Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Grouchybeast]

1 hour ago, QuiJon said:

So what it sounds to me is that we should charge a higher AH fee. I mean if the amount of currency in the AH is the problem then perhaps we should create an elevating system where you are charged from 10 percent like now and the more expensive of an item you sell it cranks up to like 75 percent. 

I hope you enjoy the idea of sitting in Atlas endless spamming "WTB Sup Brute's Fury Acc/Dam/End/Rech 25mm" over and over again in Trade chat  until someone who has a set for sale happens to pick your name to initiate an off-AH trade.

[Luminara]

49 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

So what it sounds to me is that we should charge a higher AH fee. I mean if the amount of currency in the AH is the problem then perhaps we should create an elevating system where you are charged from 10 percent like now and the more expensive of an item you sell it cranks up to like 75 percent. 

 

See the problem that no one is really touching on here is that marketers are also creating currency in the game in the way of products that the game didn't "create" randomly. If I can buy a 1k recipe and for 600k transform it into a 5m infl recipe at sale, sure I might only be transferring money, but I am creating a more valuable item to take more from the economy for myself. So maybe we should just destroy more of that profit from the purchase, there by taking more infl out of the economy to balance out the infl created in game play.

 

That already exists.  You have to spend either merits or inf* to acquire converters, thus removing either form of currency from the game permanently.  No currency is created in that transaction.  In actuality, you are improving the economy by adding to the supply of goods and removing an amount of currency permanently.

 

56 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

People have and will always farm.

 

And still can.

 

1 hour ago, QuiJon said:

Cap the prices

 

As has already been explained at least a dozen times, prices have already been capped in a roundabout way, via the availability and cost of convertors and seeded salvage.  You keep circling back to demanding a fixed-price vendor-supplied single-player game economy.  That's not happening.  Let it go.

 

If you really don't understand the fundamental concepts of economics, I'm certain there are numerous resources online.  Try Wikipedia.

[Oubliette_Red]

Everything traded in the AH is already price-capped, by what other players are willing to pay. 

 

[MunkiLord]

4 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Let's say that our current economy is exactly the same, except Miracle +recovery is replaced with 2x Miracle +recovery .   Demand would get filled very quickly, there would be a lot of extra supply, prices would drop.  We'd say that's working as intended.  Who gets hurt?  Well, anyone who owned a lot of them in storage. 

 

Me. I own a lot of them and I'd be hurt lol. But it I'd only be out a few billion, so it's not a big deal. 

[Dazl]

Just removing the patrol xp would have fixed the "exploit".

[SwitchFade]

4 hours ago, QuiJon said:

So what it sounds to me is that we should charge a higher AH fee. I mean if the amount of currency in the AH is the problem then perhaps we should create an elevating system where you are charged from 10 percent like now and the more expensive of an item you sell it cranks up to like 75 percent. 

 

See the problem that no one is really touching on here is that marketers are also creating currency in the game in the way of products that the game didn't "create" randomly. If I can buy a 1k recipe and for 600k transform it into a 5m infl recipe at sale, sure I might only be transferring money, but I am creating a more valuable item to take more from the economy for myself. So maybe we should just destroy more of that profit from the purchase, there by taking more infl out of the economy to balance out the infl created in game play.

 

People have and will always farm. It is the best time vs return in the game for xp and infl. And it has always effected markets yes. So again if we are truly looking at wanting to control INFLATION, the simply put cap prices. Either cap each level if IO to a value or seed the market at a price point like they did salvage that means that no one can really sell for much more then that. 

 

The fact is prices are going up because more people have 50s, more people are building out IO characters and more people want what is for sale and have now gained the money to afford it. More demand doesn't drive down prices in this game it drives them up. It always has and always will. If you want to limit it then take away the system that causes it, which simply put is the market itself. Create a price point that someone that plays how the devs feel is appropriate can earn the money to outfit themselves doing normal content. Cap the prices to that, and you suddenly cut off both the greedy of the markets and the "creation" issue of the farmers since neither of those two groups will also have to work as hard to build a toon out. 

That's not how economics works.

 

Converters  don't create things that create currency. Converters assure all goods are normal goods and all goods are substitutes goods.

 

This drives down prices and assures demand and supply reach equilibrium sooner and at a lower price, assuring surplus us at a maximum for both buyer and seller.

 

You should really read the entire thread.

