Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Saikochoro]

19 minutes ago, Crimsonpyre said:

Would there really be a shortage of converters if they were bound? As was pointed out to me earlier, the loss of the xp boost for non farmer and non marketeers wouldn't matter because they could just run a 20 minute Yin TF and make 20 merits and turn that into 60 converters. Then everyone would be happy because they can't turn it into that ebil influence.

People go through a lot more than 60 converters in a session. Try hundreds at a minimum. This would cause prices to sky rocket. It would also eliminate an income method that many use merits to converters to cash and thus devalue merits. This would only hurt everyone. 

[Dazl]

They could do hami raids instead.

 

Of course this shouldn't happen. It is interesting to see the argument used to support the nerf on casual players "just run more TF's", doesn't work for others.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Crimsonpyre

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, ivanhedgehog said:

1000 farmers generating inf that they arent spending dont cause inflation.

 

They would, then, accumulate "large pools of inf*".

 

1 hour ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Large pools of inf causes inflation.

 

So... you're saying that farmers cause inflation.

 

Contradictory statements are contradictory.

[Peerless Girl]

7 hours ago, QuiJon said:

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. 

 

The more he says it, the more I think he believes it might be true.

 

5 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Large pools of inf causes inflation.  1000 farmers generating inf that they arent spending dont cause inflation. People with large pools of cash that are willing to pay any amount to get what they want causes inflation. Marketeers cause what we need to cost more by buying cheap and selling high. So prices rise. That is inflation. cutting out those existing huge pools of inf would cause people to stop spending inf at exorbitant price points. Halving inf gain will do NOTHING to stop people with existing oceans of cash from using that cash and raising prices. The 100 people with a net worh of 30 million or less dont matter, it is the people with 40 billion that are driving the inflation.

 

It's funny watching the Eval Kineval-style leaps these farmers make. Members of the Cirque du Soleil couldn't make the contortions it takes to reach these backward conclusions. It's truely impressive. It really is. 

 

5 hours ago, justicebeliever said:

That's an oversimplification of how marketing works.  They don't buy rare IO's low and sell them high.  Despite appearances to the contrary in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, they don't just "fall outta a truck".

 

Marketeers buy Converters, from any source, and salvage that is cheap, and then spend time (time is a cost) to create rare IO's where there were none before.  That means they increase supply, which oddly enough lowers prices on rare IO's.  And despite the demand for common and uncommon salvage for marketeers, the costs remain stable because those markets are seeded in game.  

 

Removing marketeers just means increased IO costs, and a loss of influence for people who don't use converters.

 

 

Which is exactly what some people in this thread want, it's part of the agenda. 

[Gremlin]

8 hours ago, Seed22 said:

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.

We saying that the patch will drive inflation rates down. We're defining inflation as an increase in the average price of IOs. i.e the cost of an entire build rather than the cost of any one specific IO. IIRC Jimmy stated that this was the point of the change.

 

We don't know what the rate of inflation was before this change was made so we cannot say whether the overall effect will be that prices rise more slowly, stay the same or even start to fall. It takes time for inflation to affect prices appreciably. I'm thinking of months not days.

[Myrmidon]

11 hours ago, Digirium said:

Enhancement converters possibly need to be bound to a character, not able to trade, to persuade the recipient to use them.

 

[Gremlin]

 

8 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

what drives the prices is when "Bob" with the 175 billion wants that armageddon proc. there are 5 available and the price posted is 70 million, much more than they are worth. But Bob wants it now and bids they 75 million. the next guy sees the list and historic prices are now 75 million, so he forks it over, you have inflation.

I think this is pretty much correct. There are a couple of other characters to add.

 

"Barbara" is a farmer with altitis. She's spends inf like water so she's currently broke. She needs a LofG for her new build. She sees that they're currently selling for 9 million but offers 10 million because she wants to get back to farming. After all, 10 million is only 5 minutes of her time. Less if she gets some nice drops.

