Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Oubliette_Red]

As far as I'm concerned, there's already a spending cap. It's what any given player is willing to spend on any given item in the AH.

[Zeraphia]

2 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

That makes me more confused that you didn't do it just now, then. I was trading some Blistering Colds and Winter Bites around for 20mil about 4-5 hours ago. Was one or two outlying price spikes in the sales history but that's usually just someone deciding they need to have it now instead of waiting.

Well that sir is very interesting, because right now here are the current sales of Winter's Bites

 

[Indystruck]

Usually the superiors aren't that much higher than the regular ones. If you look at Winter's Bite (not Superior Winter's Bite) instead, you can probably save yourself 7-10 mil.

[siolfir]

9 hours ago, Heraclea said:

I also turned off XP while exemplared for many of my level 50s that had achieved a basic level of incarnates (t3 all around, some t4s).  They still often run exemped content.  Has this been reverted to default for all characters, or does XP need to be retoggled for each?

Since I didn't see this answered yet: my characters that I had the "Disable XP, double inf while exemplared" setting were set to the "Disable XP" setting and had to be manually changed.

[MunkiLord]

9 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

I understand your intentions with this change, and I understand the feedback from others stating to "test the changes" before forming a judgement on it, that's why I've mainly held off on it despite my intuition telling this was too radical of a change...

 

Today I was trying to "gear up" or well IO my new Elec Affinity/Sonic Blast Defender, and unfortunately, the market was extraordinarily inflated (I'd say an average of 10-20% of the normal prices) and this lead to me vastly overspending what I thought I'd end up spending on specific IO's.

 

The problem with this change is that there is no safeguard as an influence cap on the amount you can spend on an IO, and the influence already exists. This is causing less to farm, more to feel less inclined to do so, resulting in less recipes/IO's less affordability, and market inflation spikes, the opposite of the intended effect... Winter-O's were usually around 22-25m, they've now spiked to being in the 30m category now, PvP enhancements have absolutely gone through the roof most hovering around the 10-14m range. Many rare IO's have also recently spiked as well. I think if you are going to implement a "negative" change, you should implement a "positive" one to balance them effectively. I understand that there was going to be a lack of feedback due to the reasons of not having the exploit come about, but people are giving handed feedback now with this change. 

 

I would not state that this change has "improved" the spending power of an average player, if anything, it has cut their spending power. Many of the hardcore supporters are now finding it very difficult to enjoy multiple builds and characters that they wish to try, doing this at the time when a new set was released that would potentially make people unable to afford building their characters may have been a mistake.

 

This does not mean to come across as "you did a bad job!" this is moreso me giving my feedback and observations as a player, I think possibly a rollback or a market cap how much a specific IO can sell for per category (PvP, ATO, purple ATO, purple, rare, etc.) would go a lot further with this. 

I've seen observations about prices both ways the last day or so, and I think they're all premature. First, the change just happened, so it's difficult to impossible to say what actual behavior has been changed and to what degree in just a few days. Secondly, a lot more people are spending a lot more time at home currently and from what I understand game population is consistently higher now than a month or so ago, so prices are going to behave more like weekends when they can be all over the place. 

 

I think watching specific sets would give better data than just broad categories like PvP recipes. Six weeks ago I was selling Panaceas, all of them, for 15-18 million each, though that price eventually went back down to what I consider normal(10-14). The Winter IOs going up I considered inevitable. During the holiday sale people bought them for dirt cheap by the 1000s, I didn't think the semi-lower prices I've observed the last few months was sustainable. Eventually people would sell off what they bought. Though I could be wrong there and maybe that surplus was gone by February, I'm working through possibilities.

 

Now I'm not saying they shouldn't make more changes, just that it's too early to really determine that. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

24 minutes ago, Noyjitat said:

 

Also on day one of this current patch as soon as the server was online the market had entire sets of the new ios and not just a few. Like nobody could have had enough time to loot, craft, attune and list them that quickly let alone purchase from a reward merits vendor.

 

I had a shit ton of crafted Efficiency Adaptors ready to go.  I converted by category and had bids and offers out on all the new End Mod IOs within a few minutes of getting on post-patch.  It was like Christmas morning for me!

 

Never underestimate the boredom of someone confined at home from the CV!

[mrultimate]

7 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

Well that sir is very interesting, because right now here are the current sales of Winter's Bites

 

Sometimes there is a lightning bolt for us slow old folks.

