Miladys_Knight

[ QUOTE ]
How are you estimating "merits produce 1/3 of the total supply we used to get", by the way? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that I don't have a guess on that. There's some multiplier for "no more half hour katies", some multiplier for "people who have two hundred merits and don't know it", some multiplier for "taking the guaranteed LoTG" and some multiplier for "people who used to run Sister Psyche, and now run Sister Psyche for twice the number of recipes."

[/ QUOTE ]

Emprically rather than scientifically since I don't have access to dev datamining tools. Unfortunate but there it is. I'll give you my numbers, observations, and reasoning and you can decide from there.

It started out from sometime before EvilRyu's "are the drops equally weighted thread". I had been tracking my drops and the TFs that I was running to get them. I expanded it later on to include the "X TF forming" tells in the 5 very busy global channels (across 3 servers Freedom, Virtue, and Justice) I was in. (2 of those channels were at capacity, to give you an idea of how busy the channels I was referencing are). I don't remember when I started keeping track as I didn't write down dates or anything. I just had a note pad file that I kept open and added tick marks to then tallied at the end of my play sessions, to track how many of which TF was forming. At that point in time I was playing ~ 2 hours a day on week days and as many as 4-6 on weekends.

1) Out of the 3,128 TFs that I tracked, Speedens (14% of the total) and KHTFs (83% of the total) accounted for 97% of the total pre-merit task forces, over the 3ish months that I tracked it. That percentage would have been higher except that I started many of the non-KHTF/Speedens myself so that I could get TF Commander accolades on several of my toons. I was responsible for starting ALL of the Positron TFs that were formed during that time period and I counted the 3 Posi's that my wife and I Duo'd in that reckoning.

2) When Merits were first introduced, (if I am remembering every thing correctly) their standard was 1 merit per 5 minutes of the mean time of the data mined TF. Eden was 2 merits (10 Minutes), KHTF was 7 (35 minutes), and ITF was 20 (100 minutes). Random reward rolls cost 20 merits making the ITF the new standard.

Factoring in (1) and (2) we went from ~31 minutes per random roll to 100 minutes per random roll. That's less than 1/3 the of the previous supply levels.

3) Mid-High range recipes that I was tracking jumped in price and stabilized at about 275% higher than previous. LotG +7.5s went from about 20 million each to about 60 million each in that time frame.

4) I discounted Merit rewards for Oro arcs since post merit global chatter indicated that Oro was less than 1% of the team run content.

5) I discounted Merit rewards for Story arcs since my experience soloing 10 characters in Story arcs alone (excepting enough radios to get each bank and temp power) from 1-35 resulted in an average of 256 merits. It was slightly higher than that average on characters that stayed at heroic difficulty from 1-35 and markedly lower on characters that could (and did) increase difficulty. (Usually 1 bump at level 12 and DOs and then another bump at level 20 and Stamina, followed by 1 or 2 bumps at level 22 with SOs and 3 slotted Stamina depending on the character) additionally only the arc holder got end of arc reward merits further reducing this item as a possible extra supply of Pool C/D recipes.

The reasons that I discounted any merits gained in 4 and 5 were:

6) Failed/abandonded TFs.

7) Diminishing returns on repeat TFs. Pre-merit you could run 2 back to back KHTFs, claim one recipe, log off with the award screen still up and log back in 3 hours later to claim another recipe. Dimishing returns hits immediately, increases with multiples of the same TF and is on a 24 hour timer instead of a 3 hour timer.

8) Players that save to purchase exact recipes. Judging from posts in this forum at that time there were a statistically significant number of players that were going to be using this option and burning up multiple random rolls worth of Merits on single recipes.

9) Merits are non-transferable in units of less than 20. That means that as an example if all players ran 3 KHTFs and gained 21 merits, random rolled one recipe and then they had 1 merit left over. Multiply this by a player base of approximately 100,000 players and then again by 12 characters per server and this alone equals 60,000 random rolls that aren't making it to the market any time soon if ever. That's for a single left over merit but the numbers can go as high as 19 left over merits per character.

10) Merit hoarders. People that don't spend their merits. I know there are some because I am one (I have over 7000 unspent merits across all my characters, there are currently no Pool C/D recipes that I want/need to complete builds, I don't need to make random rolls to craft and sell since I have more inf than I can currently spend and I know how to easily get lots more, I can't use merits to buy Purples and PvP recipes, and I have 3 1/2 SG storage bins full of the Pool C/Ds and Purples that I might use on any future alts) and there have been a few threads in this forum about other folks that hoard their merits.

I am making an educated guess that 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 consume significantly more merits than 4 and 5 create. On February 10th Synapse changed the numbers of merits awarded by various tasks, in most cases they were increased slightly with the exception of a few outliers and merit/unit time was changed from 1 per 5 minutes to 1 per 3 minutes for TFs, from 1 per ~4.5 minutes to 1 per 2.5 minutes for trials, and from 1 per ~14 minutes to 1 per 7.5 minutes for Story Arcs. I'm making another educated guess that this change only makes up for the greater loss of merits from 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 than 4 and 5 produced. Close enough for me to call it a wash.

That leaves me with 1, 2, and 3 above and supply levels approximately 1/3 the pre-merit levels.

This is getting to be a novel but let me finish with tickets and just a couple reasons why they blow merits and standard drops completely out of the water.

