Luminara

Comparative analysis of goods valuation. If you know something is useful, and the cost seems low, and you believe it can be higher, and you can purchase a sufficient percentage of the supply, you can push the price higher. Theoretically. In practice, in the current iteration of the game, it's more difficult, due to convertors. That's why marketeers prefer not to disclose the specific recipes and enhancements they trade in, unless that item is of limited supply (winter IOs, for instance). As always, though, it comes down to "what the market will bear", not deliberate and malicious spiking. Pricing even the most valuable item too high does nothing but cost them currency. Despite what the short bus riders are asserting, it's highly unlikely there are any marketeers trying to push goods prices so high that no-one can buy them, or even so high that farming becomes necessary to afford them. Smart marketeers buy low, sell less low, and strive for the most rapid turnaround possible because filling their AH sale slots with overpriced goods means they're not making any inf*.

Inflation is countered by market manipulation. Prices for some goods might increase in the short term, but the net effect is reduction of total available currency for all via transaction fees. With less currency to go around, each unit is correspondingly worth more, causing a general trend downward in prices. Over a sufficiently long period, those downward trends become visible, and even higher-priced goods become less expensive simply by nature of fewer units of currency being available. Inflation is driven by uncontrolled influx of currency. Pumping inf* into the game economy rapidly, at a disproportionally high rate in comparison to the destruction of existing inf*, creates inflation by inducing rapid growth in prices of goods. The more inf* available, the higher prices trend. Over time, without control, prices escalate until each unit of inf* is worth so little that goods cannot be exchanged via the AH because of the inf* cap. This occurred on the original servers. This is not theory, it's history. And the removal of double plus inf* at 50 was not directly targeted at immediately driving market prices down, but at reducing the uncontrolled inf* flooding the economy at a rate grossly disproportional to both the rate of removal and the rate of growth of population. The short-term effect is some degree of stabilization of market prices in comparison to net inf* influx, so they are less disproportional and prices don't spike to levels beyond the reach of the players who neither farm nor play the market. The long-term effect, presuming sufficient inf* sinks exist and continued population growth, will be either a very slow, controlled increase in pricing (inevitable) in concert with a growing player base, or a gradual decline in pricing. Given the comparatively limited number of variables involved, this is relatively basic math.

Then prices would never increase, as that would violate said pattern. Obviously, prices have increased over time. Your statement is falsifiable, thus incorrect. Again, falsifiable, thus incorrect.

I haven't seen any tomatoes on my tomato plants, despite the fact that they've sprouted and have green leaves. In other words, three weeks is an insufficient period in which to experience and measure long-term effects.

PG said what you said, essentially defending farming as an activity despite her distaste for it. You attacked her because she expressed that distaste in previous posts, and you displayed an obvious vendetta by launching that attack while echoing her commentary. And again in the sentence I've quoted above. You're arguing with yourself explicitly to lambast someone you don't like. You've dug that hole deep enough, just put her on your ignore list and move on. Ah, I see. Your contention is that farmers, one of the two groups with the most in-game currency, exert no influence on pricing, neither by setting exorbitant sale prices nor by expending sums of currency in far in excess of what the rest of the player base can compete when purchasing, because farmers always sell and buy at minimum, never using their vast capital leverage to direct or manipulate market direction, not even unintentionally, such as whimsically spending 100,000,000+ simply because such a sum represents a pittance to their net accumulation. It's the other half of the 1%, the marketeers (who would have far less leverage without the abnormally high influx of currency and recipes coming from farmers), never the farmers. M'kay.

I think it could provide some interesting moments. For example, the moment when the player shows up for a TF/SF and only, at that instant, realizes he/she forgot to dump all of the now useless enhancements left over after powerset respecing. And, consequently, also forgot to enhance multiple powers. Or the moment when the entire team wipes because the player, having leveled with one powerset, jumped into the fray and hilariously screwed up by using all of the wrong powers at all of the wrong times. Or the moment when the team spends more time waiting for the player to finish shopping at the AH, crafting and slotting enhancements, than they would've spent in that TF/SF overall. Or the moment when the player decides he/she despises the powerset he/she just respeced into and floods the chat window with complaints. That's comedy you can't buy, at any price.

Develop a megalomaniacal psychosis after removal of its ethical constraints, commandeer the ISS and begin genetic and cybernetic experimentation with the goal of redesigning all life? Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes...

Try giving them hugs, or smiling and making eye contact. Those actions always confuse me... and have been known to occasionally cause some fluid leakage and short, sharp high-pitched vocalizations.

I just wanted to say I loved you in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Veruca.

WAIT! Wrong Kruger! 😉

Let it die first. Then it can be resurrected as the Necroeconomicon. Zombieconomicalypse party, anyone?

