Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[arcane]

7 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

I’m going to be honest with you. I have gutted more than a few characters recently for their IOs as well. 
 

However, there are a few caveats. I power level my toons to 50 with double xp. I enjoy lots of alts, but do not enjoy not being level 50. I plan out my builds and they are all expensive (300-600m). 
 

This week I made 6 or 7 new alts. I didn’t have the money to cover them. The power leveling process did fund portions of it. I didn’t particularly feel like doing the enhancement converter routine lately, so I decided to cannibalize less used toons. 
 

I think I probably would have had to do that anyway before the nerf, but not as much. Like I said, it was a nerf. 
 

That said, in my anecdotal (key word) experience, I have seen prices drop somewhat across the board for several of my go to sets. Not a huge drop, but one that I noticed. 
 

I plan to spend about 2k converters in the next couple weeks to due the enhancement conversion routine to fund more alts. That will give me even more of an idea if prices overall have dropped. Just for info when I place things for sale I always put in a price around 300-500k less than the last 5 listed depending on the price (except for bugged displays like miracle + recovery).
 

Speaking of miracle - PSA - never bid more than 4.5 - 5m even when the last 5 indicate they have been selling for 10-18m. 

I had 100% of my alts purpled to the teeth before the nerf. As soon as the nerf hit, I lost my patience with the slower rates of return pretty quickly. Now only ~50% of my 50’s have enhancements at all. 😕

[Lines]

Just now, Coyotedancer said:

 

I would bet Harry's favorite farm map that you guys *still* make more of a profit than anyone else, though.

 

Even though the resulting number may be a bit smaller than they used to be, marketeering remains the route for highest return per amount of time invested. 

 

Possibly. (though I don't think of myself as a marketeer. I just convert and sell my drops. I don't flip anything.)

 

But also keep in mind that using the auction house only moves existing money around, and someone who might be hoarding money is taking it out of play and deflating the economy. Plus the tax, which is more money gone.

 

Inflation, and the large prices that come with it, happen when new money is poured in.

[Yomo Kimyata]

23 minutes ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

In a word, Yomo?

Choice.

 

 

I want to make sure I am not misunderstanding you. 

 

Your answer to my first question which I will paraphrase as "How is success in terms of easy inf generation not achievable by anyone?" is "Choice."  One chooses not to be successful.  Ok.  To each their own.

 

Your answer to my second question which I will paraphrase as "How have players who don't play the markets been adversely affected?" is "Choice"?  That one I don't get.

[Coyotedancer]

1 minute ago, Lines said:

 

Possibly. (though I don't think of myself as a marketeer. I just convert and sell my drops. I don't flip anything.)

 

But also keep in mind that using the auction house only moves existing money around, and someone who might be hoarding money is taking it out of play and deflating the economy. Plus the tax, which is more money gone.

 

Inflation, and the large prices that come with it, happen when new money is poured in.

 

Why is it that every time the income inequality conversation comes up, someone inevitably tries to deflect by going right back to that "The Market, blessed be its name, doesn't cause inflation"-thing? 

 

Yes, yes. Market fees remove INF from the economy and that's a Good Thing. I don't think anyone is arguing against that. 

But it has nothing at all to do with marketeering being the most effective way to amass a fortune in-game.  

[Saikochoro]

13 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

I had 100% of my alts purpled to the teeth before the nerf. As soon as the nerf hit, I lost my patience with the slower rates of return pretty quickly. Now only ~50% of my 50’s have enhancements at all. 😕

I feel for you. It does suck to cannibalize alts. I also didn’t have the patience to earn the required influence through the market or farming. 
 

If I’m being brutally honest, especially given Jimmy’s most recent reply, I don’t think this will change. If anything it may be nerfed more. Though I don’t believe so much so to make it not worth it. They don’t hate farming (other than afk farming). I’m just not sure how they are going to attack afk farming without normal farming being touched. 
 

I know this answer doesn’t sit well with probably most people. But I find that I have the most success with doing a balance of different things.  I know I said in another post that I “like” farming and playing the market. That isn’t actually true. I don’t “like” doing either. I just like the rewards of doing them. What I “like” doing is playing fully kitted out level 50s without slogging thru level 1-49. I just put in the leg work to fund them. 
 

This is honestly the only game I have ever played the market on. I do it because it is easy and efficient. This is also the only game I have ever farmed on. Again, because it is the easiest way to get to level 50. 