Here are the merit costs for the various items available.
[*]Large Inspiration: 1 Merit [*]Single Origin Enhancement (levels 20-50 only): 8 Merits [*]Invention Salvage (three "tier" options: Levels 10-25, Levels 26-40, Levels 41-50): [*]Random Rare Salvage: 20 Merits [*]Random Rare Magic Salvage: 30 Merits [*]Random Rare Tech Salvage: 30 Merits [*]Common Invention Recipe: 12 Merits [*]Invention Origin Enhancement Sets (select specific recipes): [*]Uncommon Enhancement Recipe: 50-75 Merits [*]Rare Enhancement Recipe: 125-275 Merits [*]Random Rare Recipe Roll: 20 Merits

Pre-per mission ticket cap it was ridiculouly easy to hit the 9,999 ticket cap in under an hour (I was able to do it consistantly). Post per mission ticket cap it is still possible though more difficult to amass those 9,999 tickets in an hour.
[*]9,999 tickets in an hour is almost 3 gold rolls. That's 3 hours worth of TF merit gains.[*]3 minutes worth of merit gains will buy you a single tier 3 insp. AE boss farms drop more tier 3 insps than you can use without spending a single ticket.[*]An SO is 24 minutes of Merit gains. An SO is 75 tickets. You can get more than enough tickets to buy 1 SO each minute.[*]A Random Rare Salvage with merits takes 60 minutes of TF time (90 minutes if you want to narrow it down to tech or arcane). You can get 18 of the exact rare salvage you want for less than an hour's worth of tickets.[*]Merits are rewarded for only certain specific content. Much of the easy and quick dev created content rewards less than 1 merit per 3 minutes. Radio and Bank missions award none. Player created MA missions that are equivalent to (or easier than) Dev created story arcs, radios and bank missions award tickets at faster than TF levels and award them to all players on the team not just the mission holder.

There's lots more here but I believe my point has been made.

[ QUOTE ]
I can't tell you how jazzed I am about Rad blast becoming a Blaster primary... but I'm also getting myself ready for disappointment, because I was equally jazzed about Psy blast and was disappointed.

That disappointment was due in part because I loved the fast recharge rate of Psionic Dart over on redside, and I really like power sets that play differently rather than falling into generic 'tier 1, tier 2' blast settings. I feel that powers sets should be (relatively) balanced overall rather than individual powers.

Having said that, I just can't see them keeping Neutrino Bolt as is, and what's more I can't see the entire set not getting hit with a nerf bat before it comes over for oen reason and one reason only... the Achilles Heel proc.

-Defense ranged attacks that recharge that quickly piling on the defiance AND having the awesome potential of a few Achilles heel procs just seems a bit overpowered - and while I absolutely believe that you should balance a set based on the powers themselves and not how they might be slotted with expensive IO's, I don't have faith in the Devs to put those kinds of blinders on...

I just don't want to get excited about Rad blast and have it come out as Energy Blast without knock-back. Thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

You can count on the animation/rooting times on Neutrino Bolt and X-Ray Beam being 1 second and 1.67 seconds respectively. Defiance requires that. The Devs can play with the rech/end/damage values (to a point) as long as the ratios remain the same.

I would also count on the -def values on all the rad powers being greatly reduced but with damage being increased to compensate and the Hold magnitude and/or duration on Atomic Blast being reduced as well.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Nop, always been this way. Effects are calculated after interrupt windows, or at activation for powers without interrupts. Hold, knock back, even killing the foe wont stop the effects from landing if the to-hit was successful.

Have been in a few double KOS due to this in the past.

[/ QUOTE ]

It hasn't always been this way. I repeatedly took my Archery/Energy blaster into Brickstown and mowed down entire spawns with RoA, and on every occasion, every critter would attack before being defeated, but all of the defeated critters' attacks would deal 0 damage. The damage was removed before the attacks landed. I even pointed this out in numerous Archery and RoA threads.

Last night I was getting shot and blasted by critters which I had defeated before their attack animations had started. That's completely opposite of how it was working previously.

I don't know exactly what has changed, I don't know when it changed, but something has changed.

[/ QUOTE ]

This sounds like a bug the way you've described it. Logically, you'd assume once an attack is initiated, especially ranged attacks with travel times, that the attack would still do damage even if the mob was defeated while the attack was in route.

Also, I would suggest posting combat logs to support an argument. Animations are only approximations of what the game engine is doing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Logically you would expect a DoT like Full Auto to stop doing damage to you when the gun in the mob's hands slumps to the ground and is pointing in the complete opposite direction. That's not what happens though. If you defeat them in the first second of animation that gun that's not pointed at you, is laying on the floor still chattering, and still doing damage to you.

[ QUOTE ]
Knight: I believe the weighting is on a 1-to-5 scale based on popularity at the time of the weighting, with some fudge factors added in. You're 5 times as likely to roll a LoTG: Recharge as a Trap of the Hunter triple.

How much more imbalance would you like them to add?

You can call a 50% increase (over "all good recipes") a drop in the bucket if you like. I see it as "half a bucket in the bucket" myself.

On the salvage side, I think the most expensive tech rare was about 100K before the change; it went up to half a million or a million. I don't remember the arcane prices but I think high-end arcanes went down by half a million or a million.

And on the costume side... well, I agree that costumes parts are fairly minor. That's why I didn't mention them in this context.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok unless my math is totally off.....

Merits = 66% decrease in total supply. The remaining 33% got a 50% increase in "good stuff".

So I have a 50% higher chance of rolling something good coupled with 66% fewer opportunities to roll.

That doesn't sound like an increase to me. It sounds more like government weasel work where they increase taxes by 66% and then "give" you a 16.5% tax break afterwards that you are supposed to be thankful for. All the while telling you, "See! We cut taxes!"

