Laevateinn

I once joined a boss farm with my Tank. It went OK, except that there was a Fire Controller on the team who kept putting Bonfire right under me, scattering enemies everywhere.

After many dead squishies and several rounds of gathering up loose bosses, I finally asked, "Controller, just curious - is there a reason you keep putting Bonfire under me?" And I explained about the knockback.

I don't remember what her answer was but it was something to the effect of "Oh, it does that?"

To her credit, she stopped doing it without being told to.

My elf knight, Swordsmistress (Inv/DB Tanker).

I think she's pretty cute.

Summary

This is a closed fund to invest in the crafting and sale of high-end Pool A and C enhancements.

This is on Virtue Server, for heroes only.

This fund will run for 10 weeks, from 17 August 2009 to 26 October 2009 after which it will be dissolved.


Business Plan

The business plan is to craft and sell expensive Pool A and C IO Set enhancements.

This is a low-risk, medium-volume market that provides reliable income. It is reasonable to expect profits of 6m-10m per enhancement (my target figure being 8m), and a sales volume of 20-30 enhancements a week. Therefore, I project total profits per month to be between 640m and 960m once we have achieved full production capacity.

There will be two phases to this plan. In order to produce 20-30 enhancements a week, we need significant capital that cannot be raised through investments alone. This money is needed to bid on raw materials, pay listing fees, experiment with new niches and provide a safety buffer should something go wrong. Therefore, at first the focus will be on growth, and secondary markets (such as flipping salvage and crafting of low end Pool A enhancements) may be tapped to bolster income. During this time all profits will be reinvested and no dividends will be paid out.

Once enough liquid funds are accumulated (the minimum acceptable is 200m, but much more may be required depending on the niches being targetted), income stabilizes; at this point the fund is mature, production is at full capacity and profits will go entirely to dividends. It's hard to say how much time will be needed to achieve this phase, since it depends on the amount needed, the items being produced and the performance of other market activities we use to get there. My target is to reach this phase within 2 weeks.


Disclosure of Risks

There is a risk that changes to game mechanics will kill the crafting market or severely and drastically reduce profits. In such a case, assets will be liquidated and money divided between investors.

There is a risk that I will abscond with investments and/or profits, or be unable, for whatever reason, to be able to log in, or dishonestly report performance or assets in order to scam. Upon contacting you to collect your initial investment, I will ask you for the name of another player you trust to act as your escrow agent. I will then deposit a sum equal to your investment with him or her, to be returned to me when the fund closes. This way, your initial investment at the very least will be safeguarded. However, there is no way to completely remove the risk of fraud.

I like to believe that no one would go to the trouble of ruining their good name and writing all this for a paltry amount of video game money. Still, I'll be frank and say that if you encounter such a scheme elsewhere it's likely to be a scam. If you have doubts about my trustworthiness, it's best that you don't participate.


Offering Details

To minimize the hassle of hunting down multiple people, as well as avoid spreading returns too thinly, the number of players involved will be very limited. For now, I'll accept up to 6 players. Each will invest exactly 1m per person.

At this point, enough people have expressed interest that I'm not looking for additional players unless one of the aforementioned people drops out.

No new players will be accepted once operations begin. This is to prevent spreading returns too thin, because after a certain level, income plateaus and adding more capital does not increase profits.

Dividends will be calculated (not necessarily collected; you can meet me at anytime to collect your money) on a bi-weekly basis after Monday morning maintenance ends provided that significant profits have accumulated that are not earmarked for reinvestment. Profits will be divided between all investors equally. No management fees are charged.


Exit Strategy

You may withdraw your investment at any time by contacting me.

If the business is no longer viable, all goods will be sold and the money divided between investors.

At the closure of the fund (26 Oct - after 10 weeks of operation) all goods will be sold and the money divided between investors. You have a 2 month grace period from the date of closure to collect this money and any remaining dividends owned to you. If at the end of the grace period you haven't collected your money AND I haven't received any notice from you, I'll assume you have left the game and the money will belong to me.


Launch Process

First, I need the people who have expressed interest above to confirm their interest and agreement with the above proposal. At this point no influence is to change hands yet. This is to allow some time for more discussion and so everyone gets their questions answered, and any disagreements can be worked out.

