NPC Vendors Buy Merits for 200k inf each

[aethereal]

I remember an SG-mate telling me, with some pride, that now that her character was at or near 50, she had blown her lifetime earnings on some sets.  What were her lifetime earnings?  30M inf.

 

I was like, "Oh, uh...  no.  No, that's not what needs to happen.  How many merits do you have?"  She had like, I dunno, 120, she had already blown a bunch on ATOs at 100 merits per ATO.

 

So I walked her through converting her merits to enhancement converters and selling those, turning those 120 merits into let's say another 24M inf and making her aware that she'd blown several times her "lifetime earnings" already.

 

This is not an uncommon story.  While the people reading this message probably broadly know that you can net a lot of money per merit via simple strategies like "buy enh converters, sell on market," or yet more money by slightly more complicated strategies like actually using enhancement converters, this is by no means an obvious fact to new players, or indeed older players who don't read the fora.

 

Let's just...  let people sell their merits for a reasonable price.  It's not like we're adding gameplay challenge by making people go through the process of converting them.  It doesn't even add grind, the difference between:

 

Go to merit vendor > buy enh converters > put on market

 

and

 

Go to merit vendor > buy inf

 

is like maybe 30 extra seconds of work.

 

We can seed enhancement converters on the AH if this means that the market for them dries up.  I don't think that we gain anything by making players who aren't aware of the market for converters (or boosters or whatever the currently-optimal thing is to sell) jump through this hoop.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

The issue with your idea, it then means the supply of them being put on the ah dries up because people then just vendor them. People should have to interact with the community to some extent. Especially because who do you think makes all those rare IOs selling on the ah? Those taking the time to buy converters and actually use them on their virtual roulette spinning. Whats next having vendors pay top prices for rare IOs so we can just vendor them to? Pretty soon we would be all forced to play solo self found rather then enjoy the robust and active economy.

[aethereal]

I feel like I addressed that at the bottom of the post, did you read it all the way?

 

My suggestion also gives less inf per merit than you'd ordinarily expect to get on the AH -- the floor price for enh converters is almost always 80k ea, so that's 240k for one merit, -10% for AH fees, leaves 216k per merit.  At the high end, you might get as much as let's say 270k inf per merit.  Players who know about enhancement converters will presumably continue to sell them.  But players who don't will be much closer in income to those who do.  This may even get some of those players to engage the AH -- right now, people who don't understand how to make money in the game look at the AH, see prices in the millions, and just in many cases shrug and ignore it, because they think it's out of their reach.

 

If the market for enhancement converters does dry up, we can seed them at 110k or 120k each.  That way, players can still sell them, but if nobody is selling them, the people who play the converter game (of whom I am one) can do so at minorly less profit than they do so today.

Edited February 22, 2020 by aethereal

[Doc_Scorpion]

39 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Pretty soon we would be all forced to play solo self found rather then enjoy the robust and active economy.

The economy is not robust - as it depends on an endless supply of cheap salvage supplied by The Goverment and a steady (read: also essentially endless) supply of Converters to keep the roulette wheels spinning.  It's heavily slanted towards the crafter and the marketeer.

[Razor Cure]

Maybe teh option to sell merits would be a good thing. I wonder what the percentage of people who buy converters is, who actually only then go onto use said converters to craft whatever IO is selling well, in order to flog a bunch to people who DONT think 30m is nothing.

Personally, I dont sell converters at all, I use them to build MY IOs, so I dont have to deal with the marketeers who enjoy shafting others and getting hordes of virtual money. 30m will get a heap of level 50 SOs, or some decent sets, but I think it is more concerning that 30m was your sg mates 'lifetime' savings, but a AE farmer could make that amount in like 30 mins (or whatever the average fire farm is).

[Sif]

8 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

I think it is more concerning that 30m was your sg mates 'lifetime' savings

30m sounds about right for 1-50 back in the SO days.

 

30m goes way further these days than back on live, thanks to those converters (and bucketed salvage) helping balance prices out across a tier.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

The best cure for this is within our own hands. One of the main reasons I ever adopted the mantle of bentley berkeley way back on live was to act as mentor in character to new players. Ive taught so many on HC about earning inf, how to use sets, that I cant even begin to count them all. I am but one though, yet if I can reach out to so many over the course of 8 or 9 months I cant even begin to count them, then how many must not bother reaching out at all for so many to still wander the streets of paragon unaware?

 

Its not enough to wait for someone to ask for help. Use your eyes, read bio pages, look at builds. Its not hard to spot the inexperienced and try to reach out to them. Be a hero not just to NPCs but to the young sidekicks in need of mentors.

[MunkiLord]

I think 200k is too high. 100k would be a more reasonable price in my opinion. Based on the price of seeded salvage, I have no reason to believe that seeded converters would be anywhere close to what I typically pay for them(82 k). 

[Haijinx]

Just add some basic market hints to the load screens. 

 

 

[nihilii]

11 hours ago, aethereal said:

We can seed enhancement converters on the AH if this means that the market for them dries up.  I don't think that we gain anything by making players who aren't aware of the market for converters (or boosters or whatever the currently-optimal thing is to sell) jump through this hoop.

