Andreah

The joy of the marketeer; finding clever ways to store inf, discovering patterns in how other people list and bid, learning about how to convert IO's from cheap to pricey, managing the UI to minimize hand strain, and that magical moment when someone buys your one piece of salvage for 500 Million.

I once put together a quickie-model of what my builds cost. I separated the IO's into a few categories: SO's Common IO's Common IO+5's Unique IO's ATO's Regular Purples Purple+5's HO/etc's I assigned a WAG (Wild Assessment Guess) cost to each, and counted how many of each kind were on a build; multiple and sum for an estimate. The problem is, what one spends on making a build is not the value of liquidating the build; nor is the spending cost going to be very stable over time or in terms of how fast you collect all the pieces. If one has a specific build in mind, and preps a shopping list and carefully puts in low bids for items, or even better, skillfully uses converters to produce them, the total spend is going to be significantly lower than if one were to go to the Auction and start "Buy It Now!"-ing the pieces quickly. Perhaps two thirds, or only half as much. So the patient and skillful consumer's 1 Billion is probably worth more than the impatient novice purchaser's 2 Billion. And this is why when someone says "My character has a 500 Million inf build" I roll my eyes. You could literally spend that on one piece, but it would not be something to brag about. I am more impressed by (and interested to know) how little someone can spend on a specific build.

This is a critical point people need to keep in mind. There's a time horizon on wealth. Cash is immediately liquid. Assets take time to liquidate, and the more quickly one needs to liquidate, the less they're worth. There's even a time horizon on the value of cash itself. If you're willing to spend it slowly, you can realize full value for it; but if you try to buy things quickly, the same amount buys less. I keep three bottom line measures in my spreadsheet: Actual cash; in inf on characters, in emails, and cancelable bids to buy. Market listings I expect to sell soon-ish Inventory of things I have not listed for sale yet, but intend to. So I can say that as of the last time I updated my sheet, April 15th, I have 92.88% in cash, 1.78% in listings, and 5.36% in inventory. I considered tallying up the things that could in principle be sold even though I don't intend to, but haven't done that because of the tedium required, and the horizon on selling such things would be pretty long. Finally, there's the value of things you cannot sell, but that represent avoidable future expenses. I keep track of the numbers of these but I don't assign values to them. This category would include amplifiers and such from super packs, free-specs, free tailor sessions, and so forth. They have value, but even though you could save a million in tailor fees using a free tailor session token, it's a hard sell to me to say it's worth the same in notional discretionary cost avoidance. I wish I could list these for sale though. :D

I keep a spreadsheet tally of all my characters, their inf, their marketable assets, their bids to buy, and their offers for sale. I mark the value of assets and offers to sell at the lesser of their listed prices and the long term prices I know they could sell instantly for (even if I expect to get more than that for them). I keep some other non-market information in it too, like veteran levels, and etc. I don't count the value of enhancements I have slotted or that I'm saving for future builds. I don't ever intend to sell those. I also track the inf I've given away to friends, to new players, and to fund contests so that I don't go crazy with those. I update this spreadsheet roughly monthly and watch the bottom line.

I run at 3840x2160 with windows scaling at 100%: It took a little work to get CoH to size windows and controls correctly, but it was worth it. I like how crisp everything looks. The downside is there's more load on the GPU to render at actual 4K, especially in those big events like MSR, zone events, and especially in the April 1 event, and sometimes the particle count eases that.

I think being able to walk up closer to other players could have some use in rp; but not through. There's higher things on my person wish list, but I think this is reasonable ask assuming the existing bugs didn't make everything work worse in total.

There a few other circumstances when you can walk through people, too.

If it were possible to have walk adopt a minimal hit box, I'd be in favor of that. But no, not walking through each other. Hit boxes also seem kind of janky as is, so I think it's perhaps not a good thing to fool with without some careful scrubbing first.

Sounds like it would take some work to make it reasonably consistent with the zone, but I think it would add a lot of fun if it could be done.

Every time I visit Cimerora, all these things still need to be done, so I'm sure we could fit in an occasional big open zone event. And if it doesn't make sense, you re-write stuff until it sort of does.

We were just chatting and it went off the rails far enough it sounded fun. [General] Project Seventeen: Make a Cimerora Zone Event where a full league of folks have to defend the town from waves of 54+ cyclopses, minotaurs, and evil khelds. [General] Project Seventeen: and random cyst eruptions. [General] Wildchilds: Mission one of the ITF then? It does sound like fun [General] Project Seventeen: I'm thinking Ancient Mothership Raid equivalent. Maybe we have to send teams out to collapse AV grade cysts [General] Gob of War: (Still want to have A "Giant Monster" Statue Event.. but then I just like the Idea of a Badge called "Monumental") [General] Project Seventeen: FInale of the Cimerora Apolcalypse event would be a giant bronze statue GM that gets unleashed. And defeating that gives you the Monumental badge. [General] Natasha-Marie DeSade: Nice [General] Project Seventeen: Anytime an ITF is completed, there's a 5% chance of the event triggering if it has been at least two hours since the last one. [General] DC-Theta: Give me EQ avatar of war vibes [General] DC-Theta: Gives* [General] Project Seventeen: I'm full of ideas, most of which are really bad :D ... but this one sounds sort of fun. [General] Mistress Viktoria: it sounds great to me [General] Project Seventeen: We could have flying harpy attacks phase. They try to carry away Cimerora civilians, and we have to stop the harpies or rescue the people from the mountain top nests. [General] Exploding Frog: I always did want to fight the big robots. [General] Snipe the Shootbold: They could be modeled off the Warwalkers, even.

Challenge accepted!