Once we have agreement, I will post here to arrange to meet players in-game to personally collect money. Once all funds are collected, operations begin. I expect the entire process to be done by the 17th at the latest, giving us a little more than a week to sort things out.

My in-game global is @Laevateinn. All dealings regarding this are to be done through one of my characters, named "Virtue Investments" (plural, without the quotes), Fire/WP Scrapper.

Defenders have access to Sonic Blast. With a debuff set, the stacked -Res, far more than any Controller can manage, is really noticeable.

Rather than a +Recharge inspiration, I'd rather see a debuff resist inspiration.

Something that gives 10/25/33 resistance to -Recharge, -MoveSpeed, -Def, -Regen, -Heal and -ToHit.

(edit) -End and -Recovery, too.

Thank you, devs.

Congrats on your windfall!

Were you trying to maximize your profit (and provided you could afford the risk) you could likely have listed the item for 270m, and it would've sold.

t will definitely be blueside, with news of Going Rogue on the horizon. I'm tempted to say Virtue (my home server), but if most people interested are on another server (Freedom?) I'd consider that, too.

I'm tentatively considering a small group of 3-5 investors, with dividends calculated after Monday maintenance ends, so that I can hand out the money from weekend sales. I'm not sure yet whether there should be a seperate time scheduled for everyone to show up and collect their money. I'll also write a weekly report to be posted here, detailing the fund's performance.

I want to keep the initial investment small, to make it accessible to less wealthy players and to reduce the risks players face. (Like COTCaveHater said, influence isn't really a limiting factor - time and slots are - so I don't see the need to ask for vast sums of money either.) I think a good plan would be a fixed amount of 1m influence per player, no more no less.

Finally, I'm sorry if I disappoint, but I'm not really certain what, if anything, you'll be able learn from this venture since I don't plan to disclose exactly which items I'm buying and selling. For the most part, it will be pretty standard market play, except using other people's money instead of my own. Actually, now I'm curious; what do you think you'll learn from this?

Maybe I didn't make it clear - I'm not interested in scamming or anything unethical.

Selling market "secrets" sounds interesting, but I don't have that many to sell. I suppose I could try to run a service where I find and research crafting niches.

At the core, this isn't about making money for myself. This is about pretending to be a fund manager while (hopefully) helping a few people buy enhancements they want. I've always enjoyed the market side of the game, and now that my build goals are all mostly achieved, it gives me a reason to play the game other than making #9 posts at the end of every issue.

Yah, but I am (if I decide to go ahead with this) serious, not running a ponzi scheme - and how profitable would a ponzi scheme be, anyway? There is no money to be had in cheating poor people.

What would you guys think if I said I was setting up a public mutual fund?

Now that nearly all my characters have completed their builds, I'm thinking of running an investment scheme. I don't intend to make any money for myself on this, and will be doing this for fun. I'll solicit investments, play the market and pay out dividends. After a certain period of time, perhaps 2-3 months, the fund will close and all money will be repaid to investors.

Obviously, farmers and established marketeers wouldn't benefit from this scheme - it's too much hassle for too little return. This would be for those players who aren't rich and don't have the inclination to play the market, but still want to profit from it.

The business plan will be to craft and sell high-end Pool A and C IOs. From my experience, this is a more reliable, if not very spectacular, source of income than flipping recipes. The profit margin varies from 25% - 50%. I need to start recording sales to be able to give an accurate turnover rate.

What return on investment do you think is feasible? How often should dividends be paid out? Investors will need to collect their money from me in person, so paying out often will be troublesome, but if a long time goes by without any results people will be rightfully concerned.

There is always the risk of people being scammed, or that I won't be able to log in and pay investors. All I can think of to minimize this risk is to put a sum equal to the investment in a neutral 3rd party to hold in escrow. If i default, the 3rd party can then refund investors.

At this point, there are no concrete plans (yet). I'm just gauging interest and looking for opinions.

The same piece from the same set can only be slotted once in the same power (i.e. You can't slot 2x Obliteration Acc/Dam in Headsplitter, but you can have 1x Obliteration Acc/Dam and 1x Multistrike Acc/Dam in Headsplitter, or 1x Obliteration Acc/Dam in both Headsplitter and Slice).

