Ukase

I thank you for your thoughts. I want you to know, I am pro-afk-farming. I am pro-farming. I'm also pro-play the game how you want, whatever that looks like, as long as it doesn't corral me to play the game in a fashion I would rather not. I farm. I market. I play content. I do it all, but some I do better than others. I market better than I farm. I play content better than I farm. But, I still farm, more to avoid spending influence than to acquire it. The devs, as I understand these mysterious people, have no real beef with active farmers. Even though their risk is minimal, their efforts are not scalable. They're active. So, they do whatever it is they do with their drops, which can vary from player to player. Given what I will call somewhat negative changes to AE on Brainstorm, it is clear that they would like to reduce, if not do away with afk farming. Afk farming is scalable. Because we can have 3 accounts per shard, while I maintain more than 4 accounts is too tedious for me, there may be others that don't play on a primary account and just farm. For them, they may be able to handle 6 accounts, or maybe more. That's a lot of tedium for me, but the inf would certainly pour in at quite a high rate. And it's easy, once you get the build figured out. It doesn't always go perfect for me, but it's certainly effective. But then, I've always maintained that a build specifically for AE, on top of a build for general content would be an opportunity cost. How many maps and conversions would I have to make to get the return on the investment for a specific afk farm build? And, ultimately, given that my afk-farmers already have a build, and can do the job, and they're afk, who gives a crap if it takes them 2 minutes longer than a farm-optimized build? Not me. I maintain that even if players did run a dozen accounts or so, afk, the returns they'd get are a drop in the bucket compared to the total inf that gets poured into the economy every day. Most players that are filthy rich in influence simply accumulate that influence. They aren't mucking with the AH and influencing the costs of IOs, and even if they did, the marketers would keep them in check quickly. The average marketer makes more than the best farmer, hands down - with absolutely zero risk of defeat, and they make it faster. Much, much faster if they price well. And yet, the folks against AE whine about the advantages of farming over non-AE content. It's an apples to oranges comparison we're doing, on many levels. As has been pointed out, different builds, different players, the rng, all give varying results, both in farms and outside of them. I can concede due to the density of mobs that there are more kills per unit of time on farm than outside of AE. But - have we forgotten that teams of 8 get more xp than a solo player? Have we forgotten that XP (and thus influence) is higher outside of AE than in AE? The HC devs have already throttled down the farmer's earnings. And yet, still some of you cry for "less, less, less". A very few of you will not be happy until every farmer has left. To those people, I present to you Rebirth. There are no vet levels. The slog of a grind on the incarnate path is very real for the solo player. Even doing Dark Astoria arcs will not help you much. You basically must do iTrials there. And it's quite cozy. Once you play there, you are essentially going to be teaming with the same people, day in, day out. It's like one big (but small) SG. They are all extremely competent, and they love to mock us as impatient, lazy children. They like to grind for it. And I've tried AFK farming there, and have not done so well. There is no spines/fire combo. There is rad/fire, so I've got one in the works, grinding it up old school style. But, converters are hard to come by as they're not tradeable. You can get them randomly - maybe 20 on your journey from 1-50 will drop. Or you can buy them at 5 reward merits for 1, and pay 25K for the exchange. Yes, the anti-farmer should go to Rebirth. You will like the grind, the different ATs and powersets. The only thing you won't like is at peak times, you might get 100 players. I doubt it, but you might. And because of that, most of you won't go where other like-minded players are. You'll stay here and try to drag the rest of us, kicking and screaming out of the farm and into your bloody mainstream content, with your "You'll play it my way and like it" attitude. Good luck with that.

Thing is - only a fraction of people are going to use those builds. My farmers were around before those builds existed; never saw a reason to change them because my farmers can handle life outside the farm, as they leveled up through content outside of AE. So, your numbers may be added, but to make this blanket statement that other numbers are errors and yours are accurate is ludicrous. It's fine for "in vitro", but this is "in vivo". My numbers are accurate for my farmers. Flea's are accurate for his, etc. Yours is just a single number to add to the total and divide by the total set of tests for each respective criteria. Additionally - your numbers coming from Brainstorm, not live. So they are useful, but everyone else's numbers are from where things are currently to actually determine what the advantage is, if there actually is one.