[Yomo Kimyata]

48 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

Me. I own a lot of them and I'd be hurt lol. But it I'd only be out a few billion, so it's not a big deal. 

I know you do.  It makes things psychologically harder when I know who I’m cowman PvPing against!

[EmmySky]

18 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

You should really read the entire thread.

Fate worse than death: reading this entire thread (yes I have done it but a little along as it was added lol).

 

That's what you wish on someone you really dont like...read the inf thread!

[MunkiLord]

8 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I know you do.  It makes things psychologically harder when I know who I’m cowman PvPing against!

That one I just stick to my price even when I know someone is actively undercutting me, the demand is high enough that it may just take an extra day to move the 75-150 I've posted. 

 

The PvP enhancements I'll keep adjusting my buy and sell prices until I squeeze everything I can out of it, then move on for a few weeks. I enjoy those as people will bid creep by like 100 influence at a time. 

[Saikochoro]

6 hours ago, QuiJon said:

So what it sounds to me is that we should charge a higher AH fee. I mean if the amount of currency in the AH is the problem then perhaps we should create an elevating system where you are charged from 10 percent like now and the more expensive of an item you sell it cranks up to like 75 percent. 

 

See the problem that no one is really touching on here is that marketers are also creating currency in the game in the way of products that the game didn't "create" randomly. If I can buy a 1k recipe and for 600k transform it into a 5m infl recipe at sale, sure I might only be transferring money, but I am creating a more valuable item to take more from the economy for myself. So maybe we should just destroy more of that profit from the purchase, there by taking more infl out of the economy to balance out the infl created in game play.

 

Suggestions in this thread keep getting more and more ridiculous. It’s like people are trying to one up each other on who can have the worst suggestion.

 

You said yourself. The market does not create influence. Pure and simple. It just doesn’t. It enables goods to be fungible and thus enables demand to be met at much lowe prices. All of these suggestions to curb market “greed” would only serve to hurt everyone by causing prices to sky rocket.  The “greed” of the marketers helps keep prices low for everyone. 
 

If the goal is to curb influence generation it makes the most sense to target the biggest offender, not something that already takes money out of the economy. Hence the devs decided to go the common sense route and nerf farming.

 

50+ pages of salt and tears and still people aren’t getting it.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Parabola]

10 hours ago, QuiJon said:

See the problem that no one is really touching on here is that marketers are also creating currency in the game in the way of products that the game didn't "create" randomly. If I can buy a 1k recipe and for 600k transform it into a 5m infl recipe at sale, sure I might only be transferring money, but I am creating a more valuable item to take more from the economy for myself. So maybe we should just destroy more of that profit from the purchase, there by taking more infl out of the economy to balance out the infl created in game play.

Ok, I think I may see the problem here. I think you have convinced yourself of a couple of things. Firstly that wealth inequality is a problem and that it drives inflation. And secondly that this change was made specifically to stop farming because the devs don't like it as a playstyle and all the talk of limiting inflation is just a smokescreen excuse.

 

At this point I'm not sure anything anyone says on the matter will change your mind. I will for the sake of it say that the first genuinely isn't a problem, and that is why we aren't talking about it rather than some conspiracy of silence. As for the second I am obviously not a mind reader so I can't state the devs thoughts or intentions, but I simply don't think this is the case.

 

Think of people converting enhancements as manufacturing companies. They take raw materials that no-one wants or can directly use and turn them into goods that people actually want. This is a good thing for all involved. They make a profit from doing it but they increase the supply of worthwhile stuff, driving the price down. I don't imagine you think Ford are a problem for the economy because they take metals and plastics and create a car out of it? Of course not, we want cars and the more of them that get made the cheaper (relatively) they are.

 

Going back to the original point wealth inequality does not drive inflation. You only need to look at the real world to see that. We have vast wealth inequality all over the world but not runaway inflation. Someone sitting on billions of inf is no more likely to want to pay over the odds for an enhancement than someone with just millions. Rule no1 of how to be wealthier is to learn how to spend less.

 

10 hours ago, QuiJon said:

So what it sounds to me is that we should charge a higher AH fee. I mean if the amount of currency in the AH is the problem then perhaps we should create an elevating system where you are charged from 10 percent like now and the more expensive of an item you sell it cranks up to like 75 percent.

Increasing taxes on market transactions is a dangerous business as others have pointed out. The last thing the economy needs is for transactions to be driven off market. I suspect the fact that this was happening back on live was directly the reason converters were added to the game.