I believe that for a long time purple prices were actually artificially low due to vast amounts of farming. Being able to buy a purple for a mere 30m-50m is abnormal, when you consider their astronomically low droprate (most players who don't farm may only see one every several months; a level 50 character is practically guaranteed to earn more than that amount in the time it takes them to get one purple through normal drops). When farming moved to Task Force speedrunning, then to AE, the supply of purples was no longer inflated and you are seeing a return to their true value.

DXP, hordes of powerlevelled 50s trying to trick themselves out, and people trying to grind influence to afford them (thus further devaluing the currency) also have something to do with it, yes.

i16 will likely make "traditional" farming more lucrative than AE farming again, so expect prices to fall soon.

The new emotes are cool. I was in Croatoa recently, and saw Devouring Earth using the same "hide in plain sight" emote as Fir Bolg where they pretend to be trees until you approach, then unroot themselves and attack.

I like it and wish there were more. It would be pretty fun to see a Malta ambush decloak and airdrop in Titans when attacking.

I hope you're right. But presumably, they're able to produce influence with greater efficiency than before, too, which could be another reason they're lowering prices.

Since I was away from monday-friday, I didn't want to make any special plans. I did leave a bunch of overpriced goods up on my Virtue characters, but it was mostly business as usual.

Earnings were about 500 million from my regular niches, not including any sales of said overpriced goods. I don't expect them to sell until the newly powerlevelled 50s start shopping over the next week or so.

Also got my Scrapper 24-33 and a new MM 1-26.

It was a quiet and mostly pleasant DXP.

Thanks for all your comments.

Shannon, can you clarify when you mean by slot level placement issues? I won't have all the slots at level 32, but I tend to level up to 50 entirely or mostly on SOs, so that doesn't worry me.

Werner - the main reason I didn't want to rely on the Fighting pool to softcap is I found it hard to squeeze in Weave by level 32. In order to do it, I'd have to delay taking things like True Grit or AAO. I suppose it's more important to hit the softcap first before starting to layer things like extra HP on it, though. Good catch on not being able to hit +4s.

I've not actually gone in and done the math (which I am horrible at), but I'm quite certain the build will be softcapped (or very close to it) at 32. There is no exemplar scaling for exemplaring down as far as 32.

I am abit wary of dropping melee def and relying on Parry to compensate, and swapping out the Obliterations in the build would mean losing some recharge and accuracy bonuses as well. What would both of you slot in the AoE attacks in that case? How feasible do you think it is for an /SD to skip parry and rely only on softcapped defense?

And moondog, that is a scarily cost-effective build compared to mine, execpt I don't see how you're softcapped at 32 when Weave only becomes available at 47.


I incorporated some of your suggestions. I dropped CJ, as well as some of the "for fun" powers, to take Weave. I had to move AAO to level 38, and Aid Self now comes at 41 (but still no later than on my Kat/SR, so I can live with that). Net endurance gain is 2.54/s. Now that I don't need the ToD in it, I decided to try dropping Parry and going with an attack chain of Hack > DS > HS > Slice as well.

It's sturdier now at ~28% SL resistance and I managed to fit in a Kismet unique, so overall I'm much happier.

I suppose I could drop OwtS and move slots around in order to take Parry, so that option's still open if it comes down to it.


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I made this build, but I'm not very satisfied with it.

Softcapped without Fighting pool, Aid Self, attack chain is Parry/Slice > Hack > DS > HS. Empty slot in HS is the PvP -Res IO, empty slot in OwtS is the Gladiator's Armor 3% def.

I don't like the lack of high DefDebuff resistance and low damage resistances, and I wonder if I've given up too much for Aid Self instead of the Fighting pool. I'd prefer not to take Hasten if at all possible, but I don't see how I can muster the recharge to fully double-stack Active Defense without it.



The build goals are:

- Must have Fly, for concept reasons, and it has to come early in the build (because otherwise, I feel silly hopping about with giant silver wings).

- Must be softcapped when exemplared down to level 32. Since I play Task Forces almost exclusively, some ability to exemplar while maintaning set bonuses is a must. I'll have a dual build for 20-32 play.

- Have Aid Self, if possible.

Comments? Suggestions? Here's the build.


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In all seriousness, I think Scattershock is a pretty good name. Shattershock?

Congratulations.