We gain a need to improve, either by figuring stuff out (personal milestone) or asking other players (community engagement). We gain some level of character progression, gradually earning a full build.

I think your proposed solution only guts further aspects of the game that, arguably, have been diminished too much already. It's one step further towards insta 50 with IOs and incarnates.

 

You can't decisively name THE currently-optimal thing, and that's a good thing. That search for what works - and the different thoughts and strategies each player will have - are part of the game. Your suggestion would cut down much of this range of options in favor of a hardcoded path.

[Haijinx]

"Merits are valuable.  Check the Homecoming Forums\The Market for some ideas" 

 

"You might be able to turn your Merits into valuable influence in the Market.  Ask around on the Help Channel" 

 

Etc.  

[aethereal]

49 minutes ago, nihilii said:

You can't decisively name THE currently-optimal thing, and that's a good thing. That search for what works - and the different thoughts and strategies each player will have - are part of the game. Your suggestion would cut down much of this range of options in favor of a hardcoded path.

 

But that's actually not true at all.

 

Selling a merit for 200k remains less remunerative than selling enhancement converters has ever been at any time I've seen.  It's much less remunerative than actually using enhancement converters, or other auction-house related strategies.  It's less remunerative than farming.

 

All it does is close some -- but not all -- of the gap between low information and high information users.  It doesn't preclude any activity today.  It certainly doesn't preclude anything that actually requires effort.

[Razor Cure]

7 hours ago, Sif said:

30m sounds about right for 1-50 back in the SO days.

 

30m goes way further these days than back on live, thanks to those converters (and bucketed salvage) helping balance prices out across a tier.

I didnt mean concerning as in 30m was/wasnt enough. It does sound right. I meant 30 mil in a 'lifetime' of playing..vs 30mins farming. For a similar amount of money.

[Ukase]

On 2/21/2020 at 7:52 PM, Bentley Berkeley said:

The best cure for this is within our own hands. One of the main reasons I ever adopted the mantle of bentley berkeley way back on live was to act as mentor in character to new players. Ive taught so many on HC about earning inf, how to use sets, that I cant even begin to count them all. I am but one though, yet if I can reach out to so many over the course of 8 or 9 months I cant even begin to count them, then how many must not bother reaching out at all for so many to still wander the streets of paragon unaware?

 

Its not enough to wait for someone to ask for help. Use your eyes, read bio pages, look at builds. Its not hard to spot the inexperienced and try to reach out to them. Be a hero not just to NPCs but to the young sidekicks in need of mentors.

I have thought about this...but then I think again. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. I have often thought about making a new character, calling it some fitting name, making a new SG, and announce that I would take any player that wanted a billion influence by level X, all they would have to do is play for an hour a week with their new character with my new character and we'd all do the same things - explores for reward merits->converters. Log off in Ouro at level 2-4 after having placed for sale converters. Rejoining a week later to the next part of making scads of inf. 

Sounds fine - except for the part where some would say - let's go do dfb! (or something far more fun to them than sifting through AH looking for recipes that can be bought for x, only to sell them to the vendor for x + y.) 

I wish I'd known about the forums of CoH when I first got the game in Issue 3. Seriously, I never knew they existed until someone told me. I literally had no idea that I was clueless. I thought I was doing quite well. Did a respec against the sky raiders, and I was the only one who wasn't losing endurance. Turns out, I wasn't slotting 1 acc, 5 damage. I was slotting one of each DO or SO that the power would take. 1 acc, 1 dam, 1 range, 1 end recovery, 1 recharge, 1 of ...and when I came to a power that took 8 kinds of enhancements...I'd asked how I could get a 7th and 8th slot and explained what I was doing to a teammate - then I got educated. Poor fellow had no idea how clueless I was, and neither did I. He said he was sorry, but all he could tell me was to go to the forums, because he didn't have the time to explain things, and referred me to the forums. Learned quite a bit on the forums!  

But it was also then that the game became more about math, and less about fun. No good success goes unpunished, I suppose. I'm more than happy to explain to anyone how to make influence if they want to know. But how to slot, how to play "well"...that I won't do, because I've really no way of knowing if my way of slotting or playing is any better than anyone else's. (I have a hunch I play more efficiently than most, but probably don't have nearly as much fun because I do most of it solo.) 

[Leogunner]

Wouldn't this all just create an influx of inf?  It'd be like the federal government printing more money and just paying people to buy food rather than creating the food stamps/ebt system.  You might end up just ratcheting up the price of all goods rather than just feeding the hungry.  As is, merits are like meal vouchers in that, you can either trade them for money (illegal but people DO do this) or if the price of the good is worth the price of the voucher, you just buy food with it.

 

The person in the OP, frankly, I don't think is particularly wrong.  If their goal is to get their enhancements a certain way, earning all the merits and purchasing them from vendors can be a means of growth and incentive to play the game more rather than seeking instant gratification to quickly trick out a character.  Granted, I'm sure those that actually want to earn their characters' build through a series of trials, arcs, badges and limiting exp gain to create a well-rounded and custom made character the old fashion way are in the minority, but I hardly feel it's necessary to possibly alter the rest of the market because the game tries to guide you along this longer route rather than the expedient short cut.  Remember, the game is meant to actually take more time than a few nights a week to get a tricked out character.  Those that want to do that should need to actually SEEK the means to do it, not have the game point you to all the player made shortcuts.

