Obitus

Well, to be fair, the original statement about the price of the PvP hold set was, "surprisingly affordable," which is reasonable no matter how you slice it.

Only later, when you pressed him, did Gavin say, "cheap," and then only when the context clearly related the PvP hold set to other, expensive sets. (Full post quoted below.)

That said, it's hard to call any loose characterization of IO prices unfair on a forum where dream builds featuring several purple sets are the norm rather than the exception. 150-200 million inf is certainly not cheap for everyone, probably not even to most people, but in a market where a full set of Kinetic Combat will cost you roughly that much (and how many builds feature several sets of those?), it ain't an irrefutably extravagant sum, either.

Then again, I'm with you in this particular case. If I could get the Basilisk's Gaze for a good deal cheaper, then I wouldn't upgrade for the sake of 2.5% endurance/damage. The most important bonus is the same for both sets. Maybe, maybe after playing the build awhile and deciding that I loved the character to death, I'd think about heading into the upper stratosphere of build tweaking, where even hundreds of millions of inf generally only yield tiny proportional performance gains.

(Emphasis mine.)

Hehe, you wearing your accountant-issue green eye shade?

Heh, I keep the temp powers that look interesting for the character I'm playing at the time (usually the power analyzer and the recovery serum or the -regen dagger for situational hard-target fights). You raise an interesting point about spreading the power analyzer around; I'll have to sell some of those.

But I figure if I'm getting on average 2 Gabriel's Hammers and/or Revolvers per run, that the market doesn't need any more. It'd be nice if they were a little rarer, is all, but that may be my bias speaking. I play concept characters -- heavily min/maxed, but they at least started with, and try to adhere to, a concept -- and so the chances that I'll ever want to use a weapon I didn't explicitly plan my build around are pretty slim.

As for crafting enhancemnts, I just can't be bothered to craft more than two or three at a time, mostly because my enhancement inventory is also usually storing something or other that I deem important.

Anyway, enough of my personal quirks and habits. The point is that market slots are precious for anyone who's not interested in playing alt-inventory accountant with their time. Oddly enough, those are the very same people that anti-marketeers most often claim to be representing.

I fill up my inventory in about three missions on my Tanker. Because there's no way I can sell everything I have on the market for a so-called "reasonable price" in anything like a timely fashion, I basically have to list any non-rare salvage for 1 inf. Sometimes when there's clearly a flipper (or just a lowball bidder at work), I'll gamble and make a bid at 1 inf higher than the transaction-revealed lowballer (it usually works within a few seconds).

For recipes, I check the market and craft the (usually) one or two worth selling -- and I list them at like 30% below the ballpark average of the last five. The rest get vendored, because recipes just don't move very fast, generally (and jeebus, can we get Temp power drops moved to a lower priority pretty please?). On the whole, it works out pretty well. I usually have about 5-8 market slots tied up at any given time with crafted enhancements. Salvage usually sells immediately or if not, it sells while I'm running the next batch of missions. Any salvage that doesn't sell by the next time I run to the market gets pulled and relisted at 1 inf.

Oh, and lately I've been pocketing rare salvage because the prices for those are down now with the AE stuff that's going on. They get used naturally as time passes by my occasional crafting.

So anyway, all of that self-indulgent stuff aside, all of the above is why I find it utterly and flabbergastingly (lol, making up words) bizarre when people claim that inventory/market space isn't valuable. The only way I keep my casually played characters active in what these people (presumably) would consider to be the "real game" is to destroy most of my recipes.

You're spot on, as usual, and in fewer words.

Yeah, talk about a bizarro-world argument: "Here's a million reasons you save people time and drive up market participation among active players [that is, not players who don't mind waiting several months to sell items], but you're all evil, money-grubbing propagandists!"

Thanks for playing, StabBot. You did an excellent job reinforcing the opposing side's arguments, just as you predicted. The players who would be most inclined to whine about inflated prices are precisely the kinds of players who don't want to spend four days selling stuff every time their inventory fills from the natural pace of running missions. Like me, believe it or not.

Any incentive to get those players to put their items on the market increases supply for everyone. Which is good for everyone, because there's very little point in being an evil, dirty, stinkin' rich capitalist pig if there's nothing to spend your ill-gotten gains on.

