Yomo Kimyata

I think that this is going to be up for interpretation and there may not be *one* definition. So I'll be happy to adopt whatever you come up with! In very general terms I think of it as a subsegment of the overall market by set category, or alternately as a specific strategy. The former could be "Aegis IOs", or the latter could be "rare roulette." Maybe those are two different terms. I think it varies, but specifically to your points: 1. Sometimes. For example, I have a guy who only deals with Kinetic Combat IOs. He buys KC recipes sometimes, he buys cheap crafted KC IOs. Every once in a while, I log him in and put a lot of content into the market. I rarely cut it down to a specific IO in a set, although I do it with some procs. 2. Often. For example, I have a gal who deals with Serendipity and Gift of the Ancients as part of the overall Defense Complex. Usually she crafts recipes and converts the IOs, sometimes all the way to LotG, sometimes not. She rarely trades, unless it's bottom feeding on crafted IOs. 3. I can see it as a niche. I think of flipping, or trading as I prefer to call it, as a strategy. But focusing on purples alone makes it niche-y enough to me. 4. I still think it's a niche. 5. With very few exceptions, it's difficult to find something that is NOT profitable. Although my brief "I'm going to make Entropic Chaos a *thing*" strategy certainly didn't send any of my alts to finishing school. I'm still finding inventory left over from that. 6. There's a limited number of things to do in the AH, and it's fair to say that everything has been looked at and if it's sexy, someone has worked it, even if they are not working it now. EDIT: additional thoughts on profitability. Some of my favorite niches aren't the most profitable, but I like them because they're intellectually challenging. One in particular is like cracking petroleum. I take a really unheralded segment and convert it. One by product is a decent proc, but the rest of the set is crap so the non-procs go into the rare roulette bin and I sell the proc. Another byproduct is a good proc, so I convert the other parts of the set into the proc and sell them. And another byproduct is a good set that sells pretty well across the board. I'm not making 5mm a trade, but maybe in the 1-3mm range. My 2 inf. Happy hunting!

I'm not sure English is your first language, so I'll cut down the flowery language. Speculation has led to every single human accomplishment. You may think that it means something financial. That's not how I was using it. I'm not going to be that person who quotes a word from the dictionary; you can look it up yourself. I mentioned Kirby games since they seem to be really easy and if you want to master a game in no time at all, people say that the Kirby games are the way to go.

One in the box! (Meaning I trapped someone who was outraged at something I mentioned as a possibility that was then refuted.) I was merely speculating. What I WANT is mostly theoretical, since this isn't my ball. What the HC team wants, I presume, is long term stability of a game, and note this, that they themselves want to play long-term. Should you have to grind for six months to want to play this game at the top level? That's a question for the ages, but maybe you want to look into whether or not this game is really for you if ?10-50? hours of play is going to take you six months. After all, there are plenty of Kirby games.

This is as good a place as any to post questions/observations about fear. Most (all?) robots appear to be immune to its effects, but I don't know if that includes the to-hit debuff or just the cowering effect. In fact, I don't know if those two are separate? Does the to hit debuff only work if the cowering effect takes place?

Both valid rebuttals. To be clear, I am in no way asking for every single legacy set to be rolled out. Just those that HC has "improved" and that they presumably still have the code for. And those that, in the eyes of the HC devs, were changed in order to make them easier, more powerful, or more user friendly. In the specific example of Dark Melee, it should be pretty simple. Add a category, change the name, cut and paste. Maintenance of the set should be minimal. Now, if there were aspects of DM that were overpowered in the current game environment, that's fine and I'm happy to nerf it. But I don't think that was the case. To me it looks like a cut and dried example of power creep and boosting "underperforming" powers. I think the same was true of, say, the overhauls to the Concealment Pool. I don't envy the devs, either of HC or the original Live version. People always want new shinies that are superior to everything they have ever had before, and when they get them they want their old shinies to be improved so that they are superiorer. I love the idea of incredibly strong powers with serious drawbacks, like Stone Armor or Titan Weapons, but rather than people embracing that, they are all, "This power sucks because it has serious drawbacks. I'm going to need to have you come in on Saturday and fix that." It looks like I'm a very small minority on that.

That reminds me:

This has been my experience. Demons seem really overpowered compared to the others I’ve tried (all except robots) and adding dark to that seems almost unfair!

I can get behind this post of yours, not because I agree with it, but because it is clearly an opinion, and not one that is presented as fact. I happen to completely disagree, since I think that currently the most valuable items in the game are currently way too cheap in terms of time or inf or merits or whatever. But that's my opinion. I like the idea of progression and working towards rewards rather than having everything given to me. Some people differ, and that's ok. Aesthetically, I like the idea that someone running from 1-50 doing story arcs and TFs could "earn" enough in merits or inf or random drops to mostly build out their "ultimate" build. Call it 1,000 merits and a few hundred mm inf. I think that's casual enough, and it's not forcing people to play as Hawkeye when they want to be Thor.

