Bionic_Flea

While I appreciate that some people like or want the grind, I do not. I run all content on all levels on blue, red, and gold, but to be fair most of it is blue side. I don't need or want the game to tell me what to do or encourage me to do one thing over another. I make up my own weird goals to keep the game fresh for me. Sometimes I PL to 50, sometimes I solo mission arcs, or run TF teams, or Signature Story runs, or badge hunt, or run every mission available in Ouro, on rare occasions I even PvP. I play the market and farm enough to finance all my projects but neither farming or marketing takes up most of my time. I guess the thing I enjoy the most is making oddball builds that work. There are plenty of things to do.

I think it is fair to say that a lot of what used to be vendor trash IOs have gone up in price while almost all the big ticket items have gone down in price, or at least stayed flat. I'd have to see some data on it but I suppose that it's possible that there are so many IOs that have gone up in price vs those that have gone down that it is a net increase in prices. However, that also means that people get more money for selling junk and, in my opinion, should make the mythical casual player able to earn enough from sales of anything to make a good build without being a farmer or a marketeer.

There is a price ceiling. It is the vendor price in merits. Purples and WinterOs don't go much higher than 20-25 million influence because at that price you could buy it with merits. You can buy a merit for a million inf and you can buy 3 converters for 1 merit. Converters sell for about 75,000. So if you used 100 merits to buy 300 converters you'd get 22.5 Million (75k x 300=22.5M). Even if the relative price of converters changes (and they have), nothing will sell for more for 100 million, the price you could buy 100 merits.

Ohh! What do I inherit?

Let me add my voice to the chorus of "no" *Ahem* Do, re, mi, fa, so, le, te, Noooooooooo!

Don't you have and use consume? How about the Panacea, Numina, and Performance Shifter Procs in health and stamina?

Switch Fire Sword with Blazing Bolt slotted with the Winter's bite set. Also, you may want to check this:

Have you done "Dirty Work" arc by Shauna Braun? Or "Gone in a Flash" by Bobby Curtain?

Don't you consider new power sets and power pools content?

You could easily lose Assault, Melt Armor, or Rise of the Phoenix. Dealer's choice!

Sort of a tangent here; but an interesting one. I think I may be similar to Myshkin and Yomo in that I gift new alts about 200M seed money to buy all the P2W transports and goodies and then a few procs, PvPIOs, and ATOs that can be slotted early. After that they generally pay for themselves just by playing and crafting/convertng/sellng my drops. I have 23 alts about evenly split between two accounts. All are level 50 and most are pretty much "complete" which to me means getting to +3. A few of my favorites get to be +4 to everything. I farm and market, but not a lot of either. I tend to play new characters until somewhere between 20 - 35 and then feel the need to boost them ten levels or so they can slot out their powers. I slot attuned sets as I level so that at 50 I end up with a completed build once I slot purples (if any) and catalyze my ATOs and WinterOs. My marketing consists of selling drops and older characters put in lowball bids for unloved recipes or IOs, which then get crafted, converted and sold when I next play that character.

Well, yes, but you have sharp, pointy sticks!

But Jimmy, why can't I test and play and play and test and have cake and eat it too?

It depends on how they ask. - LOL You got me. Hey mind if I get some badges now that you killed me? vs - YOU F$%^&ING A$%^&*!!! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M TRYING TO GET A BADGE, BROCCOLI BRAIN? *(broccoli brain substituted for more colorful language). Which one gets better treatment, I wonder . . .

For the most part, I used Vidiotmaps to find most of the exploration badges and plaques. A few I just stumbled across. But I have intentionally found a few on my own, the Faultline and new PvP explore badges specifically. I did that by looking at the name of the badge and thinking of where might be a good location that fits the name; sometimes a location looks like it should have a badge; and then a combination of determination and luck.

*Shrug* Disagree. It's not much of a PvP, but it is, by definition one player against another player. Maybe if you dual boxed it and it's just you vs you.

False. The PvP zone badges existed on live. While you may get in and out without encountering someone, the threat is there. Moreover there are PvP badges that require you to win matches in the arena; those have also been there since live. Even if you traded kills that is still PvP. Furthermore, the size of the niche is irrelevant. There are a number of players that do enjoy PvP. PvP has existed since issue 4. That was 15 years ago. It's OK to like and dislike certain parts of the game. Everyone has their favorite activities. But telling others that the way they play is wrong is uncool, unappreciated, and unacceptable.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Somebody who wants all the badges is going to have to engage in some level of PvP.

But Jimmy . . . OK, I got nothing. You win this time.

Salvage bins and character items from Super Packs is how I do it. The nice thing about the bins is that you can pick up and drop them as a stack of however many you have.

PvP never turns into harassment. You consented to PvP the moment you entered "the ring" (zone or arena). If you don't want to engage in PvP don't enter the zone, or leave if you do enter and encounter an opponent. The worst thing that happens is that your character gets knocked out and sent to a nice, clean hospital right by the exit door. Now, if someone starts saying hateful things in a PvP zone either while ganking someone or getting ganked, then they can be disciplined for saying hateful things.