holds a trivia contest in our chat channel, with 20 questions, and the prize is a billion per correct answer.

God only knows how much more he had stashed away in other ways.

He doesn't read the forums at all, as far as I know, and I suspect there are a lot of folks like him out there.

Incidentally, my liquid inf is very low because I just vaporise it whenever I'm bored. It's like coffee filters: you go to the store to pick up a new set when you run out, but who seriously bothers collecting them?

I'm just saying because I threw billions into the 88s pool and have given away ludicrous amounts of wealth for random whims because the knowledge of how to make money is more enduring and more valuable than any amount of actual money.

Plus, I like stuff.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

We may be getting into a discussion where we have to distinguish between "increase in personal net worth", "increase in personal actual cash" and "increase in inf added to the game." Honestly, between high-efficiency farming, SuperTeams, and CEBR on one side, and mass generating of PVP IO's on the other, I couldn't actually guess whether TopDoc has added inf to the game or subtracted it. I like to think it's come out on the negative side but I have no idea.

Oh, and

I know someone who doesn't even post and very rarely reads the forums who has over 100B in Inf, obviously not counting items either stored or slotted. His net worth is a lot higher than that if you include theoretical sale value of stuff, because he's got hundreds of valuable items stored.

There's a lot of money out there.

I remember doing an inf exchange for someone with like 100B in inf, before the merged red and bluesides, who I'd never heard of, who didn't post, who was an SG-mate of someone who'd used my services. And he had a few very wealthy friends.

And I seriously doubt those people have gotten poorer.

My example of someone who's really, really rich is PumBumbler, who is a forumgoer but only peripherally visits the Market forum. The guy just likes to play and keeps running up against the 9999 merit limit

FourSpeed's calculation is a good mental tool; we can play with the dials all we like and get highly variable answers, but it's a good tool to get within, say, an order of magnitude. I think there are half as many total players as FourSpeed does, but more of them have broken the 2-billion-inf mark.