@America's AngelCan you elaborate on "bunch of inaccurate numbers"? Whose numbers are you deeming inaccurate? And how is it that you believe that your numbers are any more valid than theirs? Because it's unlikely all farm builds are the same, while the influence on a given map, if it's cleared would likely be the same total, assuming the number of mobs are the same, the time to clear that map will vary from farm character to character. So, there is no "X million inf/minute" is the answer. The answer will vary. In some cases by a lot, because in my tiny 3 asteroid map test sample, I didn't clear the maps. Your comment is throwing me off. Explain yourself, please. As for marketers, that varies with each marketer. Some folks like @Yomo will go for volume, but accept a smaller profit. Whereas me, I can't be bothered with any sale less than 3m. Some folks flip salvage. There's just too many niche players to come up with an average for a marketer, particularly when you consider a marketer will likely market with every character they play, with only a certain few set up to market certain things in certain niche areas.

Just my two inf: The reason most point to 125 is because for me, it was simply the first one I ever heard of. Others have duplicated the same map, pretty much the same mobs but with different costumes. @Bionic_Fleaalmost hit on a stroke of genius, having the mobs rez after defeat, thinking we'd get double everything, but that wasn't the case. Killed 'em again for no gain of anything. But it was still a clever idea. If it had worked, we'd be talking about Flea's asteroid map, for sure. I think if the HC devs are really against afk farming - which we know GM_Jimmy expressed concerns about way back when, then all they really need to do is come out and say so. Most of us recognize we're guests here and play at their mercy. For free. I think in this case it isn't so much the afk farming, but the impact (which I've yet to detect) of farming emps, converting emps into reward merits, and then getting whatever folks get with those merits - converters most likely, but also boosters, maybe some folks needed catalysts quickly, or perhaps it's all those emp merits that's been flooding the AH with LotG 7.5% at less than 6M for the past month or so. As has been stated by me before, I don't think the AE changes themselves will stop afk farming much. Maybe a little. For a while. Someone like me - if I'm motivated (I'm currently not), I can spend a little time with mids and boost up AoE and range defense, and possibly decrease some recharge. It's an afk farmer after all. Instead of Hasten, I can go with physical perfection and increase my regen to better handle the extra incoming damage. Absolute worst case, I could just put my heal on auto, and let the blazing aura and quills do the damage. Not like I'd be in a hurry in an afk farm. Still, pretty sure I could drop assault, and go with melee hybrid for extra defense, and go with agility over musculature. Those little changes can add up. It's not like any of my characters are very far off in the first place. Or, I can resurrect my fire/spines tank in lieu of the spines/fire brute. Either way, the folks that like farming will keep doing it, although the required adjustment is just annoying. There was no harm being done from where I sit, and I'd like to think I'm fairly in touch with the market, if not the player base. ******************************* The rest of this is more of a rant than anything else. Ya might want to skip it. ************************************* If it's to corral/encourage folks to team, rather than farm, forget about that. Too many of us just don't appreciate the personalities of too many of those who like to team. So many times I want to pull out my hair after beginning a task force and find I'm stuck with someone who is so clueless about what they are doing, they genuinely have no idea that they're clueless. That's not to say folks have to be a master of the game. But, when you do get your character to 40, you should know how to get to Kallista Wharf. There really is no excuse if you've ever taken a train before on blue side. Villains..I might cut them some slack, but they are villains and deserve some derision. And while I can see my way to understanding why a newer player wouldn't know, surely they must know that if I click on you and it shows me you're level 23, and somehow you got to be in the task force, that means you haven't trained up for 17 levels. It boggles my mind why any idiot would wait that long. 23 levels worth of slots and powers you don't have! Idiot! Now the rest of us have to carry your weak character. It just pisses me off when I run into idiots like that. And that one time I did a TF with SrMalloy's alt, and recognized the name from the forums. Someone else was leading, and it was a positron 1, I think. The league leader had a real life friend on the team, it turned out. The friend of the lead goes afk while in the map, mission completes, leaving someone impatient like me - who was patient for about 5 minutes, then I got testy. I was like, kick this douche. He's inconsiderate. I shouldn't have to wait for some idiot to go afk mid-tf for more than a couple of minutes. And then that 5 minutes turned into 10, then 20, then I think it was about 26 minutes later he came back. Turns out his mother made him do some chore. Damn kids. I get that it's not necessarily the kids idea to go afk, lest his mother beat him, but it still isn't cool. My life doesn't revolve around anyone else's. I refuse to be a slave and wait for people who don't have their act together. Dude was afk longer than it would have taken to finish the tf and finish the next one. Completely wasted my time. If I'd known how long he was going to be afk, I would have just violated my own rule and quit immediately. But, now I can bitch about it, so glad I stayed in. Now, some folks would tell me that things like that are going to occur in a pug from time to time. And I agree. But why should I or anyone else have to be at the mercy of these people? My time is just as important as anyone else's. It's damn rude to not be slotted. It's rude to go afk and not come back for 20 minutes. I get real life can happen, but most folks can control their lives to where this kind of thing wouldn't happen. They'd simply go out the mission door so as to not hold the rest of the tf up. But it probably never occurred to him. Moms can be scary when they want to be. I may come off as some grumpy, angry troll here on the forums, but in game, I go out of my way to be as courteous as I can be. I make sure I carry my weight in a team, at least to the best of my ability. Some guys are so fast getting to the boss, I admit - they're carrying me! It makes me uncomfortable, so I limit those experiences as well. I make doubly sure I have the best IOs for my build that I think I need. Other than those hard mode tfs, I rarely get defeated. Like very rarely. I'm fairly competent, if I do say so myself. I see no reason why everyone shouldn't be at least trying to make their character as good as it can be. If you lack the inf, I get it. I used to be poor. One of my first characters is on torch, a level 20-something scrapper. Still has SOs in it. I really should do something with that character..but I ain't feeling like regen/broadsword just yet. Damn, close a thread for a day, and I had all that bottled up! Sorry!

