Gremlin

There is a common misconception that prices are somehow "set" by marketers. Marketers don't set prices, they _follow_ them. They look to see what sells for high prices and then make more of it to sell. If they try to sell at a price that's too high then they won't sell anything. The side effect of this is that whatever the marketer buys goes up in price a little and whatever they sell comes _down_ a little. Marketers are careful not to move prices much because it reduces the profit margin. In fact, nobody "sets" prices at all. The "price" for an enhancement is simply short hand for "what people are currently paying". People in a hurry bid high to a get an enhancement now. If lots of people do that then the average price goes up. This used to happen big time on double XP weekends. When things calm down a little the price will drift back down again.

I was just joking. I wasn't serious about messing things about just for the heck of it. As you point out, @macskull, it'd be hard to do anything that'd make any real difference. I don't think hoarding is a problem. The only thing I can think of that could be a problem is inflation. It seems like the devs are keeping on eye on it so I don't expect any serious problems.

Ooh! That'd be fun.

Sellers cannot control the price of a niche in CoH because they cannot control the supply. If you try to force the price up, all that happens is that you end up holding a load of stock that you cannot sell because other players get drops that they list for less. Try it some time and you'll see what I mean. If you've got a lot of inf you _can_ mess with prices for a short while. What you can't do is profit from it. The reason is that the only behaviour you can force on other players is to pay more than everyone else and to sell for less than everyone else. If you try it, you'll rapidly run out of inf and the market will quickly return to normal.

Nah! Small fry. We need to aim bigger. I suggest that the devs should pick one of the following in each release: remove all enhancement with an S in the name make the AH fee 50% merge the uncommon salvage and LotG proc markets reduce the drop rate of all melee sets to 10% of the current rate get all players to understand basic economics I think most of them are doable. 🙂

A Darwin Award. Honorary Darwin Awards are mighty impressive though. Shoot for one of them. (Pun intended.)

I literally hadn't noticed the heart icon until I read this thread. It would seem that I'm not terribly observant. 🙂

I do. I'm all in favour of nerfs that make the game better. Some of them affect me and some don't. This dev team have earned my trust but making the game better and better. If I get swiped by the nerf bat a little I'm prepared to accept it's in a good cause.

Have you tried it to see how much difference it makes? Someone in chat was saying that it only reduced their inf by about 25%.

I definitely saw low ball bids on live as well. I've come to the conclusion that the best way to think about the market is "how well am I doing on average". If you're listing very low in order to sell very fast then you're going to give someone a bargain from time to time. Does this really matter to you? If it does then list at a higher price. FWIW if you just want to sell something by tomorrow then it doesn't really matter if you list for 1 inf or 1/2 the going rate. It'll still sell.

I'd love to know what the inf flows are. i.e. how much inf is added to the game in drops, how much is removed by market fees, how much is removed by Winter Packs etc.

I'm guessing here but there are probably two reasons: to eliminate an exploit to prevent inflation from taking hold If the devs are able to see how much inf is entering the economy and how much is leaving then they can tell whether we're at risk of inflation. If I was them, I'd be watching this closely to ensure that market prices continue to be pretty stable.

This made me laugh so hard that I actually cried. Thanks for that.

I'm not aware of any hard data on inf flows in and out of the game so I can only speculate. We're all aware that inflation is a recurring problem in MMOs and the devs are too. Given the care they seem to take over everything else I'm going to guess that they've looked at some data and seen signs that inflation is happening. Reducing the inf generated by farming seems like a sound idea; particularly as they're just reducing the difference between playing normal content repeatedly and playing specialised farming maps. It's seems likely to me that this change will have little visible impact and that's probably the whole point. The devil will be in the detail. We might see some localised changes such as more trading and less farming or the price of red recipes rising. Who knows? In the mean time, it's kind of fun watching people throwing their toys out of the pram. 🙂

That's a mightily impressive patch for a volunteer effort. Asymmetric costumes? Holy cow Batman! You're clearly putting a lot of effort into the game and I really appreciate it. Thanks.

At least he's not hitting it with his night stick!

I love CoH but I'm not interested in comics and I don't find the concept of superheroes very interesting. Not surprisingly my toons aren't inspired by super heroes. On the other hand, I read lots of Sci Fi and Fantasy but none of my toons come from there either. I guess it never occurs to me to do that. Mind you, the back stories etc for my toons rarely end up the way I expect. Finding out who they are is part of the fun.

... so you can see the names and the effects of powers they cast on themselves. Likewise you can see what they're doing to you so you can sort of reconstruct their power list. It's all very tedious though. It would be nice to just see their builds.

I've never developed a taste for rare roulette. I suspect we all use slightly different methods depending on what we enjoy and what fits in best with everything else we do.

I was making that kind of money for a short while. I spent an hour or two a day buying unpopular recipes and turning them into popular enhancements. I made 100% profit on every item and turned over at least 1/2 my stock every 24 hours. Eventually I ended up with an enhancement factory! I packed it in because I had more inf than I needed and I didn't want to spend that much time trading. "Stepping on a bunch of little guys" wasn't involved. The main consequence of what I did was that impatient people could sell unwanted stuff right now at a slightly higher price and buy the things they wanted right now at a slightly lower price. The little guy can always make more inf per trade than the marketeer. For example, if he's trying to buy the same thing as me, he can see how much I'm bidding because the price is in the last 5. So he just bids 1 inf more and bags the next recipe before me. I'm always bidding as low as possible so the little guy is guaranteed to get a good price. Likewise with selling. I'm selling around the upper-mid price because I need to sell a lot in a reasonable time. The little guy can wait longer and sell for more. If he's buying he can bid less than I sell at and get a bargain. Give it a go some time and you'll see what I mean.

First the obvious: Thanks to everyone who helps to run the game. I'm sure there's a huge amount of effort involved and I really appreciate it. But... I've seen fan and volunteer efforts before. The goodwill and effort has a familiar feel. I've _never_ seen one this professional before. There have been a couple of server problems since I started playing and each time an announcement appeared within a few minutes to explain what was going on. There are very few services that I actually pay for that are this slick let alone volunteer efforts. Thanks.

Doors. I really hate doors. If the mission is in a building with double doors then only one side will let you in. If you walk up to a door until the cursor turns into a hand then you're still too far away to open it. Gaaaaah! You can't use a door if a team mate has just gone through. I spend a lot of time failing to open doors in this game. 🙂

Congratulations on your 50! If you're going for sets in a big way then you need to be aware of "The Law of Fives". (https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Set_Bonuses) It means that you can only benefit from a particular set bonus 5 times. A set bonus is something like "+1.5% Max Health". If you've got six sets giving you this bonus then one is ignored. One thing you can do at 50 is to hunt down the accolades. A few give you bonuses such as +5% HP. See https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hero_Accolade_Powers. If you've spent a lot of time in missions and task forces then getting the exploration badges will take you on a grand tour of the city. You also get 5 merits per zone.

I have a fire/fire brute because you can never have too much fire! He's tough enough to have tanked most of the game at +2/8 in a duo with a Corruptor. He's built for general play not farming. It comes out at 38% melee defense + capped smashing, lethal and fire resistance. The corr soft caps his defense and energy resistance which is nice. On his own, he's vulnerable to large groups of Arachnos because they're evil energy draining, def debuffing ******s. He incinerates pretty much anything else. Fire for the win. 🙂

I've seen warnings about this problem in the market forums so I guess it's a known issue. I hope you didn't lose too much.