Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Oubliette_Red]

 

1 minute ago, Blastit said:

7 minutes ago, Corruption said:

This change and the rationale given are lame.

They do still have legs, tho.

Now that they got the farmer off, I'm sure it'll be walking just fine shortly.

 

[Oklahoman]

On 3/31/2020 at 9:32 AM, Deadly Fredly said:

You stop earning Empyrean merits around vet level 99, right? Some sort of inf gain buff at vet levels 100+ might help quell the discontent.

Forgive me for not digging through all the comments before making my own. I have no problem with the inf part of this, but I would like to see something that happens once you reach vet level 100.

 

I'm guessing an inf buff is out of the question, so I would like to see the P2W vendor have a selection of pbAoE powers with a long recharge - matching the super team inspirations, perhaps. Every 100 vet levels maybe the radius increases. Yes, we could comically have a toon with a vet level high enough to rez an entire zone - so what?

 

I stopped gaining XP on one of my toons (Boy Band) once he hit vet level 100 because there really wasn't a benefit beyond that.

[Gremlin]

5 hours ago, gunterrr said:

So when a change like this is made in the name of creating a better experience overall, it's good to have analytics, survey data

I'd love to know how much inf enters the game and where it ends up. Perhaps the monthly activity stats could include:

• inf generated from drops
• inf generated from vendoring
• inf spent on P2W vendors
• number of Hero/Villain and Winter packs purchased
• AH fees
• median and mean values of inf held on active accounts
• total inf on active accounts (which would also indicate inf lost to inactive accounts)

As others have said, it's probably impossible or undesirable to report all this but I'd love to see it.

[Digirium]

11 minutes ago, Gremlin said:

I'd love to know how much inf enters the game and where it ends up. Perhaps the monthly activity stats could include:

• inf generated from drops
• inf generated from vendoring
• inf spent on P2W vendors
• number of Hero/Villain and Winter packs purchased
• AH fees
• median and mean values of inf held on active accounts
• total inf on active accounts (which would also indicate inf lost to inactive accounts)

As others have said, it's probably impossible or undesirable to report all this but I'd love to see it.

 

Add:

• how many convert operations are performed, broken down by operation type

Enhancement converters possibly need to be bound to a character, not able to trade, to persuade the recipient to use them. As it is, they are being used to exploit for profit, to extract influence from others actually playing the game, by characters not playing the game and not directly earning influence. Influence has become more valuable than before with the disabling of influence in lieu of experience option. Limiting the use of enhancement converters would help to maintain the value of influence.

[Lines]

1 minute ago, Digirium said:

Enhancement converters possibly need to be bound to a character, not able to trade, to persuade the recipient to use them. As it is, they are being used to exploit for profit, to extract influence from others actually playing the game, by characters not playing the game and not directly earning influence.

Sort of? I mean you need merits to create new converters and to get merits you need to be playing the game.

 

All that would happen if converters were flagged as untradeable is people would find the next best merit-to-influence object to exchange. I'd wager catalysts would be next. The value of merits might change a little, if at all. The large-volume trade of converters that we have means that the supply of in-demand rare IOs is kept high and diverse. Limiting people's access to converters would decrease the supply and raise prices.

 

I personally use merits for my converters, which I use as you suggest. I'm not sure how many people buy their converters from the AH, but there's clearly an enormous trade for them.

[Lockpick]

10 minutes ago, Digirium said:

Enhancement converters possibly need to be bound to a character, not able to trade, to persuade the recipient to use them. As it is, they are being used to exploit for profit, to extract influence from others actually playing the game, by characters not playing the game and not directly earning influence. Influence has become more valuable than before with the disabling of influence in lieu of experience option. Limiting the use of enhancement converters would help to maintain the value of influence.

 

/jranger

[Yomo Kimyata]

12 minutes ago, Digirium said:

 

Add:

• how many convert operations are performed, broken down by operation type

Enhancement converters possibly need to be bound to a character, not able to trade, to persuade the recipient to use them. As it is, they are being used to exploit for profit, to extract influence from others actually playing the game, by characters not playing the game and not directly earning influence. Influence has become more valuable than before with the disabling of influence in lieu of experience option. Limiting the use of enhancement converters would help to maintain the value of influence.

Make converters non-transferrable?  How EVIL!  I LOVE IT!

[Parabola]

9 minutes ago, Digirium said:

 

Add:

• how many convert operations are performed, broken down by operation type

Enhancement converters possibly need to be bound to a character, not able to trade, to persuade the recipient to use them. As it is, they are being used to exploit for profit, to extract influence from others actually playing the game, by characters not playing the game and not directly earning influence. Influence has become more valuable than before with the disabling of influence in lieu of experience option. Limiting the use of enhancement converters would help to maintain the value of influence.

This thread really is the gift that keeps on giving. Converters are being used to transform enhancements that no one wants into those that they do. The increased supply of desirable enhancements brings their cost down. The people doing the converting are indeed making a profit but they aren't exploiting anyone, in fact everyone benefits. Anyone can do this and if you don't want to buy from the market there are other options available (including sitting down with a stack of converters of your own and converting until you have exactly what you want).