So while my bucket used to be 100% full and 40% of it was fish and 60% water. I now have a bucket that's only a third full but 60% of that is fish? (using your previous junk to good stuff ratios) I'm a lot shorter on water but I'm still short on fish compared to where I was before.

Pre-merit total supply of Pool C's "felt" right. Most people had reasonable expectations, prices weren't really out of line, and there were enough of the top end things to go around if you wanted to put in a bit of effort.

Post merits there were neither enough recipes nor an adequate amount of "the good ones."

Post weighting there are more good ones but still not enough total supply.

Tickets..... well quite frankly, tickets are a mess, and will be until they get someone that knows something about economics working on the game.

[ QUOTE ]


Milady's Knight said, in the same post:
[ QUOTE ]
1) With the exception of costume recipes (which are cosmetic only and don't change any game function), every patch that the devs have put into place that have any thing at all to do with "loot" and the market have been to make the best "loot" more rare not less rare.

[/ QUOTE ]

and
[ QUOTE ]
the MA was massively over rewarding tickets and by extrapolation "leet loot."

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess the TL;DR version of this is "They make changes both ways. Saying they ONLY lower supply is inaccurate."

Three instances:

1) Adding magic salvage to Council and DE did nothing except make "leet loot" more common. Before you say "Salvage isn't what I mean" consider that in the I9 timeframe if you wanted an Impervium Armor: Resistance, you spent three times as much on the Enchanted Impervium as you did on the recipe. I picked up several Psi Resistances for a million each, and the salvage was MUCH higher. My point is that while the juicy items have changed as the market changed, those counted as leet loot at ONE point. And supply has gone up repeatedly on them.

2) Adding tickets BY ITS NATURE makes "leet loot" more common. It removes trash and replaces it with treasure. Your points in 3b, i through iv, are true and not going anywhere.

3) The devs weighted the Rare Recipe drop table so you get about 50% more of the good stuff. People on Test who did hundreds of rolls went from "40% good, 60% crap" to "60% good, 40% crap" .

They've made things tougher in some ways, easier in others, and sometimes they did it on purpose. But it hasn't been a one-way ratchet, Knight.

[/ QUOTE ]

I never said it was a one-way ratchet but it has been much more of a 2 steps forward 3 steps back process and the places that move forward have been minor ones and the OP is looking for major ones.

Costume recipes are cosmetic and don't really affect game function so no skin off the dev's noses by increasing the drop rates.

Merits were a huge nerf to Market Supply and the little bit of rebalance and merit increases in later issues were a drop in the bucket of going back the other direction.

Making council and DE drop arcane salvage was also a drop in the bucket since it only increased arcane supply by 50% for the players that actually went after those type mobs and DE were (in their own way) all ready as hard CoT or Carnies that drop exclusively arcane.

The points I made about tickets are here to stay.... at least for the short term. Tickets over reward and the devs know it. That's why all the huge changes and the drama over it.

I'd expect to see ticket rewards still in line for the nerf bat except for the sticky little problem of doing so to eliminate/reduce the farms also has the same unfortunate effect on the rewards for story based content that the MA was designed for and would reduce the intended reward below the level of dev created non-MA content and make the use of the MA a rewards penalty for the players that wish to use it as it was intended.

This post by Castle makes me sure that they are still very aware of the situation but may not have an idea of what to do to solve that sticky little problem. I'd bet that as soon as they come up with a way to make a change that hits the high end at the same time that it brings up the low end (rather like the dom changes) that the points I made on tickets will be changing and no longer valid.

As far as drop table weighting goes it's still a half measure. If the drop tables had been "balanced" instead of "weighted" we'd have gone from 40% good stuff, 60% junk to all of it being good stuff since the demand for each category would be met by identical levels of supply across all categories. There wouldn't be "junk" areas that are over supplied.

The devs only took us from "far too much junk" levels down to "too much junk" levels.

I'd go something like this. It should be similar on price. It cost you some regen but honestly with the amount of defense that you have your problem will be incoming burst damage that gets through and not regen rate.

The only thing that Acro gives you that you don't all ready have is -KB and your end use worries me. I'd switch to the -KB IO. My forcefielder has lower end use and higher recovery than yours and still has occasional end problems.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Spanish Vampire: Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Force Field
Secondary Power Set: Energy Blast
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Power Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Deflection Shield -- GftotA-Def/EndRdx(A), GftotA-Def/Rchg(3), GftotA-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(9), GftotA-Def(34)
Level 1: Power Bolt -- Ruin-Acc/Dmg(A), Ruin-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Ruin-Dmg/Rchg(25), Ruin-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Ruin-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37)
Level 2: Force Bolt -- FrcFbk-Dmg/KB(A), FrcFbk-Acc/KB(25), FrcFbk-Rchg/KB(39), FrcFbk-Rchg/EndRdx(39), FrcFbk-Dmg/EndRdx/KB(50), FrcFbk-Rechg%(50)
Level 4: Energy Torrent -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(5), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(7), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(17), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(23)
Level 6: Insulation Shield -- GftotA-Def/EndRdx(A), GftotA-Def/Rchg(7), GftotA-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(9), GftotA-Def(34)
Level 8: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 10: Power Burst -- Ruin-Acc/Dmg(A), Ruin-Dmg/EndRdx(11), Ruin-Dmg/Rchg(11), Ruin-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Ruin-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(17), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23)
Level 12: Dispersion Bubble -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(13), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(13), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(15), RedFtn-Def(34), RedFtn-EndRdx(39)
Level 14: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Numna-Heal(46), Mrcl-Rcvry+(48), Mrcl-Heal(48)
Level 16: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 18: Maneuvers -- S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(A), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(19), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(19), Ksmt-Def/EndRdx(37)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(21), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(21), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(33), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(40), P'Shift-End%(48)
Level 22: Tactics -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(33), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(40), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(40), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-Build%(42)
Level 24: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(46)
Level 26: Repulsion Bomb -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(27), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(29), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42), KinCrsh-Rechg/EndRdx(43)
Level 28: Aim -- AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(43), AdjTgt-Rchg(43)
Level 30: Power Blast -- Ruin-Acc/Dmg(A), Ruin-Dmg/EndRdx(31), Ruin-Dmg/Rchg(31), Ruin-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Ruin-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33)
Level 32: Force Bubble -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Explosive Blast -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(36), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(37)
Level 38: Personal Force Field -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 41: Power Build Up -- AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(45), AdjTgt-Rchg(45)
Level 44: Vengeance -- RedFtn-Def/Rchg(A), S'dpty-Def/Rchg(45), GftotA-Def/Rchg(46)
Level 47: Temp Invulnerability -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), S'fstPrt-ResKB(50)
Level 49: Detention Field -- Acc-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance



