QuiJon

I agree with almost everything you say here, and is the very reason why I was so critical of the way this "change" was implemented. It is all choice, and yes it can be different on different servers. However this game is not run for profit anymore. And something like ATOs which were essentially items behind a real money pay all on live need to have a means to be in the game, so they put them as a pack in the AH. I am fine with that. However my problem is that this change was done so in the dark and called an Exploit to justify changing it with little to no discussion. Once the offense of calling me an "exploiter" wears off, I am left with thinking that nothing that we did in our farms was to use anything but tools that had been in the game since the development of Day jobs and the AE itself, and used them as the original developers created them. This was not an exploit. This was a change based on a small group of people (the devs) philosophical beliefs in how the game should be played to solve a perceived problem. Well like I have said, I get plugging exploits, and that excuse doesn't even really hold up. They called using the "enterbasefrompasscode" and exploit also because it was a admin command and said they would fix it, not only have they not fixed it MONTHS later, but they openly discussed it on the forums while it was in use and even had a thread on possible ways to patch it but address players desire for a better alternative that lead to its use to begin with. Yet this change "exploit we don't talk about it until it is patched". These servers are not for profit. Which means options keep people player not time sinks. We support the continued operation of these servers. And as such when functionality is going to be changed I think it deserves a discussion. And if we had that discussion prior to the changes perhaps we would have seen that the majority of the players would have wanted something else. Maybe we could have hit a compromise where we get rid of patrol xp for everyone, leave the exemplar option only set to maybe 50 percent extra influence and bump up drop rates and lower merit costs and boost real world influence earning to equalize all the ways people might choose to play so one is not night and day better then another. But we don't know what might have been, because we were called exploiters and a change was stealthed into the game. Granted I don't like the change anyway, but I am honestly more upset at the lack of discussion prior to a blanket change. We have seen months of discussions on these boards when it comes to things like tanker changes, new power sets, dominator changes etc. Why suddenly was this not worthy of the same attention and community input?

They would already have to if they want to complete incarnate tiers. Also not everyone feels as you do. I mostly PL a toon 80percent or so of the way to 50. Then I play and do ITFs and such until I get the feel for it. And at 50 if I like it, then I want to deck it out with IOs, if I don't care for it, it is not worth building out for me. Ifi want to build it out it is because I plan on keep playing it post level 50. My 11-12 of like 30 50s that I have built out are all upward of vet level 40 because I keep playing them. Not everyone feels the same or wants to play just like you do. So long as someones play doesn't prevent your own, it should not matter how they choose to do things. Essentially this change addresses the problem of influence inequity by changing the rules against a player base instead of changing them in favor to equalize the hardship to the other type of player that had it the worst. Create benefits that increase drops and influence gain for playing "the game" that don't benefit marketeers or farmers and you have fixed the same problem without changing the game for a third of your players.

Cutting off the extra influe I would not disagree with this. However changing the mode by which farmers make money to control the playing experience of those that play other ways is unfair to the farmers. First of all, those that play the "game" earn other rewards also. They earn merits off missions and TFs. 100 merits easily makes that player 27+million influence if they buy converters and sell them. Or can give them even more if they use those converters to make much of what they need of the more expensive IOs rather then turning to the AH to begin with. But even so, it would seem to me that costs would be controlled if rather then hurting influence creation they simply lowered the "game" cost of certain items. Make PVP and Purples drop more frequently. Maybe lower the super pack prices about 25 percent, lower the merit purchase prices make like Orange recipes cost 30 merits, PVP 40, and purples, ATOs, and Winters 50. And heck maybe even increase the bonus influence you earn from a TF or mission completion. The over all theme has seemed to be that this was needed to control price creeping. However we know it wont do that. It really doesn't matter how many billions I have sitting around if it means I can price another player off the AH, and we already know many players that farm or market can do that all day everyday. However if prices stayed low or went down because the value of the items was diminished by way of lowering their costs by other means of obtaining them then from farming or AH, then their perceived value on the AH also goes down. 2 Tfs earning a purple drop is not a bad deal or rate of earning a drop. Maybe 3 ATOs from those 2 TFs...… Why spend 25 million for a winter or purple drop if you can just go to a hami raid and earn one or two for an hour of work? That is how you lower the prices and control inflation. You lower the perceived value.