 

Jenny's had a good day. She just dinged 50 on her blaster. She thought she'd run a quick ITF before doing a respec. Amazingly she got an Armageddon Proc drop. She crafted it and sold it immediately to some nutter who paid 75 million. Awesome!

 

Tommy comes along. He's saved up 150 million inf to buy a full set of Armageddons. He goes to bid for the proc and is horrified to see that they're selling for 75 million. He knows that purples usually sell for around 25 million so he bids 24 million and logs out. A few days later he logs back in and finds that he bought the proc for 24 million. He notes that there are now 38 for sale and prices are back around 25 million. He wonders why anyone would pay 75 million for a proc that they could have had for 24.

[Uruare]

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.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Uruare

[Blastit]

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

[Lines]

43 minutes 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.

...

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

I don't think many people are actually anti-farming here. Farming's fine.

 

43 minutes ago, Uruare said:

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?

There's two issues here:

 

If there's less inf amongst active players, but supply and demand are both the same as they are now, then prices will fall. If you want to sell, you have to follow the market. If people have less inf to spend, then bids get lower, so sales need to get lower to match. Nobody's profiting at all if everyone's listing too high, and you'd be stupid to list too high unless you're somehow hoping to catch an anomalous extra 0 someone accidentally added to their bid. This circumstance would be deflation.

 

The real nightmare would be if a few people generate too much inf and can regularly buy out the desirable items in the market with regular, high bids. That's how we got to the market we had on live, and it wasn't fun. This would be dramatic inflation, which most players wouldn't be able to keep up with, which we want to avoid.

 

Secondly, there's not going to be 50% less inf. There's not even going to be 10% less inf. In fact, there's going to be more inf. This change hasn't made there somehow be less inf, it's made the generation of inf slower. Apparently enough to be worth doing, but we can only speculate what data the HC team were seeing to know why it's warranted. For this change to happen, I imagine there must have been a hell of a warning sign.

 

43 minutes ago, Uruare said:

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.

It's already significantly more profitable to use converters yourself. By a huge margin, in my experience. I'm honestly not sure I know why people sell converters at all. It could be the reliability of knowing that 100 merits will net you ~25million via converters. Or the convenience of not having to spend time converting. Or just not knowing how or why you should convert trash recipes. None of that will change.

 

But selling or not selling converters doesn't really change how much is getting converted. If everyone used all of their own converters, then the same number of IOs are getting converted, which feeds the market with in-demand IOs. If everyone only converted until they found the exact IO they were hoping for, ignoring the market altogether, then everyone is being really stupid. The AH allows you to only have to convert until you have something equivalent to what you want.

 

If the value and supply of converters on the market dropped, but people still convert a lot of things, then the value of converters will rise again. This happens fairly often as it is, if you watch the market.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Lines

[Haijinx]

You know the thread is functionally over when each post eclipses on 1000 words. 

[Blastit]

31 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

You know the thread is functionally over when each post eclipses on 1000 words. 

No, that's when you know you've crossed over into that part of the anime tournament where the weakest fighters can no longer even see the movements.

[Luminara]

21 minutes ago, Uruare said:

Whole lot of people on this thread that are clearly lifelong devotees of the 'You're Having Fun Wrong' cult

 

"Fun" and how it's measured has nothing to do with the change or the response.  It's a matter of overall game viability and longevity, in exactly the same way ED was.  A problem existed, one which previous experience in this very game indicated would magnify beyond control measures; which previous experience in other games reflected the same outcome; and which reflected real-world examples of several economic collapses (Germany near the end of WWII, or Zimbabwe less than 15 years ago, to list a couple).  The options were to address the problem now, or wipe and restart the servers later.