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[ QUOTE ]
Knight, its a video game, you seriously compared your life to an MMO, thats as sad is can possibly get. Real life is obviously different, certain "risk" factors apply. Why even bring it up, when were talking about a fake market. I understand your need or want to make it like RL, but thats just sad. The game should be just that. Whether people exploit, demand, complain, etc is irrelevant, as its just a game. When you log off you keep living your sad/boring/happy/eventful/depressing life. I don't care how much you make , what you've done, or how much you need. It's sad when a person has to defend an in game market with fake money. It's all just code man, its just a game.

"Look at my inf, look at my purple IO's, look at my furrows of worry, this has to be real". QFTT(quoted for twisted truth)

[/ QUOTE ]

Oddly enough you have it exactly backwards. The skills I learned in the real world make creating vast sums of inf in game ridiculously easy with the very very simple economic system the game uses. It's about as hard to accumulate 20 million in a play session through the market as it is to walk into the kitchen and get a drink of water.

I have no need to try to make inf in game. I've earned all I wanted and quite a bit more for all the alts I have. My marketeering is more of a game with in a game now and it's done sporadically and at whim.

I'm certainly not defending the in game market as I have made several suggestions that would ease many of the concerns that other players have none have been implemented and the concerns that others have are growing not decreasing as this thread clearly demonstrates.

Real marketeers will make use of what ever game change occurs to make influence no matter where or what that game change is whether it is completely opposite from the previous change or not.

Changing rules, changing how the market works will not matter one bit to the marketeer since the change is where the opportunity for profit comes. This is true in real life and in the very simple in game system that we use.

Except for my blasters very few of my toons use purples. Not because they are expensive but because they lack defense bonuses which is where my current build interests lay.

I find the puzzle of putting the sets I want together in the powers I want almost as interesting a game as playing the character while leveling or after it's complete.

At one time I found the market as compelling a game within a game. Now it lacks the challenge but it's still a means to an end in the other parts of the game that I find enjoyable.

[ QUOTE ]
Amazing how everyone in this section of the forums knows everything.....ever. even in the old PvP forums I;ve never seen a bunch of folks so full of themselves. You all go on patting yourself on the backs and feeding each others egos. I realize now why I've never posted here. You all are the most self righteous egotistical group I've ever seen. I suppose it takes a certain type of person to be drawn into the act of getting rich at the expense of other people. The sad thing you can't do it in real life and have to get your kicks in a video game...then act all high and mighty like your something special and talk down to people. Way to go guys. Good job.

Devs...1 billion inf is too much for one IO. Please do something. Thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm I find it amusing that you can extrapolate 4 names and 8 points plus a couple paragraphs into everyone in this forum section and into knowing every thing. It's no wonder you are having trouble grasping basic economics and it also explains why you are mistaking someone else's self confidence as ego while simultaneously failing to see egotism in yourself.

The 8 points I made, you can't refute, they are facts and are verifiable but I can give you a few more things and perhaps you'll get more of an idea that you are peeing into the wind, wasting your time, and asking the devs to do something that, so far, they have gone the opposite direction from.

1) With the exception of costume recipes (which are cosmetic only and don't change any game function), every patch that the devs have put into place that have any thing at all to do with "loot" and the market have been to make the best "loot" more rare not less rare.

2) Merits, which many hailed as "saving" the "casual" player from "unscrupulous marketeers," made pool C and D recipies more rare not less. Speedens averaging under 10 minutes, KHTFs averaging 20, and Virgils averaging 20 kept the market well supplied with moderately priced Pool C recipes. The merit standard is 1 recipe roll every 60 minutes. That means that merits cut supply by 66% (perhaps more).

a) Unspent merits means that it's cut farther.

b) The ability to spend all acumulated merits after hitting level 50 means that low level recipes have further decreased in supply since they aren't being created.

c) Direct purchase of recipes with 10 times the merits means that the market takes a further hit. Spending 250 merits for a LotG +7.5% means that the "greedy" "market hating" casual player screwed 9 other players out of the recipies that would have been created had each TF produced 1 recipe rather than multiple TFs resulting in a single recipe.