If the entire point is to curb inflation how is adding a pack that already would sell for 300 percent more then the most expensive pack already that also offers drops that are about currently equally valued on the AH be a fair plan? It is already bull crap that they cost 100 merits, when if you figure that to buy the merits is like 1 million per merit means the vendors value them at 100million a piece. The entire point is to make the markets work for everyone keeping prices at 20+ million for ANYTHING is basically still saying to the common game player they are priced out of the market. Especially now if they can not even exempt and run TFs for more influence then they could have before.

Or why not just address it in drop rates. I am fine with winter, ATO packes etc at there current costs. But perhaps we should see the PVP and Purple sets come down a bit. A purple that can drop shouldn't be as rare to cost the same as an winter or more sometimes then an ATO. Simply put have them drop more often in game play and then lower the cost of those on the merit vendors. Maybe 50 merits for PVP and 75 for purples or something like that. Then the top 100 merits remains winter IOs and ATOs. I don't know the current drop rates of purples but frankly to me it could be tripled and be just about more right then it is now. I think in the last year I have gotten maybe onlyl 4 purples during TFs or game play, so if I want them I have had to either farm or buy them with merits or on the market. This feeds the inflation of the items and the need to farm to either get them as drops or earn the money to buy them at 20m a pop.

Look I get that the devs put in volunteer time doing this and keeping the game servers running. But this is also not a profit engine anymore. Its purely for fun. And once a month those devs open donations and ask us to contribute to keeping these servers up and running. I don't believe that makes this my server, or that things should be a democracy. However that doesn't mean that changes to existing game mechanics should be alters at whim of a small group of people with absolutely no input and no discussion. This thread should have been going for the last month only having started with the devs stating a problem they are seeing of inflation, what they think is responsible and how they might want to change it or ALL the options they could do to change it and this should have been a discussion to figure out what most people would have liked. I mean if patrol XP was the issue that bumped XP to high, perhaps killing patrol xp would have been a better solution to try. We don't know. And we wont because they made this change, and lets face it this change will nto solve the problem. We know that from the last 15 years this game ran they never found a way to not have farming be the most productive use of time. But I don't appreciate stealthing in a nerf to a mechanic that like it or nor was being used as intended, and then calling all of us using it exploiters so they could change it with out discussion. You example compared to this is more like if I came into you house and lit up a menthol, and you told me no we don't allow menthols just the type of smokes that we like are allowed and we think menthols stink.

So what it sounds to me is that we should charge a higher AH fee. I mean if the amount of currency in the AH is the problem then perhaps we should create an elevating system where you are charged from 10 percent like now and the more expensive of an item you sell it cranks up to like 75 percent. See the problem that no one is really touching on here is that marketers are also creating currency in the game in the way of products that the game didn't "create" randomly. If I can buy a 1k recipe and for 600k transform it into a 5m infl recipe at sale, sure I might only be transferring money, but I am creating a more valuable item to take more from the economy for myself. So maybe we should just destroy more of that profit from the purchase, there by taking more infl out of the economy to balance out the infl created in game play. People have and will always farm. It is the best time vs return in the game for xp and infl. And it has always effected markets yes. So again if we are truly looking at wanting to control INFLATION, the simply put cap prices. Either cap each level if IO to a value or seed the market at a price point like they did salvage that means that no one can really sell for much more then that. The fact is prices are going up because more people have 50s, more people are building out IO characters and more people want what is for sale and have now gained the money to afford it. More demand doesn't drive down prices in this game it drives them up. It always has and always will. If you want to limit it then take away the system that causes it, which simply put is the market itself. Create a price point that someone that plays how the devs feel is appropriate can earn the money to outfit themselves doing normal content. Cap the prices to that, and you suddenly cut off both the greedy of the markets and the "creation" issue of the farmers since neither of those two groups will also have to work as hard to build a toon out.

Please in a game that generates its money only off killing or completing missions and that money holds no actually real value or backing, how is "generation" a "real" problem and accumulation only contrived? It is the exact same thing. The AH is designed to create a means for players to sell items. Players are greedy and will sell their items for as much as they can possibly get for them. The seller has no care if that 10m for that pvp IO is obtained through infl accumulated through marketing or generated by way of farming. All that matters is someone is willing and has the disposable infl in order to meet their prices. This is not the real world were there is only so much wealth to be circulated. It is created unlimitedly.

Couldn't I easily say the same thing if I said make everything a in game purchase from the game itself, get rid of all player to player auctions and everyone just pays a set price for what they want? Oh wait, that's right that destroys the "Choice" of wanting to be a marketer, well that isn't fair to those that wish to take part in that activity. However those that wanted to earn that extra money farming, oh well they are dirty farmers and exploiters we don't care what they think apparently.