 

Yes, some people are negatively affected.  Some people also consider themselves negatively affected by traffic laws, or flu shots.  That's inherent in societal interaction.  A minority of people will always be negatively affected by limitations imposed for the greater good.  It doesn't matter if you believe driving on sidewalks is "fun", or infecting everyone you come into contact with is "fun", or amassing a hundred trillion inf* is "fun", what matters is how your "fun" impacts others.

 

And that's what this change did.  It imposed a limitation on everyone to do the most good for the most people.  The mature response, the response of adults, is to recognize that no-one exists in a vacuum, and examine and comprehend the change from that perspective.  I actually have read almost every reply to this mega-monster-merged thread, and that's exactly what I've seen from the majority of responses.

 

I have also seen petulant, childish, insulting responses from people, the majority of which have come from those protesting the change, reacting with the textual equivalent of temper tantrums because their "fun" has been impinged upon and they do not feel that they should have to live within the limitations necessary for societal interaction.  This is the category in which your response falls.  Well, sorry, but there are reasons you can't drive on the sidewalk, and why you should be vaccinated, and why you have to live with a "50% fun reduction", as long as you're participating in societal interaction.  Accept it or remove yourself from the offending interaction, those are your grown-up options.

 

As for the rest of your commentary, which equates to, "Water is not wet, the sky is not blue and economic/game theory is bull"... it may very well be that the mountains of evidence disproving your beliefs are in error.  You're quite welcome to submit your own evidence contradicting the consensus, reinforced by properly conducted research, testing and peer reviews.

[Luminara]

56 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

You know the thread is functionally over when each post eclipses on 1000 words. 

1000?  Gotta pump those numbers up!  Those are rookie numbers in this racket!

[tidge]

13 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

Maybe they have a gigantic stock of thousands of LotG +rech stashed away?  Or possible just a deep sense of nostalgia for paying 75 million each for them on live?

Assemble the team and warm up the shredders. They are on to us.

[tidge]

3 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 enjoy active farming because I enjoy mindlessly killing lots of mooks, not because it' the most superior way to get stuff.

 

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.

 

Which (club) foot is the shoe on? If a player enjoys 'mindlessly killing lots of mooks' what does the amount of Inf gained through that activity have to do with the source of enjoyment?

 

The amount of 'mindless killing' doesn't scale with accumulated Inf; if it scale with anything it is with crafted IO pieces. I appreciate the contribution of raw materials on the market from all players (especially farmers), but it is the Ebil Marketeers^TM who are generating the largest number of specifically desired IO pieces.

 

The ONLY measurable barrier to entry to becoming an Ebil Marketeer^TM is the Auction House's Vig when posting items for sale.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Oh jeez, don't get this epic thread locked for THIS!

[Jimmy]

50 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Oh jeez, don't get this epic thread locked for THIS!

Just hidden some posts to prevent that being necessary.

 

Keep it civil folks.

[MunkiLord]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Oh jeez, don't get this epic thread locked for THIS!

Forum's Law is like Forum's love: hard and fast.

[Luminara]

17 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

Forum's Law is like Forum's love: hard and fast.

 

Behave.  You don't want to attract a pigeon again.

[Saikochoro]

8 hours ago, Lines said:

I don't think many people are actually anti-farming here. Farming's fine.

 

There's two issues here:

 

If there's less inf amongst active players, but supply and demand are both the same as they are now, then prices will fall. If you want to sell, you have to follow the market. If people have less inf to spend, then bids get lower, so sales need to get lower to match. Nobody's profiting at all if everyone's listing too high, and you'd be stupid to list too high unless you're somehow hoping to catch an anomalous extra 0 someone accidentally added to their bid. This circumstance would be deflation.

 

The real nightmare would be if a few people generate too much inf and can regularly buy out the desirable items in the market with regular, high bids. That's how we got to the market we had on live, and it wasn't fun. This would be dramatic inflation, which most players wouldn't be able to keep up with, which we want to avoid.