Hehe, you're right. That is annoying. Let's see:

DDR = Defense Debuff Resistance

APP = Ancillary Power Pool (those pools unlocked at 41 hero-side)

PPP = Patron Power Pools (villain-side equivalents to APPs)

DA = Dark Armor (you probably guessed that)

SS = Super strength (ditto)

SR = Super Reflexes

AFAIK = As Far As I Know

AD = Active Defense

AAO = Against All Odds

AOE = Area Of Effect

ST = Single Target

I'm sure I missed some. Normally I feel as you do about acronyms that aren't immediately clear from the context, but it's hard not to do it sometimes when the conversation is flowing along so smoothly with them. Your society is a good idea!

I think Gilla was referring to the math, not necessarily the duration.

In other words, a 50% resistance translates into a 33% reduction of effect (1 / 1.5 = 0.667). This is (AFAIK) in contrast with damage resistance, which simply reduces the magnitude of the resistance debuff by a flat amount. (50% damage RES = 50% effective RES debuff).

Either way, it's the first I've heard of it. I think we'd see more complaints from SR Scrappers if their ~95% DEF-debuff resistance were actually ~48% in practice.

My Tank has both Fences and Ball Lightning from the Mu APP. With Footstomp and double Rage, ten minions die in one salvo (~5 seconds or so of animation). With the +recharge proc in Footstomp, I'm virtually assured of 5 seconds of +100% recharge, which helps bring back the long-cooldown Ball faster.

It's a great combo, though it can be difficult to fit in 8 of your discretionary slots to spend on Targeted AoE powers (the IO sets for which don't come with useful DEF bonuses of any kind -- which I think is intentional). It also comes at the expense of potential single-target DPS, as Gloom is superior to Mu Lightning.

The best thing about Fences, though -- and probably the reason I'd never drop it now -- is that it prevents those freaking Longbow Eagles (among others) from skittering in and out of AoE range. When I-19 hits, I'm planning to try Handclap as a form of ghetto mitigation. Only problem is that Fences has a shorter radius than Handclap (and Ball Lightning, and Footstomp), which means that I will potentially knock some targets away. Still, it's a small price to pay for additional situational survivability.

/End threadjack.

There will always be something to which you're weak. Dark Armor is actually pretty well off in that regard, as capped DEF is itself a kind of hedge against DEF debuffs (because the first debuff usually has to hit you to start the cascade failure, which can at least give you a little extra time to thin the crowd and/or pop inspirations.)

The idea that there are people with builds that can efficiently solo random missions at or near the highest difficulty levels is basically a myth. When people talk about those builds, they're usually either describing a cherry-picked mission full of farmable mobs, or they're talking about a build that can handle most anything on paper, but occasionally struggles when it encounters a kryptonite mob faction. I think the devs don't get enough credit for varying the threats among high-level NPCs. On paper, the game is trivially easy. In practice, it isn't always so.

Personally, and for what little it's worth, I like +0/x6 or so on my INV/SS Tanker. But I have a fair amount of AoE damage and I like to maximize drops. Against the right (or the wrong) mob faction, I have to use the terrain to my advantage and pop Inspirations like they're going out of style, even at that relatively unimpressive difficulty setting. Try Paragon PD if you're looking for DEF debuffs and a lot of energy damage (to which DA is very weak).

As for Dark Armor, it's basically immune to end drain, and it has good psi protection. Those are probably the two most common bug-a-boos for high-end Tankers. You have excellent healing potential, a good amount of proactive mitigation (in the form of control), a very nice combat-usable self-rez, and a decent amount of free damage from Death Shroud -- and probably one or two other nice perks.

I imagine Dark/SS is a serious end hog, though. Ironically, the only end drain to which you're vulnerable is your own.

Honestly, I'd recommend any APP that gives you an extra AOE attack, all of that said. Assuming you can get your end use under control (and there's no reason to think you can't, if for no other reason than that we're a couple of weeks away from the delicious Cardiac Alpha Boost), Energy Mastery does very little for you. The extra regeneration is less than negligible when compared against your heal, and Rage trivializes any need for more ToHit. Laser Beam Eyes is a terrible attack from a DPA standpoint, perhaps the worst available among all analogous APP/Patron powers, and Torrent is more parlor trick for a Tanker than it is a bona-fide source of damage.

So I'd go Soul for the excellent Gloom, or Electric/Fire for AoE goodness.

Sorry for the ramble. Kinda got away from me there.

Oh, and equating in-game marketeers with Goldman Sachs wasn't an ad hominem? Your tears are delicious.

