Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Yomo Kimyata]

But regardless, time is money.  I think.

 

 

[Obus Form]

2 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I see a lot of posts (not yours!) that say things like, "I have four jobs and eight children and three wives.  I have forty-five seconds to play CoH every other month, and you expect me to be able to compete with those slack-jawed yokels who are playing 26 hours a day, 9 days a week?  No, just give me my purple IOs for 10,000 inf each and give me a temp power that will let me solo Hami during my leisure time."

HAHAHA 😄 love it!

 

4 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

There are a lot of things in life that are a lot more important than this silly game, but if you are carving out any time at all to play it, you probably have five extra seconds to put a number other than 5 in the sell box.  If you are playing today, you probably will be able to play again within the next few weeks and pick up your buys and sales at your next log in.

 

What the buy it NAO and sell it NAO crowd is paying for is convenience and the lack of patience.  Typing 5 is a lot easier and faster than determining a better sell price to get a little more return. 

I think you're right, and I recall a similar discussion in the /Market forums.  Impatience and convenience make people buy NAO.

 

But then I think this "choice" boils down to education or lack thereof, metrics or lack thereof, risk aversion, and "other factors" that knowing/trying/doing XXX is not "worth your real-life time".  <-- Not judging anyone here, just making observations based on person life experience.

 

If one religiously carves out time to play, would it not be in their best interest to spend some of that game-time to learn to maximize inf generation?  So then I dive deeper into "desire".  Nothing replaces true desire for.... success, influence, money, fame, power, etc.   If someone truly wanted to learn COH Homecoming inf maximization, they will learn marketeering, and they will learn it whether or not the devs wipe clean the /Market forums because you can do math and determine, based on /AH prices, how much 100 merits is worth (1 purple, 1 ATO, 1 winter, or tons of converters).   The /AH price difference in those 4 items, but each costing 100 merits, is what sparked my 1st thought of marketeering on homecoming.  If one decides (for whatever reason) that marketeering isn't for them.... discussion over.

 

On a macro scale, I think us marketeers make money based on our desire for influence, the spark of curiousity, or some other innate desire.  On a micro scale, I think some transactions pull through due to impatience and convenience (i'm looking at you, catalyzed-ATOs-on-the-AH!)

 

 

[Obus Form]

18 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

But regardless, time is money.  I think.

100%, this is what all jobs are.

 

We are capped, in real-life, by X hours of life time.   The very wealthy have learned not to trade life hours for $.  So the most profitable way to make money is have people trade their life-hours for your $.  But you need initial seed $.  Hence you can get a normal job, use a line of credit, mortgage, etc and run a restaurant, run an Air BnB, etc.

 

In COH, your initial seed $ is farming yourself, actively or passively.  Once you hit 50 million you can start marketeering (properly) and monitoring results.  Without having to trade your real-life time for in-game influence in a measured 5-6 million inf/hour like a job, with  practice/knowledge/patience/risk tolerance you can now trade several hours for hundreds of million of inf, like a company owner.  Now I'm trading real-life time in a measured 500-600 million inf/hour.

 

Others choose to AFK farm via multiple accounts, similar to running a company in real life (you are AFK while others trade their life-hours for your $), except it is at the start of the production process (raw materials) rather than the end (converting and selling to end user).

 

Still some choose to AFK farm and marketeer, having expanded their business vertically.  More power to them!

 

 

[Haijinx]

5 hours ago, Gremlin said:

Have you seen any data about this? I'd love to see some concrete numbers.

No I should have prefaced it with "I think"

 

It seems like it has to be.

 

It is what you'd want it to be also.

 

 

[Haijinx]

5 hours ago, Lines said:

My guess would be that farmers were generating the majority of inf. Certainly enough of a proportion to raise a warning sign.

 

Totally a guess, though. I just imagine that the data HC were seeing must have been quite serious for this kind of solution.

 

(Edit: Though after dwelling on it, I do see your point.)

I don't think farmers could possibly be a majority of earned Inf. .. not across all servers. 

 

But a wildly disproportionate piece of the pie?  I'm sure they are.

 

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by Haijinx

[Haijinx]

2 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I hear what you are saying, but I don't think it really is time.  It's convenience and patience.

 

I see a lot of posts (not yours!) that say things like, "I have four jobs and eight children and three wives.  I have forty-five seconds to play CoH every other month, and you expect me to be able to compete with those slack-jawed yokels who are playing 26 hours a day, 9 days a week?  No, just give me my purple IOs for 10,000 inf each and give me a temp power that will let me solo Hami during my leisure time."

 

There are a lot of things in life that are a lot more important than this silly game, but if you are carving out any time at all to play it, you probably have five extra seconds to put a number other than 5 in the sell box.  If you are playing today, you probably will be able to play again within the next few weeks and pick up your buys and sales at your next log in.

