Miladys_Knight

Well actually Goat they did nerf the amount of pool Cs coming into the market when they introduced merits especially with the save to buy program.

Then they put in tickets and nerfed the supply of purples, costumes, and recpec recipes. (Not intentionally but there were people in the closed beta [the ones of us that aren't their yes men] that told them what would happen and they turned a deaf ear.)

It's the reason that merit rewards keep getting bumped up and one of the reasons that they reduced the amount of garbage that drops from pool C by weighting it.

This issue saw the mega nerf to AE that now makes it "an interesting idea that failed in execution" with any luck by the time Going Rogue or at least I17 comes out they may have finally rebalanced AE to the point where it's about the same as running regular content.

This issue has also brought another (most likely unintentional) buff to merits with the Super Sidekicking system. Since merits are a time based reward setting your TF to -1 level mobs significantly shortens the defeat alls. Also having powers available that are 5 levels higher than the TF rating speeds things up greatly.

My coalition did a -1 level Posi today in an hour and 30 minutes and we weren't "really" trying to speed it. Having stamina available also makes a huge difference. I think if we built for it and really tried to speed it we could get it down to 60ish minutes.

We might just now be getting back to the level of supply (in my opinion apropriate level) we had during the I11 heyday of the market.

When they finally get around to merging the markets for GR (IMO they are about 7 issues behind on that) we might actually have a relatively stable market with a reasonable amount of supply. Provided of course the competing MMOs don't siphon off so much population that we fall down below critcal mass.

Please don't take what I'm going to say here in the wrong way but if you think that you couldn't have reasonably done so with out the market I would have to point out that you are incorrect and there are many resources that you didn't use for one reason or another.

1) If you are a member of a large super group you could have traded items amongst those members.
2) If you are a member of a large coaltion you could have traded items amongst those members.
3) If you are a member of a (or several) large global chat channels on your server of choice you could have traded among those members.
4) You could have used the market forum for both WTB and WTS or trade even type transactions.

Had you done those things it could have potentially gone faster for you than using the market.

The reason that the market is THE most efficient way to get the IOs that you want is that it allows you to broaden your customer base by several magnitudes.

1) You can trade with players who are in different zones from you.
2) You can trade with players who aren't in the groups that you game or chat with.
3) You can trade with players who aren't on the same server that you are.
4) You can trade with players who live in different countries from you or have a different schedule from you even when one of you isn't on line.
5) You can exchange something that has no in game effect (influence) for something that does (enhancements).

The market is even better for the players who have less time to play than it is for those that have more time to play because you can buy and sell during those long stretches where you are off line.

The market also consumes some time so there is a time/reward mechanic involved. It is rather more akin to rested XP than anything else.

It allows you to earn inf while off line so it can be kind of seen as rested influence.

The problem with trying to do something other than the market for trades is that any other system would reduce your chances to get what you want rather than increase it. No other system is going to be as effective at doing the 5 above things. That more than any thing else is the reason that self determination of drops from merits and tickets is bad and it had quite the negative effect of raising prices rather than lowering them.

Every time 200 merits is spent buying a specific recipe 9 pool C recipes, that could have been used by someone else, failed to come into existance. This raises prices as people become more and more impatient.

Tickets did the same thing to common and uncommon salvage prices, Purple prices, and costume and respec recipes.

The sticker shock problem that you site would be easy to dispense with too. It's only unreachably expensive because the numbers are large. If the devs dropped every thing having to do with inf by decreasing the numbers 1000 fold people wouldn't perceive it as such a problem. (Ie: inf rewards at 1/1000 th of what they are now and people sitting on 2 billion inf are now only sitting on 2 million and do that across the board on every item). The perception of sticker shock would be gone.

I do think the devs should pay attention to the in game market. The first step in doing that would be to either listen to the suggestions of the folks here that know the system or to hire an economist to take charge of market development. Thus far the devs have done neither.

And as an FYI I do think that the government should stay out of medicare. Any time the government takes over or creates something of that sort so many resources are wasted it's not even funny.

The government doesn't have to worry about making a profit nor does the government have to worry about waste (though they should) and costs to do the same thing on the private side would easily be 1/2 to a third lower than what it costs when the government is in charge mainly because they don't have to be responsible managing the money.

No matter what you will have players that do better than other players no matter what the subject. A fire/kin is going to outproduce a FF/elec.

A player with better twitch reflexes is going to do better than a player without.

A player with a better computer and a faster ISP is going to do better.

A player that has been playing the game for 48 months will probably be doing better than a player that has been playing it for 3.

A player that is color blind or deaf may do worse than players that are not.

A player that is handicapped by having only one hand may do worse than a player that has 2 hands.

Players that are interested in, and take the time to PvP, will do better at PvP than those that don't.

Players that are interested in, and take the time to use the market, will do better than those that don't.

You can't "normalize" basic differences in our humanity with out destroying it. You can't "normalize" power sets or the market without doing the same thing.