Not true, as has been said people spend like 20 minutes working the market a day and earn a billion a week in influence. However now if I farm 20 minutes a day I likely will barely break 200m, if someone spends time doing 1 TF a day they likely will earn maybe 20 or so million for that TF. The problem is what people consider effort. For some reason gaming a market is considered "playing the game" where actually using your characters and hitting buttons and powers if it was being done in a AE mission that was repeatable was not. And the point of my first example was not to say 2m is a big amount of influence. It was to show how the powers creep up. And as they creep up, even if someone like you lists something for cheap, it will still end up being the odd man in the history listing and people wont consider it a valid price or bid. The only way to control the price creep is the same as the only way to control power creep and that is to put ultimate limits on things. Just as they did when they introduced enhancement diversification, or just as they did when capping defense or resistances or the total amount of bonus damage you can do etc. Rather then looking at nerfing the reward in AE what they should have done was to buff the earning potential in real gameplay. Make a conversion for 1 merit to equal 1 million influence. So not only can you buy merits but trade them in as well. Then lower the cost of the expensive stuff to what you think it should cost in millions, so like a purple is 30 merits or something like that. maybe 40. Now you have effectly boosted the buying power of regular players and set a cap effectively on the cost of building a character out that is manageable by everyone with about equal effort.

Which then drives up the prices. I mean as more people bid for that extra cash. I can commonly see IOs that have a last 5 history that will have like the top 2 at say 4m then one at 2m and then one more at 3m and the lowest at 1. But people posting new items also see that history so they have no encentive to look and say "oh well it should really be about 2m" they look at see "oh many people will spend 4" and they post higher and eventually that history is now full of prices that are like 3.5m and up instead of 2m and down. Boom the market has just been effected and driven up by people with an abundance of influence. This can not be changed by only addressing 1 aspect of the game that causes the influence piles. The market itself needs to be changed. They need to cap the ultimate price of something to a fair value, and make that an equal value across the board. So no matter if you save merits, sell converters or farm or whatever that item has a top value that allows everyone and equal shot at buying it for an equal amount of effort.

No cause any smart farmer knows that they likely have gotten any Defense piece to drop and with a few converters can make that yellow red fortune into a LOTG Recharge proc for about 1m in convertor costs. Just as they would when they want a PVP Proc for End or chance of damage etc. IMO farmers are much less likely to be using the Market to IO out their toons for the expensive pieces. Sure we might be buying more common sets but for purples and PVP sets no expensive procs, IMO we craft those easily ourselves off our own recipe and salvage drops.

If forgoing xp for more influence is an exploit then why is not using a token to get more xp rather then influence? And since those are the same thing, then I would assert that earning XP for the time you are not playing is the biggest exploit of all. So yes I think turning off patrol xp would have been a viable choice to discuss, that is if the devs had treated us as adults and bothered to enter into a discussion in the first place. So would have been disabling the influence gaining option in AE but leaving it for general game play. Perhaps so would maybe adjusting the bonus to something other then 2x, or adjusting just the AE bonus to something other then 2x. See this is why I argue about calling it and exploit. It basically just made it easy for them to fix how they wanted with no discussion or input from players. Now 10 years ago I would have gotten this. The servers were being run for profit and as such had to make a profit. But they don't now they only have to keep enough of us willing to donate to keep them alive. I am not saying that as a threat of leaving I am not seeing that happen in my future. I am just saying I change in a basic in game mechanic should have had community discussion before a blanket dev opinion was implemented.

That is BS total BS. At the point that players have more influence then they can spend, and are banking it on unplayed characters it doesn't matter how it is obtained. The money in this game is not backed by anything. It represents no real property. It is created simply by action. I kill something I get paid for it. The market and prices are dictated by what someone can afford to pay for something. It doesn't matter where that money came from. If a marketer can afford to pay 100m for a purple that he wants then it doesn't matter to him that oh well he will be making a billion by the end of the week anyway. Just as a farmer is the same thing. If they can support their spending it doesn't matter where the money comes from. In fact the farmer is much more likely to have recipes and converters and NOT ever even go to the AH for buy high priced items then the standard player or the marketer are. I get enough PVP, Purple, and other stuff that drops that I can craft and convert just about any hancer I need that cost more then 2m pretty easily. So even with the farming money it is likely not my bids that are running up the AH prices and I would bet most smart farmers are the same way. So long as people "play" the market it will be an instrument that encourages greed and the pushing of the pricing envelope. It really doesn't matter that the market takes 10 percent of your sale if your sale is 5m in profit from buying crap converting it to gold and selling it. It is money that goes to a new player that can then use it to over pay for what they want assuring that the prices are being driven ever higher. The only way to combat the inflation if to put devices in place that creates appropriate caps for the highest price that should be paid for any object of any type.