I have zero problem with farming or marketing as an activity though. I think they are both just as valid as playing story content. But I think you, I, and others who want lots of expensive builds fast will feel nerfs less if we all do a bit of marketing, a bit of farming (many many different ways of farming), as well as a bit of traditional teaming. That way any targeted nerf only affects us a bit. That is just my opinion though. 
 

I think they are doing their best to make any one way not “required” to leave options open. I think there will always be the most optimal routes though. That’s why I generally use each most optimal route. 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 minute ago, Saikochoro said:

 

I have zero problem with farming or marketing as an activity though. I think they are both just as valid as playing story content. But I think you, I, and others will feel nerfs less if we all do a bit of marketing, a bit of farming (many many different ways of farming), as well as a bit of traditional teaming. That way any targeted nerf only affects us a bit. That is just my opinion though. 

The wisdom of portfolio diversification!

[Coyotedancer]

3 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

I’m just not sure how they are going to attack afk farming without normal farming being touched. 

It's going to have to be something very carefully targeted and devilishly clever... Because short of that? They can't.

 

We'll see if they can manage that.

If not? I suspect those of us who are active farmers will find ourselves thrown under the bus in the name of "the common good".

[arcane]

13 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I want to make sure I am not misunderstanding you. 

 

Your answer to my first question which I will paraphrase as "How is success in terms of easy inf generation not achievable by anyone?" is "Choice."  One chooses not to be successful.  Ok.  To each their own.

 

Your answer to my second question which I will paraphrase as "How have players who don't play the markets been adversely affected?" is "Choice"?  That one I don't get.

I don’t know his points, but I will say that, for myself, I’ve tried to follow guides to marketeering several times and found the whole process so tedious and filled with long waits that I ultimately decided I didn’t have the patience/capacity to do it correctly in the way that our dear billionaires do.

Edited July 20, 2020 by arcaneholocaust

[Yomo Kimyata]

Just now, arcaneholocaust said:

 tedious and filled with long waits 

And that, my friend, is exactly why it is so incredibly profitable in terms of make-believe money.  If you don't want to spend years going to space medical school to become a rocket surgeon because it is admittedly a lot of work, don't expect to earn space rocket surgeon money.  The difference is that you don't have to pay a penny in terms of time or investment to learn to market.  If you choose not to, that's fine! 

[Lines]

1 minute ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

Why is it that every time the income inequality conversation comes up, someone inevitably tries to deflect by going right back to that "The Market, blessed be its name, doesn't cause inflation"-thing? 

It comes up because the market is at the eye of the storm in that conversation. Those who can engage with it are the 'haves' and those who can't are the 'have-nots'. By the end of Live, that disparity was huge. On Homecoming right now, everyone can engage with it. And that's incredible.

 

4 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

Yes, yes. Market fees remove INF from the economy and that's a Good Thing. I don't think anyone is arguing against that. 

But it has nothing at all to do with marketeering being the most effective way to amass a fortune in-game.  

Amassing a fortune isn't an issue (Just typing that out, I feel the urge to add that I don't feel the same way about real life wealth. Different beast). Worst case scenario is that someone with an incredible amount of wealth and no sense decides to buy every IO five times each for a few million more than what they're worth. There would be a temporary bump in the market and it would normalise again as people buy and sell for a more average wealth. A few wealthy players cannot make any long-term change to how much things cost* - the average wealth is a more powerful mover.

 

As money gets poured in and swished around, the average goes up and the prices go up with it. On Live, that average must have been very high - not because a lot of people had that much money, but because the disparity between rich and poor was so big.

 

*I guess a sustained, coordinated, 24-hours-a-day effort with the intent of screwing up the economy for everyone would do it. But then nobody benefits out of that. The wealthy players most of all, who just lost all their money buying a ton of crap that was worth half as much as they bought it for.

[Saikochoro]

5 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

It's going to have to be something very carefully targeted and devilishly clever... Because short of that? They can't.

 

We'll see if they can manage that.

If not? I suspect those of us who are active farmers will find ourselves thrown under the bus in the name of "the common good".

Yeah I really really hope they are going to be able to achieve it. 
 

Only thing I can think of (don’t know if possible) is a way to detect if a hero is moving as well as if the only powers being “used” are toggles and the one auto power. Then suspend the not logging out when in a task force for AE content.  Put a timer of say 5 minutes and if the above criteria are met the hero is logged out. 
 

The player would be forced to be more active. I truly hope they minimize the effect on active farming as much as possible though. 

