And the mask comes off.

[Ironwolf]

As a player who used to run an all Knownback, stun or disorient team - Ragdoll physics.

Watching everything fly and land in random crumpled poses - was satisfying.

[Nyghtshade]

Is the latest NCSoft / NEXON news likely to throw a serious wrench into the negotiations for CoH?

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/article/8786/friend-owner-nexon%E2%80%99s-hostile-takeover-ncsoft-becoming-increasingly-likely

[Arcana]

Things are worth whatever someone is willing to pay for them. In the case of the PVP +3% defense global, they were worth more than 2 billion to quite a few people; that's why they mostly were sold off market. Sure there were a ton of 2B bids on them and someone who got one without knowing better would occasionally post one and it would sell for 2B, but that wasn't a reliable way to get one unless you were very patient due to all the outstanding bids.

Settings price caps on a player makert is pointless and does nothing but discourage use of that market. Seeding it is equally counter-productive as it makes it harder to sell anything and also discourages people from listing items they don't need. If you were going to do that, you might as well just move everything to NPC vendors and remove the market entirely.

In one sense its a truism that things are always worth what people are willing to pay for in a market-based system, so (at least during the period of time when they sold for this much, pre-merits) the 3% PvPIOs were in fact worth many billions of inf.  But there was another factor at play and that was the fact that the CoH economy became highly degenerate at the top.  There simply were not enough commodities at the top to spend influence on so there were significantly more players with essentially unlimited influence than there was a supply of such things.  In the real world there's always something for a rich person to spend their money on.  In CoH, you could literally run out of things to buy and still accumulate influence at a rate so rapid it also became a challenge to store.  As a result, the top PvPIOs didn't just sell for what their intrinsic value was, and not even what consensus value was, they basically sold for whatever price a rich player decided to spend that day.  The closest analog to the real world is that pre-merits the 3% PvPIOs were the Picasso paintings of the CoH world.  Some days you could barely get 2.5 billion off market.  Some days you could get 5 billion.  It all depended on who you ran into that wanted them that day.

[BadWolf]

As a player who used to run an all Knownback, stun or disorient team - Ragdoll physics.

Watching everything fly and land in random crumpled poses - was satisfying.

We had one case where the ragdoll physics and the collision physics conspired to get a lieutenant hooked on the edge of a crate, dangling by one ankle upside-down. He didn't live long given that there were two masterminds in the immediate vicinity, but the memory of the "Zombie Pinata" has lived long for us ever since.

[Codewalker]

There simply were not enough commodities at the top to spend influence on so there were significantly more players with essentially unlimited influence than there was a supply of such things.  In the real world there's always something for a rich person to spend their money on.

Indeed the lack of influence sinks and the unbounded inflation that resulted was the primary cause for sky high prices for the very top items with limited supply. Lots of people liked to complain about the market without really understanding the dynamics of how economies work; if they did they would have realized that limited supply or 'ebil marketeers' weren't the problem, but rather too much money existing. A few did realize, as evidenced by the various influence destruction projects.

In some games, you have to routinely repair your gear, or there are (necessary) consumables sold by NPC vendors, or various other methods of counterbalancing the wealth that gets created out of thin air every time an enemy is defeated. COH didn't really have that once you hit the level cap and no longer needed new SOs, you could just accumulate influence forever and never have to spend it. The 2 billion cap was the only limiting factor and required creative methods of storing influence past that.

Even the sometimes exorbitant prices of IO recipes didn't impact that, as if you bought a high end purple for a billion influence, only 100 million of that was removed from the economy. The other 900 million went to another player, ready to bid on something else with. In an off-market trade for the Glad Armor unique, if someone paid 4 billion for it, all 4 billion went to another player and absolutely none of it was removed from the system.

Meanwhile, billions upon billions of influence was being created every day just from enemy defeats in regular missions, task forces, AE farms...

The real 'fix' for the COH economy would be to give rich players something to spend their money on that destroyed it in the process, preferably something repeatable that would keep them coming back for more. High-end vanity pets costing hundreds of millions of inf, inf-purchasable time limited buffs, that kind of thing.

[LaughingAlex]

Indeed the lack of influence sinks and the unbounded inflation that resulted was the primary cause for sky high prices for the very top items with limited supply. Lots of people liked to complain about the market without really understanding the dynamics of how economies work; if they did they would have realized that limited supply or 'ebil marketeers' weren't the problem, but rather too much money existing. A few did realize, as evidenced by the various influence destruction projects.

In some games, you have to routinely repair your gear, or there are (necessary) consumables sold by NPC vendors, or various other methods of counterbalancing the wealth that gets created out of thin air every time an enemy is defeated. COH didn't really have that once you hit the level cap and no longer needed new SOs, you could just accumulate influence forever and never have to spend it. The 2 billion cap was the only limiting factor and required creative methods of storing influence past that.

Even the sometimes exorbitant prices of IO recipes didn't impact that, as if you bought a high end purple for a billion influence, only 100 million of that was removed from the economy. The other 900 million went to another player, ready to bid on something else with. In an off-market trade for the Glad Armor unique, if someone paid 4 billion for it, all 4 billion went to another player and absolutely none of it was removed from the system.