 

What the buy it NAO and sell it NAO crowd is paying for is convenience and the lack of patience.  Typing 5 is a lot easier and faster than determining a better sell price to get a little more return.  Throwing in a high bid to avoid bid creeping is certainly faster, although it must be annoying if your high bid doesn't insta-fill and you have to bid creep anyway.  That's A-OK with me.  Sometimes I pay up for convenience, but mostly I collect impatience fees from the AH in the 45 hours a day I play marketeer.  I'd love it if more people would put some more effort into the AH process, since that would add a little competition and keep it fresh, but I'm perfectly happy to keep the counter on my imaginary currency rolling over.

Yeah they are poor but somehow buy everything at buy it now prices 

 

And sell everything like they don't need the money. 

 

I was able to buy 6 sets of purples for about 60% the going rate on average by just being willing to wait a few days. 

 

 

 

 

[Peerless Girl]

4 hours ago, justicebeliever said:

This was my initial complaint about this change before I realized it was being used as an exploit.  I'm somewhat on the fence here, because we. as a community (not every individual, mind you), are OK with 2XP boosts, but we fret about the Influence boosts.  As someone who doesn't use extra XP boosts, and frequently turns off XP to not outlevel stuff, I'd like to see some reward to go the other way, for those of us who miss the slower leveling days of yore (a minority to be sure though).

 

I understand the impact of Influence inflation, and I'm not suggesting we go backwards here, but wondering how we (and maybe the question is IF we even need to) compensate those who aren't burning through XP as fast...

 

I feel similarly to you. I'm wondering if a "Half-XP" option wouldn't be a good middle ground for not gaining XP too fast and out-levelling stuff, while still actually gaining some (at no change to Influence or drops or anything)? (Not that you can't use Oroborous, but not everyone wants to--plus you can't access the system till around 30).

 

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

I don't think farmers could possibly be a majority of earned Inf. .. not across all servers. 

 

But a wildly disproportionate piece of the pie?  I'm sure they are.

 

 

 

Uh no. I'm fairly sure all the rest of  the "regular" players in the game are generating the majority of the influence just playing as "normal" and running missions, selling salvage/drops and occasionally putting something on the market (which takes some Inf out of the system anyway).

 

[Papaschtroumpf]

if only devs would also fix the market so to reduce the income gap between those who play it and those who don;t (or is trading a more respected profession than farming?)

[Haijinx]

49 minutes ago, Peerless Girl said:

 

Uh no. I'm fairly sure all the rest of  the "regular" players in the game are generating the majority of the influence just playing as "normal" and running missions, selling salvage/drops and occasionally putting something on the market (which takes some Inf out of the system anyway).

 

Yes,  this is what I meant. 

 

 

[justicebeliever]

25 minutes ago, Papaschtroumpf said:

if only devs would also fix the market so to reduce the income gap between those who play it and those who don;t (or is trading a more respected profession than farming?)

Let's look at the whole picture here.  Farming doesn't just earn Influence...you are also earning salvage, enhancements, and XP.  Marketeering doesn't earn anything, it just redistributes influence (and granted redistributes much of it into their own hands).  And these aren't separate professions...You can (and many do) farm and marketeer, so it's not like one activity negates the oppty to do the other.

 

If we really go down this path, then we need to reward the grinders, the badgers, the incarnates, etc...Because isn't playing Incarnate content more respected than farming?  Isn't collected badges more respected than marketeering?  

 

Marketeering, farming, griding, badging, etc...These are activities, not occupations, and each gives their own reward as appropriate to the activity

[Haijinx]

27 minutes ago, Papaschtroumpf said:

if only devs would also fix the market so to reduce the income gap between those who play it and those who don;t (or is trading a more respected profession than farming?)

Those playing the market are not generating influence.

 

They are getting influence that others generate.

 

Its not whether one is more respected than another. 

 

One literally will automatically exist if you have trading in your economy.   

 

The other is directly increasing the total money supply.

 

Because MMOs just print money and hand it to players when they get kill bounties, mission reward bounties and sell items to npc vendors.

 

Its like comparing apples to tea kettles. 

[roleki]

Sigh.  And when this does nothing to curb inflation, they'll nerf AE even more, then stand around with big comical question marks over their heads when inflation actually increases as farming gradually drops off. 

 

You want to fix your market?  Floor converters at 750K.  Make it unprofitable to transmute yellow trash into orange gold.

 

 

[Haijinx]

If we remove markets from the game we would need to directly sell everything to players.

 

So IOs would need to work like SOs.  Whether it included a crafting step or not. 

 

The Devs would have to decide how much time spent actively playing on average was fair for each IO    Normalized for character level.  Essentially time/reward.

