Winter IO Drops

[Dacy]

I was also completely I decked out and ready to go to purples, but I know how to use what I get to my advantage. What I’m saying is, it’s harder than it should be at the lower levels, IMO. You can make an argument that people are just too lazy to read up on the information that’s out there, but honestly, some people genuinely do not understand what you need to do in order to be able to do this. Just because I have been fine doesn’t mean it’s good the way it is. It means it’s possible, not optimal. What would be wrong with giving new players some influence if they wanted it, to help them get going?
 

-Dacy

[quixoteprog]

8 minutes ago, Dacy said:

I was also completely I decked out and ready to go to purples, but I know how to use what I get to my advantage. What I’m saying is, it’s harder than it should be at the lower levels, IMO. You can make an argument that people are just too lazy to read up on the information that’s out there, but honestly, some people genuinely do not understand what you need to do in order to be able to do this. Just because I have been fine doesn’t mean it’s good the way it is. It means it’s possible, not optimal. What would be wrong with giving new players some influence if they wanted it, to help them get going?
 

-Dacy

My problem with this, is that it is already REALLY easy to get influence. Part of what makes any game compelling to play is the difficulty to achieve goals that are inherently set by the game. You could take your question to an absurd extreme and say why not just let people start at 50? Why not give them enhancements that boost their power by 10000%?

 

I'm not saying you are asking for that. Not in the least. Just that there is a reason you set SOME limits on how easy it is to achieve certain goals. And I am not saying that letting people start with influence is wrong or will ruin the game. But I do lean pretty heavily against it. I think the game is too easy as is.

 

And as far as the "but you play the game the way you want to and let me play it..." argument. That is fine. Difficult of the mission can be set for different people to let them level as fast of slow or whatever. But the amount of influence in the game affects the overall economy and dumping more into the game is something that will have an effect on others. So does allowing fire farming. And while I do it, I would not be opposed to banning it. I would adjust.

Edited December 5, 2019 by quixoteprog

[Erydanus]

28 minutes ago, quixoteprog said:

My problem with this, is that it is already REALLY easy to get influence. Part of what makes any game compelling to play is the difficulty to achieve goals that are inherently set by the game. You could take your question to an absurd extreme and say why not just let people start at 50? Why not give them enhancements that boost their power by 10000%?

This. 

 

It is SO EASY to get money. This discussion is reminding me of Rift, a game where typically you just used money for resurrection costs and training fees when you leveled; most armor was provided by zone events and dungeons; you needed a little more money to buy a mount at a few levels, but the cost of the mount at 50 seemed really high to people who were used to doing nothing but living off the cash that dropped from defeating monsters and selling the trash drops.  It was about 50 gold and the typical person who made 0% effort to make money would arrive at level 50 with about 10 gold and be shell shocked. But that was their own fault. If you put 0% of your play effort into making money you're going to get no money. If you put maybe 5% of your play time into making money, you'd make a LOT! And I'm not being theoretical here. You could learn mining for free at a trainer right after you left the tutorial, and if you just collected the copper ore along the road to the capitol in the middle of the first zone, you would have 1.5 gold worth of copper by the time you got there for literally just taking the time to click some glowies along the road over a 10 minute period. If you actually farmed a little bit on the way it was closer to 5 gold. People at 50 shocked they needed to come up with 40 gold could have just spent 5-10 minutes every couple days in the newbie zone picking up rocks off the ground and selling them on the auction house to have all the money they needed for that mount.

 

 

It's really like that in City as well.

You can make money selling orange and yellow salvage. You can make money by not using a double xp booster that removes influence gain. You can make money by using merits to buy salvage and components and selling them on the AH (guides are posted for this). If you want to play this game making 0 effort to make money you can still do it, you can eschew the invention system and you can kit yourself out with SOs all the way to 50. You won't be able to solo +4/x8 content but you can play this game in super casual mode and see everything.

 

If you want the "goodies" you have to make the effort and that means figuring out a way to make money that works for you. Farming is one option but it is not the only one. Nothing 1-off is going to be an income stream. People talking about how great the Winter packs are bought more than 1, on the average got enough enhancements to resell to make a profit. It's that simple. You just have to make a choice.

 

It's not my responsibility to do the emotional labor of forcing people to stop being willfully ignorant about their options.  

Edited December 5, 2019 by Erydanus

[Dacy]

27 minutes ago, Erydanus said:

It's not my responsibility to do the emotional labor of forcing people to stop being willfully ignorant about their options.  

Nope, and I doubt anyone wants you or anyone else to do that.  How about the simply clueless? The "I just don't get this" people?

 

Okay, putting you squarely in the "nope, don't give them money" column. I got it.

 

Me, with the "millions every minute" that farmers are making, I don't see a huge economic impact from giving people a bit to start with.  It worked great on the private server, apparently.