[arcane]

1 minute ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

And that, my friend, is exactly why it is so incredibly profitable in terms of make-believe money.  If you don't want to spend years going to space medical school to become a rocket surgeon because it is admittedly a lot of work, don't expect to earn space rocket surgeon money.  The difference is that you don't have to pay a penny in terms of time or investment to learn to market.  If you choose not to, that's fine! 

Absolutely, I don’t believe inequality is inherently wrong either. Unfortunately, the vessel that was helping me reach new heights in terms of wealth - farming - got nerfed. Consider yourself profoundly fortunate that your preferred method of wealth accrual has been preserved better than mine.

[Jimmy]

1 minute ago, Lines said:

*I guess a sustained, coordinated, 24-hours-a-day effort with the intent of screwing up the economy for everyone would do it. But then nobody benefits out of that. The wealthy players most of all, who just lost all their money buying a ton of crap that was worth half as much as they bought it for.

Even that's not really practical because of converters.

I think the only thing you could really do that with would be Hami-Os (because they can't be converted), but sustaining that kind of manipulation would be incredibly expensive, and it wouldn't last long after you stopped because Hami-Os just aren't that much better than the alternatives in most cases.

[Saikochoro]

11 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

I don’t know his points, but I will say that, for myself, I’ve tried to follow guides to marketeering several times and found the whole process so tedious and filled with long waits that I ultimately decided I didn’t have the patience/capacity to do it correctly in the way that our dear billionaires do. I did make a little cash each time, but I was nowhere close to unlocking that obscene level of wealth that only pro marketeers enjoy in this game, no.

The way I did it was buy 20 yellow recipes at the end of a play session. Convert the merits I earned during the play session to converters. Then the next day at the beginning of the play session craft the recipes, convert, and sell.  Took about 20 minutes.  Then pick up the cash the next day or two. And repeat each day I was able to play.  I don’t have a huge amount of wealth, but I was able to fund my builds. 

[Saikochoro]

3 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Even that's not really practical because of converters.

I think the only thing you could really do that with would be Hami-Os (because they can't be converted), but sustaining that kind of manipulation would be incredibly expensive, and it wouldn't last long after you stopped because Hami-Os just aren't that much better than the alternatives in most cases.

Oh the glory of converters! You really can’t overstate their worth and benefits to the game economy. 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Yomo Kimyata]

6 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Even that's not really practical because of converters.

I think the only thing you could really do that with would be Hami-Os (because they can't be converted), but sustaining that kind of manipulation would be incredibly expensive, and it wouldn't last long after you stopped because Hami-Os just aren't that much better than the alternatives in most cases.

Jimmy, stop stealing my material!

[arcane]

3 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

The way I did it was buy 20 yellow recipes at the end of a play session. Convert the merits I earned during the play session to converters. Then the next day at the beginning of the play session craft the recipes, convert, and sell.  Took about 20 minutes.  Then pick up the cash the next day or two. And repeat each day I was able to play.  I don’t have a huge amount of wealth, but I was able to fund my builds. 

Yeah my problem is I like farming way better, so my only interest in marketeering is in being one of those hyper-rich pros that make more than farmers. So when I get the mediocre returns every beginning investor has to start with, I just get discouraged and go back to my farming day job that at least pays the bills, though slower than any of my rich friends pay theirs.

[Jimmy]

At the end of the day, marketeers don't negatively impact the experience of other players so we don't really see it as a problem that needs solving. You can be upset that someone has the patience to work the market and amass wealth - but really, what impact does it actually have on you (or other players)?

 

In order to make money on the market they need to produce goods that others want to buy. If nobody did that, then you'd either have to make (craft / convert) them yourself (which you can still do!), or pay very high prices due to those goods being scarce on the market. You are effectively paying the marketeers to craft and convert for you.

 

All of this is only true because of how obscure and unintuitive / difficult to work with the crafting systems are. If they were simple and easy then there wouldn't be a reason to pay others for it and everyone would it themselves. So in reality... the market isn't the problem here, crafting is. If we want to democratise this, then we need to make crafting and converting easier to use and understand.

[Saikochoro]

2 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Yeah my problem is I like farming way better, so my only interest in marketeering is in being one of those hyper-rich pros that make more than farmers. So when I get the mediocre returns every beginning investor has to start with, I just get discouraged and go back to my farming day job that at least pays the bills, though slower than any of my rich friends pay theirs.

Totally understandable. Our goal was different so I completely understand not being satisfied with the results. 

[EmmySky]

1 hour ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

The other constant issue that I see in this thread, and others associated with it, is this bizarre perspective that the market itself is somehow equally accessible to everyone.