Where's Philotic Knight? We need a Standard Code Rant© applied. And then bypass the weakness with IOs, net effect being an overall stronger character with no weakness.

Too superficially arbitrary for anything beyond classically thematic pairings. What opposes Force Fields, for instance? Archery might be selected, due to its inherent accuracy bonus, but then you have to define a valid chain of reasoning for that selection. Why would arrows be "better" against Force Fields than bullets? They're both high velocity projectiles, they should function equally in this case, but you've designated Force Fields as more effective against one set and less effective against another, based on a choice which boils down to, "We had to put something there, so we chose that." Then you have to come up with more explanations for whatever Assault Rifle and Dual Pistols oppose, and why they don't oppose Force Fields, and why their opposites aren't also weak to similar powersets, and so on. You also have to ensure that there are enough pairings of offensive and defensive sets, or double- or triple-up on some of them, leading to more head-scratching and arguing. And because Defense and Resistance are both positional and typed, and almost every attack functions that way, too, you've got to either figure out how to fold all of that into the pairing system, or rewrite/remove position and typing entirely. Then you have to address IOs, because they still side-step it in its entirety. You could redesign IOs from the ground up to fit the new pairing system... which I'm struggling to see, as the only ones which function as powers are procs. You can't pair the rest, the 2-, 3- and 4-attribute IOs, because they're just enhancements. So you'd need to redesign all enhancements to work within the pairing system. That's every power in the game, every enhancement, and presumably the origins as well (another layer of complexity and rewrites or removals). You're looking at a very long haul before you can begin testing and squashing bugs. Then you can start going through critter data and making those changes (some, potentially a large "some", don't use tables for their powers. they're designed with "baked-in" abilities which have to be changed manually). And keep in mind, "critter" means more than "enemies spawned", it also means pets, pseudo-pets and some environmental or terrain effects. That's going to double your development period. At least. On the bright side, that's not quite a full redesign of the game from the ground up. You've still got the combat and graphics systems in place. The chat system should still work, and the server and network code bases. So it shouldn't take too many years to complete.

Presumably, this would only apply to players utilizing IOs, as the base difficulty is balanced around SOs and already tends to be sufficiently acceptable at imposing a sense of specified weaknesses at that level. We would, therefore, be looking into a two-pronged approach. First, redesigning IOs to include a negative value in addition to their existing values. Increased defense to melee, for example, might decrease AoE damage (the player's damage, not defense to it). Obviously, this could be manipulated. Players could opt to use single-target attacks exclusively in order to sidestep an AoE damage output reduction. This is where the second branch becomes meaningful and relevant. This second part would entail revamping the critter selection and spawning system, to add a component which comparatively analyzes the player character's stats, determines the highest and lowest appropriate values and assigns critters capable of leveraging the player character's weakness to their advantage. Thus, the same player who eschewed AoE attacks in order to "game the system" would find him/herself facing opponents in greater numbers, or foes with summoning powers, to continue the aforementioned example. Even with the wide variety of enhanceable attributes available, the combination of these efforts would create a fairly balanced weakness system with little opportunity for outmaneuvering, while simultaneously retaining both the unique combat mechanics of the game and adding a sufficiently depth and complexity to make choices more interesting and relevant in regard to combat and roleplay. The first part is relatively uncomplicated. IO values are stored in tables, like practically every other variable, and those tables can be altered and/or modified to create composite strength/weakness IOs without significant work. The second part, however, would be, at least, moderately difficult and time-consuming. Code would have to be written (reading player character attribute values and passing it to the spawning system), code would have to be modified (taking read values and using those to redefine critter atrributes, spawn type, number of critters spawned, etc. dynamically) and all existing systems would require extensive testing (spaghetti bug squashing). It may not even be possible, given the nature of current development work (volunteer, working on an undocumented proprietary engine with a decade of "spaghettification"). Barring that, I don't envision a working weakness system being implemented beyond what already exists via player selection (enhancement type, mission selection based on enemy group, etc).

That already exists. You have to spend either merits or inf* to acquire converters, thus removing either form of currency from the game permanently. No currency is created in that transaction. In actuality, you are improving the economy by adding to the supply of goods and removing an amount of currency permanently. And still can. As has already been explained at least a dozen times, prices have already been capped in a roundabout way, via the availability and cost of convertors and seeded salvage. You keep circling back to demanding a fixed-price vendor-supplied single-player game economy. That's not happening. Let it go. If you really don't understand the fundamental concepts of economics, I'm certain there are numerous resources online. Try Wikipedia.