I want to point out, which I hope you can already see from the majority of responses, it is how you came across. And this doesn't clarify it much at all, to me. Are you asking why people play concepts you don't like? Are you asking why people play concepts that other people, in your opinion, have tried before and failed to do a satisfactory job? Or are you asking why, when, in your opinion, character type X's have a certain low reputation, why do people who should know better keep trying to play them? See, this is what I'm having trouble with. First off, not only do I not have a problem with people adding powers and characteristics beyond what the game engine implements, I see those as generally being signs of imaginative and capable roleplayers -- it's not a bug, it's a feature. Yes, it could be abused, but I find that rare, not common. Then, you say it's not everyone, but then you add these statements about it being numerous, or persistent, and the like. Frankly, I'm not surprised you got the tone of responses you did. If I had a dragon character and I read your opening post, I might have felt obligated to respond just to defend myself. You'll find our community is filled with people who have similar experience, and for some, much more. I think you will find your answers in there, and not from our responses. I can't know who you have been interacting with so many unpleasant interactions to feel this way about CoH today, but I will offer that my experience is that the great majority of people who play such concepts do so fully aware of the potential pitfalls and do a creditable job of avoiding them.

I wouldn't automatically assume a player is intending to go for RP Power by choosing to portray a god, or demon, or dragon. They might be looking at the mechanical power their character is going to have when built out and be choosing a background, in their minds, which explains and is consistent with that power. After all, a fully built out level 50 incarnate can be incredibly powerful. Also, I wouldn't assume that a "God" is necessarily a supreme being come to Earth; perhaps they're a create from a parallel time or dimension which is powerful enough to be mistake for one, or which has visited before and been considered one, and may have significant weakness and limits, as others noted from other comic literature. And a demon need not be the agent of the supreme evil or the personification of some sin as they are in our various mythologies; just very different creatures from other realities. Similar with dragons. Sometimes a player will choose such a background because the theme interests them, or they had a costume idea that felt creative, or so on. And yes, they're all tropes that are done to death; but isn't just about everything in this genre? And who is to say that the one playing a character isn't having a great time and exploring the concepts that may be quite novel to them. Sure, there's character concepts that I see that give me an internal sigh, but it's on me to get over it or not. Sometimes I can't, and that's okay - I'm not the one who decides if they're having fun with it or not. And it's not just Gods, Dragons, & Demons that do this -- I remember, on Live, meeting a character who was RP'd as the rebellious teen daughter of Mother Mayhem and Tyrant, and the player seemed to have Praetoria's lore all re-written for their head canon. I'm sure they were having a great time, but that isn't my idea of fun storytelling, and I stayed out of it. But sometimes, when I do give folks a chance, I'm surprised with something interesting and fun.

Has anyone determined/theory-crafted the probability of success for combining two level 50 enhancements into a level 51? Or two 51's into a 52, and so on?

In big events I always reduce my "Max Particle Count" to minimums. I suppose it's easier on my graphics card, but mainly, it helps me see what the heck is going on.

Sometimes it's a hard decision for me, whether and how much I gift to a specific person. I'll give almost anyone, say, ten million, at the drop of a hat, and provided I think they actually don't have enough. They may be ecstatic for getting it, but they'll soon discover it doesn't go very far unless it's rationed out carefully. Some people require that sense of needing more to motivate to play, and I would not want to gift them so much they would not feel that motivation any more.

One problem I've run into is that we've had total congestion of people in these events. Last night, we had two FULL leagues in Steel Canyon trying to do one event. I got less than half a level from it, mainly because we couldn't move and our powers wouldn't fire or recharge. I think the servers must slow down the simulation clock, because powers that should normally recharge in 60 seconds were taking 90 seconds or more. I haven't seen server load induced lag like this in ages. Then, on top of that, once people realized how good the XP was, especially for low level characters, they did start swarming in the level 1's. I made one myself, Saturday morning, and went from level 1 to 25 in one event. On the other hand, I sold hundreds of expensive items in the auction. I suppose it's too much of a good thing, and we are not worthy.

I moved SO MUCH inventory over the weekend I'm ... really happy!

I often watch for subtle clues in team or general that folks are struggling to get basic things. I then send them a modest few millions and also offer to help them spend it wisely and how to earn more on their own. Sometimes people take me up on it, and become able to fund their fun on their own. A couple even become billionaire later on. It's not hard. Although it would be harder if everyone were doing it. :D

... and out-price the flippers. Fun all around!

There's definitely a lot more purchase volume over weekends.

We read this book back in 8th grade!

One thing you can do is look at the numbers of listed and for sale of each item. If you do it quickly, you will see they are very similar, if not identical. If you look at the at low activity hours, you'll notice every item of the same rarity has the same number for sale, the same number bid to buy, and the same sales history. If you yourself list fifty at once of a single kind, you will see all of their for-sale counts go up by fifty. The auction house code is reputed to be a bit squirrely, and it wouldn't surprise me if occasionally sales went out of order, or even ore likely, if you were notified of sales out of order due to the networking code lag. I notice when I switch characters that it can take thirty seconds or more for the auction listings for the new character to refresh. In the past, I flipped salvage for a few days, and I was able to set minimum and maximum price bounds for the entire rare salvage market using just one kind of rare salvage. (I made a little money, but too little for it to be worth while. for the constant checking, bidding and relisting). I'm sure there's a comprehensive list of which various items are bucketed somewhere.

This is not true. All salvage of the same rarity is bucketed together. Once someone buys any kind of salvage that is the same rarity as you kinetic weapon, if yours is the lowest listed price of any kind of salvage of that rarity, your kinetic weapons will be sold and it will turn into the kind of salvage they bought. This is the essence of what 'bucketed' means. Many other things are bucketed with similar items; for example, all IO's of a kind of any level, but leveled and attuned, share a bucket, and will turn into each other via the market.