Yes, I know, which is the point I've been trying to make all along. As is usual with your posts you are focusing on a single element (in this case raw damage output) and a single very narrow play style.

You are looking at 3 or 4 powers total in the sets which are made up of 18 total powers. If raw damage output is all you need why are you playing a scrapper? Why not a blaster where you can get ALL of your powers doing damage?

The answer is because raw damage isn't enough. Mitigation is required especially if you want to attack mass spawns of +4s which is why people either use lots of mitgation set bonuses or play scrappers instead of blasters.

Since we are here in the scrapper boards we are talking about doing both. Getting mitigation from the scrapper secondary of our choice AND adding in mitigation from set bonuses.

Let's do a little quickie math and look at the other side of the coin that you are belaboring.

Lets go with the soloing 16 mobs you are talking about. Let's give it a typical break down and say that 9 of them are minions, 5 are lieutenants, and 2 are bosses.

Even con minions are going to do roughly 100 damage, lieutenants 250, and bosses 500.

Thats a damage total of about 3,150. With softcaped defenses 5% of that will be making it in on average and the base resists in Deflection and True Grit will reduce that another 11ish percent but we'll call it 10% to make the math easy.

That's 141 points of damage that will make it through. That doesn't sound bad at all since if we have True Grit slotted for max hit points and all the +max hit point accolades we are sitting at 1600ish hit points and our regeneration (including 3 slotted health which most soft capped builds don't have slotted up that far) will give us 12 hit points back per second.

The mobs have attack animations between 1 and 3 seconds lets call it 2 for easy math again so that 141 damage will be hitting evey 2 seconds or so but we'll be getting back 24 health in that time. So we are losing about 60 health a second while in combat against 16 even cons.

That means that we have 26 seconds to deal with this spawn which is no problem. If we allow 6 - 10 seconds to herd up the spawn and another 4 - 6 seconds to fire off our powers we still have plenty of health left at the end of the fight and even enough to start on the next spawn. Which is exactly how many of us farm this kind of stuff but.....

Average isn't the way that defense works. Defense is all or nothing and the resists underneath are tiny. If just the 2 bosses roll well on their first and second attack you are all ready dead even at the soft cap.

Now take it up to +4s and double the damage. You are skirting death every 13 seconds and your regen hasn't increased to compensate. You can pull it off with inspirations but over time you will fail or run out of insps.

Now drop down to your 39% defense build you claim is fine. This doubles the damage that gets through again. Odds say that you don't live through one attack even with insp use and if you do you certainly don't have the health to start on the next spawn.

With Dark/ you do though. With decent recharge slotting you can replace 10% of your hit points every 7 seconds or so (more if you slot Siphon for healing). That's all it takes to keep you up and running continually (even with only 39% defense).

This is exactly what I mean when I say best combination (emphasized on purpose) and when I say that Dark/ covers Shields weaknesses and vice versa. Dark/ with any defense based mitigation set is nicely sustainable.

With all that said I have a couple last points to make.

First is that I know that you will be back in this thread trying to break apart what I've said, or put some kind of arcane spin on it so that you are trying to make what I've said some warped version and distort my meaning or what ever other "yeah but" you care to try to tack on but I trust that I've made my meaning clear.

I don't know why you have choosen to stalk my posts and try to contradict every thing I choose to say but I wish you would cease doing so.

Second is that (also as I said before) that I don't care to play dark with shields mainly for asthetic and conceptual reasons. My main shielder is a BS/Shields but shields was designed with such a constricted and constricting (and dare I say contradictory) theme that I don't see it as a go to set for any of my new scrappers. Which is a shame since I had several ideas for shield type characters that I would like to have made had sheilds been done with more flexibility.

Now with all that said, I won't be responding to you again in this thread and will most likely put you back on ignore.

Perhaps if they water them and put them out in the sun they will grow larger?

Soft capped defenses allow me to perfectly position 2 or even 3 spawns each and every time. The taunt in AAO means they go where I go and get squashed in my time on my terms.

With Soul Drain you don't need Lightinging Rod to kill a spawn.

This thread, like the other one, belongs down in suggestions and ideas. And you are completely correct and drastically wrong at the same time. Purples are too powerful AND they are balanced by being ultra rare (that's more rare than "too rare" by the way).

When merits were introduced we asked if purples could please be rolled with lots of merits and were told that it's not possible to hold enough merits to make a random roll for a purple. Since we can hold 9999 merits (or 500 random rolls) and the ticket cap allows you to maybe make 3 gold rolls the idea that 9000 tickets would allow a purple roll is so unlikely as to fall in the realm of the ludicrous.

@Lakanna

I wouldn't say that we are darwinian about the market (though there are some that like to have a consistant niche and don't want change). Most of the regulars here actually look forward to game changes that change the market because when you are experienced you make MORE inf off of market changes than you do any other time.