3) Tickets. The devs calculated what rewards would be dropping from a story driven MA arc based on the rewards that dropped from a story driven, dev created, arc and turned that into a ticket value that should have been equivalent except for several things which they failed to take into account.

a) Travel time. This is actually quite a hit on how much loot you get in playing dev created content especially when you consider that the content that allowed you to avoid much of the travel (radios/newspapers) doesn't reward merits.

b) Pruning the follage. Tickets allow you to skip much of the junk drops that you would have gotten and sold for influence.

i) All those non-origin matching enhancements. Poof, gone.

ii) All those enhancements that don't work in any of the powers you have. Poof, gone.

iii) All those common IO recipes that you would sell for influence. Poof, gone. You can use the influence that drops in the MA to buy them off the crafting table and save the tickets for more lucrative loot.

iv) All the "junk" rare salvage that used to drop (like diamonds) because it was only used for enhancements that few players/ATs could use/slot now converted into Deific Weapons and Enchanted Impervium which were always more in demand. Pre-MA it took about an hour to generate 1 piece of rare salvage and you never knew which piece it was going to be. The only control you had over it was tech or arcane by selecting the type of mobs you were fighting. Now an hours worth of MA allows you to buy anywhere from 3-6 pieces of rare salvage and exactly the piece you want.

v) All the truely junk yellow salvage that dropped. Poof, gone. 5 minutes of ticket generating will get you exactly the uncommon you want.

vi) Fighting easy tech based mobs like Freakshow (or even exploitively created custom mobs) raking in bunches of tickets and turning around and creating arcane salvage with it which is typically dropped only by the more difficult dev created arcane mobs.

In and of themselves each of these is not much but added together the MA was massively over rewarding tickets and by extrapolation "leet loot." Then the "casual" players got their hands on the MA and they took what the devs and the altruistic beta testers had determined as the appropriate awards, and turned it into arces and acres of exploitive massively fertilized farmland and cranked out tickets like the government prints dollars.

c) Meow farms and all the other exploitive over rewarding mobs.

d) Farms instead of stories. Missions that consist of one word story lines on the nature of "Go!" for the purpose of creating bags and bags of architect tickets that were rapidly turned into "leet loot" with ease and in record numbers of production.

4) Unmerged markets. More transactions available to more players make a less dynamic, more stable market, that has lower prices for the same amount of goods. If the devs wanted lower prices, especially red side, they would have merged the markets long ago.

The above was the level of supply you want and the dev response was ticket caps, threats of account bans, reward nerfs, mob nerfs, removal of maps , and removal of several features that were intended on being used for story driven content because players like yourself wanted to farm, what you wanted to farm, cheap and "nao"

The devs reduced supply from where you want it and put it back where they want it.

As far as getting rich at the expense of other people. No matter what that's a reality but it's not the fault of the business man. You can't get rich unless people spend. People that spend foolishly or fail to learn from their mistakes remain poor. You can try to teach them, you can try to help them, you can show them how to be comfortable but if they decide that it isn't for them, or it's too boring or what ever lame excuse they come up with so that they can do what they want, instead of what they should, and then stand around looking for a hand out when all they had to do was work diligently and spend wisely? I have little sympathy for them especially since I tried to help them and they wanted none of it.

As far as unable to do it in the real world? When I was working and in my prime I started 5, new business locations, with budgets that ranged from 1.2 million per year for the smallest location to 5.7 million per year for the largest (revenue was actually about 17% higher than budget)in a 4 year period. The last job I had I got a 2% bonus at the end of the year based on the company's revenue increase. I took a company that had an anual revenue of $997,000 and the end of the following year had a company that had an anual revenue of $2,100,000. My bonus that year was just a bit over $22,000 and my penny pinching ex-boss signed that check with a huge grin.

My wife and I bought a house last year just as the housing bubble was bursting. We got a house that was much lower priced than it's actual value at a time when interest rates had reached almost their lowest point. I took out a 30 year fixed interest loan for 1/4 a percentage point higher interest than the lowest it went and I'll have that loan paid off in less than 20 years all while paying $100 less per month than the rent on the much smaller house we rented when we moved here.

When the stock market did it's jig here recently I moved my investments around and lost only a tiny fraction (less than 3%)of my total investment. My portfolio has since recovered and is roughly 33% larger than it was last year at this time.

I got where I am by working my butt off and making smart decisions, not by expecting someone else to give me something for which I had done no work and which I didn't deserve. It's the reason that I can now spend my time gardening in my back yard, spend time with my grandkids, play CoH, and post on this forum.

So if you think that the self confidence I earned by a life time of hard work, weighing options, and making smart decisions is ego, well then, I'd rather be an egotist than lazy and poor.

They are split pretty evenly as far as spawns go. You remember the MoGs because they are PITAs and take much more time and effort than they are worth.

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Devs....did you want purple sets to cost well over a billion inf? That's it.

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The short answer is, yes they did.

1) Their is no evidence that the devs read this forum.
2) If any of them do read this forum, they certainly do not post in it. There has been only one red name that ever posted in this forum. A Community rep that is no longer on staff and she admitted that she used the market exactly the way that you do not want it used.
3) Marketeers have been invited into closed betas. Myself, Catwhoorg, Smurphy, and Uberguy are 4 that I know have been there.
4) The above players have posted in closed beta threads what the market effect of game changes made will do to the market.
5) All of the posts the above players made concerning the market post issue update occurred almost exactly as predicted.
6) All of the current market situations were predicted and ideas to reduce/eliminate these issues posted by the above named players and others during those closed betas.
7) None of those suggestions were implemented.
8) As far as we know NONE of the developers have any kind of background in economics. There are lots of computer programmers and graphic artists but no one that actually has any idea of what game changes will do to the in game market.

So in short yeah, they wanted purples to cost a billion because they didn't listen to those of us that actually use the system and have a pretty good idea of how it works or they did listen and decided that the way it is, is the way they wanted it.

