NPC Vendors Buy Merits for 200k inf each

[Leogunner]

28 minutes ago, nzer said:

What's the choice? To spend three times as much to get the ATO now rather than half an hour from now? Do you think most of the people buying ATOs with merits understand that's what they're doing? Because I'd bet they actually just don't know any better, in which case it's not a choice at all, they're inadvertently wasting merits because they don't know any better. That's a trap, by definition.

Supply and demand is a thing, though. If enough people know about converting merits into converters, you saturate the market and it might tip the scales to making it cheaper to buy something else with those merits. 

 

Same thing if you just keep having people exchange merits for inf... The supply of the recipes and enhancement are then affected and now scarcity drives up their price as inf becomes more inflated. 

 

You can't just whack some stuff down to equalize them... You just make a perpetual game of whack a mole as the value of your inf plummets. 

 

Also, communism doesn't work. 

Edited February 27, 2020 by Leogunner

[aethereal]

The idea that we're terribly infringing on people's god-given liberty to spend 100 merits on an ATO instead of spending the same 100 merits on enough info to buy three ATOs is stupid.  Nobody is proposing taking anything away from people.  I'm sure that there's somebody out there who for some insane reason thinks that there is an advantage to them to buying an ATO for 100 merits.  That person is wrong, but I don't want to argue with them.  They can continue to pay 100 merits for an ATO.

 

But the vast majority of people who spend 100 merits for an ATO aren't doing that because they made a considered decision, it's because it's completely not discoverable that you can get massively increased efficiency out of your merits by spending them on enhancement converters, then selling the enhancement converters on the market, versus just buying an ATO.  There is no reason to suspect that this is the way to get much more for your merits.  Unless you either read the forums (or other sources of player community info) or else make a habit of looking up literally everything in the game on the AH all the time to figure out what sells well, it's just not discoverable.

[Obus Form]

10 minutes ago, aethereal said:

The idea that we're terribly infringing on people's god-given liberty to spend 100 merits on an ATO instead of spending the same 100 merits on enough info to buy three ATOs is stupid.  Nobody is proposing taking anything away from people.  I'm sure that there's somebody out there who for some insane reason thinks that there is an advantage to them to buying an ATO for 100 merits.  That person is wrong, but I don't want to argue with them.  They can continue to pay 100 merits for an ATO.

 

But the vast majority of people who spend 100 merits for an ATO aren't doing that because they made a considered decision, it's because it's completely not discoverable that you can get massively increased efficiency out of your merits by spending them on enhancement converters, then selling the enhancement converters on the market, versus just buying an ATO.  There is no reason to suspect that this is the way to get much more for your merits.  Unless you either read the forums (or other sources of player community info) or else make a habit of looking up literally everything in the game on the AH all the time to figure out what sells well, it's just not discoverable.

How did we discover it?

[nzer]

5 minutes ago, Obus Form said:

How did we discover it?

Something isn't not a trap because you can discover it and avoid it. The argument you're making is dangerously close to "ATO recipe prices are a trap deliberately, and that's okay because traps incentivize people to seek out knowledge," and I don't think you realize that.

[aethereal]

 

1 hour ago, nzer said:

Something isn't not a trap because you can discover it and avoid it. The argument you're making is dangerously close to "ATO recipe prices are a trap deliberately, and that's okay because traps incentivize people to seek out knowledge," and I don't think you realize that.

 

More so, something definitely isn't a trap because you could theoretically possibly discover it and avoid it.  Like, can anyone reading this thread say that they found out about the AH pricing of enhancement converters without being pointed there by another player?  Sure, some people have stumbled upon it -- probably a handful out of thousands of players.  That doesn't mean that it's practically possible for people to discover it.

Edited February 27, 2020 by aethereal
Typo correct and add emphasis.

[nzer]

50 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

You can't just whack some stuff down to equalize them... You just make a perpetual game of whack a mole as the value of your inf plummets. 

I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting we lower the price of ATO recipes to 30 merits, or whatever, then call it a day, I'm just suggesting there's an imbalance that ought to be corrected.

[Haijinx]

2 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

First, the intent of your suggestion is clear if people use context. Not sure why anyone is hung up the semantics of you using 'right way' in your comments. It's silly, you were clear.

 

Because forums

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Same thing if you just keep having people exchange merits for inf... The supply of the recipes and enhancement are then affected and now scarcity drives up their price as inf becomes more inflated. 

 

You can't just whack some stuff down to equalize them... You just make a perpetual game of whack a mole as the value of your inf plummets. 

Yah.  Once you set an official Merit->Inf exchange rate, it's going to ripple through the enconomy...  I'm not going to make pessimistic predictions as I don't know what's likely to happen, only that it will happen.  Given how many Merits can be earned in Task Forces (Strike Forces, Trials), especially when they're the Weekly Strike Target, there's going to be gameplay repercussions as well.

It's something to be approached with great caution.

[Grouchybeast]

Merits were never meant to be an equally efficient way of buying IOs, though.  Merits were implemented as a way of controlling market prices by introducing supply when prices of a small number of IOs became stupidly high.  They also serve as a deliberately inefficient way of buying recipes for the players who yelled and screamed up and down on the old forums that they didn't want to be forced to touch the filthy market to get their shinies.  They make buying IOs without the market possible, without creating a ton of extra supply of very rare IOs.

 

The ability to use converters to turn merits into inf is already an incredible step up in ease, convenience and efficiency from live.  It can be explained very, very simply to anyone in game or in the forums.  The last thing the game needs is to open up another source of inf generation to encourage inflation.