 

1. A toon with open slots at least lvl 10

2. Winter ATO's

3. Enhancement Catalysts

4. Enhancement Unslotters

5. Sell

 

Jeez I feel dumb now.

[golstat2003]

8 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I had a shit ton of crafted Efficiency Adaptors ready to go.  I converted by category and had bids and offers out on all the new End Mod IOs within a few minutes of getting on post-patch.  It was like Christmas morning for me!

 

Never underestimate the boredom of someone confined at home from the CV!

Now THAT is how you do ebil. 😄

[Yomo Kimyata]

Just now, mrultimate said:

Sometimes there is a lightning bolt for us slow old folks.

 

1. A toon with open slots at least lvl 10

2. Winter ATO's

3. Enhancement Catalysts

4. Enhancement Unslotters

5. Sell

 

Jeez I feel dumb now.

It’s not a niche that I ever used, personally, since I couldn’t understand why anyone would pay up for that service.  But assuming a 30mm sell price (27 after taxes), minus cost of catalyst and unslotter (not sure what catalysts go for, but call it 3-4mm), if you bought the regular WO at 20mm, that’s only a few mm profit for your efforts.  I’d much rather convert 10 yellow IOS for 10x the profit.  Volume!

[SwitchFade]

43 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

I understand your intentions with this change, and I understand the feedback from others stating to "test the changes" before forming a judgement on it, that's why I've mainly held off on it despite my intuition telling this was too radical of a change...

 

Today I was trying to "gear up" or well IO my new Elec Affinity/Sonic Blast Defender, and unfortunately, the market was extraordinarily inflated (I'd say an average of 10-20% of the normal prices) and this lead to me vastly overspending what I thought I'd end up spending on specific IO's.

 

The problem with this change is that there is no safeguard as an influence cap on the amount you can spend on an IO, and the influence already exists. This is causing less to farm, more to feel less inclined to do so, resulting in less recipes/IO's less affordability, and market inflation spikes, the opposite of the intended effect... Winter-O's were usually around 22-25m, they've now spiked to being in the 30m category now, PvP enhancements have absolutely gone through the roof most hovering around the 10-14m range. Many rare IO's have also recently spiked as well. I think if you are going to implement a "negative" change, you should implement a "positive" one to balance them effectively. I understand that there was going to be a lack of feedback due to the reasons of not having the exploit come about, but people are giving handed feedback now with this change. 

 

I would not state that this change has "improved" the spending power of an average player, if anything, it has cut their spending power. Many of the hardcore supporters are now finding it very difficult to enjoy multiple builds and characters that they wish to try, doing this at the time when a new set was released that would potentially make people unable to afford building their characters may have been a mistake.

 

This does not mean to come across as "you did a bad job!" this is moreso me giving my feedback and observations as a player, I think possibly a rollback or a market cap how much a specific IO can sell for per category (PvP, ATO, purple ATO, purple, rare, etc.) would go a lot further with this. 

Understandable you may feel this way viewing the market in a snapshot, but this behavior is normal and can easily fluctuate by that margin depending on time. The prices have and will actually trend down overall.

 

To validate, I recommend tracking those io's you bought over the next 30 days (valid sample size) at 4 distinct and fixed points in a 24 hour period, repeated each day.

 

Drop the data per io into an Excel and run a single factor regression analysis and you will see an "r-square" value of over 80% (significant), the price average trending downward and projected to continue and then stabilize, with an alpha of 5% and a margin of error of 3-4%.

Edited April 3, 2020 by SwitchFade

[Number Six]

39 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I had a shit ton of crafted Efficiency Adaptors ready to go.  I converted by category and had bids and offers out on all the new End Mod IOs within a few minutes of getting on post-patch.  It was like Christmas morning for me!

 

Never underestimate the boredom of someone confined at home from the CV!

IMO, this is a perfect example of what I meant when I said that the market was a "player services" market more than a goods market. One or more enterprising individuals took it upon themselves to prepare for the patch, had supplies ready to go, and as soon as it went live jumped on to roll the dice with converters and populate the market. The result is that other players who didn't want to take the time to craft/convert the new sets could almost immediately buy pre-crafted ones and slot them right away if they wanted.

 

Making a tidy profit in the process, of course. 😉

[Noyjitat]

41 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I had a shit ton of crafted Efficiency Adaptors ready to go.  I converted by category and had bids and offers out on all the new End Mod IOs within a few minutes of getting on post-patch.  It was like Christmas morning for me!

 

Never underestimate the boredom of someone confined at home from the CV!