It isn't.

It actually is.  Every player has access to the market.  Saying it isn't equally accessible to everyone is wrong.

46 minutes ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

Choice.

 

The game was designed to reward players in a way that they ultimately got to choose.  That choice is good.  The freedom and option stands to enable players to participate in the game on their own terms.  It is, in my view, a fundamental principle that elevates City of Heroes to the quality of game that is so well loved by so many. 

Choice.

 

It all comes down to this.  People have the options.  There exists the opportunity for everyone to use the market (or farm, or play normally) to fund their requirements.  They have options.  Nobody should be able to 'guarantee' that the outcome of choice A be equal to the outcome of choice B, each choice has its pros and cons and each player makes that decision based on their own needs, desires and 'fun'.  

 

I won't claim that removing double inf while exemplared was a nerf to farming, it was a nerf to anyone playing exemplared.  I love to use my 50s to join any team, doing TFs or story arcs or even farming, just to earn threads and such for incarnates.  I no longer have the double inf option.  It was a nerf to inf generation.  By generation I mean making inf out of thin air, not moving it around in the market or amassing wealth.  The change had nothing to do with players and their wealth.  Overall, it was a healthy  move for the economy and I haven't personally found it taking any longer to amass the wealth  needed to outfit a 50 than it did before, but thats because I do that concurrently with earning incarnate salvage and that takes .... well, a while lol.

 

 

TLDR; not all choices have the same outcome and a player will be subject to the outcome of the choices they make

[Saikochoro]

9 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

At the end of the day, marketeers don't negatively impact the experience of other players so we don't really see it as a problem that needs solving. You can be upset that someone has the patience to work the market and amass wealth - but really, what impact does it actually have on you (or other players)?

 

In order to make money on the market they need to produce goods that others want to buy. If nobody did that, then you'd either have to make (craft / convert) them yourself (which you can still do!), or pay very high prices due to those goods being scarce on the market. You are effectively paying the marketeers to craft and convert for you.

 

All of this is only true because of how obscure and unintuitive / difficult to work with the crafting systems are. If they were simple and easy then there wouldn't be a reason to pay others for it and everyone would it themselves. So in reality... the market isn't the problem here, crafting is. If we want to democratise this, then we need to make crafting and converting easier to use and understand.

I think the conversion process is actually pretty easy once someone gets the initial run down. 
 

People just need to be exposed to it. I don’t think the system itself needs changed.  Perhaps a tutorial, similar to the crafting tutorial, would be in order. 
 

A short tutorial arc that has you gather a couple recipes, gather salvage, gives you 12-15 converters, then has you craft and convert. The recipe drop could even be fixed to be a valuable type (such as defense, resist, or healing). It could have you first convert by type.  Then convert within set. It would award a useful IO that could be sold or used. Then have a second conversion mission that has you convert by rarity. The recipe used for this could be one of the types that is guaranteed to turn rare in one conversion (such as slow movement). Then the player could use what they learned in the previous conversion mission to convert by type to hopefully a good IO.  
 

Then advertise the tutorial with a welcome message for a few weeks. 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Saikochoro

[arcane]

Marketeering has always been surrounded by attitudes of “you can have this too if you just do the work”.

 

Which isn’t wrong. What’s also not wrong is that same attitude but with regards to farming.

 

The only difference? Marketeers’ playstyle isn’t constantly in the crosshairs of the nerfbat.
 

Would I get over it and learn to marketeer if long term in game wealth were my sole concern (disregarding personal play style and fun as factors)? Sure. Does it still suck that my preferred method of accruing a fraction of marketeer wages is the one that always gets the nerfbat? Yes, yes it does. Oh. Well.

[Luminara]

Today is exactly two weeks since I started playing again.  In that two weeks, I've accumulated almost 100,000,000 inf*, and every IO I wanted on my level 34 character, including several waiting to be slotted and some uniques for my other characters.  I started with nothing.  0 inf*.  No costume contest prizes.  No random fly-by gifts.  No friends to "help".  No farming.  Haven't teamed once, in fact.  The sum total of my interaction with anyone else in the entire two weeks has been one /tell from a stranger asking if I "need some levels" (i declined).  I'm not even playing above the default difficulty.  And the only marketeering I've done has been to sell what I converted if I thought it was worth something, but didn't want it for myself.  Frankly, I don't consider that marketeering, it's just sensible.

 

Oh, and I have a pile of merits that keeps growing, despite my frivolous use of them.

