Drop Throttling System

[krj12]

Years ago, back on live,  they implemented some kind of system that would throttle drops if you spent a lot of time farming content, such as AE or certain maps.  

Gave it some weird name, which I cant remember, not that it really matters...

 

My question is,  exactly what triggers it?  Is it time spent on particular maps,  the number of drops you get over a certain period of time, or something else?

 

I think this system is still in place, since I've noticed that drops seem to be a lot better on characters that I've let sit inactive for a while.  

Meanwhile, on my farmer toons, the good drops gradually fade  to nothing over time, which is frustrating.   I currently have two AE farmers, an SS/Fire and a Rad/Fire. 

Just curious exactly how many characters would be needed to get around this system, and how often I would need to switch farming toons?

 

I honestly don't know why this system would still be kept active, since there is currently a big backlog of demand for purples on the auction house, 

some items with well over 200 bids vs just a handful of items available.

Edited November 18, 2019 by krj12

[DarknessEternal]

It’s all in your head.  No such thing exists, you’re just trying to make a pattern out of randomness.

[macskull]

1 hour ago, krj12 said:

Years ago, back on live,  they implemented some kind of system that would throttle drops if you spent a lot of time farming content, such as AE or certain maps.  

Gave it some weird name, which I cant remember, not that it really matters...

I am pretty sure the name you are looking for is "selection bias."

[doyler]

You're likely thinking of MARTy - https://www.engadget.com/2011/09/12/paragon-studios-introduces-marty-to-city-of-heroes-for-issue-21/

[krj12]

9 minutes ago, doyler said:

You're likely thinking of MARTy - https://www.engadget.com/2011/09/12/paragon-studios-introduces-marty-to-city-of-heroes-for-issue-21/

Yep, that was it, I think.  Unfortunately, it appears to be tripped by normal AE farming.  Be nice if they could strip that code out.

Edited November 19, 2019 by krj12

[macskull]

Just now, krj12 said:

Yep, that was it.  Unfortunately, it appears to be tripped by normal AE farming.  Be nice if they could strip that code out.

Are you running standard rewards or architect rewards? I haven't seen any stoppage of inf/xp/drops at all.

[Heraclea]

There is a separate system that limits AE ticket gains on very large maps. 

[Omega-202]

1 hour ago, krj12 said:

normal AE farming

lol, "normal"

 

As if that is not exactly what the system was designed to prevent.  

 

For the record, I'm not against removing it, but please take a step back and evaluate the lack of self awareness in you comment. 

[krj12]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

Are you running standard rewards or architect rewards? I haven't seen any stoppage of inf/xp/drops at all.

standard

 

For the record, I'm not against removing it, but please take a step back and evaluate the lack of self awareness in you comment. 

Farming has existed as long as MMOs have existed.  So yes, normal.  Never understood why the devs spent so much time trying to quash it, especially given the rampant inflation on live.

 

 

[Omega-202]

1 hour ago, krj12 said:

especially given the rampant inflation on live

Ok, you're trolling now with the lack of self awareness.  The reason for the inflation was the farming.  THATS why they tried to curb the farming: to curb the inflation.  Farming screws with the economy of MMOs, because they aren't designed around it and it means non-farmers get pressed out of the market.  

 

Again, I don't care if they remove the drop lock out, but you don't seem to understand anything about why it exists or how it could have a purpose.  It makes taking your suggestion seriously very difficult.  

[DarknessEternal]

Homecoming has a system to prevent inflation already.  It's called Reward Merits.  Their changes to those effectively limit the cost of things in influence because if things become more expensive than their merit/time ratio, people will use that.

 

It does not have a drop throttler.

Edited November 19, 2019 by DarknessEternal

[macskull]

20 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

Ok, you're trolling now with the lack of self awareness.  The reason for the inflation was the farming.  THATS why they tried to curb the farming: to curb the inflation.  Farming screws with the economy of MMOs, because they aren't designed around it and it means non-farmers get pressed out of the market.  

 

Again, I don't care if they remove the drop lock out, but you don't seem to understand anything about why it exists or how it could have a purpose.  It makes taking your suggestion seriously very difficult.  

No, the inflation was going to happen from the very beginning. Players had years to amass influence before the invention system/market was introduced and even though the devs made attempts to add inf sinks to the game they just weren't effective. Farming was never the fastest or most efficient way to make influence but it did help supply the market with drops. The systems Homecoming has in place should help mitigate the amount of inflation, to an extent - the "hard to get" stuff is easier to get, the prices at the merit vendors are reasonable and ensure that prices will never get as high as they did on live, and normal drops are available in every AE arc.