At least my name (which was fairly mild) came with supporting argument and reasoning. Yours was a smoke-and-mirrors attempt to argue by assertion. You still have yet to explain how flippers can't lower prices when the market gives preference to the lowest asking price. And you're still stuck with 14 Regenerative Tissues at a price for which they won't sell.

Yes, lol, competition for customers is a bad thing. See what I did there? Ignoring content and saying whatever the heck you want may be a fun way to pass the time, but you're not going to convince anyone of anything by doing it.

Scratch that. In order to ignore the content of your post, there'd have to be some content to begin with. Enjoy your Koolaid, oh great populist agitator. Oh, and enjoy the 49 million (0.05 * 70 * 14) in frustrated listing fees your Regenerative Tissues will give you. Might wanna learn how the market actually works before you pontificate about how easy it is to raise prices.

Because higher average prices draw more sellers. More sellers is more supply. More supply drives prices down.

And again, the flipper must have enough breathing room to have the lowest bid at a given moment in time. He can't just arbitrarily list at the highest possible price, or he'll take a bath. The more active the market is -- the more flippers there are competing over a given niche, in fact -- the more prices stabilize. Eventually, the flipper(s) will be driven from their niche when it's no longer profitable, and the cycle begins anew. Flippers are basically roving market stimulators.

And yet, miraculously, you seem to believe that higher prices wouldn't encourage that kind of increase in activity. Your powers of selective observation are truly dazzling.

That's cute. Selective editing for the win. What if I just posted your above quote with the 'not' edited out?

Your addition has no reasoning to back it up. History, logic, and common sense all stand firmly against you. The game's mechanics stand against you, too. What part of "the lowest asking price fills the highest bid" don't you understand?

The flipper is called a flipper because he plays within the margin of error created by a lack of market activity. He can't simply decide what the prices are going to be. He has to have enough room and enough inactivity that he can sneak in the highest consistent bids and the lowest consistent listings to turn his market slots around in a timely fashion. This is all self-evident and irrefutable.

Yes, and if he wants to sell it, his listing price has to be the lowest at a given point in time. That's what we call adding stability. What's endlessly fascinating to me is that for years, the Red-side market was about ten times more prone to market manipulation because there was so little participation there -- and yet, most of the prominent marketeers in this forum avoided the Red-side market, or at least criticized it here.

Why? Because a market with more participation is a healthier market. A healthier market is better for buyers and sellers alike.

"Blah, blah, blah, Goldman Sachs," is not a convincing argument. It's ugly, emotionally charged innuendo that has no place in a discussion about a fictional market using fictional money. What's more, it's a fictional market in a game that doesn't require any of the expensive items on the market.

But then, Talen said it better than I could.

Rant and rave and scream all you like about how flippers increase prices. In the short term, they do. But to deny that an increase in prices doesn't encourage more sellers is to deny the truth that's staring you in the face. And to deny that you have exactly the same capacity that flippers do to buy low (namely, patience) is to deny yourself the rightful price points to which you apparently believe yourself entitled.

It'll be interesting to see how far purple prices fall once I-19 hits. More people will be playing their 50s outside of AE, so supply should go up by a decent amount. We can reasonably assume that whatever exploits are affecting AE farms right now will be fixed at some point too.

If both of those things happen at or near the same time, then purples ought to plummet. Then again, the added incentive for people to grind for improvements to their 50s might also spike demand for high-end IOs. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Says it all.

I'd say you're either doing something off-the-wall to amuse yourself in a game (crazy talk!), or you have an unhealthy fascination with Heath Ledger.

It's a no-way win only if you accept the absurd premise that inventory space isn't limited in CoH. Clearly it is, and the only possible way to truly maximize that storage involves complex accountant-like management of alternate characters' inventories.

Which is so involved that once you've crossed that line, you're no longer in the category of players who can complain with a straight face about so-called market manipulations.

If you're saying that there's no 100% analog in CoH for RL distributors, then you're right.

But if you're saying that the ability to move items faster isn't a benefit to the market overall, then that's crazy talk. I can fill up my salvage and recipe inventory in about three missions. At that point, I have three choices:

1. I can do what Chuckles apparently advocates, and spend the next hour or so messing around with transferring items among my countless alts and/or messing around with my SG's storage (and, interestingly, Chuckles demonstrated a desire for more base storage in the Base forum about a year ago).
2. I can say screw it and vendor (destroy) my stock.
3. I can list it all on the market, and hope it turns around quickly.

All of the above assumes, of course, that I'm interested in keeping space available for any potential high-value drops. I think it's pretty clear that's what the game encourages.