I kind of feel like I made my point. But since it's re-opened, I'm still not out my gourd. And if I were, I still have Nectanabo's gourd to replace it.

I don't have a favorite. I've probably done 5 radios since HC opened. Might do 5 more before they close. I don't think more folks will do radios; I think they'll adapt to how AE changed and keep moving forward.

Saw someone with an extra zero - 710k for the last 5 converters... But, it doesn't make sense to me that folks would dump converters ahead of page 4. Yes, I can understand converting the emps to reward merits now. But the reward merit to converter isn't going anywhere. May as well keep the reward merits, and if you have too many - convert to hero/villain merits. No cost in doing that, except time. Then convert to converters when you're running low.

I've never tasted Jeff Bridges. But, with that unsavory notion aside, no, I don't think so. The writing is on the wall, and I will take the change from no incarnate progress/vet rewards in AE to the no emp to reward merit conversion as a small victory. It should drive up converter prices, so consider that as a likely effect. But, it could be shortlived. Some folks will find other things to do. But some will either quit, or quit doing incarnate stuff.

They temporarily closed the thread. Now what do I do?

So, first asteroid - 17 minutes, map not cleared, but gonna reset anyway, just the same as I would normally. Inf earned before any sales: 4,416,186 or 259,776 per minute. Inf earned after vendoring inspirations, common salvage, common recipes, enhancements: 4,695,864 or 276,227 per minute. 2nd asteroid - 19 minutes, map not cleared, etc. Inf earned before sales: 4,417,665 or 232,509 per minute Inf earned after vendoring the loot as before: 5,015,920 or 263,996 per minute 3rd asteroid - 11 minutes, map not cleared, etc. Inf earned before sales: 4,048,297 or 368,027 per minute Inf earned after vendoring: 4,701,077 or 427,371 per minute That's all I have time for. It's important to note that when you run 125, there are obviously going to be more mobs in the map when you enter it than after 10 minutes of sitting in the center with burn on auto. This is why the inf per minute is more on the 3rd run than on the first 2, but I'm out of time for right now and have things to do! You can take the numbers and do with them what you like. But, if I don't account for the drops of uncommon and rare recipes - honestly, I wouldn't afk farm, unless it's for emp merits. It just isn't worth it to me except as a passive way to increase influence, which I no longer need. If I do take them into account, see my previous posts about how the afk-scaling comes into play. It is worth it, because it's additive. Not exponentially so, because I can't handle playing 3 farmers on each shard. (well, I think I could, but I want to actually play content. If I had that many farmers going, they'd get congested with salvage, recipes and crafted IOs. It would literally take me an hour or so to deal with all that, and there's only so much time I can actively play in a day. For those of you against farming, you keep doing you. You have your reasons for thinking the way you do. If everyone thought the way I do, the world would likely be very scary! Still, like me, I hope you all can open your minds and entertain the notion that what you think is best may be best for you, but not what's best for the game. Or it may be what's best for the game today, but not what's best for the game next month, or next year. Some decisions are like that. We can't have the benefit of hindsight usually. But those who ignore history are destined to repeat it. Perhaps we can reach some common ground - like once the average player population per shard reaches X, then AE rewards should drop to Z. Or, alternatively, treat AE like pvp zones. When you enter the map, your build stats change to make it untenable. But, until the population picks up, adjusting farm rewards seems counter-productive to me.