[Yomo Kimyata]

9 minutes ago, macskull said:

No, the inflation was going to happen from the very beginning. Players had years to amass influence before the invention system/market was introduced and even though the devs made attempts to add inf sinks to the game they just weren't effective. Farming was never the fastest or most efficient way to make influence but it did help supply the market with drops. The systems Homecoming has in place should help mitigate the amount of inflation, to an extent - the "hard to get" stuff is easier to get, the prices at the merit vendors are reasonable and ensure that prices will never get as high as they did on live, and normal drops are available in every AE arc.

I hear this argument a lot, and I can't say I believe it.  If people amassed thousands of billions of influence before the invention system, they could only amass 2 bn per character.  They couldn't even email it.  Personally, on live before the AH, I had a dozen toons who maybe had a billion inf across them. Even if you had a hundred toons who were at the influence cap before the AH, (and you didn't), there was no inflationary effect on the economy at the time.  It occurred all at once.  Not over time.

[macskull]

1 minute ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I hear this argument a lot, and I can't say I believe it.  If people amassed thousands of billions of influence before the invention system, they could only amass 2 bn per character.  They couldn't even email it.  Personally, on live before the AH, I had a dozen toons who maybe had a billion inf across them. Even if you had a hundred toons who were at the influence cap before the AH, (and you didn't), there was no inflationary effect on the economy at the time.  It occurred all at once.  Not over time.

The inflation occurred all at once? My old emails gradually chronicling the drop in what RMTers were able to charge for inf would like to have a word with you.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I'm unclear what RMTers have to do with stored influence,or inflation.  Are you saying that Chinese gold merchants (may not be Chinese, or merchandising gold) set up hundreds or thousands of accounts, built them all up to the account maximum at the time, and then waited or lobbied for an auction house, and then pounced?  

 

[nzer]

23 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I'm unclear what RMTers have to do with stored influence,or inflation.  Are you saying that Chinese gold merchants (may not be Chinese, or merchandising gold) set up hundreds or thousands of accounts, built them all up to the account maximum at the time, and then waited or lobbied for an auction house, and then pounced?  

 

Because it's supply/demand linked to an external metric, i.e. real world money. The price of inf from RMT sellers going down over time is potentially an indication of increased inf supply. They couldn't charge as much per unit for it because players had more of it.

 

It's not a great argument since the price could have fluctuated for dozens of other reasons, but the relevance is pretty clear.

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 minutes ago, nzer said:

Because it's supply/demand linked to an external metric, i.e. real world money. The price of inf from RMT sellers going down over time is potentially an indication of increased inf supply. They couldn't charge as much per unit for it because players had more of it.

 

It's not a great argument since the price could have fluctuated for dozens of other reasons, but the relevance is pretty clear.

Everyone says that when Live went to an AH, the huge amounts of accrued inf were crazy.  But at the time that got instituted, there was, at most, 2bn per character.  So in the moment they instituted a free market, there was at most 2bn per toon.  There were a lot of toons, but very few of them were maxed out.

 

RMT sellers were not about accrued wealth; they were about income  There was no one who decided to make thousands of characters and run them all up to 2bn and then sell out.  It was about rate of wealth accumulation.  If you could make 100mm inf in an hour, and you could sell that for $1 per hour, that was your thing.  Good for you.

[nzer]

11 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

RMT sellers were not about accrued wealth; they were about income  There was no one who decided to make thousands of characters and run them all up to 2bn and then sell out.  It was about rate of wealth accumulation.  If you could make 100mm inf in an hour, and you could sell that for $1 per hour, that was your thing.  Good for you.

You're missing the point; what RMT sellers could charge for inf had nothing to do with the RMT sellers, it was about how much legit players were willing to pay for inf. That's a function of how much inf those players had access to, which is a function of, among other things, inflation and accrued wealth.

 

Edit: I want to point out before this goes much further that I'm not agreeing with what macskull is saying, just clarifying the relevance of RMT prices to a conversation about inflation. I have no idea whether the inflation happened all at once or over time, or whether it happened at all. I wasn't there.

Edited November 19, 2019 by nzer

[Yomo Kimyata]

3 minutes ago, nzer said:

You're missing the point; what RMT sellers could charge for inf had nothing to do with the RMT sellers, it was about how much legit players were willing to pay for inf. That's a function of how much inf those players had access to, which is a function of, among other things, inflation and accrued wealth.

 

Edit: I want to point out before this goes much further that I'm not agreeing with what macskull is saying, just clarifying the relevance of RMT prices to a conversation about inflation. I have no idea whether the inflation happened all at once or over time, or whether it happened at all. I wasn't there.

Sigh.  you are right of course.  The RMT inf/$ amount had to do with what people thought their time was worth.

 

But I'm not missing the point and I resent that you think I am that stupid.  What YOU are missing is that my beef is with the argument that there was so much built up inf in the system that when there was an outlet it blew.  It has nothing to do with RMT.  I don;t know why you or MacSkull seem to think that RMT is important to inflation other than that farming increases inf.  I wasn't arguing against that.  