Sounds to me like he used that just about right. Homecoming Devs were not candid about changes they had planned. This has been going on a while with no issues, with no wisper that it was a problem. But somewhere somehow behind the scenes it was discussed to change it. The devs knew it would be a shit storm of controversy to change a mechanic that was used to increase farming so rather then enduring that and being strait forward with players they stealth the change into an update and labeled it a exploit fix so they could excuse not bringing it up on test. I mean hell MONTHS ago you labeled use of the "enterbasefrompasscode" as being able to be exploited and would need to be addressed and that is still working, and has had public discussion even though you labeled it an exploit. But this exploit...oh no no shhhhhhh top secret don't want to even tell that 1 in a thousand players that didn't know about it so stealth it into the patch. So yes disingenuous seems pretty fitting.

If the idea that you put forward is that making double or whatever extra influence for nominal difference in difficulty was the issue, the point being is that this WAS infact the intention of these systems. It was NOT an exploit. Yes people made farm maps specifically to take advantage of this system but that is no different then people sidekicking a level 5 into a MotherShip raid to farm xp and I have seen nothing done to change that "exploitive" behavior. I have read the responses and none of them hold up. I have seen everything from influence exploit which is was not. The system was intended to be a reward for playing down. A means by wich higher level toons would find benefit in still playing their characters even at a time when experience is not really a worry anylonger. And it was not a secret. Hell the maps in the farms would specifically say on the titles for XP gain or Influence gain no one was hiding the mechanic or the use of it. So as was said there was no "threat" of an exploit becoming public knowledge it was already to anyone that farmed for influence. I have also seen this to say that the increase in the influence earning skews and drives up prices on the market. But again how can this hold up as an excuse when over and over and over again people post how they make billions a week doing nothing but seeding greedy auctions for profit? If this was in fact the reasoning then frankly again, this solution of changing farming only addresses half the issue. And if the influence was the factor then both marketeering and farming sould be addressed together because they both contribute. Fact is that this is not a real world economy. Influence is not a finite resource. Anyone earing or sitting on piles of cash do absolutely nothing to prevent anyone else from earning their own money, the game generates it freely. Therefore as been pointed out the only controlling factor in the cost of items in the AH is what people are willing to pay. So if you want to control that you have to control the pricing over all by other means then controlling the productions of influence. The only control you have is the supply. You can drop purple drop rates making them more common to keep the prices low. You can drop their cost in the merit vendors down to say 50 merits so they are more affordable to buy that way. This change was stealthed in because you didn't want discussion. Yes it might have become heated. But any less so when you stealth the change in with no feedback. You are right, none of you are paid. But the game also doesn't have to turn a profit either. Its survival now is totally dependent on the players being willing to keep supporting the servers. As such I think yes, you owe it to the players doing so to at least engage in discussion, suggestions, and feedback before implementing broad reaching nerfs to game mechanics you personally perhaps don't like. I mean hell you could have just fixed the issue in AE and I would have less complaint on it. But I like playing my old characters and my level 50s that is why I made them, that is why I spent time building them out with IOs and T4s to their incarnates. I could probably be persuaded to agree that the bonus in AE was uncalled for if we were also looking at other means of price controlling in the markets. However I don't think it is out of place that if I want to play my old characters that get little reward from xp anylonger, to be able to turn off xp and earn more influence when I am running TFs and Orro missions and such with teammates. This change to the game mechanics also changed that aspect as well. Changed it for everyone. That was not an exploit in any way, that was the basic intention of the option to begin with and it is now removed with no community input or discussion.