That is probably the case with most beginning farmers. But farmers, like many players have public and private chat channels they've joined to discuss which maps give them the best rewards, depending on what they're in pursuit of. Some farmers, like many non-farmers, can't stand the AH. They're looking for influence and vendor most drops because of their distaste for it. Other farmers like myself, are no longer worried about influence or xp, but want emp merits. Some farmers are after incarnate xp or xp in general. Some farmers avoid AE in pursuit of reward merits. Make a build specifically for a certain NPC and rerun certain story arcs through ouro when the mood strikes them.

The problem with dealing with salvage is it is seeded. It would require more clicking than I want to suffer with. Further, it disturbs our own kind, the marketer, and the players savvy enough to realize crafting is cheaper than buying the IO "now". True disruption would be to join forces and just buy everything. Leave no uncommon or rare IO in the AH. Literally buy them all. It would take a long time for one player, but for a dozen focused marketers, buying all of them and placing 10M bids for each one that subsequently is placed for sale...how long would be be able to sustain it, and what would the reaction from the player base be? I often sat upon my big stacks considering buying every pvp recipe in the AH, regardless of the cost. And over-bidding for subsequent listings to ensure I had all the new listings so that the only way to get them would be to buy the ones in place, or use merits to get them. But, inf in the hand is worth 2inf in the bush, right?

I don't create strawmen, lol. But I will badmouth them if they deserve it!

I can appreciate your opinion, but while I don't know Flea personally, I trust him. His game knowledge is top-notch, and he bends over backwards (figuratively) to help folks figure things out. Flea isn't Anti-AE, but I suspect he's more Pro-CoH, whatever that may happen to look like. Flea has farmed his own characters, and may very well do so again when it suits him. I trust he is after the information to help the powers that be make the best decision they can for the health of the game overall - whatever it looks like.

So, let me elaborate. When I suggest that prices will go higher, it's basically a hunch of mine, because I imagine that with the proposed change, there will be some players who farm specifically for emp merits won't do so anymore. Heck, they may quit entirely, I've no idea. My comment was aimed primarily at people who dismiss farming as an exploit. If it were an exploit and treated as such, there'd be a lot fewer items to buy on the AH, guaranteed. That's the point I'm trying to make, to the folks who are "Farming bad! It's cheating! It's an exploit!!" Clearly, I'm failing to make my point, because despite my best attempts to explain that our farmers are what's allowing them to get the IOs that don't drop for them at a reasonable price. Take a look at D-Syncs and Hami-Os. Look at a microfiliament. It's one of 12 Hami's available. Usually sells for 20-50 million, depending on who's selling them when they get them. And some of those D-syncs, in particular the threat/recharge/accuracy - it has sold for the inf cap! The reason the prices of those are so outrageous is because even if my brute could hang with a Dr. Aeon, the odds of getting one of those is damn slim. I'm still better off slaving away in a farm and letting one of my primary characters run Aeon while the farmer does what he does best - sit with burn on auto. But, I promise you, if AE could give d-syncs or hami's as a reward, the prices of those would be 10-20x cheaper. Farming isn't going anywhere. It won't leave AE, because the changes proposed are merely going to slow things down a bit, because our afk-farmers will have to forgo certain set bonus numbers in pursuit of other set bonus numbers to mitigate the increased damage coming their way from AoE and ranged attacks. There is a noticeable difference for my farmers sitting in the middle of the map with burn on auto on Excelsior compared to Brainstorm, the test server. So, please don't worry about "doom". That's just what I think would happen if folks like UltraAlt had their way and farming would be forbidden or discouraged to the point where a player had to choose between farming at some sub-optimal rate or teaming with some player who wants to read lore (slowly) instead of getting the job done. Or teaming with some player who hasn't bothered to slot enhancements, or even train up.