If they want to change that in the future they need to go get one of the bean counters out of their marketing department and put him on staff as a developer in charge of oversight on in game auction house development. Since they haven't done that..... yeah they want the market to function the way it does.

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So after issue 16 hits, supply goes up, purple prices go down. Won't the marketeers just buy low and hold them untill prices go back up, then sell?

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Nope, real marketeers analyze current trends and profit in the short and long term. Speculators invest then hold goods to turn around later for profit. The first is dynamic, the second passive.

A real marketeer goes where the profits are. If the profits tank (which they will in that scenario) the marketeer unloads all their stock and moves to a more profitable niche. The really smart ones go before the trend begins to show. The smart ones go as the trend begins to show and the "marks" are the ones stuck holding the bag on goods that they were too slow or dim to unload.

That can turn a bad marketeer into a speculator if they invested all their working capital into a single area.

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If you want cheap purples you should try convicing everyone in the game to get out of the MA. Prices will drop right back to where they were pre-MA.

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This is why I've shelved my quest to purple out the Goat until after I16.

Between the inevitable nerfs to MA rewards and the ability to set the team size for your missions purple prices will drop fast.

I can barely wait to see JDouble's explanation for this inexplicable phenomenon!

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Aw, Goat you disappoint me. I gave you a straight line for the magic pony solution and you let it slide.................

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You come in here like your [censored] dont stink end all market genius and expect me to just be like Ok smurphy said no so I'll shut up now. You voiced your opinion...I voiced mine. We disagree. Get over it and calm down. Your taking this [censored] way to personal Smurph.

I think drop rates need increased on purples, and there needs to be some sort of price cap wether it be 150 mil or 500 mil. That is MY OPINION. You disagree and have stated that like 10 times now. Got it. You can go back to your ITFs on test now.

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Lol. When my grand daughter was in 1st grade she was of the opinion that 5+3=9. She got it wrong on her math test but she insisted that it was right (repeatedly) until I got out a bag of marbles and showed her (repeatedly) that 5+3=8 no matter which color marbles you use. That was her opinion until she was able to grasp the math behind it in other terms.

As far as the rest of your statement goes. There is a hard price cap on the market. It's 2 bil inf.

As far as the drop rates on purples go the devs didn't change a thing. The players decided which drops and what content they wanted to pursue. If you want cheap purples you should try convicing everyone in the game to get out of the MA. Prices will drop right back to where they were pre-MA.

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The price caps are COUNTER productive. One of your suggestions helps. The other hurts. Adding a bad idea and a good idea together doesn't make the bad idea acceptable. It's still a bad idea that doesn't work.

I said "one part of your idea is incredibly stupid, pointless, and actually counter-productive at achieving your goals." You said "but the other part is good so that makes it ok". No, no it doesn't make it ok. The one part is still stupid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_ceiling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_shortage
http://economics.fundamentalfinance....ce-ceiling.php
http://ingrimayne.com/econ/Allocatin...sRationer.html
http://student.ccbcmd.edu/courses/ec...7/market05.htm

If you would like I can explain the concepts of "Shortage" in exact detail for you, step by step.

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Lol...Wikipedia makes everyone en expert. Look smurph, if they tripled the drop rate of purples but didnt have a price cap, the market manipulators would just buy them up and flip them still demanding 200 million to a billion inf for one IO.

Perhaps your getting so worked up becuae you realize a price cap would ruin the market manipulators because the only way to make money off the market would be to go out and earn drops rather than use your vast amounts on Inf to push up prices for everyone else.

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Unlikely. Prior to AE purples hovered around 30 mil. Since the only content that was available had standard drops that was the equilibrium price. Costume recipies were in the 50,000 - 100,000 range. 3 days ago I sold a pair of rocket boots for 2.5 mil, and a set of tech wings 1.3 mil.

It's pretty clear that MA is the cause since that is the only thing that happened between those 2 points and those recipes can't be bought with tickets.

It seems strange to me that you can see how and why the price would climb with those mechanics but that you can't see how prices would begin dropping back to pre-MA levels if supply returned to pre-MA levels.

BTW Smurph is a RL economist (I minored in economics when I was in college that one of the reasons I hang out in this forum section) his advice makes sense. Instead of loling at him you should actually take it upon your self to read those articles. The wiki is dumbed down enough that even someone with out any economic background can get something out of it.

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A pet in the Epics wouldn't help for a majority of the character's leveling life, aka what I assume most people want a soloing improvement for.

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The resistance/defense toggle for blasters comes in epics and that would also be a drastic improvement for them for soloing during the character's leveling life, yet there it is.

Most Controllers get their pets at 32 and their tier 9 secondary at 38. Villian PPPs have pets. Most pets (not henchemn) come late in a toons life anyway.

A late life pet for Defenders wouldn't be inappropriate.

For a Fire/Kin just slot the 2 uniques in health and save the rest of the slots. Regen on a controller is not the best use of your power slots unless you went with Stone Epic and can perma Earth's Embrace.

A hastenless blaster isn't living up to its full potential. Neither is a blaster without fitness (unless you have another means of massive +rec especially at low levels, like always teaming with a kin or /mental).

If you want to live up to your full potential. Every scrap of extra +rech and +rec (with out gimping yourself on power selections) is what you want to fuel the new defiance. Any thing else is less than optimum.

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Adding a pet to each of the Defender Epics Power Pools and fixing Vigilance so that it provides a reliable benefit and also provides it solo would most likely fix most of the disparities.

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Doing something so Vigilance is useful ALL the time, not simply SOME of the time, is needed.

