Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Peerless Girl]

10 hours ago, Uruare said:

Maybe I've missed some tidbits in my recent days of not giving a froof, but I don't see anyone praising the skygods for saving the economy factoring for how the value of merits and time to generate merits hasn't been changed.  

 

This isn't going to fix anything.   It isn't going to change a gods-blessed thing except how we can go about farming up whatever we want.
 

Gonna say it in small words so some of the clubfooted slow people in the back won't have to try so hard to catch up;  I enjoy active farming because I enjoy mindlessly killing lots of mooks, not because it' the most superior way to get stuff.

 

Actually, some of us are praising the skygods for saving the economy. Merit/time is likely going to be looked at as well, I'd suspect. It certainly will be one *step* on the road to fixing stuff.  That last paragraph was entirely uncalled for.

[SlimPickens]

11 hours ago, Blastit said:

If farming is less fun for you now, why not look into the other ways of creating inf?

Because those other ways are marketeering, which is much less fun than farming.

 

I play the game to actually push buttons and burn mobs, not click a million converters and bid creep the market for hours a day... but my way of playing has just been made 50% less profitable, whereas standing around with the AH screen open all day is still the best way of making influence available, and always has been.

 

Being ebil and flipping/converting/reselling has always been the best way to make fake money, but I prefer to push buttons to do it. I just dont appreciate having to push twice as many buttons over twice as much time to do it now.

[Blastit]

3 minutes ago, SlimPickens said:

Because those other ways are marketeering, which is much less fun than farming.

 

I play the game to actually push buttons and burn mobs, not click a million converters and bid creep the market for hours a day... but my way of playing has just been made 50% less profitable, whereas standing around with the AH screen open all day is still the best way of making influence available, and always has been.

 

Being ebil and flipping/converting/reselling has always been the best way to make fake money, but I prefer to push buttons to do it. I just dont appreciate having to push twice as many buttons over twice as much time to do it now.

Using the market doesn't create inf, it just moves it around. Things that create inf other than running farming missions include task forces or doing storylines. You could have a go at those.

[ForeverLaxx]

8 minutes ago, SlimPickens said:

Because those other ways are marketeering, which is much less fun than farming.

 

I play the game to actually push buttons and burn mobs, not click a million converters and bid creep the market for hours a day... but my way of playing has just been made 50% less profitable, whereas standing around with the AH screen open all day is still the best way of making influence available, and always has been.

 

Being ebil and flipping/converting/reselling has always been the best way to make fake money, but I prefer to push buttons to do it. I just dont appreciate having to push twice as many buttons over twice as much time to do it now.

Since this seems to get repeated ad infinitum, the problem wasn't that people had money to spend on any singular character; the problem was that there was too much money being generated out of thin air which causes inflation to happen. Playing the game normally generates influence out of nothing, but not at any appreciable rate, which is why farming was so popular -- it generated a lot more influence in the same amount of time. The problem was, due to an exploit, this amount of generated influence was crossing a line that the devs drew in the sand and has since been corrected. You're still generating more influence than everyone else who plays normally, just not enough to potentially impact the market and drive prices up.

 

Marketers do not *create* influence by doing their conversions. All they do is shift around the wealth that already existed.

 

Stop looking at this as "the devs don't want players to be rich", because that's not what this change is targeting.

[justicebeliever]

There is certainly alot of "whataboutism" on this thread that I don't understand.

 

If you don't like the changes, I understand that is frustrating.  But marketeers didn't "do this" to the farmers.  Marketeers haven't conspired to make this happen, and marketeers don't benefit from this change.  Many of the Ebil marketeers are also farmers, and I'm sure some where using the "exploit" to farm Influence.  

 

Harming marketeers won't make your game more fun, or more fair.  It'll just raise prices, and make the game less fun for more people.  I guess, if that's your goal, continue to push for it, but I wouldn't expect a ton of sympathy from most folks.

 

 

[Dazl]

It does seem we have come to the end of the internet on this one. Some like it some don't. Guess it's a matter of time to see how it all works out.