Meanwhile, billions upon billions of influence was being created every day just from enemy defeats in regular missions, task forces, AE farms...

The real 'fix' for the COH economy would be to give rich players something to spend their money on that destroyed it in the process, preferably something repeatable that would keep them coming back for more. High-end vanity pets costing hundreds of millions of inf, inf-purchasable time limited buffs, that kind of thing.

The supply of influence being so insane was the core reason I was highly opposed to AE farming, because I knew that it tended to send a very disproportionate amount of influence into the market.  Power leveling from it was one thing as one could stop at 50 but all the 50s doing it see were gaining hundreds of millions of influence in far far less time than anywhere else.  And even after the bug fixes it was still producing way to much influence as 50s would still exploit it for other things and then see the market prices rising far to quickly.  Heck, I worried that some newcomers would see the market, turn heel and run before even realising they only needed a few IO's to get started.

To much influence was in the market and it screwed the game economy up.

[JanessaVR]

The real 'fix' for the COH economy would be to give rich players something to spend their money on that destroyed it in the process, preferably something repeatable that would keep them coming back for more. High-end vanity pets costing hundreds of millions of inf, inf-purchasable time limited buffs, that kind of thing.

Personally, I'd have loved such things for my stable of L50's.  Maybe City of Titans or Atlas Park Revival can eventually introduce them to their games.

[BadWolf]

The supply of influence being so insane was the core reason I was highly opposed to AE farming, because I knew that it tended to send a very disproportionate amount of influence into the market.  Power leveling from it was one thing as one could stop at 50 but all the 50s doing it see were gaining hundreds of millions of influence in far far less time than anywhere else.  And even after the bug fixes it was still producing way to much influence as 50s would still exploit it for other things and then see the market prices rising far to quickly.  Heck, I worried that some newcomers would see the market, turn heel and run before even realising they only needed a few IO's to get started.

To much influence was in the market and it screwed the game economy up.

Given the way people farmed the Peregrine Island missions, I'm not convinced that AE made things drastically worse. A little bit, certainly--it was more efficient, or people wouldn't have done it. But high-level players could certainly generate millions in very short time just by whacking level 54 Button Men.

[LaughingAlex]

Given the way people farmed the Peregrine Island missions, I'm not convinced that AE made things drastically worse. A little bit, certainly--it was more efficient, or people wouldn't have done it. But high-level players could certainly generate millions in very short time just by whacking level 54 Button Men.

I'm guessing you never saw the monkey farms, though.  Your talking like, the moment your level 50, millions of influence in moments.  It was insanity.  That gigantic influx was unprecidented.  As it was we were already seeing purple recipies for about 50-100 million influence, it then more than doubled and tripled the prices in record times.  That was perhaps the worst hyperinflation I ever saw in that game, and I played about 80% of the time it was out since inventions came, only left for about oh, one year for champions until champions began to stagnate and the problems it had began to root their ugly heads.

The other thing to remember though to is that, peregrine island farms didn't affect prices anywhere near as much because they also provided access to ALL recipes, AE farms could only provide a limited amount of tickets per character and you also could NOT get purple recipes through AE at all.  So you saw both a drop in supply of purple recipes, slight drop in oranges and a huge influx of oranges.  This caused a significant price shock.

[Kelltick]

All this talk of AE farms just further reinforces my feelings of, "I didn't miss a damn thing by not touching the farms."  I generally avoided AE like the plague, but if there were worthwhile stories to experience I ran them once per character.  Never did see the draw to AE farms...was it really that damn hard to level up/earn inf/whatever that normal gameplay didn't offer?  Goodness...

[archaist]

All this talk of AE farms just further reinforces my feelings of, "I didn't miss a damn thing by not touching the farms."  I generally avoided AE like the plague, but if there were worthwhile stories to experience I ran them once per character.  Never did see the draw to AE farms...was it really that damn hard to level up/earn inf/whatever that normal gameplay didn't offer?  Goodness...

To be honest, ya, kinda. I would rather spend less time getting that full purple build and spend more time playing it. Farming provided faster results, what can I say.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

To be honest, ya, kinda. I would rather spend less time getting that full purple build and spend more time playing it. Farming provided faster results, what can I say.

i used to occasionally run some Fire Tanker ambush farms on my Widow, which could actually be challenging sometimes, but i did it mostly to get tickets for uncommon recipes and rare salvage i wanted for various alt builds. 99%+ of the time i never bothered with farms, AE or otherwise, but there were some very entertaining story arcs and missions in AE to play as well.

[LaughingAlex]

To be honest, ya, kinda. I would rather spend less time getting that full purple build and spend more time playing it. Farming provided faster results, what can I say.

Well here's a problem, getting that influence for those purples through AE just drives the prices up and INCREASES the time for you on later purple builds and for others, defeating the whole point of "getting those purples faster".  I found it far, far faster to actually just play alignment missions on 8x solo than to do anything involving teams or AE.  I was able to make a full purple character pretty much on just purple recipe drops I traded for purple recipes I needed.