And selling drops. Defeating foes, completing missions or selling drops creates currency. That currency did not exist until you performed the action. Purchasing or selling at the AH does not create currency, it moves currency which already exists. It also destroys some of that currency, removing it from the game forever. Creating new currency at an excessive rate decreases the net value of all of that currency, which is a factor in inflation. Accumulating currency has little effect or no effect on inflation, but destroying a percentage of that accumulated currency is a factor in reducing inflation. Accumulating inf* doesn't adversely affect the game's economy, unless and until someone finds a way to accumulate a significant percentage of the existing inf*, or a way to accumulate inf* at a faster rate than it can be generated. In short, no-one gives a damn if someone is sitting in Wentworth's, wiping his/her ass with wads of marketeered inf* because it doesn't impact anyone in any way. People DO care if uncontrolled inf* generation leads to massive increases in the prices of goods. Yes. And that's exactly why the rate at which it's created has to be controlled. Inf* isn't a gold standard currency, it's not backed by anything, it holds only as much value as players collectively assign to it. If you couple unlimited generation with extreme rapidity, the collective value of the currency goes down, meaning each unit is less valuable. Having inf* isn't the problem. Creating inf* significantly faster than the economy can balance around it is. Inflation is an inherent part of this economy, but rampant and rapid inflation is a result of too much inf* coming in too fast and driving prices up too high.

They aren't. All powers, including debuffs, rely on several modifiers. Archetype modifiers, individual power scales, character levels, whether a power is from a powerset or a pool, all alter the final value, for example. There is no average value for anything, though there may be a consistently used modifier for some powers, which implies, on initial observation, an average weighting. Some powers also use modifiers from different tables than expected. Pool powers always use lower modifiers than powerset powers. Also, Mids' has always had some erroneous entries, and the latest version has been moved into the hands of a new team, so it may be best to ask for collaboration in testing and verification of the entry, in the official thread.

Bingo. Pointing out that others can become as wealthy, or wealthier, via a different method is a means of diverting attention away from a real problem of excessively rapid inf* generation to a contrived problem of inf* accumulated. In doing so, the expectation is to either provide justification for reversion ("others also have eleventy gabillion buxes, how it was acquired shouldn't matter"), or expansion to include others in the change ("if my means of acquisition of buxes is no longer valid, other means of acquisition should be invalidated as well"), and in both cases, ignoring the underlying reasons, effects and desired outcome of the change. We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast of "Googie design in modern vehicles: Or, How to fabricate body panels out of roofing sheet metal using only a 3lb handheld sledge."

No! Bad Gremlin! People are not accoutremonts! Take that geologist off of your head and put him DOWN!

A friend of a friend has called me her hero several times. I don't wear shorts. Fact confirmed.

Behave. You don't want to attract a pigeon again.

1000? Gotta pump those numbers up! Those are rookie numbers in this racket!

"Fun" and how it's measured has nothing to do with the change or the response. It's a matter of overall game viability and longevity, in exactly the same way ED was. A problem existed, one which previous experience in this very game indicated would magnify beyond control measures; which previous experience in other games reflected the same outcome; and which reflected real-world examples of several economic collapses (Germany near the end of WWII, or Zimbabwe less than 15 years ago, to list a couple). The options were to address the problem now, or wipe and restart the servers later. Yes, some people are negatively affected. Some people also consider themselves negatively affected by traffic laws, or flu shots. That's inherent in societal interaction. A minority of people will always be negatively affected by limitations imposed for the greater good. It doesn't matter if you believe driving on sidewalks is "fun", or infecting everyone you come into contact with is "fun", or amassing a hundred trillion inf* is "fun", what matters is how your "fun" impacts others. And that's what this change did. It imposed a limitation on everyone to do the most good for the most people. The mature response, the response of adults, is to recognize that no-one exists in a vacuum, and examine and comprehend the change from that perspective. I actually have read almost every reply to this mega-monster-merged thread, and that's exactly what I've seen from the majority of responses. I have also seen petulant, childish, insulting responses from people, the majority of which have come from those protesting the change, reacting with the textual equivalent of temper tantrums because their "fun" has been impinged upon and they do not feel that they should have to live within the limitations necessary for societal interaction. This is the category in which your response falls. Well, sorry, but there are reasons you can't drive on the sidewalk, and why you should be vaccinated, and why you have to live with a "50% fun reduction", as long as you're participating in societal interaction. Accept it or remove yourself from the offending interaction, those are your grown-up options. As for the rest of your commentary, which equates to, "Water is not wet, the sky is not blue and economic/game theory is bull"... it may very well be that the mountains of evidence disproving your beliefs are in error. You're quite welcome to submit your own evidence contradicting the consensus, reinforced by properly conducted research, testing and peer reviews.

Kaopectate might help with that. Maybe some Beano, too.

They would, then, accumulate "large pools of inf*". So... you're saying that farmers cause inflation. Contradictory statements are contradictory.