[aethereal]

Whether this would cause noticeable inflation depends a bit on how many players there actually are out there who previously have been sitting on merits/using them inefficiently, who would switch to using them to buy inf.  My intuitive guess is that the amount of inf created by this is negligible compared to the amount of inf created by farming and general high level play, but I could be wrong depending on the numbers.

[VileTerror]

To respond to the loading screen hints idea:

Please no?  Not until we have some other way to view those hints in-game, anyway.

My game loads so fast that I never have a chance to read any of those.  Not trying to do one of those "weird flexes" here either; I -want- to be able to read the hints (some are funny, and despite playing since 2004, some still provide information I didn't have before).  

[Lazarillo]

Generally, we want more to sink Influence, not create it.  Using Converters as a secondary step to, well, convert Merits into Influence keeps inflation manageable.

And inflation has happened since HC launched, though right now, we're still at this weird tipping point, where a few things are almost supplanting converters as the thing to sell.  It'll be interesting to see if the scales really do tip, and what that might cause, or if we're effectively "capped" in a sort of Converter-based stasis.

[aethereal]

If lots of people switched from buying converters to buying inf directly, and we seeded the market with converters at a somewhat higher cost than is typical now, the net effect would be to sink inf, not create it.  If there are large numbers of people who are currently stockpiling merits or spending them in inefficient ways, who would convert to selling them for inf, it would inflate.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I'm not sure I see the problem.  If your friend wants to spend her merits on whatever she wants, what's the problem?  That she's not getting "fair value" that she would get if she figured out the single most profitable item, converted to that, then sold it, then used the proceeds to buy whatever it was that she wanted to spend merits on in the first place?

 

I'm a huge net user of converters, but I would rather see them removed entirely from the merit vendor than for them to be seeded in the AH.

 

There are so very many ways to make inf in this game, the least of which is just playing it however she wants to play it.  If she needs inf, have her send me a PM and I'll send her whatever she needs.

[nzer]

On 2/21/2020 at 4:49 PM, Doc_Scorpion said:

The economy is not robust - as it depends on an endless supply of cheap salvage supplied by The Goverment and a steady (read: also essentially endless) supply of Converters to keep the roulette wheels spinning.  It's heavily slanted towards the crafter and the marketeer.

Salvage almost always sells for less than the seeded price, meaning the market is almost always running on player generated salvage, and I don't know whether converters are seeded or what they're seeded at, but the way the price fluctuates makes me think we aren't in danger of running out of those either.

 

And let's be clear, the market is slanted towards crafters and farmers, and every player can easily be both if they know how to. The economy isn't held together by duct tape and prayers, it's more than self-sufficient with the number of players we have currently.

4 hours ago, aethereal said:

If lots of people switched from buying converters to buying inf directly, and we seeded the market with converters at a somewhat higher cost than is typical now, the net effect would be to sink inf, not create it.  If there are large numbers of people who are currently stockpiling merits or spending them in inefficient ways, who would convert to selling them for inf, it would inflate.

If we have more of the former than the latter, this suggestion isn't necessary to begin with.

Edited February 25, 2020 by nzer

[Greycat]

17 hours ago, VileTerror said:

To respond to the loading screen hints idea:

Please no?  Not until we have some other way to view those hints in-game, anyway.

My game loads so fast that I never have a chance to read any of those.  Not trying to do one of those "weird flexes" here either; I -want- to be able to read the hints (some are funny, and despite playing since 2004, some still provide information I didn't have before).  

 

Hmm. Suggest a /displaytip or /randomtip command? Or one that senses if you're at certain day job locations so if you pick a /displaytip or /randomtip while (say) at the market, AE or in a PVP zone, it gives an appropriate tip? (Like "You're in a PVP zone, why are you reading this? What's that behind you?" )

[aethereal]

19 hours ago, nzer said:

 

If we have more of the former than the latter, this suggestion isn't necessary to begin with.

I disagree.  It's entirely possible that we have a rump population of 20% or so who could engage more with the game if they were given a chance, and I think it's worthwhile to target them.

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 2/21/2020 at 9:00 PM, MunkiLord said:

I think 200k is too high. 100k would be a more reasonable price in my opinion. Based on the price of seeded salvage, I have no reason to believe that seeded converters would be anywhere close to what I typically pay for them(82 k). 

Since you can buy merits now for 1mm a pop, let’s see what else to use as a benchmark.  Devs have seeded rare salvage at 1mm.  Where can you sell rare salvage at a guaranteed rate?  5k.  That’s a big spread, but the fair market seems to split the difference.

 

Maybe they should make merits directly tradeable on the AH?  It’s an interesting thought experiment as to where the clearing rate would be.  

[MunkiLord]

I like that idea, selling merits would be very interesting indeed.