 

Farming and similar activities would either become essentially mandatory and figured into these times or be banned for throwing the system out of whack

 

 

[Oubliette_Red]

Besides, as was mentioned in an earlier post, the market is also an influence sink, with the 1m+ inf fees for posting 20m+ items.

 

The market also does not require special builds to use, literally any character can play.

 

Edit: I marketeer but I am by no means a Master Marketeer. But now I want to know how quickly a L1 character with nothing but the tutorial drops as starting collateral can make in say 1 week.

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by Oubliette_Red

[Haijinx]

I think people tend to confuse inflation and prices.  

 

A lot like the real world economy discussions. 

[Haijinx]

9 minutes ago, roleki said:

Sigh.  And when this does nothing to curb inflation, they'll nerf AE even more, then stand around with big comical question marks over their heads when inflation actually increases as farming gradually drops off. 

 

You want to fix your market?  Floor converters at 750K.  Make it unprofitable to transmute yellow trash into orange gold.

 

 

This would ALSO increase prices for IOs

 

You would be reducing IO supply on the market by throttling conversion.  Thus producing a bottleneck/scarcity. 

 

Sure marketers would make less money, but a lot of people wouldn't be able to get the IOs they want. 

 

 

[MunkiLord]

12 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

Besides, as was mentioned in an earlier post, the market is also an influence sink, with the 1m+ inf fees for posting 20m+ items.

 

The market also does not require special builds to use, literally any character can play.

 

Edit: I marketeer but I am by no means a Master Marketeer. But now I want to know how quickly a L1 character with nothing but the tutorial drops as starting collateral can make in say 1 week.

 

 

 

[Oubliette_Red]

3 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

 

 

Yeah, I was just down there looking at those.

[Lines]

25 minutes ago, roleki said:

You want to fix your market?  Floor converters at 750K.  Make it unprofitable to transmute yellow trash into orange gold.

 

 

I don't see how that would make anything better for anyone...

[MunkiLord]

20 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

Yeah, I was just down there looking at those.

Obviously the billion in a day is an outlier and not something reasonable for most people. The 100 million in a week is certainly doable, but also likely overkill for the vast majority of people. Assuming no powerleveling, I bet 25 million or so a week is both easy and fulfills needs on the overwhelming majority of builds.

[Peerless Girl]

1 hour ago, Papaschtroumpf said:

if only devs would also fix the market so to reduce the income gap between those who play it and those who don;t (or is trading a more respected profession than farming?)

 

Yeah...I hope this is a troll. If not, you're grossly misunderstanding the situation (like many seem to be)

 

1 hour ago, roleki said:

Sigh.  And when this does nothing to curb inflation, they'll nerf AE even more, then stand around with big comical question marks over their heads when inflation actually increases as farming gradually drops off. 

 

You want to fix your market?  Floor converters at 750K.  Make it unprofitable to transmute yellow trash into orange gold.

 

 

 

That would make everything *worse* not better. Either 1) you're massively uninformed 2) you just selfishly want converters cheaper for yourself/to spite others or 3) You have an agenda you're trying to push, which would destabilize and damage the game and the economy. I HOPE it's the first one, SUSPECT it might be the second...and WORRY it might be the third.

[Saikochoro]

4 hours ago, roleki said:

Sigh.  And when this does nothing to curb inflation, they'll nerf AE even more, then stand around with big comical question marks over their heads when inflation actually increases as farming gradually drops off. 

 

You want to fix your market?  Floor converters at 750K.  Make it unprofitable to transmute yellow trash into orange gold.

 

 

This would break the market. Would cause prices to skyrocket across the board. This would hurt everyone. I can’t believe even after 50 pages of this people still can’t seem to get it through their heads that converters are not a problem. All they do is help reduce prices.  Absolutely terrible suggestion. 

[Saikochoro]

3 hours ago, Lines said:

I don't see how that would make anything better for anyone...

I think people now are just being purposely obtuse. The devs have outright said they don’t want to do anything to discourage the converter process because it helps the supply of desirable goods without creating influence. 

[Saikochoro]

I also don’t know where this farmer vs marketer mentality came from. I would venture to say a lot of marketers farm and a lot of farmers market. They are not mutually exclusive. Neither are inherently bad. Both help supply the market with goods to keep prices under control.
 

One just has an aspect, that in the extreme and in the long run can have undesirable affects on the in game economy.  The only real different is that farming creates tons influence while marketing transfers already existing influence and while doing so deletes influence. 

 

Hence they nerfed the influence generation aspect only. Farming is still very effective in earning influence to kit out characters. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

23 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

I also don’t know where this farmer vs marketer mentality came from.

Seriously, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.

 

From here on out, I will refer to marketeering as cowmanning until we come up with a better name.

 

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by Yomo Kimyata