Oh please no, on the pet. I'm already a full time babysitter on my Defender. I don't need fuel added to the fire...

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The defender is a force multiplier on a team. Solo there is no force to multiply. Adding a pet to the epic allows the defender to continue to make full use of the primary even while solo. Making vigilance useful while solo and a pet would solve most of the defender's problems in all the power sets.

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I have been playing a mid range fire blaster recently, and I noticed that even after defeat NPC power effects are landing. I am taking damage or mez from defeated foes. Up until recently this wasn't the case afaik; if a power was still animating or the effect had not reached you, it was "canceled".

Has anyone else noticed this/am I imagining things?
I mentioned it to some people on global channels and UberGuy mentioned that if this had changed, the current behavior of repairmen on the STF could be related.

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Yes it's been that way ever since I15 launched and I too believe that the repairman behavior is related.

It's especially noticeable with Rain of Arrows. Pre-patch I could fire, the mobs would notify as soon as the RoA psuedo pet spawned, they would que up a ranged attack and begin the animation then the Rain would hit, they'd die mid animation and do no damage.

Post patch even after they die mid animation the attacks that they began still complete and they still do damage. Solo against a swarm of 10 or so minions in a hazard zone I'm getting ripped up pretty badly post mob defeats as opposed to pre-patch where only 1 or maybe 2 attacks from the lieutenants in the spawn would land.

It's not lag either and combat events tab clearly shows the damage landing after mob defeat. On mob attack powers that have long animations (2 seconds plus) if they had the attack queued even a server tick or 2 before defeat they still get the attack off, and it still does damage even though the mob has been defeated for several seconds. When spawns are close I've had damage from a previous spawn land while alphaing the next spawn.

I've bugged the behavior and posted it in the bugs forum.

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I would say 1.5 sets. There are powers in the Empathy set that the Defender can use on himself. Heal Aura comes to mind, as does Recovery Aura.

By the way, my Empathy/Electric Solos just fine.

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Here's another thing to think about: can controllers actually leverage their secondaries better than defenders? Emp defenders solo have a few powers that work on themselves. An /emp controller has those, plus buffable pets.

One of my favorite powers for my earth/rad is choking cloud. if I open with stalagmites or earthquake, I'm in the center of the mob before they can hit back, and CC is doing the work for me. I would imagine the same would work for plant or fire. How many defenders can reliably use CC solo? (I have and love the lockdown proc in CC.)

Fulcrum shift: for defenders, this is somewhat risky solo because it requires getting into the center of a group. Controllers with a spawn even temporarily locked down can get in and use it in safety. It even buffs pets that are in melee, which is an added bonus.

The buff and debuff sets seem to have a lot more synergy with a control primary than with a blast secondary. I'm not saying that defenders can never use Fulcrum shift or choking cloud solo, but it's easier and safer for a controller to do so. I would think that trick arrow and storm offer no particular extra synergy, while cold (come I16), empathy, FF (maybe), and sonic all have powers that benefit from having a pet. Rad and Kin can both use their more dangerous powers with greater safety.

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Adding a pet to each of the Defender Epics Power Pools and fixing Vigilance so that it provides a reliable benefit and also provides it solo would most likely fix most of the disparities.

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If you really want to or desire every bit of regeneration you can get. To be honest though, the difference between two and three level 50 gIO enhancements is not very much, so if you need the slot elsewhere but still want a strong effect, just two Heal gIOs should be sufficient.

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If you use max level IOs you can slot Miracle Heal, and the unique, Numina Heal and the unique, and get pretty close to the ED softcapped bonus for regen AND the benefit of the uniques AND the first set bonus in each set all in 4 slots.

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Anything an RO type defender team can do an RO style controller team can do too. I'd venture to say that the controllers do it faster, safer, and just as ridiculously as the defenders do.

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I have never run with RO (that I know of), so maybe they would agree with your statement.

I do however run theme teams pretty frequently. All one AT teams are very common. My SG generally does not design characters for our members (the only time we really did that was for our Rad/Ice defenders; our all Electric blast defenders team happened by accident, we just happened to have a bunch of people make some on the same server, and then invited others to join us once we realized it, which was months after some of the characters had been made).

So when we run an all scrapper event or an all controller event or an all defender event (etc.), it is not with a plan or design. We grab whatever we have of that AT and mix it up and go. We might try to have a kin, or maybe hope to have a bubbler or possibly would like 4 Fire blasters, but no one is really under any pressure, its just play what you want. Planned Fire control teams slaughter fast. Hell, accidental Fire control teams slaughter fast. But an Ill/Storm, Fire/Storm, Grav/Storm, Ill/Kin, Plant/FF, Ice/Sonic, Fire/Kin, and Earth/Emp team is only extremely good.

In my experience, throwing together random controllers, who all just want to play, does not become stupid amazing (its merely amazing). Too many tanks, too many people trying to do the same lockdown. In my experience, throwing together random defenders is always stupid amazing. Can you really have too many AoE blasts hitting a spawn, when recharge and endurance are a non-issue? Teams of all controllers use buffs/debuffs, then controls, then kill. Teams of all defenders use buffs/debuffs, then kill. One less step. Its like being on a team of psycho scrappers, only with some of the members buffing as needed in addition to killing.

On more balanced teams, we normally have a Tanker. At that point, almost all need for controls except as an emergency valve are gone. I'd rather have the (even if only slightly) higher buff/debuff values and AoE blasts. I'd never say no to a controller (play what you want), but they just do not bring any value over a defender.

YMMV.

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Yes my mileage does indeed vary.