[Dazl]

21 minutes ago, Digirium said:

 

Add:

• how many convert operations are performed, broken down by operation type

Enhancement converters possibly need to be bound to a character, not able to trade, to persuade the recipient to use them. As it is, they are being used to exploit for profit, to extract influence from others actually playing the game, by characters not playing the game and not directly earning influence. Influence has become more valuable than before with the disabling of influence in lieu of experience option. Limiting the use of enhancement converters would help to maintain the value of influence.

Well that idea will make some people nervous.

[Yomo Kimyata]

No no no no, hear me out.  I love this idea of making converters bound.  This would add some real strategy to the game. 

 

Ebil marketeers would have their ill-gotten gains slashed, since they could no longer get cheap converters.  Stick it to the marketeers:  check!

Merit farmers would no longer be able to dump converters for quick cash.  Stick it to the merit farmers:  check!

Inf farmers would see their earning potential in relationship to the first two groups rise, but will be shocked that no one is making cheap IOs anymore.  Stick it to the inf farmers:  check!

 

Or they could simply remove converters as an option at the merit vendor.  You can only get them as drops!  Prices would go through the roof! 

 

I'm giddy at this idea!  Now THIS would make the game harder!

[Haijinx]

Wow.  Exemping down to 49 from 50 and doubling Inf was obviously stupid.

 

It was a no brainer of exploits to close. 

 

Proposing all sorts of other changes both to earn tons of Inf, or to sink tons?  Not sure it really helps anything. 

 

 

[Seed22]

On 4/6/2020 at 4:07 PM, Ironblade said:

Well, this is wrong.  I'm not sure why you would say this.  I THINK you don't actually know the definition of the word 'curb'.  It means 'restrain', not 'eliminate'.

 

Of course, there isn't always inflation.  This is why the word 'deflation' exists.  But I agree that inflation is both normal and desirable.  The only issue is the RATE of inflation - which this change will have a favorable effect on.

Oh no, I'm aware of it's definition, and it still cannot truly be curbed(i.e restrained). The rate of inflation hasn't changed and won't. Yellows are still the price they were before this change(50k a pop and such), and purps are still fixed. So my comment still is correct and  still stands.

 

In the long-term, like I said(which is what most people don't look at) it won't change, i.e inflation won't be curbed, which means overall this...kinda did nothing, actually.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Seed22

[Seed22]

On 4/6/2020 at 4:16 PM, ivanhedgehog said:

what would help the economy would be for the devs to run a script that across the board deletes 50% of every toons inf. 75% if that toon has more than 1.75 billion. This change will do nothing for inflation, there is too much cash out there already and the marketeers that have most of it wont be giving it up. everyone would feel the pain so no one would feel left out.

You know I thought I heard of every asinine thing possible, and then THIS shows up. I hope it's sarcasm. Please say sike.

[gunterrr]

4 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

No no no no, hear me out.  I love this idea of making converters bound.  This would add some real strategy to the game. 

 

Ebil marketeers would have their ill-gotten gains slashed, since they could no longer get cheap converters.  Stick it to the marketeers:  check!

Merit farmers would no longer be able to dump converters for quick cash.  Stick it to the merit farmers:  check!

Inf farmers would see their earning potential in relationship to the first two groups rise, but will be shocked that no one is making cheap IOs anymore.  Stick it to the inf farmers:  check!

 

Or they could simply remove converters as an option at the merit vendor.  You can only get them as drops!  Prices would go through the roof! 

 

I'm giddy at this idea!  Now THIS would make the game harder!

 

Why would you want to make the game harder for everyone. If you want it to be hard go for it... I don't have that kind of time to invest and these changes don't benefit anyone who isn't in the groups you mentioned. Net loss?

[justicebeliever]

6 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

Oh no, I'm aware of it's definition, and it still cannot truly be curbed(i.e restrained). The rate of inflation hasn't changed and won't. Yellows are still the price they were before this change(50k a pop and such), and purps are still fixed. So my comment still is correct and  still stands.

 

In the long-term, like I said(which is what most people don't look at) it won't change, i.e inflation won't be curbed, which means overall this...kinda did nothing, actually.

By what evidence do make a claim that inflation can't be curbed or restrained.  I'm not an economist, but certainly there a massive tomes devoted to the ideas and methodology of curbing inflation.

 

Your own example of prices not rising on certain salvage is evidence this is true (prices have not inflated, and are thus restrained).  I'm not sure I'm understanding what you are saying.

[QuiJon]

On 4/2/2020 at 3:30 PM, Oubliette_Red said:

Pretty sure that disabling Patrol XP affects everyone equally, while the changes the devs made primarily impacts exploitative farmers.

If forgoing xp for more influence is an exploit then why is not using a token to get more xp rather then influence? And since those are the same thing, then I would assert that earning XP for the time you are not playing is the biggest exploit of all. So yes I think turning off patrol xp would have been a viable choice to discuss, that is if the devs had treated us as adults and bothered to enter into a discussion in the first place. So would have been disabling the influence gaining option in AE but leaving it for general game play. Perhaps so would maybe adjusting the bonus to something other then 2x, or adjusting just the AE bonus to something other then 2x. See this is why I argue about calling it and exploit. It basically just made it easy for them to fix how they wanted with no discussion or input from players. 