You said flipping was a parasitic activity, which may be true on an individual basis; no one can know what it's in your heart. But on a grander scale, flipping helps the market. It is neither a good nor a bad act, intrinsically.

Look, it's very simple. If we accept your premise that flippers increase prices towards and even beyond the equilibrium point (which is true as far as it goes), then we must also accept that flippers make selling stuff more attractive. If selling stuff's more attractive, then more people will be inclined to sell stuff.

If more people sell stuff, then supply is increased. The more participation there is, both from buyers and sellers, the harder it is for flippers to artificially inflate prices (and make a profit doing so). That's your equilibrium.

(And double-XP weekend is a terrible example if you're looking for lower prices. Demand spikes during double-XP weekend. Flipping can blunt some of the effect of that spike in demand, but it can't counter it entirely. There are just way more buyers than sellers of any kind in that scenario.)

When we're talking about play money, and particularly so little of it, it's hard to argue that any act is irrational. If someone doesn't have a whole lot of time to play and they want to craft something before they log off for the day (or even the week), then it might not be a big deal to overpay like that for a piece of salvage.

If you'd said 100 million instead of one million, we might be closer to irrationality, but even then it's a hard case to make. In any case, as before, the phenomenon you're describing would be helped, not hurt, by more flippers.

Stable means that there's more supply when demand is high, and more demand when supply is high. Listings are increased by flippers when they need to be increased.

As for whether people are deleting items, that's exactly the point. If you don't have a reasonable expectation that your items will move fast enough and/or sell for high enough, then you might be discouraged from participating in the market, which hurts everyone. Thus, flippers indirectly increase supply overall.

See above about deletion. Having people sell things at the NPC vendor isn't good for the market -- not for the supposedly downtrodden newbie, not for the savvy marketeer. No one.

I make a conscious effort to sell all my salvage because I want to participate, even if it's by taking a tiny loss on a piece of salvage listed for 1 inf. More often than not, that 1-inf listing turns into a much, much higher sale.

Happily, it's also easier to sell everything on the market. I don't have to make a side trip to the vendor. See how all of this is aimed at the casual gamer?

But I guess you wouldn't care about that, given that you can't see how 57 + 26 + 10 inventory slots > 18 market slots.

They're the guys who ensure that there is sufficient incentive for people to open stores, if we're going to keep the analogy.

Clearly not.

It's self-evident. Flippers (usually) buy things that the original sellers don't care that much about, because obviously if the seller cared more about them, then he'd have set his price higher.

Then the flippers turn those items around for a profit when demand is higher. They're stabilizing supply against demand. If there's an over-arching downside to the actions of flippers, then it comes (ironically) from a lack of competing flippers to drive the potential profit margins down.

My Level 50 Tanker has 57 slots in his salvage inventory, and (IIRC) 26 slots in his recipe inventory. That same character has 18 market slots. If I want to sell a full load of my goods, then I need at least my low-tier salvage to move quickly.

Is arithmetic evidence? I think so. Your mileage may vary.

This is usually the point at which anti-marketeer posters argue that you can use alts and personal bases to circumvent the built-in limits on inventory and market slots. But that argument jumps the shark, because the so-called pro-casual crowd should understand that a casual player isn't going to go to those lengths. If all you want to do is play the game normally and sell your drops, then you want to your market slots to have high turnaround.

That argument is, in effect, using a loophole in the system to argue against what they consider to be another loophole (flipping). The system was clearly designed to encourage market participation through inventory/market-slot limits.

Why is a grocery store any value to the consumer or the farmer? For that matter, isn't any investment technically an example of flipping?

The thing that confuses me about these arguments is that everyone seems to forget that buyers and sellers are not mutually exclusive. Anything that benefits the seller tends to benefit the buyer too. As in real life, the seller benefits from anything that makes his product move faster. The buyer benefits from having easier access to a wider variety of competing goods and services. And that goes double in CoH, where everyone has equal capacity to produce the goods.

Yeah, like DarkGob, I haven't even seen a spam broadcast or email in a very, very long time. Then again, I almost never go to Atlas Park or use Mission Architect. For what it's worth, the Auction houses in Talos and Cap Au Diable don't seem to have any spammers.

In any case, I'd say that the Paragon team has done a very good job limiting spam. There was a time when the email system was virtually useless to me because I had 60 billion spam emails filling my box every time I logged on. Now, I get none at all.

YMMV.

Beautifully stated.