I like this one a lot. I do farm, yes. I also run content. And it surprises me no end to get on a pick up group and run an ITF with strangers and listen to them complain abou thow they can not afford anything or how poor they are and how unfair it is that the markets are built for farmers and marketeers and then start the TF and speed and stealth their way through it all to get to the pool of merits as quickly as possible and maybe kill only 30 percent of the mobs total. Basically doing only what is required of them. I mean do they think I just run into a farm and kill 3 mobs and hit a blinky and repeat it over and over again? Effort equals rewards. And sure I can not say kill alling a tf is just as good as farming but stealthing a task force for sure is the lowest possible reward you can hope for. Effort should equal reward. Even if it is just a time basis. Perhaps rather then nerfing the rewards for some activities we need to look at boosting it for others. If I can make 100m an hour running a farm at x difficulty they perhaps the in game reward system should be set to equate to the same level of reward for every hour of ACTUAL game play/action. Most of that past history I do kind of leave in the past. I don't want to argue it. However this excuse that was put forward with this change that it was not announced because it was an "Exploit" doesn't hold water to me. There was nothing exploitive about this. It was no more exploitive then in the past side kicking system where you were tethered to another player and you would try to find someone that put you at the optimal +4-5 level range for enemies for xp earning. It was how the system was designed and how it works. And changing it should have been announce and the subject of conversation ahead of time. I get these are volunteers and such. However we are volunteering our money to keep all these servers open. There is no longer a profit motive for the development of the game. It purely exists for player enjoyment now. Clicking on or off toggles in your option menu is not an exploit and adding or removing options should always now bet he subject of converstation and discussion ahead of time. We had MONTHS of converstations about changes to tankers or dominators etc. before settling on things that accommodated everyone. I see no reason why a converstation on the concerns of the market and how to fix it between changes to farming, marketeering, normal game reward changes, merit value and buying power etc could not have been had to find a more equitable solution for everyone. I didn't say the sidekick system was not intended to allow varying play levels to play together. What I am saying is it was not intended to be used as a power leveling tool. Which is exactly what it has become used for now. It is much faster and easier to be a lower level toon on a higher level team because a high level team can run higher difficutly levels and with incarnate and other IO power creep things a higher level team and get away with running 8 man content with only even 2-3 effective characters on the team. (sometimes less but you get the idea) People join RMS raids with level 5s. In the mid 30s how long would it take you to solo 4 levels cause on a level 50+4 ITF team it takes about 45-60 minutes. That isn't power leveling? What I am saying is that if we are going to start looking at reward per hour or whatever, why are we only looking at money and farmers. Why is there no adjustment for marketeering? After all I don't even need a farm toon or to run a misson. I can make a billion a week now just playing the market if I really want to and not kill a single thing. Why is that not a problem for this evil accumulation of influence that farmers are being punished for? Ultimately this was not an exploit it was a game mechanic used to advantage and leverage the best returns, just like the sidekick system. If they had issues they wanted to address they should have opened a discussion on the subject of their concerns and taken suggestions and looked at those. But they called it an exploit and then stealthed in changes. This game is not run for profit, its players keep the servers up for our own enjoyment. I think we deserve to have input before a blanket nerf is stealthed into the game.

I am not saying coverters are bad. I am saying that there is an inherent creep to the cost of items not because of disposable income but because people are inherently greedy and want a better return on their spending. Not to long ago, just months really, you could buy purple crafted enhancements on the AH for 10-15 million with some going as high as 20ish million. But what that meant is that you could take your same 100 merits, turn it into 28-30million influence and instead of buying 1 purple recipe by 2-3 purple enhancements. Or 2-3 ATO pieces. However what we generally see is that for the most part things balance into a cost on the AH for what the cost of getting them outside of the AH is. For ATOs that is 10million for a super pack, for Winters that is 25ish million for a winter pack. etc. Right now purples are 20 million because people farm. They get ones they don't use, and they can either sell them and buy exactly what they want or play converter roulette with it. But frankly now that the prices have normalized among them it is easier to sell and buy then to chance it. However what happens when that supply maybe goes down? We cut the return in influence from farming in half. Let just say 25 percent fewer farms are taking place, that is a 25 percent cut in that market of extra or unwanted purples. Less supply means more demand for what there is, more demand means prices go up, higher prices means that only those with money can afford them making it harder for those that don't farm to afford what they want. And in the case of purples and other high end enhancements like pvp or some other orange sets, to get them with merits cost 100 merits. Now think again about that. It means that if 1 merit converts to 1m influence. That justifiably a AH item of a purple or PVP hancer could inflate to 100m influence per item before it becomes cheaper to earn merits to purchase them. This is why I am saying the only way to reliable achieve the goal they are claiming they want, to prevent inflation creep in market prices is to seed the market at set price levels that cap what a player can sell and item for. It worked with salvage and will work with enhancements. But cutting the reward from farming to dissuade it as a viable option for earning just will end up cutting supply which over all will raise prices. And as we have said people are already sitting on billions from farming and marketeering. It isn't those players that wont be able to afford a build its the players that just want to log in and casually screw around running TFs and such. And even though this hits farmers, those players are even impacted by this change because now if I want to earn on a 50 to build him out I don't have the option to turn off xp and earn better influence running old TFs and content with him. Just saying this is not the solution to the problem they are saying exists. Prices will continue to rise because of greed. The game is a microcosm of real life. Prices will raise as high as people will spend, and the money is already in the game. And always will be until you also address those people making a billion influence a week from marketeering.

