Sardan

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and how do i come to perez park?

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Perez Park doesn't have any train lines that connect it to other zones. The ways to get there are from Atlas Park, Galaxy City, Skyway City, or Steel Canyon. You'll see a little marker on the edge of those maps labeled Perez Park. When you get to the entrance it'll be guarded. Click on one of the guards to enter. You must be level 7 or higher to enter.

The center area is kind of a huge maze of densely overgrown forest. It can be difficult to find your way out the first time or two you enter there, so if you can, stay out of the woods if you're close to the minimum level.

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I trust you told him how to get out of Pocket D.

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Um, roll an alt? That's what I do every time I somehow end up in Pocket D. Curse you, Pocket D! The Hotel California of CoH!

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Economics is a hard subject to grasp. I wasn't to good at it in college, and I think I've actually learned more in just reading essays and articles on the internet for discussion on this forum than I did in college. Regardless of what people think, economics is as straight forward to grasp as math is, providing you can account for all the variables.

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I beg to differ. There's a reason why economics is called the dismal science. The problem in real life is that people are not always rational actors, and many of the simpler theories in economics rely on the fallacy of perfect information. So to make econ straightforward, all it requires is a simple combination of psychology, game theory, and traditional economic theory. Actually there's an emerging branch of economics called (I think) behavioral economics that sounds like it's attempting this very melding. I haven't read about it though, just heard a Fresh Air podcast on it a long time ago.

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"But BABs...why change the title of the subject line?"

Cause I really want to prove the point. *waves to all the people looking for details about the expansion*

"But BABs...that's cheating!"

Yes.

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How awesome is this guy?

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It's a fine start, but I don't think you'll have any more luck than Stillhart did. If the goal is to educate people about basic economics, you might as well link to the wikipedia article about economics. It will be just as ineffective, and it will take a lot less of your time.

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Probably true. I kept thinking of topics, then discarding them as I realized that to take the assertions beyond the "just trust me" level would take too many paragraphs, leading to TL;DR syndrome. So as I was writing it I kept scaling back my goals. I wanted to try to get across the most basic concepts in a way that would ideally have maximum impact. Eventually I just declared victory and posted it.

Assuming I post it as a guide, I'll edit it at the end to link to your excellent multipart series of guides. Maybe mine can serve as an intro that'll pique a few players' interest.

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That being said, I don't think it really addresses some of the misconceptions like the one you quoted in the OP.

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Yeah. I started down that road but it started to get too long. Plus when I compared what I was starting to write and compared it to my recollections of some of persuasive writing I've seen on this forum, I realized it was time to wave the white flag. I figured a short essay on "the truths we hold to be self evident" would be a good start since at least I could emphasize the absurdly simple lesson of patience vs. get it nao.

How about this?

Understanding the Fundamentals of the CoH Auction Market

This short guide will explain a few basic truths of the market in CoH. The goal is to introduce a few important concepts and avoid drowning the reader in details.

I don't think this guide is very long, but here's a TL;DR version anyway:

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If you want to make a fortune playing the market or just want to avoid paying top prices, the secret is to have a bit of patience. Don't outbid peak weekend prices. Look at average prices on a Tuesday or Wednesday, put in your bids, and [u]force yourself to wait a day or two for your bids to pan out[u]. Buy recipes and salvage and do your own crafting instead of buying pre-crafted IOs.

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Supply and Demand
Unlike a store, prices are set in the CoH markets by "supply and demand". We've all heard this phrase, but what does it mean? Simply put, the more available something is, the lower its price will be and vice versa. Prices are set between willing sellers and buyers. No one can force you to buy at a price you're not willing to pay.

Example: before the Mission Architect (MA) was introduced, only rare (orange) salvage was pricey. Uncommon (yellow) salvage was cheap and generally you'd get a better price by selling it to a store than by selling it on the market. Now uncommon salvage frequently sells for 50K-100K inf. What changed? MA missions don't drop salvage, they drop tickets. Players have shown a reluctance to redeem their tickets for uncommon salvage; instead they save up for desirable recipes. People are crafting IOs just as much as ever so demand has remained constant but supply has tightened up, so salvage sells for more.

Prediction: when the Going Rogue expansion goes live, there will be at least a temporary shift away from the MA. Salvage will once again be abundant and prices will plunge.


Cyclic Demand
Demand that predictably follows a pattern is called "cyclic demand." In the real world, think of peak season hotel prices. Hotel prices are always highest in the peak season because there are more people chasing after a fixed number of hotel rooms. This pattern of higher prices during peak season is so reliable as to be predictable.

Is there cyclic demand in CoH? Sure. There are always more players on during weekends, holidays and special events such as the release of a new issue or a double XP weekend. Why should you care about cyclic demand in CoH? It'll make more sense after the next section....


Gotta Have It NOW
When most players decide they want to buy a set of IOs, they proceed to bid high enough to get the set right away. That's understandable. For them the market isn't fun. It's a necessary chore, like going grocery shopping. They want to get it over with and get back to having fun. By putting in high bids they get their stuff quickly. Experienced marketeers derisively refer to that as "get it now" pricing; they're derisive because it guarantees the buyer is paying top dollar.