Real marketeers chase the inf. We don't really care what method or medium in the market we make it on and change just increases the potential for it.

Since none of us here in the market forum have any influence in increasing the drop rates of purples I fail to see why people post this kind of thing here.

We have no control over prices. The double blind auction system means that prices are set, for the most part, by the buyer(s) not the sellers (if you don't believe that you need to read up on the double blind system).

You are wasting your time posting this here. You are wasting our time posting this here. The devs do not post in the market forums and there is little evidence to suggest that they even read this forum.

Some of the market forum regulars were in the Closed Beta where purples were first released (I know that I was and I know that Uberguy was also). We brought up market concerns regarding both drop rates AND drop pool and were pretty much ignored then they were released and the predicted behavior occured.

The same thing happened with the rewards on AE (I was in the closed beta for that and so were many of the other market forum regulars Uberguy, Smurphy, and Catwhoorg are some that I saw for sure. We knew what effect the AE would have on the market, told the devs in closed beta, and again were ignored (until now when in typical dev fashion the nerf bat has swung, swung hard, and gone too far in the opposite direction.)

No dev on the team has any experience in the field of economics that we know of and for those of us that do have some experience in economics the lack on the devs part is painfully obvious. They have graphic artists, soft and hardware engineers in plenty, but no economists.

If they want to know what market effects will be caused by game changes they could actually ask us, they have yet to do so or to follow our reccomendations on any issue related to the market. They could also take one of their bean counters in the marketing department and put him on staff in charge of the market but they haven't that either.

The only conclusion that we can draw from this is that the drop rates and market work in the way they want them to.

You can point fingers at us and accuse us of being RMTers (none of us are. We know how to use the market and have absolutely no use for RMT in either direction).

You can point fingers at the devs and accuse them of doing this so that RMT proliferates. You can even go so far as a conspiracy theory that the devs are doing this so that RMT proliferates AND that THEY are the RMTers generating extra cash for themselves or the company.

Bottom line is that you are wrong and you've come to the wrong place to complain about it as well.

Suggestions and ideas is that way.
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Soul Drain + AAO + Shield Charge is the only AoE a Dark/Shields needs.

After that all you need is a couple single target attacks to finish off the bosses that are left over.

Siphon life frees 2 or 3 pool picks up depending on whether the non-Dark shielder decided on medicine or fighting (neither pool is needed with Dark/)

Well I started a new toon on a server I didn't have anything on previously. Judging by the number of tier 3 red and green insps available on WW a LOT of people have made new toons. I was picking up the red insps for a pittance and turning 3 of them into more valuable insps every time I went past WW.

My toon is level 12 now and is all ready sitting on 7 mil inf and I'm completely IOd out with level 15 sets.

There is also a huge over supply of tier 1 salvage again and prices on it are cheap except on those bits that were always hard to come by pre-MA.

Most of the broadcasts I heard in Atlas were for people looking for sewer teams instead of people saying, "level 6 fire/kin looking for 54 AE boss farm."

Other than that it's too early to tell.

The "best" primary to go with shields is Dark Melee. Dark covers all of shields weaknesses and shields fills in on the one area that Dark melee lacks.

I personally despise the combination because I think it looks ridiculous when you use Shadow Maul (or sands) with a shield but it is without doubt the best of both worlds.

I down play it because when you use it the way you describe you get to take out 1 annoying Lieutenant....maybe.

Then if the pull was bad you get to fight all of his friends but now you are doing it with out the benfit of Aim and Build up on your first 2 or 3 AoEs. As far as I'm concerned Snipes are pure fail. There is always something better you can do or a power that is more useful more often that you can take.

The market is just a market. The people actually paying crazy prices are what's bizarro.

I liken it to building an automobile without safety belts, air bags, and crumple zones so that you have to have insurance.

If I had those things I wouldn't need the insurance except in those rare cases when I drive off a cliff while doing a stunt or those times when another motorist hits me and pushes me over the guard rail.

I believe that if you crane your neck far enough around you may see it attacked to the middle of your back.

In all caps it says, "Kick me."

Edit - In all seriousness your post belongs down in suggestions and ideas, along with all the other vehicles as travel powers requests.

As an FYI the developers have been telling us for many years now that vehicles will not be happening "soon" if ever.

Of course they also said the same thing about power customization yet it's coming in I16 so.....

Good luck to you.

Rise of and all the other self rez powers in the game aren't much use on Master of X TFs...............

That's not exactly 100% correct.

Many IOs are more expensive the lower level they are. This is especially true of global uniques and procs. These IOs give identical preformance no matter what level they are and many players will pay a premium to be able to slot this type enhancement at a lower level.

It is true, however, for many enhancement sets. In the 38+ levels there is almost no perceptible performance difference. For a set that caps at level 50 the enhancements made at level 49 will be less expensive and though 49s and 50s take the same salvage the inf cost to craft is much lower on the 49s.