Confession of a power gaming junkie

Around Jan 8 I finally went to the beta server and saw how Enhancement Converters really worked. A single Hero Merit gets 10 Converters. A single Converter will convert a cheap purple into a random purple. I can run the WWD#1 arc in around 8 minutes for a hero merit. I have probably 100 chars level 20+. After I "confirm" their alignment, I can earn around 6 Hero Merits per hour, and convert 60 cheap purples into random purples. If I spend 10 hours every week I can convert 600 cheap purples into random purples. It takes on average 2 conversions to turn a cheap purple into a damage purple, so that's 10 hours to convert 300 cheap purples into damage ones. My first thought was "What are the Devs thinking?" My second thought was "How can I use this to improve my characters?"

What will happen when these go live? There are a lot of purples produced in the game, but demand is high enough that the damage ones go for around a half billion each. The other ones sell for more like 100M, but some like Sleeps have historically been more like 1M. The future was clear to me. Anyone with a brain and a little greed will buy cheap purples and convert them to good ones. The day Enhancement Converters go live people will earn about 200M/converter. The price on cheap purples will go up, while the expensive ones will go down. When will it stop? My guess is around the time cheap purples hit 150-200M, and expensive ones hit 250-300M. There's enough demand and Inf in the system that purple prices won't crash hard. What else are people going to buy with their Inf? Converters will nearly double the supply of damage oriented purple sets but at the cost of non-damage sets. Sorry all you Doms and Controllers who liked cheap purples.

People could also convert PvP IOs. I know from my farming that I have a WHOLE LOT of junk PvP IOs. While the supply is small, the demand is even smaller, except for a few. Most PvP IOs go for under 50M, a few go for around 2B, and there are a handfull in the middle. It will take a lot more Converters to turn PvP IOs into good ones. But the supply of junk is large. Anyone with 10 minutes and 20M can have 10 chances at converting a junk PvP IO into platinum. Honestly, it isn't that hard to use converters to get the ones going for 2B. Maybe it takes 3 runs of WWD#1, convert out-of-set till you get one of the 3 good sets, then convert in-set till you get the proc. I expected prices on the middle PvP IOs to crash, and even the 2B ones will go down to under 500M pretty fast. I thought most Panaceas would keep a decent price due to PvE demand, but the H/E and H/R have already crashed. In the end, I believe the return will not be as high as using Converters on purples. The day Enhancement Converters go live people will be able to earn decent returns on them. I plan to do in-set conversion of Glad Armor: End/Rech IOs on about 20 of my chars, and I'll sell the resulting estimated 12 Glad Armor: Procs for 1 Inf. On day 2, I'll be VERY surprised if any PvP IO is over 1B.

People could also convert Rare and Uncommon IOs, but that's a waste of time compared to purples. Converting Kinetic Combat: KD to another in the set is 3 converters for an average profit of maybe 75M, or 25M/converter. No other set has enough expensive pieces for in set conversion to be worthwhile, and out of set conversions are worse.

Then I think on Jan 10 the Beta build went live. That means the Devs could turn on Enhancement Converters anytime they wanted. What should I do about it? Obviously sell anything expensive. I got nervous, so I decided to sell fast. I had a fair stock of damage purples for chars I was working on, and for Mrs. TopDoc. I sold them all. I had a huge stock of PvP IOs from farming. I sold anything worthwhile. I started a thread here to sell my top end PvP IOs at a discount. Other people followed suit, and PvP prices are still going down.

I used that Inf to buy purples. In Arcanna's words, "hoover up the entire purple market". It was a LOT of Inf. I started buying, and increasing my price to get more and more. I already had a huge stock of PvP IOs, so I could convert those given time to as many of the good ones as I needed for my personal use. But I wanted enough purples to purple every one of my 50s, and all the ones I was leveling up, and all of Mrs. TopDoc's characters, and all the ones I may make in the future. I was aiming to buy 1000 purples.

A single base can hold 1800 Enhancements when loaded with 18 Enhancement Storage bins. I had to start shipping them off to a second base because my first base was almost full. I can't stop. The future is clear to me. When Enhancement Converters go live, I'll be able to turn silver into gold. Why should I stop buying silver?

What really confuses me is why almost no one else is doing what I'm doing. The profit potential is HUGE!!! I may become a trillionaire. I have seen other bids here and there. For a while I was in a bidding war with someone bidding X,090,000 or something like that, but then those stopped. According to Arcanna I pushed her out of the market because I drove up prices too high. Too high?

Would this be a good time to recommend counseling?

Fascinating analysis, and interesting project TopDoc.

I haven't done anything at all regarding converters and I probably won't,
but I'll be very curious to see how it all unfolds.

I'll be especially curious to see what your effective exchange rate per converter
turns out to be.


GL, HF,
4

I played EVE Online and market a lot there and asked myself the question of why more people don't do marketing in these games.

It has voice channels in game, so I would just ask people why they did not market since it is the best way to make money and you end up being the richest people in the game. The answer was quite simply some people HATE math/numbers and find it boring dealing with spreadsheets etc...

In the end some just don't find it fun no matter how much profit you show them they could make to buy that pimped out part they wanted.

I've been doing this on a much smaller scale. I didn't have that many damage purples sitting around unused to sell off. I'm down to the lowest amount of liquid inf on hand that I have been since the market merger and I have a stockpile in my base, but it's nowhere remotely close to what you've got. I just don't have that kind of capital to invest.

TopDoc is the 1%.

Eat the rich!

There are plenty of us dabbling in the converter craze but doing so on the scale you suggest requires effort. Between multiple 12 hour shifts a week and taking classes, I dont have the energy or desire to do things on that scale. I only market on maybe 8-10 toons now compared to 12-15 of last year.

Additionally with prices set to drop and people like us already owning 'infinite influence', there isn't much of an outlet for such massive amounts of profit. Crazy 88s are mostly quiet now.

Two observations:

1) I am not doing this because I play mostly melee toons, and purples are dead weight in most of my builds. I consider +Def bonuses to be far more valuable than +Rech. I have..... 50-odd? Purples, in storage, just because I might someday want to use them. I have only slotted a couple of sets, and that in a Stone tanker build where the tradeoff of defense for recharge was worth it. Now that said, the advent of the ATO's is a very rich source of +defense, and may make one-two purples in a melee build 'worth it' to me....but I already have plenty for at least 3-4 pilot builds, and the resources to get as many more as I want. So I have no need for or desire for converting purples, especially since the only ones I want are set to drop soon.


2) Mass conversion is a volume game. I suspect that many people who are not filthy rich are going to be quickly discouraged when the RNG converts crap, to crap, to crap, to crap, and to crap yet again. Those are are unwilling or unable to 'roll the dice' on billion inf deals are not going to be doing this mass conversion stuff. Instead, they will cheerfully profit from selling crap purples to mass converters, and then rolling/buying things they need with their alignment merits. Both of those are 'sure things'. Why accept the risk?


Lastly, a prediction: I think the L10 Gladiator Armor Proc is going to hold value very VERY well. We'll see if I am correct.