See...counting drops - the drops are where the inf is. I conducted a similar experiment with a player I'd mentioned in one of these posts some time after the no xp/2xinf change. Here are the notes: //EDIT: Maryjane no longer plays, I don't think. If she does, she stays hidden and is farming in some lower populated zone. I met her through the help channel when she was asking intelligent questions about getting the most bang for her buck. So, I supplied her, as a gift, with no strings every winter-O and ATO she could need for the build, and even gave her my build, which she eventually tweaked to suit her purposes. 4 months later, she gifted me with 500M as a thank you. Like any of us, she had her issues, but to me, that was pretty classy. //End Edit As you can see in the notes, and I think it's at the core of the HC Dev's issue is that AFK farming is scalable. Now, the crafting, converting, selling of drops, that scales too, but only to a point, because I promise you, with 4 accounts going afk, you won't be playing the game very much at all, other than to craft/convert/sell, reset. Even when I craft/convert in the missions with burn on auto, I run out of time and need to reset with one, while another farmer is idle waiting on me to finish that. And, when I change things up to try and constantly keep the farmers busy, I end up with trays full of IOs that need to be converted, and things just get congested. I'm often tempted to just sell them for 1 inf to get rid of them - but that defeats the whole purpose of farming in the first place. The purpose is to get those drops, which is where the real influence is. 2-3M per IO for the rares, usually. When you have several hundred drops over the course of a day, it adds up quite quickly. Still, the counterpoint is that these IOs posted sell! And they sell fast. Not because I'm listing them at 1 inf, I'm listing them at a price I know they'll sell at, but above my costs. Generally 2.6-2.8, depending. (I will burn a few converters to get something like a Mako into something that will sell for 1M more) If I'm not doing this crafting and converting, the supply of those IOs will drop, the prices will go up. Nobody wants that, except me, and everyone else that crafts/converts and sells. It's no skin off my teeth, but the uproar is going to be louder when that happens.

@Bionic_FleaI don't have the remotest idea. Those aforementioned characters were afk farmers, but running actively. AFK farm characters, at least the way I run them, sit in the center of the map anywhere from 10-15 minutes to an entire day, depending on what's going on in-game and in real life. I don't know how to assess their average, because the time factor is almost certainly always varied. Now, I can set each of them up in the same map with burn on auto and just check back in every minute or two to see when the map clears, but anecdotally, even leaving them overnight would generally show 1-4 mobs just standing in a group on the perimeter of the asteroid. How would you like me to proceed? Do I count drops? I got a purple on one of those three runs, lol.

Ha! you might have a point there!

If it's useful, I just did one meteor run of Brigg's 125. Took my afk farmer just a smidge less than 6 minutes to clear the map ...a lot slower than I expected. I made 5,523,525 in that time, not counting drops. So, 920,588 per minute. My next afk farmer with a slightly different build, as I got a little smarter with the incarnate stuff (musculature over agility) and different slotting in a few powers fared a bit better. It finished in a smidge over 5 minutes. (same meteor, same map, same influence earned) 1,104,705 per minute. A 3rd farmer got the same inf in about 5 and a half minutes, so my average for actively farming is about 1M per minute, give or take a bit. It may be worth noting that all three of these farmers leveled up outside of AE and have solo'd all the tfs for TFC, but probably used a summons from p2w for help with dps in some cases. So, I don't consider them actual farmers, but characters that can farm.

Not really, it's more focused at the folks that would have the farmers of AE leave AE behind because they believe they're exploiting the game. It's simply raising the point that farmers generally list the drops on the AH. Some craft/convert, some just list recipes, and of course, I guess there are some who just delete everything but the recipes they know they want or can sell instantly for more than just a pittance. So, if folks like UltraAlt get their way, and AE Farmers are corralled into other non-AE activity, or simply stop playing, the goods on AH will decrease. Prices will increase. But, I guess some folks don't care, or haven't considered the impact that a poor decision like this would have. Some folks don't realize that crafting, converting and selling IS the game for them. That's what they think is fun. Personally, I don't ever want to do a Lambda again. Nor a Synapse. I likely will, for one reason or another, but it will be something I tolerate, not something I enjoy.