[MunkiLord]

22 minutes ago, justicebeliever said:

There is certainly alot of "whataboutism" on this thread that I don't understand.

 

If you don't like the changes, I understand that is frustrating.  But marketeers didn't "do this" to the farmers.  Marketeers haven't conspired to make this happen, and marketeers don't benefit from this change.  Many of the Ebil marketeers are also farmers, and I'm sure some where using the "exploit" to farm Influence.  

 

Harming marketeers won't make your game more fun, or more fair.  It'll just raise prices, and make the game less fun for more people.  I guess, if that's your goal, continue to push for it, but I wouldn't expect a ton of sympathy from most folks.

 

 

The UFC approves this message. 

[thunderforce]

On 4/7/2020 at 10:37 PM, MunkiLord said:

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.

It takes an average of exactly 15, obviously, since there is a 1/5 chance of getting the enhancement you wanted each time you spend 3 converters. (Even if we couldn't reason like that, it would be absurd to quote a number to 11 significant figures, as you have done.)

[MunkiLord]

Just now, thunderforce said:

It takes an average of exactly 15, obviously, since there is a 1/5 chance of getting the enhancement you wanted each time you spend 3 converters. (Even if we couldn't reason like that, it would be absurd to quote a number to 11 significant figures, as you have done.)

Well yes, the more times I do it the closer to 15 it will become. I'm just providing the data I have, you can blame Excel and my lack of wanting to format the column on the ridiculous amount of decimals.

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, thunderforce said:

It takes an average of exactly 15, obviously, since there is a 1/5 chance of getting the enhancement you wanted each time you spend 3 converters. (Even if we couldn't reason like that, it would be absurd to quote a number to 11 significant figures, as you have done.)

  

On 8/6/2019 at 5:23 AM, DSorrow said:

The math has been shown earlier in this thread that it's generally worth it to do in-set conversions (in large volume) if the price difference between what you're converting from and to is more than the cost of converters to do so: (N-1)/M conversions x 0.3 million inf for an N piece set where M number of pieces are acceptable. For a 6 piece set where 1 piece is acceptable, it takes on average 5 conversions or ~1.5M inf to to convert from a random piece to one specific piece. What's harder to account for numerically, though, is the time cost of doing this. Usually the within-set cost differences max out at around 2mil, so personally I wouldn't bother doing several in-set conversions for an extra 500k.

It's good to see that the RNG is working as mathematics and Lord Nemesis intended.  Quoting @DSorrow for enhanced mathy-ness.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Yomo Kimyata

[EmmySky]

Ugh math.  Well this thread has gone straight down the tubes.

 

😝

[SwitchFade]

16 hours ago, Uruare said:

Whole lot of people on this thread that are clearly lifelong devotees of the 'You're Having Fun Wrong' cult and are loving this opportunity to beat themselves to paste on the thinnest of edges from outright saying that to everyone that doesn't like this change.

 

Also, as for where inf comes from, it's a mystery!   It's like magnets.   You just can't explain that.

 

Maybe I've missed some tidbits in my recent days of not giving a froof, but I don't see anyone praising the skygods for saving the economy factoring for how the value of merits and time to generate merits hasn't been changed.  

 

Here's the spoiler since the You're Having Fun Wrong cultists will never arrive at it on their own.

 

This isn't going to fix anything.   It isn't going to change a gods-blessed thing except how we can go about farming up whatever we want.
 

Gonna say it in small words so some of the clubfooted slow people in the back won't have to try so hard to catch up;  I enjoy active farming because I enjoy mindlessly killing lots of mooks, not because it' the most superior way to get stuff.

 

The most superior way to get stuff is farming merits and turning merits into converters, zapping crap IO's into good IO's and selling or using those.   If you actually do lots of tf's and trials and hami raids and mothership farms, you'll be drowning in merits to the point that you won't know what to do with them most of the time.  It's not the soloers paradise option, but in my well-traveled experience, if you're actually serious about getting the best return on your time spent, be a merit farmer with groups that do stuff all the time.

 

This change made the rewards of inf farming tank.   Made my solo funtime of active farming at least 50% less rewarding, and I don't like that because I'm a player and I'm not here to not enjoy myself.

