Yomo Kimyata

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!

You'll also learn from experience. Let's say you roll a Gift of the Ancients E/R. If it's level 31, I'll probably reroll it by defense to get a LotG or a Reactive Defense. If it's level 15, I'll probably try to sell it as is or possibly roll it once by set to get a more marketable piece, since the other defense sets available at lvl 15 aren't eyepopping. And if you want to get tricky, sell your level 15 IO to another alt who buys it at lvl 25+ and roll it into a better defense piece. It's a good complex system, and I really enjoy it.

I'm probably an outlier again. I love that you have to unlock them, and I wish you had to unlock ancillary power pools as well. Every alt I have unlocks them at 35 (then goes to Vanguard and unlocks that before resuming regularly scheduled programming), even if they don't end up using them. Almost all of my builds have either anc power pools or patron pools. I don't mind the patron part, since I use my imagination a lot to justify the power and conveniently forget how I got it. Generally I am able to find one that fits best. I've never gotten a patron pet, although I'm working on a build now that requires it. As far as the powers go, they seem pretty balanced.

Thanks for the color, @Redlynne. I was afraid it was something like that. I generally don’t like to use the P2W vendor for stuff like that because it makes leveling too easy, but if that’s the only way around it I’ll have to consider it.

If you think you are burning too many converters, then you probably are. It depends on what you start with, but if you are using whatever yellow recipe drops (and yes, you are better off vendoring it and buying a lower level from the AH) then the rule of thumb I use is if I expect to get X or more from a sale, I'll sell it rather than convert it again. Generally X ranges from 1.5 to 3mm depending on how saucy I am feeling.

Hi all. I recently dipped my toe into the PB and WS waters. I generally like to level up my alts rather than PL them, and since I'm relatively unfamiliar with the play of HEATs I wanted to experience that first hand. Normally with a new blue alt, I put the difficulty on +1/x3 at start and adjust the x downward if needed. My question is: how do you deal with quantums before level 7? There seems to be at least one in every mission, and it is a death sentence each time. Even if you see it first, you get maybe two hits in and then you are bouncing in KD animation until you go to the hospital. At level 7, I can see putting a KB proc in one of your powers, but before that, is it just carrying a break free with you for every mission? Or am I missing something really simple and obvious. I don't mind eating floor at all, but the inevitability of it is starting to grate on me. Thanks for your attention!

You gave yourself two solutions! 1. Don’t run a full team. Try four. Try two! 2. Go for the challenging enemies. Play Red. Play Gold!

I'd like to thank my family, my friends, and everyone else who strikes fear in me for the inspiration. I went back and took mine out for a spin to reacquaint myself. Currently lvl 45 redside, running at +3/x5, bosses, EBs. As far as gameplay, it feels like it mostly plays like a ST scrapper. I don't have Water Spout or Fear Incarnate, but I do use all the other fear powers. Touch of Fear is a debuffer, Invoke Panic is crowd control, Intimidate is used mostly as a Taunt substitute. As far as the rest of the build goes, I definitely also took some different directions from my initial build. That's partly because I play it as a levelling build for the most part. I moved Tough and Weave way up in the rotation. I also slipped a KB IO in there somewhere, since I think I forgot one in my build. Based on my experience with Dark Armor, I think I over estimated my need for endurance. In actual play, I went Weapon Mastery for Physical Perfection (just a Perf Shifter proc) and added the Targeting Drone. Playing redside, I found myself debuffed a lot more than I expected, so wanted to up that to hit (and get a little to hit debuff res). I had completely forgotten what a mess it is getting ambushed by packs of +4 Arachnoid bosses, who debuff like crazy! I think I'll also have to put Hasten in there somewhere and get rid of Shadow Maul, which is now a completely useless power in my eyes. Thanks for putting it back on my radar screen! I'll get it to 50 sometime this summer and probably experiment with some incarnate slotting. I'll PM you, but I think I'm happy enough with the prize of having won this frightful contest -- no other rewards necessary!

I haven't done this in a while. Just bought 25 Villain Packs, got 21 imbuements and double insps, and 32 ATOs. Everything else is added to my piles of "other" in email, so there is definitely value there but I don't track merits and converters and catalysts, et al. (Anyone want 260 Build Snow Beasts? 😀) If the ATOs are trading 8-10mm, then that doesn't seem like enough profit to justify the effort, but let's see! EDIT: ok, ten hours later I’m on target for about 40% ROI. My strategy was to reroll ATOs to strong selling ones. Defender ATOs went like hot cakes at around 20mm a piece and I had a bunch of them. Curious to me since they were listed a LOT lower than that. Got lucky I guess!