And again this depends on how high that difference is. You cant simply say that more expensive crap is better. Lets say a sudden impact that was selling for 500k now becomes 2m. That sounds like a great return for crafting it. And sure you are gonna make more each one you sell over the lifetime of play. However if every purple recipe you have to buy for the life time of all your toons goes from 20million to 100m (the reflected price if you go by merit/influence standards) that becomes 80m more for EACH purple you might want to slot over your playing time. For every power that you want a set in that is 480 million more influence it cost you for a six piece set. And that is per power that you want a purple set in. The only way to assure that it remains good for the players and economy is to set the prices and seed the market to control greed. See my prob again is this fix assumes that only farmers are the problem. That the greed of the people working the markets are not at issue for driving up prices. Or that the complaints that the rewards are not as good for the "players" doesn't take into account that whenever I do TFs half the time the teams are stealthing half the missing and speeding by everything. Well fricken no duh you wont earn as much Influence and your chance for pruple drops are even lower when you don't kill half the map every chance you get. If players can earn 2x xp turning off influence I don't see how me earing 2 times influence turning off xp is breaking the game.

Here is the niche that I like. I like to get my toon to 50 however I choose to. Be that power leveling (normally doing so myself with second account) or by playing or by combination most times. Then when I get to 50 if I like the character enough I want to unlock the incarnates, IO its build up, and then get t4s. If I don't then yeah that 50 prob sits around with common IOs and prob is not played much again. I have about 25 level 50s, and maybe 11 or 12 of them are IOd and T4d and that is including a couple of farmers. But farming allows me to not stress over it. With what drops from farming I can normally max out a character with 200-300 influence. I can do this because I work on earning influence, I create and sell stuff I don't want and I convert stuff that is easy to convert to high value IOs that I then store and save for my own use. This nerf is not the end of the world for me. Not by any means. My main issue with it is that is sets a very clear interpretation of how the devs feel the game should or should not be played. The very fact that they called it an exploit when it was doing nothing more then selecting playing options makes that abundantly clear. But why doesn't this standard cut both ways? I mean sure ok fine you say doing double influence by giving up xp is not fair. Fine well what about the people that latch onto a level 50 ITF that is gonna run +4 and they are a level 35 with crap slotting and with a double xp token will gain like 4-5 levels in like 60 minutes because a strong team is carrying them. Why is not that an exploit to the game mechanics as well. Maybe that double xp token should be scaled back depending on how far up you are being sidekicked to prevent this fast of leveling? Everyone should be able to play as they want and earn how they want. If the farming was making a increase in market costs the best way to remedy that is to seed the market at the level you want things to sell at and that forces prices to go down so players auctions sell and not the seeds. I personally believe that the market is going up because more people are working the market and getting greedy more so then the farmers have to much money to easily. With how much I earn in drops I can convert to private use from my farmers I find in most cases my friends that play the market rather then farming are spending 3-5 times more to IO out a toon then I am because they are buying what they need instead of earing it in drops.

With VPNs and such and multiple free email accounts do you actually think that any limit can really stop anyone? I mean granted I have not tried, but seriously if you can hide your IP from for pirating movies and crap I am pretty sure it is possible to do the same thing to a game server.