 

But if you think this change is going to make all the fruits hang lower, I wouldn't hold your breath on that one, because merits are still worth the same and still take the same amount of time to generate.

 

Here's the snag about that.  Don't get up; I'll bring the shocking conclusion to you lest you strain yourself.

 

Inf farmers pushed craptons of inf into the AH.  Prices for converters have been floating around 85k-100k pretty consistently for a while, at least on Everlasting.   Dunno about the other servers.

 

Well, now there's going to be a sharp decrease of inf being put into the system.    The demand for converters isn't going to change, but the inf supply with which to buy them is going to gradually decrease in the coming months both due to this change as well as because active farmers like me will move away from inf farming; it's at least 50% less rewarding now!    I, at least, will be doing other things with my time.

 

So, what happens when there's 50% less inf in the AH, demand for converters remains unchanged, cost in merits and time to generate merits to turn into converters remains unchanged and both supply/demand for high value IO's remains unchanged?

 

It'll get less rewarding to sell converters.  Cost'll eventually drop.  Generation of converters will drop because it'll become increasingly profitable to use the converters yourself, craft your own recipes and wind up not participating in the AH economy at all.

 

Inf is the blood of the AH.   Blood in, blood out.     Convenience of the AH is the draw.      Convenience will, on its face, remain unchanged...but scarcity will creep in as the rewards for activities such as turning merits into converters and selling them depreciates.    Lower costs in the short term will shrink the market altogether, which will push more people into DIY'ing their problems rather than participating in the AH market, which will lead to higher costs due to scarcity.

It'll gradually get harder to find the high demannd IO's and all the pieces of high-demand sets on the AH because the value of making them yourself and using them on your own builds has now effectively been doubled.  

 

Never the less, it's not like this is some sort of doom doomy doom event for the game.   It's just taking a long, scenic walk around Lake Pointless so that we can arrive back at where we started.

In short, an ultimately pointless change that will fix nothing that fixing the stated exploit neither required nor necessitated.  The devs themselves said that they could've fixed the exploit itself, but they went ahead and killed the double inf function as well because...well, I guess taking a long walk around Lake Pointless is scenic or something.

 

This won't even slow inflation.  It'll just make the integers involved in measuring it smaller.

 

And for this pointless adventure, inf farming has been made 50% less fun, because I am totally measuring the fun of farming in terms of its rewards.   

 

You may now return to fighting over who's having fun wrong.

That.       Is.        Not.       How.      Economics.      WORKS.

 

That's not how ANY of this works 

 

Advocating, with a very disguised agenda, that someone hurt your "fun" because they removed the ability to break the economy only reveals that you have nefarious intentions.

 

There is no valid, logical, causal, factual or ethical reason why you, me or anyone should be able to destabilize an economy of a collective by performing behaviours that are explicitly bad for the collective.

 

Unchecked currency generation causes disastrously rampant inflation. That is NOT a desirable thing.

 

Anyone espousing that it's ok and attempting to shame others with excuses is trying to preserve a detrimental exploit for their own personal gain, at the expense of others, albeit unwittingly 

 

If you have yet to grasp why it's severely negative then you haven't read the multiple, detailed explenations from many, including myself, in this very thread.

[SwitchFade]

I should probably mention again, for posterity's sake, that these factors of economics, supply chain dynamics and financial metrics are what I hold a degree in and my vocation; I'm not just debating opinion here, this is well established mathematical principle...

[Haijinx]

17 hours ago, Uruare said:

 

Gonna say it in small words so some of the clubfooted slow people in the back won't have to try so hard to catch up; 

 

I missed this before because of the competing Text Walls of Doom, 

 

But this particular comment you have made is disgusting. There is no place for it.  And it deserves moderation.  

[MunkiLord]

22 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

 

I missed this before because of the competing Text Walls of Doom, 

 

But this particular comment you have made is disgusting. There is no place for it.  And it deserves moderation.  

I think this one was missed because the posts following it were more overtly aggressive and were escalating before being hidden by Jimmy. 

