Yomo Kimyata

Thank you for that:

Disbalanced.

A deity at that!

Well, if this were a much bigger universe with many more active players (and more active traders), I would personally want a volume indicator, as well as a bid-offer spread. But I doubt the former is even possible based on my understanding of the programming, and the latter would obviate the purpose of the blind bidding system. So I'm pretty content as things are. It takes a little thought to figure out what the bids and offers really look like, and I'm totally fine with a little thought being rewarded.

I read that as "gnushy", which totally should be a word. I have no idea what it would mean, but I like the way it looks and sounds.

Well, to be honest, I don't see a lot of value added by an index. I get that you want an overall "health of the economy" gauge, but there are issues with a price index with a blind auction system. Namely, what happens when you take the snapshot of rare salvage and you have 4 prints of 406,067 and one print of 10,000,000? Yes, the 10mm print is probably a fat finger trade, or someone wanting to give away funds, but it certainly doesn't represent the trading value of an alien blood sample. Similarly, I would read the 406,067 prints as the highest outstanding bid, meaning that it is the low end. And without big macro events (Winter Event, new issue released) the only fundamental changes would be from an ebb or flow of player activity or from an outlier player or two doing arbitrary things in the market. I would hate for someone to say "OMG, Trap of the Hunter procs are worth 9mm now!!!" just because I decided to clear out a backlog of inventory for my own inscrutable reasons. But if someone wants to do this, have at it! I'd be happy to opine on items for inclusion.

@DougGraves, you should do an analysis like this for the Family. There is a HUGE discrepancy between the two boss types. Consiglieres have gravity powers which are really effective with knockback and immobilize if you don't have enough mez protection. They can be a real pain in the butt. And then there are the sad-sack Underbosses, with no gravity powers at all. They're never gonna knock you up. They're never gonna hold you down. They're never gonna propel a forklit and invert you.

Some numbers: 2bn -- approximately the total inf amount of bids still outstanding 500 -- the total number of possible places I hid it 29.8% -- the probability that there were two or more bids on the same item 76 -- the number of TOs my distracting bids snared at the price of 1 inf 15 -- just a number, I think 8 -- the number of days it took me to set up this tournament a lot less than 8 -- the number of days it took me to accumulate 5.55bn inf

I'm a little ashamed to admit I just sold a Miracle proc for 10mm and I was offended because the glitched display *clearly* has the lowest trade occurring over 13mm.

Remember: there are two basic ways to accumulate inf in this game. 1. Inflationary methods. Killing mobs, finishing missions, selling items to *vendors*. These all generate inf from nothing, and increases the pool of inf in the system. Basically, these are all fundamental parts of playing the game. Farming as we know it is merely an extension of this, playing the game in a way to maximize creating inf in as fast and as easy a method as possible. If only inf was created and nothing was sold on the AH, then there would be an increasing amount of inf and a limited amount of goods. We would expect prices on goods to increase, which would help some and hurt others. Generally, inflation is not considered to be a good thing and I'll let you do your own research on that or take a Macro 101 class. 2. Deflationary methods. Getting drops/merits/whatever, maybe transforming them, and selling them on the AH. Everything you sell is (in theory) bought by another player. No one is creating inf -- you are merely moving it around from one person to another. Since every transaction on the AH erases 10% of the value of the transaction in inf terms, inf gets deleted from the system, and it is deflationary. If you could only get inf from trades on the AH, there would be a shrinking amount of inf to be spent on goods. Since inf would be the rare commodity, we would expect prices to decrease as each inf gets increasing buying power. Deflation is also not considered to be a good thing, although generally preferred to inflation. In fact, running missions or farming, involves both of these methods. You get inf and some of your drops (common IO recipes, maybe salvage) you vendor. That's inflationary. You get recipes, craft them (deflationary, since crafting fees are a sink), sell them and 10% of the price gets deleted. That's deflationary. So, is farming/running missions quickly and optimally against easy enemies good or bad for the economy? In theory, there is a multiplier of 10x, where an influx of 10mm in the system would be offset by aggregate trading of 100mm worth of goods. (You buy something on the AH for 10mm, the recipient buys something worth 9mm, they spend 8.1mm on something else, etc.). So if running farming missions produce 10mm of raw inf, and provides 100mm worth of goods, it should be neutral. I believe that the devs were worried enough about that multiplier to remove some farming exploits and slow down the process some. Now, in reality that multiplier is probably a lot less than 10x for a number of reasons. A big one I can think of is that I am out there taking away all your inf and hoarding it, essentially taking it out of circulation. That's partly because I'm greedy; partly to help the economy; partly because there isn't anything for me to spend it on that would not disrupt the system and thereby negatively affect someone else's playing experience. But what I have witnessed is more of a glut of supply -- probably not because there is too much inf and not enough goods being created, but because there are flat out not as many players making as many alts as they used to. tl;dr I'm fine with farmers at this point in time. Also, they are not within an order of magnitude of earning potential in terms of inf accumulated per active minute spent as marketing.

