Fix the Hami-O Economy

[heywoods1230]

It really isn't fun forking over 25-100 million for some of these Hami-o's while others sell for less than 2 million. I am looking at you Microfilaments.... I can't see any real harm in allowing converters to work with HO's? Normalizing the value of HO's shouldn't impact attendance to Hamidon raids, but I am no economist. If you take PvP seriously at all you know how sought after some of these are and why paying 350+ million influence just to max out super speed & super jump just feels terribly asinine. Thoughts on how to tackle this?

 

edit: There are some great suggestions on how to tackle the overall issue; normalizing the economic value of HO's. enhancement converters or allowing the player to pick one from a selection post Hamidon defeat in particular are existing elegant solutions that could be implemented.

 

Current HO prices:

• Membrane >=50mil
• Microfilament >=50m
• Cytoskeleton >=35m
• Nucleolus >=25mil
• Enzyme >=10m
• Lysosome 5-10m
• Ribosome 1-8m
• Centriole >=5m
• Peroxisome <=1m
• Golgi <=1m
• Endoplasm <=1m

Edited October 23, 2019 by heywoods1230
added prices

[Razor Cure]

Yes. Or just make dam/ran a lot less common. The amount of those i had on Live was just stupid.

[macskull]

As I understand it enhancement converters only work on power-unique enhancements (like, I can't slot two LotG def/end pieces in any given power), so if enhancement converters were able to be used for Hami O's they would become power-unique as well. I don't know the technical background there since I am not familiar with the code but it would either require a significant rework of the enhancement converter system or you'd have to deal with not being able to slot duplicate Hami O's in a given power.

 

That being said, I'd love it if converters worked on Hami/Titan/Hydra O's.

[heywoods1230]

Converters definitely won't work without some change to the codebase, but without knowing how converters are coded it could be difficult. I will leave it up to the devs if they ever look at this post to make the decision on how to implement it. But with hamidon raids and the population as a whole shrinking it would be wise they do something sooner than later.

Edited October 20, 2019 by heywoods1230

[Sniktch]

4 hours ago, heywoods1230 said:

Converters definitely won't work without some change to the codebase, but I don't think it should be a terribly difficult change to make. I will leave it up to the devs if they ever look at this post to make the decision on how to implement it. But with hamidon raids and the population as a whole shrinking it would be wise they do something sooner than later.

Standard Code Rant applies, and a clarifying example.  You know that "show power recharge as a timer" beta option, the one that just slaps a numeric countodwn over a power icon after it's used?  That got added by Homecoming.  It took several months and blew up the beta server at least once I'm aware of.  Yes, Homecoming has done a LOT to make the code less nightmarish.  It's still playing hopscotch in a minefield while blindfolded.

[srmalloy]

 

8 hours ago, macskull said:

As I understand it enhancement converters only work on power-unique enhancements (like, I can't slot two LotG def/end pieces in any given power), so if enhancement converters were able to be used for Hami O's they would become power-unique as well.

Actually, that's not necessary; the conversion functionality doesn't have to care about how you can slot the enhancements; all it has to know is what the type of conversion is. You convert within the set, and it does an RNG to pick one of the other IOs in the set. Do it by category, and it does two RNGs -- one to pick the set within the category, and a second to pick the IO in the set. It's complicated somewhat by making sure that the available list is level-appropriate -- no returning a 10-20 set when converting a level-45 IO, for example -- but power- or build-exclusivity isn't a factor.

 

The existing conversions are by set, by rarity, or by category; to make it work at all without having to completely rebuild the conversion code, you'd need to do something like define Hami-Os as their own set or category internally, and then special-case them in the convertor so you could only convert them within that grouping. Without looking at the structure of the database, I don't know how much work it would take to fold HOs into the set IO tagging enough to make that work, and once that was done, there would need to be changes to the conversion code, which could be relatively minor or grindingly difficult, depending on how cobbled-together the conversion code is.

 

[Call Me Awesome]

It would be nice, but I doubt it would be easy to do; HO's were coded into the game back in issue 1 or 2 and are treated like SO's.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's some dependency on converters and set IO's... I don't know if even common IO's work with converters?  I assume not.

 

I somehow doubt it's as simple as the converter looking up a table with all the various IO's listed... although if it is then it might be as simple as adding new entries to the table.  Nah, the Dev's weren't smart enough to do it that simple... or more likely they had to deal with too many conflicting bits of code. 

[Chance Jackson]

Yup I still want this to happen 

[Crysta Clear]

It could be done a combination of a new lootbox and an NPC vendor, perhaps. The lootbox could be only acquired this way, and would contain one random Hami-O when opened.

 

In order to get one, you have to trade in an existing Hami-O and 6 Enhancement Converters (or, if Enhancement Converters are not valid currency in the system somehow, the equivalent 2 Reward Merits that could be spent to buy 6 Enhancement Converters).

 

But yes, normalizing their prices on the market seems like it can only be a good thing.