You wouldn't have had time, nobody would have had time. This was literally right when the servers were online. Even if you got one from your first convert click you would not have had time to list it that quickly.

 

Not saying you didn't list some but im saying these were l listed already.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Noyjitat

[mrultimate]

27 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

It’s not a niche that I ever used, personally, since I couldn’t understand why anyone would pay up for that service.  But assuming a 30mm sell price (27 after taxes), minus cost of catalyst and unslotter (not sure what catalysts go for, but call it 3-4mm), if you bought the regular WO at 20mm, that’s only a few mm profit for your efforts.  I’d much rather convert 10 yellow IOS for 10x the profit.  Volume!

I'm not saying I am going to do it. Although I have almost 100 in storage of Winter and Archetype ATO's. I'm amused that it just dawned on me how it was done.

[Ukase]

On 3/31/2020 at 3:00 PM, Chirikiti said:

Trying to make everyone feel like they are on a level economic playing field through gameplay manipulation doesn't take into account the variability of people's time to devote to the game. If I can only play 4 hours per week, then my expectations of what I can accomplish/earn have to be mitigated. Shouldn't be an endless tweaking of the economy/nerfs/gameplay to try to adjust for such.

 

 

There is so much truth in this! 

One of my globals, who has stopped playing around Christmas time, was what I call a younger guy; we'd played back in live from time to time. But since I work remotely, I can easily log in, place some bids - get some work done - check back in, etc., whereas he could only come on at about 9pm Central. He'd try to make it to the hive, but more often than not, just couldn't get in. 

So - there I am - in the hive, I'm earning 160 merits in a relatively short time, but he's only getting in on round 2, if at all. So, as a week goes by, because of our different schedules, I've got over 1000 reward merits and he's got maybe 400-560. 

Let's not fool ourselves - free time is a huge variable in the influence disparity between the "haves" and the "have-nots". 

I don't have access to the data - and even if I did, I wouldn't know where to find it - but it would be a curious thing to see how many folks have influence in excess of 100Billion
more than 50 Billion
More than 10 Billion
More than 5 Billion
More than 1 Billion

I suspect everyone with only 1 level 50 would have somewhat less than 10 billion, depending on whether they farm or use the market. Folks with multiple 50s might have more - because the wealth accumulated is a function of time, as well as efficiency at gaining xp - whether farming or teams of 8 running normal content. 

So - if the goal is to make the "average" player be able to afford the good stuff - how do we define "average"? How many hours a day/week do they play? 

This is the kind of thinking that kept me out of the good schools. 

[Budo]

1 hour ago, darkbunnie said:

they we need to do about something but  black market  cause all of IQ set some of them high casue ppl in game make them high in market

 

.......

Y'know what? Maybe.

[Haijinx]

38 minutes ago, Ukase said:

There is so much truth in this! 

One of my globals, who has stopped playing around Christmas time, was what I call a younger guy; we'd played back in live from time to time. But since I work remotely, I can easily log in, place some bids - get some work done - check back in, etc., whereas he could only come on at about 9pm Central. He'd try to make it to the hive, but more often than not, just couldn't get in. 

So - there I am - in the hive, I'm earning 160 merits in a relatively short time, but he's only getting in on round 2, if at all. So, as a week goes by, because of our different schedules, I've got over 1000 reward merits and he's got maybe 400-560. 

Let's not fool ourselves - free time is a huge variable in the influence disparity between the "haves" and the "have-nots". 

I don't have access to the data - and even if I did, I wouldn't know where to find it - but it would be a curious thing to see how many folks have influence in excess of 100Billion
more than 50 Billion
More than 10 Billion
More than 5 Billion
More than 1 Billion

I suspect everyone with only 1 level 50 would have somewhat less than 10 billion, depending on whether they farm or use the market. Folks with multiple 50s might have more - because the wealth accumulated is a function of time, as well as efficiency at gaining xp - whether farming or teams of 8 running normal content. 

So - if the goal is to make the "average" player be able to afford the good stuff - how do we define "average"? How many hours a day/week do they play? 

This is the kind of thinking that kept me out of the good schools. 

You don't need anywhere near 1 billion to afford the good stuff for one character. 

[rolandgrey]

The game was designed for SOs and never adjusted after the introduction of IOs and IO Sets.  If you're able to play well with SOs, you're only going to be able to play better with IO Sets.

There is no need to farm ALL THE MONEY to cram every single Purple IO onto all of your characters.