[Haijinx]

4 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I think this one was missed because the posts following it were more overtly aggressive and were escalating before being hidden by Jimmy. 

I assumed there was a lot of frustration involved.  

 

Probably by several people.  

 

 

[Peerless Girl]

6 hours ago, Blastit said:

Using the market doesn't create inf, it just moves it around. Things that create inf other than running farming missions include task forces or doing storylines. You could have a go at those.

 

You tell these people this over and over, but it never seems to sink in...heh.

[Haijinx]

Just now, Peerless Girl said:

 

You tell these people this over and over, but it never seems to sink in...heh.

Since all transactions are taxed.  And that tax is not spent somewhere else, but just destroyed.  The market actually is slightly deflationary. 

 

 

 

[MunkiLord]

47 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I assumed there was a lot of frustration involved.  

 

Probably by several people.  

 

 

My only frustration is I couldn’t keep using Zapp Brannigan quotes as my replies. That’s something I simply don’t do enough. 

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, MunkiLord said:

My only frustration is I couldn’t keep using Zapp Brannigan quotes as my replies. That’s something I simply don’t do enough. 

I often wondered if Zapp was inspired by Captain Sternn in "Heavy Metal"

 

 

[MunkiLord]

2 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I often wondered if Zapp was inspired by Captain Sternn in "Heavy Metal"

 

 

I wouldn’t be surprised one bit. 

[Peerless Girl]

32 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I wouldn’t be surprised one bit. 

 

That and "Raemes T. Quirk" from Space Quest 5 (Roger's asshole captain) looks exactly like Sternn from Heavy Metal (and his name is a play on James T Kirk). This was prior to Zapp's creation. 

 

https://spacequest.fandom.com/wiki/Raemes_Tipper_Quirk

Edited April 9, 2020 by Peerless Girl
Added link to Space Quest 5's Raemes T. Quirk

[Jacke]

20 hours ago, Uruare said:

Also, as for where inf comes from, it's a mystery!   It's like magnets.   You just can't explain that.

Inf comes from players running characters through content and receiving Inf for every in-level-range enemy defeated, completing missions, and selling loot drops to vendor NPCs.  I believe that completely covers Inf generation.  Everything else is moving Inf around between characters, either directly or through the Auction House, or making purchases from vendor NPCs.

 

Magnetism is a natural consequence of having the electric force in a universe with Special Relativity.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Jacke

[Dazl]

4 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

That.       Is.        Not.       How.      Economics.      WORKS.

 

That's not how ANY of this works 

 

Advocating, with a very disguised agenda, that someone hurt your "fun" because they removed the ability to break the economy only reveals that you have nefarious intentions.

 

There is no valid, logical, causal, factual or ethical reason why you, me or anyone should be able to destabilize an economy of a collective by performing behaviours that are explicitly bad for the collective.

 

Unchecked currency generation causes disastrously rampant inflation. That is NOT a desirable thing.

 

Anyone espousing that it's ok and attempting to shame others with excuses is trying to preserve a detrimental exploit for their own personal gain, at the expense of others, albeit unwittingly 

 

If you have yet to grasp why it's severely negative then you haven't read the multiple, detailed explenations from many, including myself, in this very thread.

So much for Jimmy hiding this offensive post.

[Parabola]

57 minutes ago, Crimsonpyre said:

So much for Jimmy hiding this offensive post.

Maybe you can point out the part you find offensive because I'm not seeing it? He is speaking from a position of knowledge, addressing yet another post in this thread that is trying to claim that 'water isn't wet' in economic terms. And incidentally the post he is addressing is the one that contains the genuinely offensive material.

 

The only part of SwitchFade's post that I'm on the fence about is whether Uruare is genuinely motivated by nefarious intent or is simply repeatedly demonstrating ignorance of economics. I can understand reaching the conclusion he has given the time and effort he, myself and others have spent trying to explain how it actually works, only to see the same 'sky isn't blue' arguments in return. I'm more inclined to think that sadly people are just not prepared to listen to any information that disagrees with what they already believe, or what they want to believe.