My curiosity about the "pro marketeers."

Here's the deal- I don't think I'm one of you. I have been known to make over a billion infamy in a day, when I want to. Inf is by no means an issue for me, because I know that I can make it quickly whenever I need it, but I also don't sit on it and hoard it.

I can make inf. to fund a project, which is the only time I bother. If I have an alt that I want to be decked out, I will deck it out. What I'm curious about is.. Why would anyone be a "real" marketeer?

I understand that many of you have been around much longer than me, but I just see that as more time needed to make more characters, pay for them to be leveled if you want, purple them out, get them the PVP IO's they need, pay for bank missions if you miss them, etc.

For me, this game encourages alts so much that there's no point in hoarding infamy. If I want a new character, I spend a couple of weeks in game farming and marketeering to collect the 5 purple sets and 3 or more PVP IO's I need, plus an extra billion or two for extra stuff like Kin Combats and LOTG's. I spend it all within a day of making it.

I guess I just don't understand why people would hoard infamy unless they plan to use it for something. I've met players who post about how much inf. they have and how awesome it is, and I've seen them running around at level 50 with no x5 ultimate stacks and nothing to show for their marketeering in game whatsoever. I've seen people post on this board saying "I don't play at level 50."

I guess I'm just wondering what the point is for these types? Are you just hoarding infamy for the lol's, and to say you did it, while having nothing to show for it. or am I missing something?

Why do you rock the warshade?
Why do I solo AVs and spend time clawing up pylons?

We do it because we do it. When it comes to inf, I'm about it much as you are. I don't play the market, I farm when the mood hits me, I make what I need to make and then go back to doing whatever else.

When I heard that there are people sitting on not billions but hundreds of billions, I too found myself wondering why. But then I went and soloed some AVs and realized, "oh, they do it because it's fun for them to do it."

It's a game in and of itself. I'm not even good at it as such, I don't think I've ever had 20B total.

Inf is a number like XP is a number.

Some people like big numbers.

Its not that surprising.

I don't horde inf per se. Not in the way that some people on here do. I do try to keep 15 or 20 billion on hand at any one time though, so if I decide I want to build something expensive I don't have to spend time making money before I can do it.

I'm active in the market for long stretches because I think the most efficient use of my time is to spend just a few minutes per day on it over an extended period. I don't farm, and I don't cash in merits to sell the proceeds, so I pretty much rely on marketeering when I need inf.

Having said that, marketeering is a repetitive task. I do it to earn enough inf to equip my characters as I see fit, not for the sheer joy of playing the market. I'm sitting on a huge pile of inf only because my recent alt projects haven't worked out as I expected. With the changes coming in I22 I'm not sure I'll even need to play the market again (though I probably will just for good measure ).

I don't alt heavily. I am on my way to my 11th 50, and once the character is 50, I will spend a significant amount of time (probably a good month) playing at 50. New Incarnate content means my other 10 existing 50s are going to get a bunch of playtime again in the near future. It may be a couple of months before I start looking at getting another new character to 50. I have some characters waiting to get to 50 that are 4-5 years old.

I do like big numbers.

I also like to min/max. I just spent most of Sunday spending freespecs on level 50 characters that probably only gave them a couple of % extra performance. (In some cases I might even have netted no performance change, as I was occasionally adjusting for the HO "nerf". {I use the term lightly.}) Having lots of capital allows me to be agile with changes. "Ooh, I could put one of those there. Let me grab one from the market/my base."

By the standards of probably most of the regulars here, I'm a lightweight. I like to think that's mostly by choice - I don't dislike the market at all, but I don't enjoy spending time thinking about it as I do fighting or poring over builds, even though it doesn't take that much thought to make pretty big piles of money. I'd rather spend my out-of-combat brain time in Mids.

Because once I have my character set up the way I want it I have nothing else to spend inf on.

Pretty much what Bill said. As for me, I enjoy marketing on a certain level, so I regularly market on a bunch of characters. This usually amounts to logging all of them in at least once a week to check up on what they've sold and bought, craft some stuff, put it up for sale. This is good because a lot of my characters are in a SG with a kick policy if you're inactive a certain length of time. ^_^ But aside from doing it for those two reasons, I like to have enough cash on hand to fully IO/purple a toon when I want to. ATM I have a Widow at 47, my Titan Weapons brute is at 43, and I have several other toons/projects in the 40's. I'll probably IO out the Widow at 50 next.

So in that sense I'm more like Bill and the original poster, because the ultimate goal for me is to build really powerful characters. Except that I market all the time with that goal in mind.

I'm a power gamer. I like creating the best build possible for a character, which means purples and PvPs and such. And I have a LOT of characters. The different options for obtaining those Enhancements include farming, marketeering, or playing. While I love figuring out farms, and how to be efficient, I don't particularly enjoy actual farming. Ditto for marketeering. But those rewards are far higher than actual playing, so I do them from time to time. It's a question of ROI (Return on Investment) where the Investment is my time. I'm willing to do some boring things (farming and marketeering) in order to improve the quality of the non-boring things (playing with overpowered characters).

With Enhancement Converters that will soon all be behind me. I'll have all the purples, PvPs, and ATOs I'll ever need. I'll only need to use the Market for the lesser Enhancements in my build. And I'll have a huge wad of cash in reserve in case the Devs release something new that I'll want. So I'll never need to farm or marketeer again.

Why do people keep playing pacman, getting all those points, if they aren't going to spend them?

And yes, I'm one of the people who messes with the market despite never having gotten to 50.

I don't have a quibble with the folks who earn their billions on the market only to buy stuff for their builds.
I don't even have a problem with the folks who like to horde 100s of billions just "because they can".

The people I don't quite understand are the "Crazy 88" types who like to earn countless billions for the express purpose of (as far as I can tell) bragging about how many of those billions they've burned through the Influence to Prestige conversion. Some of them even claim that they are on some kind of crusade to accumulate as much Influence as they can for the sole purpose of "removing" it from the general marketplace via their destructive efforts.

Unlike a real economy this game simply creates Influence via the actions of its players. There's absolutely no way you can "reduce" the total amount of something that's infinitely renewable. I couldn't really think of a more pointless activity if I tried - but then again like many other things people enjoy doing in this game maybe it doesn't really matter if there's a "point" to it in the long run.

Hey, marketeers: Why u so evil?

Also, your tears are delicious.

It is as often said: the first Billion is hard, the next ones are increasingly easier. Besides, if I have no need to spend the Inf, it accrues up on its own anyway. On a personal note, casual marketeering, gives me a reason to visit my (mostly) retired characters.