There's an even worse form of "get it now": since many of the players that want to get their IOs right now don't want to be bothered with the hassle of crafting them, they'll pay a healthy premium to have someone else do the crafting. And when I say "healthy premium" I really mean "insane premium" like paying 2-3 mil for ingredients that costs 500K to purchase and craft.


The Secret Every CoH Market Billionaire Knows
Combine the concepts of cyclic demand with "get it now" pricing, and you get an interesting phenomenon. During peak demand (usually weekend evenings) there is a reliable flood of players who just want to buy their stuff ASAP and get back to playing. Prices surge. Off-peak those players are absent for the most part and prices sag.

So if you want to make a fortune playing the market or just want to avoid paying top prices, the secret is to have a bit of patience. Don't outbid peak weekend prices. Look at average prices on a Tuesday or Wednesday, put in your bids, and force yourself to wait a day or two for your bids to pan out. Buy recipes and salvage and do your own crafting instead of buying pre-crafted IOs.

The real kicker is that for every player who takes the time to read this and try it out, there will be hundreds who can't be bothered. And those will be the ones making you rich, Dear Reader.

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Yeah, good luck with that.

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Woah, that's a big thread. Anything ever come of it?

The thing I love about Super Speed is slotting it with a Celerity +Stealth IO. Gives you total invis to everything except snipers and Rikti Drones. Combine that with the readily available flight/jump packs and you're golden.

I saw this:

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Actually the separate markets make a lot of sense.
On the Black Market I could buy some stuff that would be out of my price range on the CH, just because there are more people and so they can better control the prices.

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And it made me think of the many posts people have made here talking about market fundamentals, explaining basic concepts like supply and demand. Debunking common misconceptions, for example that ebil marketeers can simply set exorbitant prices that the poor common folk will be forced to pay. I looked briefly at the Guides section of this forum and while there was a lot of good stuff there, I didn't see anything along the lines of Econ 101.

Has anyone written up this type of essay and I just missed it? I'd love to be able to just link to it when folks like the one I quoted pop up, which they do with great regularity.

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This I know people that won't play villains because of the perceived difficulty in ioing out redside, toss in the smaller population and lack of large merit earning opportunities there will be more villains getting religion than if it were the rapture

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It's not "perceived". I play both red and blue side. On average, IO's are definitely cheaper blue side.

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It's not just price, it's also availability. It's not uncommon for an item to be unavailable at any price redside.

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I still see the potential of characters being stripped of all gear and starting back at level 1 if they change sides.

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That would really make no sense though. Having a change of heart about what side of the law you're on doesn't change your fighting capabilities.

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the way Smurph has gone about this experiment,no reaction from on high tells us all we need to know.

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Don't misunderstand me, I'm not wishing Smurph ill at all. Just saying that I don't share your conclusions that his actions thus far prove anything. Now, if his lowbie petitioned a GM and said, "Hi, I stood in an AE mission and went from 1 to 50 in 5 hours without fighting. You OK with that?" If the GM indicated it was cool, that WOULD prove something. But AFAIK the forum mods are completely different from the in-game GMs and thus nothing has been proven.

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I've had my disagreements and battles with Smurph, but in this instance he's doing something immensely valuable for the game's population, shining a spotlight on a dev-created minefield where they refuse to provide useful, well defined guidelines while threatening players with bans and other punitive measures.

As with their original reluctance to give players meaningful information about powers- if they don't tell us the numbers, we have to find them out ourselves.

For that he deserves a hearty round of applause.

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I truly admire Smurph's creativity and his accomplishments in the game, but I fail to see the "immensely valuable" contribution to the game's population here (I can see the immensely valuable contribution to the lowbie that zipped to 50, but that's beside the point ). What new information is being imparted here?

On the larger issue: does anyone seriously think that the devs approve of leveling a lowbie from 1-50 in 5 hours? Would anyone be shocked if they clobbered Smurph's lowbie with the ban stick? If they don't, it doesn't prove that what he's done is acceptable. It just proves they're inconsistent in playing PLed character whack-a-mole.

My own belief is that the devs don't mind it if ultrafast PLing is happening on the margins; it's when it gets too common that they take draconian action. If they remove the auto-SK feature of the MA, make the "no XP" option unavailable after level 45, and force maps to have the standard mix of ranks, I'd say that's about all that's needed. It won't eliminate PLing but it'll make it a little tougher to get optimal conditions, and that's good enough.

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Basically just altering a text file? Any reason why the updater couldn't add the relevant data if an add-on is detected?

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There's no reason it can't other than limited dev resources, just like Bab said above. I'm sure they have a "to do as time permits" list that's probably 100 pages long.

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However, some of our more clever players have figured out that you can edit the quickmenu on your personal system and basically set it up to do whatever you want. A bit of searching and I'm sure you can find a link to the how to for that.

