Income Inequality In CoX

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, KC4800 said:

I've never in the life of this game needed to accumulate a billion influence. That said, there are some who do.

 

I don't begrudge them at all. 

 

I have an AE farmer. He's not a fire farmer. He's a tank. I make about 10 million in about a 1/2 hr. Not a record, I know.

 

Its enough for me to do whatever I want to. 

 

I join teams, be they radio, TF, RWZ, etc. for the interaction. Never for the inf. (Sometimes for the XP though)

I could 50 and build once a week, going through most of a billion to do it.  I don't I alt too much, partly because I don't have the cash ready. (I play more than earn)  But...I am doing it about every two weeks.  Also, my base is now filled with odd ATOs and partial purple sets and other random sets. so it is getting harder to judge.  Maybe a billion or two in there?  I may look at that thread on makling a billion in 24 hours.  Then I guess I start selling ECs on market again?  I am dreadfully tired of clicking lol.

[roleki]

18 hours ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

While I'm sure you can find a few players who fit this description, its far more likely some players simply don't have the time to both play and use the market.  They have jobs and families so they find it much easier to just vendor items to maximize playing time.  

 

This.  While flipping lumps of brown stuff into gold is the most efficient method of padding your wallet in CoH, it doesn't move the needle on leveling a character or exercising a build, so FOR ME, it's not something I am interested in.  

 

That said, just to give it a fair shot I spent about 30 minutes last night converting slows and sleeps to Resistance/EndMod/Healing procs and made about 40M.  Still not my cup of tea, but, it appears to be a working strategy.

[Gerswin]

Considering all of the time sinks associated with making a "fully developed" toon, the influence making is only a fraction. Leveling 1-50 and unlocking all of the incarnate slots takes about 4 hours, getting accolades takes another 4-10 hours depending on what accolades (just passives or geas, vanguard, etc) and I am being honest it takes me 2-4 hours to get all the costumes the way I want them. Having a stock of transcendant merits and a toon with all of the badge contacts and missions available speeds things up quite a bit, but some things just take time.  I have way more lvl 50 toons IO'd and T4 incarnate slotted but still pending on accolades than accoladed toons that have a use for influence.  If you could buy accolades for a billion inf I would probably spend more time marketeering, but as it is, inf is not a bottleneck at all.

[Snarky]

Gerswin. Not sure whether to be impressed or scared. I know i am not a really good player. But really. I am still turning on the engine and you are running the victory lap 😆

Edited February 18, 2020 by Snarky

[Septipheran]

18 hours ago, fitzsimmons said:

Female toons only earn 70% as much as male toons.

 

My female toons are outraged!

I'm not sure if this entire thread is a parody or not. I'm just going to pretend it is so I feel better about the state of humanity. I never thought I'd see the day where someone attempted to seize the means of inf. production. 😂

[DR_Mechano]

4 minutes ago, Septipheran said:

I'm not sure if this entire thread is a parody or not. I'm just going to pretend it is so I feel better about the state of humanity. I never thought I'd see the day where someone attempted to seize the means of inf. production. 😂

Da comrade, these bourgeoisie inf farmers cannot be allowed to oppress the hard working common folk. Rise up Comrades, Rise up and seize the means of your freedom, cast off your shackles, bring them down until all recipes and inf is distributed fairly!

[Shred Monkey]

Inf/hour earned is only 1/2 the story.  You should also look at your inf/hour spent.  You only need a lot of inf if you play a lot of alts who are still lacking enhancements.  If you, on the other hand, play your fully built level 50's all the time, you'll be earning huge amounts of inf, merits, and emp merits that you don't need.  

 

I'm not saying you shouldn't play alts.  Go ahead, make as many alts as you want.  Just understand the basic balance equation.  Logically speaking if you are spend all your time play new toons and never play your maxed out toons, your need for more influence is growing faster than your incoming influence.  Some people balance this equation by playing the market.  Others farm.  While others simply play their high level toons enough that they organically have inf for their next build.  

 

 

[Oubliette_Red]

20 hours ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

While I'm sure you can find a few players who fit this description, its far more likely some players simply don't have the time to both play and use the market.  They have jobs and families so they find it much easier to just vendor items to maximize playing time.  

 

This makes no sense to me. You have to actually go to a vendor to sell your drops. Wentworth's is literally three characters away. You type /ah and drop your loot set it to sell for 10 inf if you like, and go. Next time you log on type /ah and collect. It takes less time to sell at the AH than it does to go seek a vendor.

[jubakumbi]

23 hours ago, siolfir said:

Unless they went out of their way to disable them, they're still getting recipe drops which they could sell for inf. If the person they're door-sitting with is level 50 the vendor price will still get them around 1m per hour just on the commons.

 

 

Did you even read what you quoted? Here, let me highlight it for you:

They're pretty much doing the opposite of what you're claiming. They want people to be able to have more options to get similar amounts of inf.

Nope.

The OP thinks there are people that 'earn too much' and thinks there needs to be a 'fix'.

This is all control based.

Increasing Influence to those that are 'earning too little' is simply a control move to try and balance a system that does not need to be balanced.

 

The only problem here is that some people envy the time others have to play the game and those envious people want to control the system to prevent having thier sensibilities hurt...it's a pure control move...the OP wants to prevent the high earners from being high earners...the method is irrelevent...the OP wants to control the Influence flow.

 

The same argumant has been used for Influence earning and XP gain for this game from Day 1.

It's this idea that an imaginary utopia of perfect game balance exists that must be uncovered, when no such thing exists.

[HelBlaiz]

I was under the impression the request was to make radio missions and the like more rewarding, not tearing down people who make Inf in other ways.

