Yomo Kimyata

I can see them adding a bidding warning like there is for your first sale over a certain amount, but people would disable it after the first time it popped up. I cannot support them putting any time into adding a warning label to save yourself from your own human error.

I think "foolhardy" is a bit strong. If I had one character with only 100 merits, I personally would use those merits to buy 300 converters. I use a conservative rule of thumb that I reserve 10 converters to add average value of about 3mm. Let's call 300 converters adding value of 100mm inf. Conservatively. Usually it's a lot more. If I had two characters with only 100 merits each and a lot less time, one of them might, in theory, exchange those merits for converters and sell them for 77,777 inf each, or 70k after taxes. That would net me 21mm, and none of that pesky converting and selling and fun stuff. (Of course, I'd probably use them to sell unslotters at this point.) If I had a hundred characters with 100 merits each, I could easily see myself just buying something with merits just to avoid spending time. and effort. Like if there was one ATO I specifically wanted and there were none for sale or even if I didn't feel like bid creeping. Is it optimal behavior to do that when, in less than 24 hours, you can almost certainly buy it for 10mm or less? Nope. In fact, I personally would probably rather buy any other ATO in the AT and convert until I got want I wanted. But it's still legitimate behavior. It's all a trade-off between inf and time/knowledge/comfort level. And in this game where inf and merits flow like moisture from a water/storm corruptor, it's all good.

We're making progress, but I'm still not giving it away fast enough. For this weekend, I'm upping the stakes to 25mm giveaways! Any email dated July 4 or 5 will do, and then come Monday we'll revert to 20mm.

Thank goodness the servers are in Canada and Germany!

I sell them. I usually work in blocks, so I'd rather sell fifty regular ATOs quickly than five catalyzed ones slowly.

Do it! On paper, WM is slightly better, which is why most people run with it instead. One of my 50s is an Axe/Shield brute who is wonderful, and probably would have played slightly better as a scrapper.

Converters have been pretty consistent the past two weeks between 70k and 80k. I had a few listed just over 80 that took about ten days to sell. I’ve been able to buy occasionally below 70, but it also takes longer than I’d like.

By the way, what’s with people starting new account names?

I'm ok with Earth for Earthlings as long as I don't think about it too much.

Yeah, I'm down with that. Although it's more sociology than politics, IMO.

Since COVID hit, I've been playing a lot of Catan and Civ V online with old friends. I use "old" to mean both "long-time" and "they're really freaking old."

I've reported this before, and was told it's "working as intended". If one character has a bid and an offer on the same item at the same amount, it effectively "locks" the market. Since you were the first one to put a bid in, anyone else who bids the same amount is behind you in the queue. And since you can't buy from yourself, the system requires someone else to bid *more* than the price you have locked. It gets problematic when you bid *higher* than the level at which you are offering. This is called an inverted market. In your second example, if Character A offered at 1 inf, but had a bid at 10 inf, that stun IO isn't going anywhere until: 1. you buy the IO from someone else at 10, which "unlocks" the market; or 2. someone else bids 11 or more. This is ripe for abuse but devs have told me, "working as intended." As long as supply is effectively unlimited via converters, fungibility, etc., this isn't a huge problem except for items that cannot easily be generated from other items, like Hammi-Os.

Oh, that is certainly I. Toot freaking toot!

Is it I? I'm probably the most likely culprit, but artificially setting prices really isn't in my wheelhouse. I was smart enough early on in HC to realize that you cannot keep supply from entering the market thanks to seeding, converters, etc., and it's way too expensive to buy everyone else's supply and resell or delete it.

I'd like to thank @MunkiLordfor always letting me know when the display bug on Miracle procs in the Auction House is active. Who's next?

To your last question, absolutely not. Any set of bids and offers is going to look like this 1111______0000 where 1s are buy orders and 0s are sell orders. What you need to do is figure out a spot in the middle. Concrete example: lvl 15 res IOs get you Steadfast Protection/Impervious Skin/Reactive Armor/Impervium Armor. They all sell pretty well, but Steadfast Protection is the best, and specifically the Res/Def is the best. So I buy lots of lvl 15 reactive armor and impervium armor recipes. I craft them and convert them by res dam. If I get a steadfast protection, I usually convert by set to get the res/def. If I get an impervious skin, the proc sells well, but the rest are meh and mostly valuable because you can convert them to steadfast protection at level 10, where there are only two res dam sets. So when I build up 50-100 IOs of lvl 15 impervious skin IOs, I list them at just over 2mm. Then I log onto another alt and bid on level 10 impervious skins at the exact level I was offering. Since that's in the middle of the 1111_x__0000 I'm going to buy them. Then, since there are only two res dam sets at level 10, I convert by category once to get a steadfast protection and then I'll generally convert by set to get the res/def.

Yeah, I can get down with that.

Personally, I’d rather see nerfs than boosts.

Oh. Sounds like a limited problem then, and one that seems to be working as intended. I'm sorry it held up your team play!

I've never gotten a VEAT that high, and if it stops you in the middle of a mission, then that's bad marketing. Otherwise, I guess that's the price of picking that AT?

Wait, it halts you in the middle of a mission? In the middle of combat? That's bad programming.

I’m not a farmer nor do I play one on tv. I ask again, what is the problem you are trying to solve?

I've played gold side a number of times, always solo. For me, the problem is not that it's harder than blue side (it is, a lot harder). It's that I'm not familiar with it and getting from point A to point B for a mission takes too much time. If I were familiar with the Underground, I'd probably shave a minute or two of transit time, but it's just not worth it to me.

What exactly is the problem we are trying to solve here? As long as it’s not “they’re not playing the right way” I’d love to hear it. my opinion on rewards, there are already too many. So I sadly need to give you my feedback of “no, too generous” on 1-4. I have no problem with increasing the rate of rare recipes. Unless you meant very rare recipes, which would earn the coveted “Hell no” response.

I'd like to come back to the word "Meta" in the title. I know there was another thread about what that means. I became familiar with it in terms of the game Hearthstone, where there were periodic sweeping updates that caused change and some things would become more powerful and some less. In CoH, I think of a change in the Meta as introducing a new power set, or a new IO set. This is a very slow game to evolve -- understandably so both in terms of human resources to code things and in terms of setting balances. Normally, I'd be wary of introducing changes because "this is how we play now" because, well, maybe how we play will change and adapt as time goes by. However, this is a very static game, so in my opinion changes in the meta from here on out need to mostly come from either new players trying different things or old players trying different things. Personally, I would LOVE periodic massive changes, but I also get that most people would probably hate it, because change is hard!