 

Secondly, there's not going to be 50% less inf. There's not even going to be 10% less inf. In fact, there's going to be more inf. This change hasn't made there somehow be less inf, it's made the generation of inf slower. Apparently enough to be worth doing, but we can only speculate what data the HC team were seeing to know why it's warranted. For this change to happen, I imagine there must have been a hell of a warning sign.

 

It's already significantly more profitable to use converters yourself. By a huge margin, in my experience. I'm honestly not sure I know why people sell converters at all. It could be the reliability of knowing that 100 merits will net you ~25million via converters. Or the convenience of not having to spend time converting. Or just not knowing how or why you should convert trash recipes. None of that will change.

 

But selling or not selling converters doesn't really change how much is getting converted. If everyone used all of their own converters, then the same number of IOs are getting converted, which feeds the market with in-demand IOs. If everyone only converted until they found the exact IO they were hoping for, ignoring the market altogether, then everyone is being really stupid. The AH allows you to only have to convert until you have something equivalent to what you want.

 

If the value and supply of converters on the market dropped, but people still convert a lot of things, then the value of converters will rise again. This happens fairly often as it is, if you watch the market.

I think there is a good portion of people who do enhancement conversion that buy converters. If I just did a hami, market crash, and ITF sure I will use those merits to fund a conversion session. 
 

However, if I haven’t really done much in the way of warning merits I will just buy 300 converters on the auction house.  Sure cuts into the profits a bit, but still efficient enough money maker and doesn’t require me to have done a task force beforehand. 
 

Either way is perfectly fine, but there are plenty who prefer to buy converters due to convenience. This enables sellers who don’t want to mess with using the converters to make easy money even if it’s not as much. For a long time I just sold converters as it was easy. It’s only recently that I’ve began buying/consuming converters instead of selling them. 
 

In response to the individual you quoted, I honestly don’t think this farming change will have any significant impact on converter prices.  There is just so much demand and supply for converter already that even if a fair amount.  Even if a lot farmers switch over to enhancement conversion I doubt it would bump up converter prices materially.  However, since they would be supplying more high demand IOs than before the high demand IO prices may drop a bit. 

[Parabola]

Ah damn. Looks like I missed the fun. Think I can work out what happened from the remaining posts though.

 

On topic, in my entirely unscientific and limited view it looks like the weekend/new powerset bubble the market was experiencing has calmed down. The new IO sets are largely sinking into obscurity in market terms. It feels like over the last couple of days there has been quite a lot of conversion going on. Maybe more people have been made aware by these discussions?

[Oubliette_Red]

4 minutes ago, parabola said:

Ah damn. Looks like I missed the fun. Think I can work out what happened from the remaining posts though.

 

On topic, in my entirely unscientific and limited view it looks like the weekend/new powerset bubble the market was experiencing has calmed down. The new IO sets are largely sinking into obscurity in market terms. It feels like over the last couple of days there has been quite a lot of conversion going on. Maybe more people have been made aware by these discussions?

Compared to Legacy I'm sure there are a larger percentage of the players that also peruse the forums, but there are likely still plenty that never spend any time here that play they game often.

 

[MunkiLord]

29 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

Behave.  You don't want to attract a pigeon again.

This is fair. BUT! We could all use some more Zapp Brannigan in our lives and conversations. 

[MunkiLord]

10 minutes ago, parabola said:

Ah damn. Looks like I missed the fun. Think I can work out what happened from the remaining posts though.

 

On topic, in my entirely unscientific and limited view it looks like the weekend/new powerset bubble the market was experiencing has calmed down. The new IO sets are largely sinking into obscurity in market terms. It feels like over the last couple of days there has been quite a lot of conversion going on. Maybe more people have been made aware by these discussions?

Luck +Recharge prices have gone down too. I have a couple sitting at the normal selling price for a week now. Luckily for me I just posted a couple. But if I liquidate my stock now I’ll be selling several hundred at a small loss. Doesn’t bother me though, I find it interesting.