 

I am arguing, very specifically, that the statement that there was so much inf in the system before the AH was instituted that it had a lasting effect on the market, is bunk, bullshit, ignorant lies.  There could not have been more than 2bn per toon.  I'm not arguing about RMTers.  I'm simply stating that there was not a near infinite amount of influence in the system.

 

[nzer]

28 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

But I'm not missing the point and I resent that you think I am that stupid

I'm not saying I think you're stupid, but I can only respond to the things you type. When you question the relevance of RMT and go down incorrect lines of reasoning searching for it, I feel compelled to step in and clarify.

 

macskull is arguing that the inflationary effect was lasting, not front-loaded, and they're using a downward trend in RMT prices as evidence of that. That's how it's relevant.

 

Now I don't find that argument particularly compelling, for reasons that are hopefully obvious, but I find your claim that accumulated wealth had no effect on the market thanks to inf caps equally weak. You yourself professed to having maybe a billion inf spread across a dozen characters, nowhere near the inf cap, yet somehow the cap prevented the effects of accumulated wealth? I'll buy that it curbed them, maybe even substantially, but of course long-time players having tens or hundreds of billions across their account would have affected the market. The only way it would have had no effect is if everyone was running at or near the inf cap at all times.

Edited November 19, 2019 by nzer

[Yomo Kimyata]

34 minutes ago, nzer said:

I'm not saying I think you're stupid, but I can only respond to the things you type. When you question the relevance of RMT and go down incorrect lines of reasoning searching for it, I feel compelled to step in and clarify.

 

macskull is arguing that the inflationary effect was lasting, not front-loaded, and they're using a downward trend in RMT prices as evidence of that. That's how it's relevant.

 

Now I don't find that argument particularly compelling, for reasons that are hopefully obvious, but I find your claim that accumulated wealth had no effect on the market thanks to inf caps equally weak. You yourself professed to having maybe a billion inf spread across a dozen characters, nowhere near the inf cap, yet somehow the cap prevented the effects of accumulated wealth? I'll buy that it curbed them, maybe even substantially, but of course long-time players having tens or hundreds of billions across their account would have affected the market. The only way it would have had no effect is if everyone was running at or near the inf cap at all times.

 "What YOU are missing is that my beef is with the argument that there was so much built up inf in the system that when there was an outlet it blew. "

 

I'm sorry, but you choosing to reply to the previous sentence and ignore the sentence above just shows that you are simply not paying attention.  I don't think you are stupid.  You may be.   But you are certainly not paying attention.  My message had zero to do with RMT.  It didn't with my interaction with MacSkull.  I don't know why you all think RMT is so important.  

 

What I am simply stating is this:  before the auction house, there was a 2bn cap.  There is a lot of talk about how when the auction house came into being, there were suddenly hundreds of trillions of zillions of inf that got spent on one glad armor proc.  That is untrue, and if you can't see that, I'm sorry.  There was probably a few hundred of billion of inf in total, not more.

 

I have no, zero, thoughts on what gold farmers were doing then or now.

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

What YOU are missing is that my beef is with the argument that there was so much built up inf in the system that when there was an outlet it blew. 

It's hardly considered not-stupid to have a beef with reality.  I was there, I saw the insane prices for all but the crappiest IO's. 
 

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

There is a lot of talk about how when the auction house came into being, there were suddenly hundreds of trillions of zillions of inf that got spent on one glad armor proc.  That is untrue, and if you can't see that, I'm sorry.

I can't tell if you're exaggerating or putting the finishing touches on a strawman, either way, you're dead wrong.  There was a tremendous amount of inf piled up in the wallets of thousands of characters, and when the auction house opened for business, prices did soar to the moon and beyond.  Desirable IO's (Such as the Numina unique) sold for hundreds of millions of inf.  Desirable common salvage (such as that used in End Rec IO's) sometimes went for 1k+.  (And could and did spike much higher on occasion.)

[Omega-202]

I think you're all talking in circles.  Inflation is a trend, an increase in price and decrease in per unit purchasing power.  By definition, it can't happen "all at once".  It has to be over time. 

 

So day 1 of IOs and the 2 bil per character is irrelevant to the argument.  The issue was that despite all of the accrued wealth, prices for high value IOs only ever went up for years.  That meant that supply of inf increased disproportionately to the rate of drops for high value IOs, especially ones that only dropped from certain activities (TF end random rolls, mission end, PVP).  That imbalance was directly attributable to farming. 

[SaintD]

2 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Desirable common salvage (such as that used in End Rec IO's) sometimes went for 1k+.  (And could and did spike much higher on occasion.)

Luck Charms. They were so consistently valuable on Live (5000 to 10000) that it blew my mind using the Homecoming Auction House and they were the same price as all the other commons.

[roleki]

Clearly, the people at fault for everything being so expensive are the people who dramatically increase the supply of those items.  

 

The only way to fix this is to reduce the supply to a trickle, then the prices will drop!