 

I'm not a hard core capitalist, at heart. To me, it's not about  "survival of the fittest", I don't subscribe to the philosophy of, I got mine, if you can't figure it out, tough.  Farming was invented so people could make influence and experience easily, even afk, in some cases. But  many people just do not have the time or mental resources to sit down with all the info and build a farmer. If it's not breaking the game to let farmers earn influence while afk, I do not see why starter funds should be a big deal. It wouldn't make a long term impact for any account, anyway; it just makes the early game more enjoyable, especially for new people who are  trying to learn everything, or returning players who forgot everything they ever knew and are starting again.

 

@Snarky, a couple of tips for you for the market: don't sell those converters, use them. Make your uncommon recipes, the lower the level the better (less crafting cost). Sell that, buy it back as attuned (or buy back something even cheaper). Convert to something you can sell for more. You should check prices as you convert. If you convert within a category instead of in the same rarity, it will likely convert to a rare (some categories are more likely to do this than others). Example: you have an attuned (that's important) Rooted IO, one of the immobilize sets. You convert it to another uncommon (cost of one converter). It converts to Reactive Defense, in the defense category. You use the drop down menu on the upper right and this time, you convert it to another defense.  It converts to a Gift of the Ancients,,  which sells for a decent price..or you can convert again and try to get to a Luck of the Gambler, which is very good, especially the Global Recharge enhancement, which goes for 6.5-7 million.

 

It's important that you get the attuned version, preferably one that is very cheap, before you start converting, so it can change into any IO, not just the ones that are that same level.

 

Also, when buying for yourself, never buy the IO, buy a recipe. If you can't get the recipe you need, buy one in the same category and convert to what you need. Buy low level recipes to save on crafting, then sell that and buy back the IO at either the level you need or attuned. I certainly hope you're not one of the ones paying out the wazoo for superior anything! Buy the lower version and use a catalyst, even if you have to buy the catalyst, still less expensive.

 

If you want an IO that's really expensive, try buying a less expensive IO in that same category, and converting it.  IOs cannot convert out of their category! Pvp will always convert to PVP. Very rares will always be very rares, and winter attack IOs only convert to other winter attack IOs (not the travel, that's another category).  You will never get a regular IO to convert to a PVP or a Winter. So category is very important.

 

I hope this helps. 🙂

 

 

-Dacy

[Snarky]

That does help.  I never understood how the converters really worked and when i get burned during experiments my Rage bar goes past softcap (like with 10 mil winter buy fiasco)

 

i will start a Farmer tonight. Can pretty much kit one out with procs and uniques and some lower level sets i have laying around. (I do not sell once i buy. I really hate the AH so if i go to the trouble of buying it i own it forever)

 

i will also experiment with the converter tricks you mention. Crafting and selling to buy back attuned sort of makes sense but gives me trepidation. I dont want to lose money there. But i will give it a week or two. I am bery good at math and not good at science. Weird i know but my Calculus carried me thru intro to science for science majors with a B and i understood nothing. The Doctor teaching the course pulled me aside and commented on this. I owned up to it. He still gave me the B. Said my math was perfect.  As long as i had a formula i got the answer. Just never understood what the number implied

[Ael]

Make and run a farmer for at least 1 farm map a day, if you have the time. I farm for about 45 minutes every morning. I am sitting on a few billion scattered around the alts.

 

As for Winter IOs dropping, they don't. You can buy them from the AH when people put them up for sale, or you can buy the packs. They do not drop from casual play. Neither do ATOs. Yes, the packs are all random, but out of several hundred packs, I've only been screwed by the RNG a handful of times. My last 30 packs contained between 1 - 2 winter IOs each, save for 1, which had none.

[Dacy]

@Snark, here is some math for you: 30 converters, bought for 10 merits, will make you usually less than 3 mil, right? At going rate, usually 2.7 mil. Okay, so. You make a level 10 IO for 3,600, using one uncommon salvage and two commons, typically. One uncommon is 1,000, two commons are $200 total (I'm using figures that I know will get you the salvage, you can often buy for less if you will wait or the market is feeling generous). So that's 4,800. So. Even the least profitable IOs will sell for 100k-300k. I've found recipes you can buy for, on a good day, 100-500; it's pretty easy to find recipes that go for 1500 or 2k.  I'm sure you can see the profit in that, already you are at what you'd get back for one converter.