Because you don't have Invoke Panic slotted properly.

When push comes to shove, unless you are selling to an end user, it's just a game of musical chairs. Demand for finished goods is what drives this engine, and when/if everyone gets what they need, then the music stops. But I don't see it stopping today. I'm sure that almost everyone would be happy if more people learned how to use the AH effectively.

I find it extremely probable that what some people consider exploits and black magic are actually a rudimentary awareness of how the AH system works. It's not rocket surgery people! If you don't understand, feel free to ask. I'd even argue that the "last 5" bug isn't an exploit, since it affects everyone equally and there is no way to directly and solely benefit from it. It does make it harder to interpret the available information, and that's a shame. False information shouldn't be distributed, but good luck getting people content by telling them over and over again that the last 5 might be a bunch of lies.

That was my feeling as well. It was a theme that really wasn't that fun to play.

I'd be happy with the changes that have been made since HC launched being legacied, and I have to assume that the code is still around. If not, the original code is still floating around out there! I also realize that certain things cannot be reintroduced, since they would affect everyone, like tanker changes and sniper changes. But I think Dark Melee would be a very easy fix!

Well done, and that helps explain prices and supply over the past few days. 33% profit is on the higher side of anecdotal evidence, but the converting and catalyzing undoubtedly helped that!

Over the last year, many sets and individual powers have gotten overhauls. Almost all of these have been buffs, although there have been some nerfs for balance reasons. Unless the code for the old sets was thrown away, might it be possible to allow access to the pre-buffed sets as a set option at character creation? My specific example: I recently rolled out a Dark Melee character after the changes to Shadow Maul, and I personally can't stand the changes. I realize I had my chance to give my input during beta testing, and that my opinion is only one of hundreds or thousands. I am definitely not asking that the changes be reverted. What I AM asking is that characters have access to certain legacy sets, in this case "Legacy Dark Melee". Since the intention to rework the set was to make it "better" and "easier", anyone who chooses to run a legacy set would be essentially choosing to play an "inferior" version, and thus would not be gaining any advantage over anyone else. In fact, they would be at a disadvantage, which is just fine with me. Happy hunting!

I think it's reasonable to speculate that AFK anything (but farming in particular) will eventually be another shoe to drop. Maybe even power levelling. Neither of those has any real significant effect on me or my game play, so I wouldn't get bent one way or the other. But could you imagine? Heads 'sploding left and right!

I was enraged by that at first, to be honest. Making a simple game even simpler and catering to the lowest common denominator. I'd be over the moon if everyone had to travel to Wentworth's again, but I don't expect it so I moved on.

Twice as many players, twice as much demand. Twice as much influence generation, twice as much goods generation. This would be great for the economy. The potential downside is that there would be twice as many people (not you!) spouting conspiracy theories.

If you are a soloer, something like this could easily bring up your nuke every spawn. I don’t really know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but my gut says it would bring up farming yields.

I am a very vocal opponent of the lvl 49 exploit, but oddly enough, I'm fine with this. I think that if you are able to disable inf and gain additional xp, then it's probably ok to disable xp and gain additional inf. I would, personally, disable it in Ouro missions though.

I'm a little surprised it's not a more valuable set. Given the 5% recharge value can stack up to 5 times and you can easily get a 6.25% recharge value stacked 5 times as well, it seems like a real winner over, say, Positron's Blast.

A simple rule of thumb is to ask yourself, "Is this an IO that I personally have a lot of demand for?" In general, confuse IOs aren't that popular compared to how often they drop or turn up in random rolls. You are definitely on the right track though. Converting uncommon IOs into rares is usually the first step. Then once you have a rare IO, as mentioned above by @Troo, you can convert by rare and end up with something that might be more marketable. From there, you may want to convert either by category, by rarity, or by set until you get where you would like to be. Let's look at an example: You start with a Perplex IO, then convert by category (Confusion) and get a Malaise. You can try to sell that. Or maybe you convert by rarity and end up with a Reactive Defenses E/R. From there, you may want to try to sell that, or convert it by category to try for a Luck of the Gambler, or convert it by set to get the +res proc in Reactive Defenses. I'd probably convert by category (Defense) until you get a Luck of the Gambler. Let's say you get a D/E/R. You can then either try and sell that, or convert it by set to get a +7.5%. There's chance in this, sure, but the RNG seems to be fair. Your true Zen as a cowman comes when these decisions (none of which are wrong, I might add) are second nature. Happy hunting!

This thread got off to a slow start, but I think eventually had some decent ideas: I think the Market forums has a lot of great ideas, but admittedly it may not completely transparent in displaying them.

I realize I'm setting myself up here, but other than the display bug, what other exploits are you referring to?

More than annoying. Truly detrimental to anyone who doesn't realize that the last 5 display may not be accurate. We've been trumpeting awareness and pushing to have that fixed since day 1!