I have been on all controller teams that "just happen" several times. I have been on an all defender team that "just happened" once.

My experience is that all defender teams are put together by design they rarely occur on their own.

My experience with the all controller teams that happened randomly as compared to the all defender team that happened randomly was that in every case the controllers out performed the defender team.

I will admit that the results may be skewed since these all happened to be random KHTFs pre-merits but of those the controller teams were the fastest and the safest. One of those controller teams put in my record PUG time on the KHTF (17:21) with no defeats which is why I remember it. The all defender team put in a rather poor showing of 38ish minutes with multiple defeats.

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I've only been playing since I9, so I haven't witnessed any major controller nerfs. I have witnessed and partaken in Controllers and Defenders breaking the game in silly ways, and even Castle officially recognizing RO for leveraging the game mechanics to cheat. I think it's fair to say that overall controllers are at least as good as defenders. Given all that I've witnessed in game I don't feel like a buff for defenders is in order, except to make it undisputable that Defenders are the higher damage AT. That said, I much rather see controllers nerfed.

I think that Blasters were underpowered for the same reason Controllers became overpowered. Having two damage sets made Blasters a subpar class overall because only the very strong could survive enough to do their omgwtf damage. Controllers on the other hand have the best mitigation short of a Tank or MM (and even then it's situational as to which of the three brings the most mitigation) which made them less amazing, but giving them even average damage output was overpowering.

It's really a case of whether the glass is half empty or half full, but somebody needs to just fill it up with nerf and hand it to controllers.

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People keep bringing up RO and holding it up as an example. Doing this is doing so in the dark especially if you compare this to standard teams. If you wish to bring up RO then do so as a comparison to a controller version of RO such as Pressure Cookers.

8 controllers on a team requiring a single one of them to set containment for all the rest to be able to unleash masses of double damage. Buffs/debuffs that stack to the caps just like RO (because the buff values aren't different enough to prevent it).

Every thing on the map locked down every spawn so that it can't do a thing and even the ability to lock down an AV with triangles up.

Then add in 24 fire imps dealing damage and spreading aggro from the 1 in 1,000,000 mob that didn't get locked down from mass controls.

Anything an RO type defender team can do an RO style controller team can do too. I'd venture to say that the controllers do it faster, safer, and just as ridiculously as the defenders do.

AR/EM is excellent as well.

Boost range lets you leverage all your cones. If you select teleport as your travel power you then have the fastest form of travel in the game.

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The best you can actually get from scourge is about 20.7% bonus damage and thats while fighting the biggest of the biggest HP bags in the game: GMs. And this assumes you are soloing them, too, so also an inflated number.

The link to my experiment can be found here.

Depending what you are fighting, the bonus is minimal, against even level minions its just about 7%, note this may be better against higher level minions but it requires a lot of level jump for a minion to equate the Lt, who gets about 11% out of scourge.

The flaw with a simple formulaic analysis of scourge (as I attempted to describe in my guide) is that although you may get 21.25%, in practice, even the weakest of attacks will make your target jump from something like 40% to dead or 25% to dead, this makes the optimal scenario impossible to achieve against anything but GMs, or perhaps the new Reinchsman encounter, or extremely resistant foes.

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I'll concede to the burst killing factor of minions and lts.

However even without scourge factored in, corruptor still ends up being 4% to 16% higher damage when using the same sets. Toss in your 7% for scourge and we're talking a minimum of 11% to 23% that is including the +dmg/-Res debuffs factored in for both ATs. If the idea was that defender +Dmg/-Res is supposed to fill the gap some between corruptors and defenders in damage, it fails heavily.

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The only place it fails (if at all) is when solo and it is generally only by a few percentage points. The idea was never that stronger buff/debuff of defs would close the gap until they are producing equitable damage. The idea is that as a whole the stronger buff/debuff puts them into a similar degree of risk and reward. Defs tend to be slower, but more survivable.

Whatever balance gap may exist (very debatable) on teams those few percentage points evaporate when you have 7 other teammates benefiting from an additional 7.5% -res (EF) and an additional 5% +dam each, or being 10% less likely to hit due to stronger RI.
(7.5% x 7 people x 100 damage each = extra 52.5 damage that the corr has to make up for with scourge, this cuts into w/e gap may or may not exist in a straight up comparison).

We know forcemultiplication closes any gaps extremely quickly when the stronger values are applied, just look at how easy "support" classes catch up and exceed the "damage AT"s when they cross buff/debuff.

The problem is pretty much limited to where the devs have done a crappy job and haven't made a meaningful difference in the strength of defender powers vs corr/troller/mm shared powers.

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Except that much of the extra damage from the better buffs/debuffs are frequently lost in over kill. This is why in many situations lower % buffs/debuffs are just as effective as the higher defender values.

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I'd argue that if (and I agree sometimes it does) the stronger buff/debuff is resulting in overkill then it is just as likely that scourge is as well.

If we can dismiss stronger buff/debuff as creating unnecessary damage, then it seems only logical that actual extra damage could just as easily be unnecessary. Especially given the back loaded nature of scourge inherently leading to overkill.

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I would disagree with your use of sometimes. I believe frequently is more accurate. In most actual play situations the differences between controller, corruptor, and defender buffs/debuffs is so small that most teams aren't aware that there's a difference.

I'd venture to say that for teams overkill is the norm rather than the exception. Players are very much aware when they "corpse blast" or when a team mate "kill steals" by defeating targets first. This is one reason that people dislike animations over 2 seconds and many people want the devs to base damage not only on end costs and recharge times but by factoring animation times in as well.