Edited February 18, 2020 by HelBlaiz
autocorrect

[Snarky]

If...(really big if)... the Homecoming team started dropping inf on toons for per hour in game ( because RP under the guy with one huge ball is valid activity) the Auction prices on everything would skyrocket.  

[jubakumbi]

1 hour ago, HelBlaiz said:

I was under the impression the request was to make radio missions and the like more rewarding, not tearing down people who make Inf in other ways.

Which assumes there is a problem that does not exist, IMO, with the other ways 'earning too much'...

 

The reason for the 'fix' is to prevent the exitence of 'earning too much' from a totally subjective POV, IMO, that is based on the idea that there must be total influence equality...something that is simply not possible without removing influnce or setting the max influence to something like 100K...to insure enveryone could max it out...

Edited February 18, 2020 by jubakumbi

[Lines]

1 minute ago, jubakumbi said:

Which assumes there is a problem that does not exist, IMO, with the other ways 'earning too much'...

I think that's more or less the consensus.

 

Though I'm well down for going all out communism here. But only for those cool fluffy hats.

[jubakumbi]

Just now, Lines said:

I think that's more or less the consensus.

 

Though I'm well down for going all out communism here. But only for those cool fluffy hats.

I do love a good, warm hat.

 

I would love, love for there to be no influence in the game and that you just went to the Enhancement Replicator and took out what you wanted.

IMO, there is no real reason to continue to gate the waelth int he game behind any sort of time grind, because there is no money involved for subscribers/players.

 

The rarity and costs are really a joke at this point, the IOs are easily obtainable if you want them, why make it hard?

Just pick what you want and slot it up...

[Lines]

Tea, Earl Grey, Hot.

[jubakumbi]

Just now, Lines said:

Tea, Earl Grey, Hot.

IO, Armageddon, Attuned.

[Snarky]

3 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

I do love a good, warm hat.

 

I would love, love for there to be no influence in the game and that you just went to the Enhancement Replicator and took out what you wanted.

IMO, there is no real reason to continue to gate the waelth int he game behind any sort of time grind, because there is no money involved for subscribers/players.

 

The rarity and costs are really a joke at this point, the IOs are easily obtainable if you want them, why make it hard?

Just pick what you want and slot it up...

I like this. My altitis would round breathing hard and hit hyperventilate 

[siolfir]

 

[jubakumbi]

7 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I like this. My altitis would round breathing hard and hit hyperventilate 

IMO, it is the difference in enjoying making new characters/builds vs. earning loot.

Some people like to feel as if they 'did a good job' and 'earned' something by playing the game and getting drops.

Some poeple like to create/implement the ideas they have,.

Some are both.

 

For me, I am long past any dopamine from getting drops and levels in COH.

I love to make the characters in my head in online worlds, and I love to do the math and twaeking to make them awsome.

The leveling process is fun and all to learn the character, but this old-fashioned idea of 'earning' the 'right' to do some of these things in-game based on time spent is a really old system at this point, IMO, especially with the game in it's current iteration, which is that it's deployed for fun, not profit.

 

What I don't understand is why some people want to hold so tight onto what is really just an old system built to get people to spend money...

[SeraphimKensai]

16 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

IO, Armageddon, Attuned.

No no no.

IO, Armageddon, Enhancement Boost +5.

 

Purple IO's exempt automatically without needing to be attuned, so enhancement boosting them is the more practical approach, as attuning them does nothing for you.

[jubakumbi]

4 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

No no no.

IO, Armageddon, Enhancement Boost +5.

 

Purple IO's exempt automatically without needing to be attuned, so enhancement boosting them is the more practical approach, as attuning them does nothing for you.

Heh - I set you up for that one. 😉 

[Snarky]

Attuning a purple makes it look prettier tier but reduces the value. An attuned purple cannot be boosted and they are inherently attuned.  Its the only enhancer you shop non attuned on the market

Edited February 18, 2020 by Snarky

[jubakumbi]

8 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

No no no.

IO, Armageddon, Enhancement Boost +5.

 

Purple IO's exempt automatically without needing to be attuned, so enhancement boosting them is the more practical approach, as attuning them does nothing for you.

 

3 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Attuning a purple makes it look prettier tier but reduces the value. An attuned purple cannot be boosted and they are inherently attuned.  Its the only enhancer you shop non attuned on the market

See?

Even with a replicator, some people can play the game better, that's just how it is, there is never any pefect balance. 🙂 

[HelBlaiz]

While allowing the jerkhacking commands to work would be awesome, I still don't see the problem with boosting drop rates for Radio missions.

[jubakumbi]

4 minutes ago, HelBlaiz said:

While allowing the jerkhacking commands to work would be awesome, I still don't see the problem with boosting drop rates for Radio missions.

Sounds like an excellent suggestion for the Suggestion Forum.

 

I thought we were also discussing Income Inequality...

 

Which leads me to say I don't see increasing drops in Radio missions having any real impact on the people running SO'ed characters and feeling bad about the IOs of others and not having fun...just because they would be able to potentianlly afford IOs more readily does not equal all of them them running optimized builds.

 

This is the issue the OP presented - a person playing who feels bad on a team of IOed characters when they are poor.

 

There will still be players not really intersted in IOs even when they can afford them more easily from thier POV, they have existed the whole time. I have met more than one that thinks IOs are literally cheating and that they ruined the whole game, for example, who do not use them.

 

So sure, increase the drop rates in Radios, it won't impact the income inequalities though, the top players will always find the paths to the most ROI and there will always be haves and have nots, unless you simply eliminate loot all together and force all players into specific builds, etc.