SuperDan

Can confirm.

Yes. This, exactly.

Four-off!! I usually craft and convert 30-40 at a time and I'll notice this on a "per session" basis. The conversion process gets stuck in this loop of certain rolls. I'll come back later in the day, or the next day, convert another 30 or 40, and start seeing the same patterns again but often with a different IO's. Sometimes I'll have great "luck" in a session and it's very lucrative, and sometimes it's trash, but it definitely does happen. You can often tell what kind of session it's going to be after about 5 rolls.

I haven't played much lately, and what little time I've been in game has been with a new stalker. When I get around to rebuilding him I'll definitely post it here for you.

Brings back some fun memories of rolling around The Hollows, Perez Park, and occasionally Striga hunting those bigger spawns as a means to level. Back when hunting to level was a thing...

Don't feel terrified...because you're not the only dissenter. You make some excellent points. City of Task Forces.

I don't yet, as business has picked back up dramatically the last 7-10 days and I haven't played much, but as soon as I do I'll definitely post it here.

Dinged 50 last night with my ice/ice scrapper. Completely unexpectedly, it's one of my top 3 scrappers ever. Very different play style, but tons of fun. More folks should try the combo. I've got him softcapped to s/l/e/n. Fire and psi are the holes, although I do have moderate fire resists. I level some of my scrappers up with IO's the entire way, and I did with this one as well. Will move some things around to optimize him, but for the most part he's very survivable and does a good bit of AOE. And yes, I do agree, Icicles+Chilling Embrace = set defining. Lots of toggles, end management is key, but I don't recommend skipping either of those powers. With ice/ice, there are many, IMO, unskippable abilities in the primary and secondary. You're free to play how you want, but skipping more than one or two out of each set makes it just another scrapper.

Yeah man, I remember! Good to see you back!

They’re not. As amazing of an experience this game is, it seems like every set of devs charged with keeping and advancing it fails to learn the same lessons time after time. And now this group has removed a game mechanic that’s been around since the very early days to fix a problem that didn’t exist. Prices have remained very consistent since last summer. They fluctuate from mid week to weekend, but they mostly stay in that same window. Even with all the extra traffic since the beginning of the year. Real world economic principles don’t exactly hold up in a video game economy with completely different variables and market forces. We’re about to watch that play out in real time. If you want to make the game accessible for all and keep the barrier of entry low for new players, set fixed prices instead of forcing us into this odd, obscure process of converting clicking converting clicking converting clicking clicking clicking etc etc etc just to buy anything of value. There is effectively one way to level up and earn influence now if you want to fund your toons. The only way I can figure this makes any sense at all is if they’re expecting a massive influx of new players. Maybe there’s something in the works. But right now there are a few servers out there that offer some really cool and interesting features/power sets/AT’s we don’t get here (including fixed price marketplaces) that are worth checking out.

I'm glad you compared this to live. I want to give my experience there.... I quit CoH the first time just as the marketplace went live. I came back about a year later, saw the prices of things, and never bought more than a few commons for a couple toons. I wasn't into farming back then and didn't stick around long for a few reasons, one of the big ones being the marketplace. From what I understand, when the lights went out, the marketplace was out of control. I don't know all of the reasons for it, but I would expect it had a lot to do with what @Indystrucksaid above...marketers manipulating the prices of items. Marketers in CoH are the quintessential example of the rich getting richer at the expense of common folk, which is what I think you're trying to avoid. Inf farmers provide a balance to that by injecting currency into the game and, if they're like me and I know a lot are, selling everything on the cheap thereby driving prices down. So unless there are some major changes down the road as they pertain to the marketplace, today's change is only the beginning of the slow march to live, as all else being equal, prices will rise pretty dramatically if left unabated. The people that are harmed by this are new players and players that don't have any substantial cash reserves at this moment. Marketers are about to boom. If there is one, help me see the bigger picture here.

I actually wasn't making a threat at all. What I'm saying, simply, is there are choices now that didn't exist before. Another poster grabbed the essence of what I was saying. We've seen a huge spike in active players the last few months, and it's stayed consistent throughout the week now that everyone is at home. But even then, the most populated server is around 1200 players at peak hours. My guess is 10-15% of those are farmers and multiboxers. And even at 1200 active players it's not always easy to fill a team. If over time you lose another 10% of players from nerfs, which I think may be generous but still possible, it's very noticeable if growth is stagnant. I don't agree with everything the HC guys do, but generally my experience here has been fun, perhaps more so than live. But the CoH market is flooded with places to play right now, places that offer some intriguing options/powersets/playstyles that we don't get here. And if we know anything of the history of this game, it's that when the big nerfs start coming, the big players start scattering. This time they don't even have to give up CoH to leave..... This isn't a doomsday post, but this nerf combined with the code of conduct changes that removes the ability to live stream, are some pretty big changes that a lot of highly active gamers don't like.

Same boat.... With 2xp I've amassed 17 50's from casual play since last June (about half of which were plvl'd to late 20's). Once I get to 50 and unlock alpha, I decide whether or not I want to deck a toon out based on how fun it is to play or what I think its potential could be based on playing it to 50 with standard IO's. Then I'll come up with a build and start farming for inf to deck him out. Out of those 17 50's I only have one that's completely purpled out. The rest are budget to midrange builds. About 1/3 of those 50's were melted down to provide hancies for other 50's I wanted to maximize. I sell purple drops for 1 inf, rare salvage for 1 inf, everything sold for 1 inf. I'm not looking to take advantage of anyone, in fact, I want to help people that don't want to farm as much as I can. It's people like me that keep the market seeded with rares. And my guess is it's farmers like me that help keep prices somewhat stable. I'll repeat what's been said here again... If you want to keep the market under control, start by going after the marketers and nerfing enhancement converters. Law of unintended consequences...you'll see a spike on multiboxing AE and afk farming, which is a huge server load. Extrapolate action/reaction from there and see how far it goes.

I think the bolded point has a lot to do with it. With double xp you could easily level a toon from 1-50 within a few days of casual play. Plvl them to 50 in a few hours. Have them completely purpled out in a matter of a week or so of casual play/farming. You do that with enough toons and eventually it gets old for everyone, save the hardest of hardcore CoH fans.

Tagging this phrasing on to the back end of a massive nerf - one that wasn't mentioned until it was taken live, mind you - makes it feel like the origination of the Regen nerf on live, all the way back in I2-I3. The devs nerfed that set so hard over subsequent updates that it played completely differently and actually underperformed compared to the rest of the sets. Something similar will happen here. You tinker with economies enough, a collapse of some kind will eventually result. Back on live, when you were told you had to play the way they wanted you to, you just had to take it on the chin. These days you can simply go play on another server.