But in that way they also become part of the problem. Because a converter allows for the freedom to change an enhancement, where it might might the old days of 150m LOTGs a thing of the past, it also takes the ones that used to be dirt cheap and makes them now worth more. When a yellow defense set piece canbe converted to a LOTG Proc or a crap healing to a numina Proc or a pvp hold to a damage proc etc, what is happening is people are buying the cheap (or what should be cheap) set pieces and converting them for less. This means that the marketeers are selling those crap sets for more money meaning even making a non-optimal build is becoming more expensive. If they seriously want to control the prices on the market then have vendor prices reflect the prices we think things should be. Just like ATOs the pack is 10 million. That is probably a fair price for an ATO and the market reflects that. Winters go for like 25 which again reflects the pack cost and hey bonus if you get 2 in a pack right? But to buy a purple recipe or a winter set or ATO is 100 merits. Which at the transfer rate of 1 million per merit is 100m. Lower that to like 25-30 merits. Most then TF give you almost 1 purple a run. Find the equity in giving those players that want to do TF and content rather then farming the option to earn their rewards their way in an equal fashion rather then telling people how they want to do it is an exploit and wrong. Hell maybe some of the farmers will come out and run content if the rewards from doing so seem more on par with farming.

The ONLY way to control what you are saying you want to control is by controlling prices. Much like was done with salvage. There is a reason why most all salvage falls into a price range and it is because the market was seeded with it at a specific price. People have spent a year now farming. They have amassed BILLIONs in influence. Those players already have their money and will still maintain the buying power to out spend anyone they want. Those that marketer will still expect those kind of prices and therefore set those higher prices for their sales. Hell look at ATOs as a good example. Most no "non supreme" ATO sells for more then like 12-13 million. Essentially the market knows that at a 10m dollar pack price and maybe a drop rate of 1.5 per pack that you are spending maybe 7.5m per ATO. So the only real bonus on the AH is getting exactly what you want. So figure in a worst case scenario of a few million in converters and the market decides that over that amount you might as well just go about it a different way. Same thing now with purples. Where back on live things like immb and sleeps were dirt cheap they are now getting to also be as much as a ragnorok or something because people will buy them and convert them, however as a result ragnoroks are not 80 million anymore just most all of them run around 20 million because they can be interchangeable now. The rise in prices is not a result of the farmers its a result that people have now learned to not buy the premium. Buy a crappy defense set convert it to a LOTG Global Recharge. But a hold PVP convert it to a pancera proc. Buy a crap heal convert it to a numinas. As a result people on the market are learning to charge more expensive prices for crap and more expensive items are normalizing in their demand. As a result what were once cheap sets are getting more expensive. The only way to combat this if you leave converters as is, would be to cap the price of each range of recipe. Set a top end price for every yellow, orange, pvp, purple, ato, winter, and hami set. (maybe recipies cheaper then crafted) If there is a ceiling on what can be earned then it means the "competitive" nature of the AH works toward the favor of equalizing the buying power of those with not as much money. After all if I have 100m influence and someone else has 1billion influence and we both want a enhancement that caps for 10million then we both have an equal chance to buy it, if he can bit 100,000,001 influence then I am locked out from competing with him.

Patrol xp is finite. You can only hold so much of it at once and even that takes time logged off to build up. But I would imagine one pass through a farm and patrol xp was gone and used up I never honestly looked because I turned xp off. And the side kick.exemp system was also never intended to allow someone to play so far below their level. So maybe we now need to address all those that join level 50 +4 ITFs with a level 35 with double xp running and get like 5 levels in 60 minutes? Maybe we could say the same thing there that is an unintended consequence of having such a large level gap on a team and maybe we need to start giving diminishing returns on xp when you are sidekicked up? And BTW even if you call the exempt thing an exploit, that required you to leave on xp earning. There was a separate option to turn xp off that also gave a bonus to influence earning even if you were playing at normal level with no exempt and that was was also removed I believe. So please why should I not just get any bonus to influence for chosing to skip xp even at level 50 with no exempt? If all you care about is elec affinity then stop responding to me, I don't care about it in the slightlest.

Accept they didn't. You got greating influence by turning off xp. So when I did so I was costing myself Vet xp at the benefit of earning influence. Just like I can turn off influence and earn more XP pre-50. And since emp merits are transferable per account, those are rewards I was choosing to forego in order to earn extra influence. The need to farm influence is dictated by the cost of items in game. So long as someone thinks they should sell a ATO for 10 million or get 25 million for a purple set piece those are the prices they will set which will force people to farm to earn the money. And those that farm will still have the leg up on those that don't to earn those purchases faster. If the true intention was to give parity between those that farm and those that don't then cap the prices on the AH to a moderate level that can be obtained through normal game play. Therefore there is no advantage to farming at all other then stockpiling influence but having more of it doesn't mean I am at an advantage if the person that just runs TFs all night can afford to compete.