[fitzsimmons]

Why not fix the exploit itself instead of solving it with a sledgehammer?

[ivanhedgehog]

I would love to see an increase in the market fee for any sale over 10 mill. Triple the WW fee. That would help reduce inflation.

[Jacke]

3 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I had a shit ton of crafted Efficiency Adaptors ready to go.  I converted by category and had bids and offers out on all the new End Mod IOs within a few minutes of getting on post-patch.  It was like Christmas morning for me!

 

Never underestimate the boredom of someone confined at home from the CV!

 

I did the same thing, though it wasn't planned.  I was part-way through my usual routine, which included making Efficiency Adaptors and then converting them to Performance Shifter Chance for +End procs.  After the patch, I quickly saw that the Performance Shifter proc was still the highest average selling price Endurance Modification set IO, but with 3 extra sets in the L21-50 range, it was taking too many extra converters to get to Performance Shifter.  At the time, several hours after the patch, I decided the best thing to do was to convert until I got a rare set IO.  If it was in Performance Shifter, I'd carry on converting until I got the proc, otherwise put them up for sale.  Most have moved by now, so I also helped provide the new IOs on the first day.

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, rolandgrey said:

The game was designed for SOs and never adjusted after the introduction of IOs and IO Sets.  If you're able to play well with SOs, you're only going to be able to play better with IO Sets.

There is no need to farm ALL THE MONEY to cram every single Purple IO onto all of your characters.

This is true.

 

But I have 6 full purple sets, and all the expensive unique IOs, etc, etc on one of my characters and it cost much less than 1 billion. 

[Gremlin]

On 4/1/2020 at 8:35 PM, QuiJon said:

Those that marketer will still expect those kind of prices and therefore set those higher prices for their sales.

There is a common misconception that prices are somehow "set" by marketers. Marketers don't set prices, they _follow_ them. They look to see what sells for high prices and then make more of it to sell. If they try to sell at a price that's too high then they won't sell anything. The side effect of this is that whatever the marketer buys goes up in price a little and whatever they sell comes _down_ a little. Marketers are careful not to move prices much because it reduces the profit margin.

 

In fact, nobody "sets" prices at all. The "price" for an enhancement is simply short hand for "what people are currently paying". People in a hurry bid high to a get an enhancement now. If lots of people do that then the average price goes up. This used to happen big time on double XP weekends. When things calm down a little the price will drift back down again.

[Gremlin]

12 hours ago, QuiJon said:

Fact is that this is not a real world economy. Influence is not a finite resource.

 

12 hours ago, QuiJon said:

The money in this game is not backed by anything. It represents no real property.

I have some very bad news for you. The real economy is much more like the game economy than you think. Real money is not a finite resource and it's not backed by anything real either. Governments can and do manipulate real world economies in order to control things like inflation and wealth disparity.

 

I didn't believe this when I started playing the market in CoH but then I wanted to know what the differences were between "real" markets and the game. What I discovered is that real markets have most of the same features as the game. The laws of supply and demand are the same. Price setting is the same. The existence of spreads, liquidity problems etc are the same. The main differences that I've noticed so far is that the game doesn't have market makers, you can't corner the market in the game and the spreads are much larger.

[Infinitum]

5 hours ago, rolandgrey said:

There is no need to farm ALL THE MONEY to cram every single Purple IO onto all of your characters.

 

I tried to tell meself that one time, last may, but alas it didnt work.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Infinitum

[Murcielago]

16 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

 You make more in 15 minutes selling, but you probably did not include the time invested drag dropping pulling from the enhancement trays, shifting the slide bars, looking for the enhancement/recipe, typing the numbers, possibly combining at the crafting station.  It adds up in the end, sure it might be faster and easier than the effort of farming, but market flipping is incredibly tedious with all the little steps involved.  For some people, its easier to hit a handful of F-keys activating powers and be entertained with the results of bad guys falling then it is using the mouse, searching, flipping/converting, popping it back into the AH and setting a price.  The market is easier to make INF, but just so tediously boring to achieve the desired results.

 

Market flipping vs farming, each to their own.  Hopefully they raise the taxes and slam down on the drop rates, got to be "fair" to everyone with this bullshit "generally unfair towards those who play standard level 50 content instead of farming" excuse, cause you know......it is your choice to farm or not, doesn't mean the other person is evil just because they farm.  Anyone can make a farm character, very little effort involved, but if you don't want to do that doesn't mean its unfair.

15mins includes fabrication, click-to-add, and selling.