 

10 hours ago, QuiJon said:

The fact is prices are going up because more people have 50s, more people are building out IO characters and more people want what is for sale and have now gained the money to afford it. More demand doesn't drive down prices in this game it drives them up. It always has and always will.

Demand certainly does drive prices up. That isn't just in game, that is a universal economic principle as we have been saying all along.

 

The thing you are missing is the supply side of the equation. What matters to the overall economy is how many new goods are added to the market vs how much currency is added into circulation. This is where the exemped xp->inf was a problem, not just in farming, but that was the most extreme example.

 

11 hours ago, QuiJon said:

If you want to limit it then take away the system that causes it, which simply put is the market itself. Create a price point that someone that plays how the devs feel is appropriate can earn the money to outfit themselves doing normal content. Cap the prices to that, and you suddenly cut off both the greedy of the markets and the "creation" issue of the farmers since neither of those two groups will also have to work as hard to build a toon out.

In effect they have already done this. Inf can be converted directly into merits and merits can be spent directly on recipes and enhancements. The pricepoint they have set is 100 million for a purple etc. But they have also provided us with a market and we rejoice because the prices on the market are nowhere near those pricepoints. Removing the market as things stand would just make everything much more expensive.

 

A change that I could see being much more likely is removing the ability to vendor recipes. Lv50 common recipes are a significant source of income that is generated outside of the market. Also uncommon recipes are the lifeblood of the supply side of the economy. If these had to be either sold on the market or deleted it would pump up supply. Since these discussions have been going on I've actually been making a point of dumping every uncommon I pick up onto the market, it's something we can all do to help keep inflation down.

 

Another huge change would be to provide a mechanism for converting into the pvp, ato and purple tiers. No idea what a sensible number of converters would be but it would immediately limit the price differential between those tiers of enhancements and the uncommons and rares.

[Lines]

13 hours ago, QuiJon said:

I don't believe that makes this my server, or that things should be a democracy. However that doesn't mean that changes to existing game mechanics should be alters at whim of a small group of people with absolutely no input and no discussion. This thread should have been going for the last month only having started with the devs stating a problem they are seeing of inflation, what they think is responsible and how they might want to change it or ALL the options they could do to change it and this should have been a discussion to figure out what most people would have liked. I mean if patrol XP was the issue that bumped XP to high, perhaps killing patrol xp would have been a better solution to try. We don't know. And we wont because they made this change, and lets face it this change will nto solve the problem. We know that from the last 15 years this game ran they never found a way to not have farming be the most productive use of time. But I don't appreciate stealthing in a nerf to a mechanic that like it or nor was being used as intended, and then calling all of us using it exploiters so they could change it with out discussion. 

I think this is a fair concern and the update has come as a surprise. Broadly speaking, I agree that the lack of warning is out of character. However, we're not privvy to the data that the hc team have access to, so we can only speculate.

 

The abruptness of it makes me suspect that some alarming data around inflation was raised recently. Presumably the data showed that inf generation from farming was too rampant and too niche. Let's say it turned out that farming generated over 50% of the games influence, that would be pretty scary. (Anything more than, idk, 25% should make you twitchy.)

 

A month of discussion plus solution implementation means a month's worth of damage done. Once the inf is generated, there's no fair and easy way to get rid of it. I suspect the data was concerning enough that this measure simply had to be pushed out immediately.

 

It could be (and I'm not saying this is true, just postulating) that this measure is semi-temporary to curb inflation while a more robust solution is put in place. I doubt anything will change for farmers now, since farming is still the best way to generate inf. I think it's more likely we'll see exemplar rewards compensated via merits, since the existance of merits do a lot to keep prices down.

 

You mentioned in another post that increasing money sinks would help, such as the AH tax. And yes, absolutely it would (though could start to cause other problems). Sustainable money sinks are very hard to find and balance, however. That's something that does require vigorous testing.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Lines

[tidge]

7 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

Suggestions in this thread keep getting more and more ridiculous. It’s like people are trying to one up each other on who can have the worst suggestion.

Amen.

 

I do find some hilarity in the proposed suggestions; they also remind me how much of the big picture folks are missing. I'd like to imagine a different world in which these absurd market fixes were used and the vocal minority was being equally off-the-wall about 'fixes' to implement in AE farms. "Debuff all AE Damage by 60% !", "Limit the number of mobs in AE missions!", "Charge merits/inf to run AE missions!".