Edited October 21, 2019 by Crysta Clear

[QuiJon]

Even if for some reason the HamiOs can not be converted for whatever complication, I definitely don't see a reason why providing them a submenu when you choose that reward to allow you to pick what you want do be a factor. Just like at the end of an Itrial they don't just randomly assign you a piece of salvage. You pick you want salvage as your reward, and a menu comes up that allows you to pick the piece you want based on whatever rarity you were awarded.

Why not the same thing when you complete a Hamidon raid, You click you want a HamiO and a new menu comes up telling you to select what you want from all the choices. It might not allow you to convert a cheap one to an expensive one as the OP wanted to do, but at minimum it means that people can either pick the one they want so they don't have to rely on purchases or conversion, or that more people will pick the more in demand ones because they are easier to sell and therefore the prices will drop as supplies of them for sale go up. But essentially either way kind of takes the bite  out of needed the 100m dollar hamiO.

[heywoods1230]

Current HO prices:

• Membrane >=50mil
• Microfilament >=50m
• Cytoskeleton >=35m
• Nucleolus >=25mil
• Enzyme >=10m
• Lysosome 5-10m
• Ribosome 1-8m
• Centriole >=5m
• Peroxisome <=1m
• Golgi <=1m
• Endoplasm <=1m

[srmalloy]

On 10/20/2019 at 8:33 PM, Call Me Awesome said:

I somehow doubt it's as simple as the converter looking up a table with all the various IO's listed... although if it is then it might be as simple as adding new entries to the table.  Nah, the Dev's weren't smart enough to do it that simple... or more likely they had to deal with too many conflicting bits of code. 

As a programmer with some 35 years of experience, I find that I have three judgements about modifying code -- the first, based on how I would do it assuming standard database practices, the second a more jaundiced view based on pessimal assumptions about the programming practices of the original developers, and sometimes a third based on actually working through the code, usually accompanied by phrases like "Good God, why?" when I encounter things that are worse than my lowest assumptions. In thirty-five years working as a programmer, I can count the number of times I've been pleasantly surprised when examining the code on one hand; it's as if programmers, as a rule, take the adage "If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read" to heart when coding.

[QuiJon]

23 hours ago, heywoods1230 said:

Current HO prices:

• Membrane >=50mil
• Microfilament >=50m
• Cytoskeleton >=35m
• Nucleolus >=25mil
• Enzyme >=10m
• Lysosome 5-10m
• Ribosome 1-8m
• Centriole >=5m
• Peroxisome <=1m
• Golgi <=1m
• Endoplasm <=1m

But see that is the problem that I think people are having. Even if all these numbers hold as current and correct. If I did 4 raids and got any combination of the bottom 4 enhancers on that list, and sold them I could not afford even 1 of the top 4 enhancers on that list. All of which are equal rewards for doing the same action in the same event. So I do say, either allow us to convert them, however I do feel like that would destroy the market for them over all, or allow us to pick a reward from a table at the end of the raid. The benefit there would be that we don't have to rely on anything more then doing a raid to get what you know you want. And would likely equalize out the value of all the hancers in the market to more like a few million per piece cause more then that  you just go to a raid yourself. 

[Erydanus]

Ok first, thanks for mentioning this I'm gonna go buy a bunch of my favorite HOs while they're cheap.

 

Secondly converting HOs sounds like a good idea but maybe the exact approach ought to be by using a new kind of converter separate from the ones that affect IOs. Maybe IO converters can be crafted to make HO converters at some reasonable ratio, maybe 3:1? Perhaps it could be a worktable function and you convert with a specific recipe. 

[Hedgefund]

My 2 inf - I like that there's an element of this game where there can still be winners and losers.  I like the high of a microfilament and even enjoy the low of yet another golgi.

[Call Me Awesome]

On 10/24/2019 at 4:02 PM, Hedgefund said:

My 2 inf - I like that there's an element of this game where there can still be winners and losers.  I like the high of a microfilament and even enjoy the low of yet another golgi.

Interesting historical perspective... back in issue 3-4 the Golgi was one of, if not THE most desirable HO in the game due largely to the exorbitant end cost of Instant Healing before it became a clickie.

[Frostweaver]

On 10/23/2019 at 4:50 PM, srmalloy said:

As a programmer with some 35 years of experience, I find that I have three judgements about modifying code -- the first, based on how I would do it assuming standard database practices, the second a more jaundiced view based on pessimal assumptions about the programming practices of the original developers, and sometimes a third based on actually working through the code, usually accompanied by phrases like "Good God, why?" when I encounter things that are worse than my lowest assumptions. In thirty-five years working as a programmer, I can count the number of times I've been pleasantly surprised when examining the code on one hand; it's as if programmers, as a rule, take the adage "If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read" to heart when coding.

"Finally! Someone recognizes my incredible value to the coding community!!" -COBOL

Edited October 27, 2019 by Frostweaver