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Customizing the QuickChat menu

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How to Pull:

1) Stand next to team mates.
2) Push Team Teleport.
3) Click enemy pack.

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Ah, takes me back to the days of TopDoc's Fire/Rad controller superteam.

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So, I just want to say: You ain't pulling or gathering if you don't get out of sight afterward. Having a bunch of foes shooting at you and teammates from a distance is, well, what a vacuum is doing.

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Agreed. It boggles my mind that so many players don't get this, but it's shockingly common.

Ah, another reliably entertaining P_T post. Well done, even though I have to admit I was sort of anticipating another "total train wreck" story and was a little let down when it didn't turn out that way!

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I notice that 1-DO-ACC-slotted Transfusion simply *does not* hit orange-title NPCs. It seems to have at least a 50% miss-rate with yellow-titles. For as much End as it costs to run it, this is an infuriatingly high miss-rate and I admit to being extremely displeased about it. Eventually it will have three ACCs

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I don't doubt you're missing a lot, but Transfusion really doesn't need 3 Accs (unless you're saying 3 DOs?). It has a starting accuracy of 120%. One or two Acc SOs should be fine.

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Due to end-costs I find this alt to not be very solo-able. I'm going to have to be teamed. I'm not giving up, but as things stand now I have taken math exams that were more fun to run that this alt. I'm hanging in there, however. I sense the potential for tremendous power, and I always enjoy that.

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I applaud your tenacity in soloing your character, but personally I think Kins are pretty terrible for soloing due to their lack of damage mitigation. I think you'll be happier teaming.

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Not big on delayed gratification, tho. lol

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It's a long road to 32, the first big bump where you start to really see the light at the end of the tunnel.

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only useless powers in a firekin build are repel, siphon speed, siphon life, and inertial reduction.

how do i know, though....

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Siphon Life?

Also, calling Siphon Speed useless is crazy talk. People pay tens of millions for LotG's for a paltry 7.5% recharge. One application of Siphon Speed is +20% recharge, the equiv of nearly 3 LotGs. With Hasten and 3 recharges in Siphon Speed it's easy to get 3 stacked in a mission, giving 60% recharge which can cost hundreds of millions to get with set bonuses. My Fire/Kin easily gets perma Hasten via Siphon Speed.

So in response to "how do i know, though" the answer is "you don't".

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Next, SB is a short-lived buff but it's a really tremendous one. I know some Kins skip it but my belief is that if you can't cope with the idea of keeping a team of 8 SB'd then roll another set.

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I have to disagree on this. When I'm playing a kin on a team of 8, I do not try to keep everyone SB'ed. It's just too tedious. I prioritize anyone having END problems (I have about 95% endmod enhancement on it) and the highest damage-dealers.

Concentrating on keeping EVERYONE SB'ed means I'm spending less time doing other stuff. The control and damage I can dish out are massive.

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That's your prerogative. I manage to keep the entire team SB'd and keep them at the damage cap and keep them healed and neutralize mobs and do incredible damage. I can't help it if you're an underachiever.

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My attack chain goes like this, Flashfire, Fire cages, Send in the Clowns...er..I mean imps, wait till the imps and melee guys are in the thick of it...then FS, Sipon power (I skiped Sipon speed)

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One thing that's helpful is the Combat Attributes Monitor. Monitor Damage Bonus. Two stacked Fulcrum Shifts hitting a decent number of foes will get you to the damage cap. No need for Siphon Power except as a debuff against AVs.

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If FS does the same, I doubt I will keep it.

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If you didn't get FS, you'd probably be the only Kin in the game without it. And you'd richly deserve the myriad of /kicks you'd earn.

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Day 2: Level 11 so far, due to one abortive AE run [killed by half the team dying and refusing to hosp. This is a literal epidemic on AE teams, i have NO IDEA why everyone thinks it is ok to do this.]

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I've noticed this too. It's crazy because going to Hosp from inside AE takes all of 30 seconds AND you can stock up on insps for an extra 10 second investment.

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Fire Kin is love hate. All I can say is accuracy and end reduction are your friends, especially on the KIN side.

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Although once you ding 35 and get Transference (well, really 36 when you can add slots to id) your End woes are over. Yes, it's a long wait but it is soooo worth it.

I might as well through in a bit more general bits of Kin advice. First, your Kin side is a VERY late bloomer. Yes you get SB at 20 and that's a biggie for your teammates but your second and third big powers come at 35 and 38. Once you get to 39 with FS slotted up you're a radically different character than you were a few levels before in terms of what you bring to a team but it's a long journey to 39.

Next, SB is a short-lived buff but it's a really tremendous one. I know some Kins skip it but my belief is that if you can't cope with the idea of keeping a team of 8 SB'd then roll another set. Personally I hate being on teams with Kins that don't SB. A good time to do it is at the end of a battle when folks are mopping up stragglers. Go through the team and SB everyone, then when they zoom off to the next group everyone is fully buffed. A lot of Kin players like to try to SB at the start of a fight (if they think of it at all) but that's the time when you'll be very busy throwing out controls, healing, FS'ing, etc.