Honestly, they are not as bad as Antimatter’s robots. At least you generally get Vahz at low levels. But at high levels you get vast numbers of Scrub Bots, debuffing your defense with ranged energy attacks when your defenses are capped to melee and smashing. And no, I don’t want no Scrubs. A Scrub is a bot that can’t get no love from me.

Something I tend to forget -- don't choose double xp until you have enough inf to pay listing fees. You used to be able to sell the TOs you got in Outbreak/Breakout to the vendors, but they replaced TOs with that other thing that you can only delete, not sell. Even one defeat at regular XP will give you enough inf to list your inspirations at the minimum. Then, of course, Goldside tutorial gives you 50 inf for some reason, so you can ignore my advice there. Keep up the good work!

As an enemy group, Vahz need more cowbell.

They did indeed merge the AH, a long time ago! It's one AH across red, blue, and gold side, across every server.

I should have read the Wiki and made it up to 21: This table shows the exact chances that dropped Enhancements will be of a certain type, according to the patch notes for Issue 9. This is not the chance of getting an Enhancement as a reward for defeating an enemy. Character Level Training Dual-Origin Single-Origin 1-12 100% 13-21 50% 50% 22-31 50% 50% 32-40 25% 75% 41-50 100% But I didn't. Interestingly enough, there were plenty of TOs in the AH north of 21, mostly at 50. I'm guessing that was due to people exempting down, possibly from other sources. But I decided to focus on the "droppable" range.

Yes, that seemed like a good place to cap it.

tl;dr: I've hidden over 5 1/2 bn of inf on bids on Training Origin enhancements in the Auction House. Come and get them! EDIT (all gone!) EDIT (five days in) Current status available outstanding (0mm): 0 / 50 -- 1mm bids 0 / 50 -- 10mm bids 0 / 50 -- 100mm bids So, I had a hankering for TOs, since they don't drop anymore and I was nostalgic. So I bought all of them available in the AH. But that wasn't enough, not by a long shot! I have put a total of 150 bids on TOs in the marketplace. They were allocated randomly across the 25 available types of TOs (as far as I know Training: Activation Acceleration never existed, which is just too darn bad) and from levels 1-20. Fifty bids each of 1mm, 10mm, and 100mm. Oh, and I also put in a random number of lower bids on each one of these as well in order to keep folks from searching for only those with bids outstanding. If you have any TOs lying around on alts, or in your base, or *if you can come up with them any other way*, then try your luck! [RETRACTED: TAKE ALL YOU WANT!] And here's the big ask: if you do take down one of the 100mm bids, please hold off on fishing for any more for a day. I realize that this is the equivalent of putting a big old basket of candy on your doorstep on Halloween with a note that says "Take One!" but I think it would be cool if many people got to roll the dice here rather than one determined person snapping up all the inf. Happy hunting!

Yes.

Doesn't matter where you came from. You're ours now! welcome!

Or, OR you could just carry a full tray of large purple inspirations and reload after each mission. Sorry, didn't mean to hurt your feelings PK!

This isn't that far from the truth. I know how much I have in bids on impossible items. I know how many 999,999,999 emails I have (which I transfer to bids on impossible items monthly). For the rest, I know how many alts I have and I estimate based on a historic average inf per alt. It's a lot.

I can know how much I have, or I can know where I have it hidden, but I cannot know both. Call it Yomo's Uncertainty Principle.

No one expects Yomo!

I was born a Combat Jumper and I will die a Combat Jumper.

What is true is that playing the game organically (just playing for playing's sake, not making any plans on how to make inf or get items) doesn't really result in a cash flow positive experience until you are in your upper 20s or low 30s. So if you are playing for the first time, I can see how it may seem daunting to keep your enhancements above red level. But fear not, for many reasons! 1. There *is* a breakeven point, where you can sell everything that drops to vendors and buy SOs from vendors and be ahead of the game. So if you haven't gotten there yet, it's coming. 2. Honestly, up to that point you can probably play completely unenhanced. It's a forgiving game. But you can also only slot things that drop, or pick and choose what to spend your limited resources on. See @Ukase's thread on the drop challenge. 3. Once/if you use the AH to sell your items, or even better to use it as a source of income, you'll never want for anything. There are tons of useful suggestions above on how to accumulate inf using that system, if you so choose. 4. People are generous, because many of us have more inf than we know what to do with. All you need to do is ask. See the link in my signature.