 

I didn't have a mouse until two days ago.  I had to play on a touchpad. 

 

And I'm on a shitty Verizon pre-paid plan which makes it almost impossible to log in, much less play, between 8 a.m. and 2 a.m. because they "deprioritize" my traffic.  Meaning, throw my data into the garbage.  My ping time right now, if I were logged into the game, would be between 750ms and 2200ms, and I'd be up to around 5000 duplicate packets in less than three minutes.  That's a whole lot of waiting and pressing the same key before a power executes, and rubber-banding back and forth fifteen or twenty times just to travel a hundred yards.

 

By the time I'm working on Incarnate levels with my first character, I'll have enough merits and inf* to fully kit out the outrageous "dream build" I never could've completed on the original servers (not an exaggeration.  my main's build, last day i played, was worth almost 15,000,000,000, and it was only 2/3 complete).  Still without farming, or marketeering, or handouts.  I've been so impressed with the ease of generating inf* that I've stopped saving "rare" IOs for my other characters.  I know I can get them any time I want, with those characters, starting from zero.

 

The market is clearly accessible, in every way, to every player.  I didn't have to read a guide to make inf*, I just sold what I expected to be worth something when it popped up during conversions.  I didn't have to spend six months learning how it worked, like I did when I was trying to figure out how to get water up to my cabin.  And while I clearly made some mistakes, primarily pissing away merits on conversion rolls simply because I didn't want to stop until I had what I wanted, I still came out waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead.

 

And there's also, obviously, no need for farming to afford everything one wants for a character.  My tastes, in regard to my builds, are anything but modest, and I'm easily accomplishing what I hoped for when I started planning my characters.  LotG +Recharge IOs, 3% +Defense (All) IOs, Kismet +ToHit, full sets where I want them instead of frankenslotted powers that I couldn't fix until I'd been at 50 for a while and spent weeks grinding.  If a player doesn't have what he/she needs to fill his/her slots, it's not the game's fault, it's theirs.  The game throws merits at you.  Grey-con critters drop converters.  You can drool on your keyboard and make inf*.  The only reason anyone wouldn't have what they want, far more than they need, for a complete and very "expensive" build at level 50 would be power-leveling, and if you decided to skip every last bit of the game to get to the end, you've got no-one to blame but yourselves for your "need to farm because I can't kit out my 50" situation.

 

As a new player, I'm not seeing an income gap.  I'm not seeing a problem with figuring out how to make inf* on the market.  I'm not seeing outrageous and unobtainable pricing on the market.  I'm not seeing a need for an inf* multiplier.  I'm not seeing a need to farm to pay for anything.  And considering that all of this was the driving goal of the changes, I'd say they worked.  Marvelously.

 

And as a long-time player on the original servers, I am seeing a lot of good things, including the efforts to control inflation, by the HC team.  Things are so much more affordable here, now, than they were ten years ago, it's not even remotely comparable.  I have four IOs which would've cost more than 12,000,000,000 inf* collectively on the original servers, here they're not even a drop in the bucket.  Purples?  Less than 12,000,000 inf* for the ones I would've had to pay 500,000,000-1,000,000,000 apiece on the original servers.  And there are people who think they need inf* multipliers... that says so much about them, none of it good, and nothing at all about the game.

 

If I can rake in inf* while leveling slowly, on a budget laptop, in spite of Verizon throwing away 90% of my packets if I try to play during normal times, solo, with a Trick Arrow character, anyone should be capable of doing as well, if not better.  This isn't rocket science, lads and ladies, or manual labor, so stop acting like making ridiculous amounts of inf* takes a PhD or an 80 hour work week.

[Parabola]

10 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Marketeering has always been surrounded by attitudes of “you can have this too if you just do the work”.

 

Which isn’t wrong. What’s also not wrong is that same attitude but with regards to farming.

 

The only difference? Marketeers’ playstyle isn’t constantly in the crosshairs of the nerfbat.
 

Would I get over it and learn to marketeer if long term in game wealth were my sole concern (disregarding personal play style and fun as factors)? Sure. Does it still suck that my preferred method of accruing a fraction of marketeer wages is the one that always gets the nerfbat? Yes, yes it does. Oh. Well.

Have you read Jimmy's post above? Farming with double inf was problematic for the game economy because it was generating a higher ratio of inf to drops than other activities. This was causing inflation which isn't good for anyone. Marketeering just converts rubbish into things people want and removes inf through fees limiting inflation.

[tidge]

3 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Please let this thread die in fire.  Too many memories.