Quick Edit, may just post quoting myself if someone misses it:  OF course, the purple farmers like me did not mind those who only got them through raw influence from AE, as we just used the profits to never have to worry about influence for costumes or cheaper stuff again .

Another Edit: Changed a word.

[HEATSTROKE]

I never got the whining about the market.. there were so many ways to get what you wanted. The market was only one..

[silvers1]

I fail to see how AE drove the prices UP...   usually increasing the supply of an item drives the price down.

Without AE, the number of orange recipes on the AH would have been miniscule, since the drop rate from normal play was abysmal.
You would have had a small number of players, who had eons of time to play, running around with the best - while the vast majority would
have been playing with SOs.

As far as purple recipes, I couldn't have cared less.  Never had a build that required one.

For reducing inflation, you need more money sinks.   Maybe have an exchange where you can trade X amount of in game money for cool costume items, alternate MM/Troller skins for pets,  nice consumables, etc.  The cost per transaction on the AH could have been increased a bit.

[BadWolf]

I fail to see how AE drove the prices UP...   usually increasing the supply of an item drives the price down.

The supply of purples was not increased. And while you might not have cared about that, others did.

[Arcana]

The supply of purples was not increased. And while you might not have cared about that, others did.

Actually, that's not my recollection, at least not after merits were added.  Based on the way the market reacted when the merit conversion system was put in place, supply did increase when merits were added to the AE.  My rough calculations suggested that supply increased by a factor of three to ten.  It was difficult to narrow that range because not only were prices coming down implying a higher supply, but *demand* was also going down for the logical reason that the merit system was often handing players enhancements without needing to go to the market to get it.  The merit system both destroyed demand and added supply, and the amount of influence added to the system was insignificant by comparison.  Calculations at the time showed that the amount of influence you earned chasing enough merits to make an expensive purple was only a tenth what the purple itself cost.

One weird side effect of the merit system was that the really cheap purples went *up*.  Logic suggested why: when supply for all other purples increased to the point where they were affordable to a larger population *and* it was now possible to earn the expensive ones, more players began making purple-enhanced builds.  Because no one would burn valuable merits on purples costing only a few million, either to use or to sell, the supply of the cheap purples went *down* while demand for them went *up*, exactly the opposite of what happened to the expensive ones.  Super-cheap purples that you could get for less than 5 million at times jumped to about 10 after AE merits, and that puzzled many players who assumed prices would universally go down if anything.

This sort of positive and negative reinforcement effects are why I tended to caution players not to make simple assumptions about what would happen if a certain change was made to the markets in an attempt to make them "better."  As already explained, market caps would actually have the opposite effect their proponents asserted: supply would drop even further as players sought off-market player to player trades, which would keep the prices high but make it even harder to get via the markets themselves: a self-reinforcing market-liquidity-destroying effect.  Farming was similar: farming could both increase and decrease prices, increase and decrease supply, depending on context.  You needed to be an experienced market participant and knowledgeable about how the player community was likely engaged with the markets to really analyze the situation well.  Most of the players that thought the markets were "broken" and suggesting fixes did not have the requisite knowledge to fully understand what the side effects of their suggestions would be, because most tended to avoid participating fully with the markets in the first place.

[Codewalker]

Umm... are you thinking about something else? You couldn't buy purple recipes with reward merits, no matter how many you had.

There was also no way to convert between AE tickets and reward merits, or any way to earn merits from AE missions as far as I know. The merit system also predates AE.. they were introduced in Issue 13 and 14, respectively.

You could buy purples for 20 Hero/Villain merits, available only by doing morality missions (2 day minimum to get one), conversion from 50 reward merits (1 day cooldown), and the SSAs once they were added (1 week cooldown for each).

You could also get them for Empyrean merits by doing iTrials, which IIRC also had an internal cooldown on how often they could be earned.

What did make a huge difference on prices across the board was enhancement converters. In general rare stuff like PVP IOs were still expensive, but less so as it tended to average out with the cheaper ones that nobody wanted + the cost of converters.

[ivanhedgehog]

The supply of purples was not increased. And while you might not have cared about that, others did.

part the problem was uneven drop rates. dome people had purples and other "rare" drops falling on them regularly. others not so much. consistently. when Inventions came out, for the entire release, until the next release where they upped the drop rate, I never had a single wing recipe drop. not a single one. and I ran multiple characters to 50 in that time. people I teamed with would get a them often. while I didnt play "for the drops", I can see where this would cause people to do what they had to do to get $$$ to get what they wanted.

[PsiBug]

part the problem was uneven drop rates. dome people had purples and other "rare" drops falling on them regularly. others not so much. consistently. when Inventions came out, for the entire release, until the next release where they upped the drop rate, I never had a single wing recipe drop. not a single one. and I ran multiple characters to 50 in that time. people I teamed with would get a them often. while I didnt play "for the drops", I can see where this would cause people to do what they had to do to get $$$ to get what they wanted.

CRAP!
All of you people talking about drops, and purples, and recipes are making me long for the the game even more!!! I want to play, and badge, and team, and make SG bases, and horde salvage, and play the market and form all-rad teams and all-knockdown groups and and and all-kin groups and all kinds of other nutty groups.  I hope my computer can handle the extra attention...