Building a farmer is not extremely expensive. But, I guess that depends on what you deem expensive. If you know how, it doesn't cost you anything but time. It will cost what I consider to be "house money", but it doesn't cost my characters anything. I have this strong regret that I never opened up my own "build store". A player sends me his projected build in Mids, and says he'd pay 500M for it. I say, "Nah, I can acquire the IOs for that build for 250M." And it takes me an hour or so, done. Or, better yet, I say, "Well, let me do the shopping for you, and in an hour, I'll give you the IOs, you pay me 500M". I'd have tons more inf than I have now, I think. Depends on how many customers I'd get, I suppose. With the exception of Hamis and d-syncs, and the Overwhelming Force, every other IO can be converted into any other IO, as long as it's the same type - pvp or pve, or purple. So, every IO except very rares and pvp costs about 1M. Very Rares cost only about 12M, and PvP IOs cost about 3M. And the only reason those prices are so high is because converter use can add up when the rng doesn't work with you. There's really no such thing as a build that costs over 200M unless the person is too impatient or just doesn't care to understand a cheaper way of getting the enhancements they want, or it could be they're blissfully ignorant. I honestly can't tell you anyone I know that doesn't use IO sets for the set bonuses as soon as they're able. I don't think I've ever teamed with anyone at level 50 that didn't have a wall of set bonus info in their character info screen. I really think that if these players do exist, they are new, and haven't figured it out yet, or are very few and far between. Like maybe 5% of the community. I could certainly be wrong, though.

It is not an exploit. It working exactly how it was designed to work. Just because you think it's an exploit doesn't make it so. And even if it were an exploit, it doesn't hurt you. It doesn't hurt anyone. It is benign; harmless. I seriously want to challenge you to consider the idea that you're wrong. Just consider it. I am not saying that a farmer's life is difficult. I'm not saying that once you get a farmer going it's not fairly simple to make influence. What I am saying is that whether there's AE or not, there will be farming. It's not going away. So, if it's not going away, then what's your beef? You think it's an exploit because a farmer can earn influence faster than you can? Big deal. There are dozens of speed runners who earn influence faster than you do. There are dozens of casual players that earn rewards outside AE faster than you do. Big deal. It's not an exploit. It's by design. Why is that so hard for you to accept? Farming is what makes this community healthy. So, let me ask this: how do you slot your characters? SOs? Because if you use IOs, I'm curious how you get them. From the AH? Odds are, a farmer put it there. Are you subsidizing the farmers, and then complaining about them in the same post? Or are you legitimately spending 5870 merits for you final build? (roughly - 100 merits for purples, ATOs, Winters, PvP IOs, 50 for the lotgs, and most other IOs.) I just tallied up the reward merit cost for my farmer's build, that's how many reward merits I'd have to spend to get them, going through the merit vendor. For the sake of argument, I can imagine I'd get several drops as I played that I could use - so you're telling me you do 5000 merits of content as you level up? No? Where are you getting your IOs from? If not the AH, then your experience is perhaps similar to maybe 2-4% of the player base. Doesn't mean your wrong for doing it that way, but it does mean you're unreasonable to expect the rest of us to do content your way. Again, farming is good for the community. It's good for the game. It is not an exploit. If you don't accept that, then I have no hope for you. And, again, where do you get your IOs from? Who do you think put those in there for sale? Sure, some might come from a random casual player, but odds are, the very folks you're trying to belittle and degrade as "exploiters" are the ones that are subsidizing your fun with their efforts.

No, seriously. That's what she told me. I had some trauma as a kid, and I haven't really emotionally progressed since then. You can ask my ex-wife, lol. Additionally, while I may age in calendar years, I'm in better physical shape than when I was 30. So, I don't mind developing maturity, but I sure as shit refuse to grow old. I plan on being able to carry a bag of groceries up a flight of stairs, get up off the ground should I fall down - though I hope my balance and core strength will avoid that scenario. I also plan on being able to walk a mile in 20 minutes or less for the duration of my life.

I must have missed this in any earlier post. What would you like to test, where would you like to test it, and when would you like to test it? You can DM me. I'm busy for the next few hours, but after that, I can make some time, I think. Give me several time ranges over the week, happy to help!

I can't show you a guarantee. But, I can anecdotally promise you, that if there are outstanding bids for the item, it will sell quickly, if not instantly. But, that depends on the item being listed and how much it's listed for. If there's no demand for the item, that's what converters are for. I'm sure most of us have read posts from certain players who list everything for sale for 1 influence, and claim they get plenty of profit, all things considered. I'm sure my method of using converters gets me more profit, but I'm putting in more time in the process than these folks are. Nothing you don't already know, I'm sure.