 

So now you take that recipe and make it into an IO, and let's say you make a really low end IO which sells for 200k. Market takes a small percentage (I'm sorry, I don't pay close attention to that, I think it's 5%?) You buy an attuned version of that IO for 200k (I suggest you buy one before selling yours, because the sales records aren't the most accurate guides).  You put yours up for the same amount, so you're only out the market cut. * (see note later)

 

Now you convert. It might take 10, 20, even 30 to get to something really profitable, like a Luck of the Gambler, but even if you spent 30 converters to get one LOTG, which you sell for 7 mil, you're ahead of what you would have gotten  for selling just the converters by 4 mil, give or take. I don't think I've ever had to spend that many to get that specific one, but you can get a bad run and it can happen. Preparing you for that. But I've also had it come up in one try, from random in the rare category. Some days are better than others.

 

Now, if you just go for an IO that is middle of the road, 3-4 mil, which is not too hard to come by, you will still be ahead, because you can do that many times with fewer converters, see? It's random, so I can't give you hard numbers, but using the rarity level converter, to either uncommon or rare (I will usually turn an uncommon to rare at some point by staying in a category...looking at the category will give you an idea of how many of the recipes there are rare vs. uncommon, so, you can figure out the math from there as to your chances of getting a rare in that category. I have noticed that the converter tends to go from uncommon to rare to uncommon while converting within a category...not always, but your chances are good. So if you just go with middle of the road, I'd say you could probably on average see 4-5 IOs converted into 3-4 million IOs, so, now you're looking at 12-20 mil from those 30 converters, instead of under 3 million. Less crafting  costs and market cut, which, if you do it the way I mentioned, shouldn't be much. If you get lucky with the rolls, you could be looking at more, too. And most of the rares sell for 1 mil minimum (check this), so even if you go with the lower end IOs, eventually you will see a good profit.

 

*Note on Demand: lower end IOs tend to sit on the market longer, since, lower demand. That's the trade off in going with a low priced IO, it might take a bit to sell. Also, prices can be deceiving; you might have to buy an IO at more than the rate anyone else is willing to pay for a while. Well trafficked IOs will avoid this problem, but the cost to exchange them will be higher.

 

-Dacy

 

 

[Snarky]

 Not having exact percentages is not a problem. I see the pattern you are describing.  I have a base for all my alts.  I cleared all the salvage out a week ago but there was nearly a hundred orange and all sorts of yellows and whites. I tend to save oranges until i am short on cash for an enhancer lol. 
 

i am starting a Rad/Fire Brute farmer tonight. I will stop selling recipes and salvage and start using them as proscribed.  This system you lay out makes sense. I am doing all this from my phone. (Typos are free). When i get home i will save this convo to a folder so i have a roadmap. 
i appreciate the time you took to lay this out for me and anyone else who is struggling. It doesnt help i have really expensive build tastes and love to alt lol. I have a few 50s i really want to i/o and there is the army of alts always trying to claw thier way into the world. So this helps me get more than the one main i can afford and the few frankenslotted SO 50s on the backburner. Should be an interesting weekend. If your method produces results fast enough i may even buy a winter pack. Ich. Just typing that irritated me lol. Maybe i will put that off awhile

[Hardship]

1 hour ago, Ael said:

Make and run a farmer for at least 1 farm map a day, if you have the time. I farm for about 45 minutes every morning. I am sitting on a few billion scattered around the alts.

 

As for Winter IOs dropping, they don't. You can buy them from the AH when people put them up for sale, or you can buy the packs. They do not drop from casual play. Neither do ATOs. Yes, the packs are all random, but out of several hundred packs, I've only been screwed by the RNG a handful of times. My last 30 packs contained between 1 - 2 winter IOs each, save for 1, which had none.

I have had good luck over with Super Packs as well, but I HAVE been unlucky a time or two. To spend 10 million on a Super Pack and get a "top prize" of 40 Brainstorm Ideas is infuriating. Had I gotten that on MY first attempt, I would be gun shy as well.

[MTeague]

2 hours ago, Hardship said:

I have had good luck over with Super Packs as well, but I HAVE been unlucky a time or two. To spend 10 million on a Super Pack and get a "top prize" of 40 Brainstorm Ideas is infuriating. Had I gotten that on MY first attempt, I would be gun shy as well.

Yea.  Whether Super Pack or Winter Packs, I do not buy less than 6 at once. And I try to buy 8-10 at once, just to smooth out the duds, because invariably, there WILL be some duds. 

I usually get enough out of 10 packs to keep 4 ATO's/Winter O's, post any others I got for sale, and post the Unslotters, Boosters (I flashback a lot and don't care much about them), etc for sale.  

 

I don't always get back my full purchase price on the super/winter packs from what I auction. But it's usually upwards of 80% of the purchase price.

 

Brainstorm Ideas pile up in mail until I get like 400+ of them and shazam them all into a bunch of rare salvage to dump into my SG base. 

Dual Inspirations / Team Inspirations I use for my alts.  The MM's get dibs on Team Inspirations.

I wish I could hand out the respecs I get from packs, they just pile up and I never respec so much that I need to draw on them.