[tidge]

3 hours ago, parabola said:

A change that I could see being much more likely is removing the ability to vendor recipes.

I felt a great disturbance in the Badge forums, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

[skoryy]

One bad economics post generates twenty responses.  Why.

 

If y'all really want to combat inflation, make it so that forum posting costs 1000 inf a word.

[Myrmidon]

8 minutes ago, tidge said:

Amen.

 

I do find some hilarity in the proposed suggestions; they also remind me how much of the big picture folks are missing. I'd like to imagine a different world in which these absurd market fixes were used and the vocal minority was being equally off-the-wall about 'fixes' to implement in AE farms. "Debuff all AE Damage by 60% !", "Limit the number of mobs in AE missions!", "Charge merits/inf to run AE missions!".

A simple solution: the only AE missions that give XP are Dev’s Choice. I’m sure that Infernal wouldn’t mind the company generated by this one simple change.

[Parabola]

24 minutes ago, skoryy said:

One bad economics post generates twenty responses.  Why.

 

If y'all really want to combat inflation, make it so that forum posting costs 1000 inf a word.

Very true. Every time I've posted in this thread I've had this in my head:

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

17 minutes ago, parabola said:

Very true. Every time I've posted in this thread I've had this in my head:

 

XKCD comics cost 1bn.

[tidge]

3 hours ago, skoryy said:

One bad economics post generates twenty responses.  Why.

 

If y'all really want to combat inflation, make it so that forum posting costs 1000 inf a word.

Some folks are just farming responses...

[Obus Form]

8 minutes ago, tidge said:

Some folks are just farming responses...

They're just farming influence!

 

We all know the more forum reactions you get, the more influential you are.

[tidge]

22 minutes ago, Obus Form said:

They're just farming influence!

 Or Infamy perhaps. Definitely not Information.

[Grouchybeast]

7 hours ago, parabola said:

Another huge change would be to provide a mechanism for converting into the pvp, ato and purple tiers. No idea what a sensible number of converters would be but it would immediately limit the price differential between those tiers of enhancements and the uncommons and rares.

I think it would be a bad idea to involve ATOs in the converter game.  Buying packs from the market is in itself a significant inf sink, and some people buy a lot of them.  The price of ATOs is largely controlled by margin over the pack price, and a better way to adjust the supply/price for them if the devs wanted to would be to tweak the pack purchase price.

 

If might be nice to see a new pack type with purple recipes.

[Parabola]

12 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

I think it would be a bad idea to involve ATOs in the converter game.  Buying packs from the market is in itself a significant inf sink, and some people buy a lot of them.  The price of ATOs is largely controlled by margin over the pack price, and a better way to adjust the supply/price for them if the devs wanted to would be to tweak the pack purchase price.

 

If might be nice to see a new pack type with purple recipes.

Yeah I wasn't advocating that they extend the converter system just pointing out that they could and that it would really shake things up. I like the idea of a purple pack though.

[Obus Form]

1 minute ago, parabola said:

Yeah I wasn't advocating that they extend the converter system just pointing out that they could and that it would really shake things up. I like the idea of a purple pack though.

A purple pack essentially price ceilings the purple IOs, much like winter IOs being 20-25 million, and ATOs being 8-10 million.

 

Curious, not questioning your request, do you want a price ceiling on most IOs that are essential/rare like PVPs, Purples, Winters, ATOs, etc?

Gameplay wise, I would prefer not all good IOs (purple, pvp, ato, winter) come from loot boxes since it detracts from the gameplay itself.

[Parabola]

6 minutes ago, Obus Form said:

A purple pack essentially price ceilings the purple IOs, much like winter IOs being 20-25 million, and ATOs being 8-10 million.

 

Curious, not questioning your request, do you want a price ceiling on most IOs that are essential/rare like PVPs, Purples, Winters, ATOs, etc?

Gameplay wise, I would prefer not all good IOs (purple, pvp, ato, winter) come from loot boxes since it detracts from the gameplay itself.

I can see both ways really. On the one hand everything apart from pvp's and purples is either available in packs or covert-to-able so why not those. On the other I see what you are saying about preserving some natural drops in the market (but with a ceiling price set by the merit cost). Not sure which side I come down on to be honest. If purples rise much above 25 million then the pack idea might start to look more tempting.