 

Now 10 years ago I would have gotten this. The servers were being run for profit and as such had to make a profit. But they don't now they only have to keep enough of us willing to donate to keep them alive. I am not saying that as a threat of leaving I am not seeing that happen in my future. I am just saying I change in a basic in game mechanic should have had community discussion before a blanket dev opinion was implemented. 

[MunkiLord]

1 hour ago, Digirium said:

 

Add:

• how many convert operations are performed, broken down by operation type

Enhancement converters possibly need to be bound to a character, not able to trade, to persuade the recipient to use them. As it is, they are being used to exploit for profit, to extract influence from others actually playing the game, by characters not playing the game and not directly earning influence. Influence has become more valuable than before with the disabling of influence in lieu of experience option. Limiting the use of enhancement converters would help to maintain the value of influence.

When converting inside a set of six, it takes an average of 15.113313227 converters if you're targeting a specific enhancement. This is based on me tracking 2321 enhancements I converted. I used 35,124. I spent over 2.8 billion purchasing those converters on the market, so that is influence that went to other people. 

 

Also, your idea isn't going to happen. What you're seeing from converters and it's impact on the market is the intended goal.

 

Now if you want to know what actually harms the common person, I say it's the last 5 display bug. Converting in set attempting to get Miracle +Recovery when the last 5 was displaying correctly made me an average profit of 1.614 million influence per enhancement for 581 enhancements. When the last 5 bug was active I made an average profit of 5.134 million for 259 enhancements. And I posted each one of them for the exact same price, but people didn't know better so they just overbid because of the last 5 displaying incorrectly.

[Seed22]

15 minutes ago, justicebeliever said:

By what evidence do make a claim that inflation can't be curbed or restrained.  I'm not an economist, but certainly there a massive tomes devoted to the ideas and methodology of curbing inflation.

 

Your own example of prices not rising on certain salvage is evidence this is true (prices have not inflated, and are thus restrained).  I'm not sure I'm understanding what you are saying.

When I talk about curbed, I mean in terms of the macro-economical sense. Micro, sure, it'll work in certain sectors for sure. But then it might spike again in another. Like eh...catalyst maybe? And, my apologies for not being clear in that regard. I THINK overall that people here may feel as though this'll curb inflation in a MACRO sense, which I once again feel will not be true. It will probably make it better in some sectors sure, but once again, potentially much worse in others. That's pretty much all I'm trying to get at.

 

Edit: Quick question to make sure I'm reading this right(there are a LOT of opinions here lol) are you saying it will drive inflation rates DOWN? or are you wanting them to stay the same? That's a question for everyone who reads this too, btw.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Seed22

[Seed22]

You know...a double inf token would be neat! maybe have it work in TFs or in general content like the DXP ones?

[EmmySky]

To all the foot stomping tantrums:

 

TankYou needs a new judgement (I am tired of the old one) so I popped into Cults dreck map farm (17656....this is not an exemp farm so running at 50+1 and +4×8).  I had a windfall in email so I used it, it adds 25% inf gain.  In the one hour of the windfall, I quit when it was done, I earned 25 million inf.  My math skills suck but that seems about 20 million an hour, without windfall.

 

Anyone who can't stand to make a measly 20 million an hour, well, can I have your stuff?

 

On a side note...I used the windfall because thread and shard drops increase 50% with it.  In a hour I got 27 threads and 15 shards.  That seems a lil low...I wish I could buy threads with my 25m.  😝

[Jaguaratron]

Good change, positive direction.

[Rathulfr]

14 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

You know...a double inf token would be neat! maybe have it work in TFs or in general content like the DXP ones?

 

No: that just defeats the purpose of the fix in the first place.  That would just shift the grinding of double Inf from AE to everywhere else.  The problem wasn't that AE farms generated too much Inf: the problem is there was too much Inf being generated in the first place.  It doesn't matter where that Inf comes from: the spigot needed to be turned down at that particular source to reduce the rate of inflation everywhere else.

 

The answer to bailing out a sinking ship is to plug the leak, not add even more leaks in different places. *eyeroll*

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by Rathulfr

[MunkiLord]

1 minute ago, Rathulfr said:

 

The answer to bailing out a sinking ship is to plug the leak, not add even more leaks in different places. *eyeroll*

 

You know, with practical thinking like that, you'd make a terrible politician.

[Digirium]

39 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

Also, your idea isn't going to happen. What you're seeing from converters and it's impact on the market is the intended goal.

If converters are locked to characters, then the same goal is achieved: IOs will still end up on the auction house. What won't happen, is the ability to farm converters from the AH and flip IOs over and over without limit - you'll only be able to profit from the converters earned on that character.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Digirium

[MunkiLord]

Just now, Digirium said:

If converters are locked to characters, then the same goal is achieved: IOs will still end up on the auction house. What won't happen, is the ability to farm converters and flip IOs over and over without limit - you'll only be able to profit from the converters earned on that character.

Like I said, what you're seeing happen now is the intended effect. Your proposed change simply isn't going to happen.