Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[MunkiLord]

I think if a pack for purples was to be added it should be priced 60-75 million. Assuming the same average take of 1.2 enhancements per pack, that would leave plenty of room for normal price changes, still be priced appealing enough for some people to buy, but not so appealing to crash prices. I think the Windfall temp power having a significantly higher chance to drop from such a pack could be fun too. 

[Obus Form]

41 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I think if a pack for purples was to be added it should be priced 60-75 million. Assuming the same average take of 1.2 enhancements per pack, that would leave plenty of room for normal price changes, still be priced appealing enough for some people to buy, but not so appealing to crash prices. I think the Windfall temp power having a significantly higher chance to drop from such a pack could be fun too. 

I wish the email UI would allow the sorting of Pack drops into inspirations, IOs, temp powers, etc, and allow the claiming of all of each type of item with 1 click.

[Gremlin]

1 hour ago, Obus Form said:

I wish the email UI would allow the sorting of Pack drops into inspirations, IOs, temp powers, etc, and allow the claiming of all of each type of item with 1 click.

Oh yes please.

[Coyotedancer]

2 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

I think if a pack for purples was to be added it should be priced 60-75 million. Assuming the same average take of 1.2 enhancements per pack, that would leave plenty of room for normal price changes, still be priced appealing enough for some people to buy, but not so appealing to crash prices. I think the Windfall temp power having a significantly higher chance to drop from such a pack could be fun too. 

 

Out of pure curiosity, why do you think they should be priced so much higher than the Winters? Given what purps tend to sell for, that seems pricier than they deserve. (Then again, I *also* think the merit conversion price of 100m for them is absolutely absurd, so- *shrugs*)

[QuiJon]

4 hours 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.

Or why not just address it in drop rates. I am fine with winter, ATO packes etc at there current costs. But perhaps we should see the PVP and Purple sets come down a bit. A purple that can drop shouldn't be as rare to cost the same as an winter or more sometimes then an ATO. Simply put have them drop more often in game play and then lower the cost of those on the merit vendors. Maybe 50 merits for PVP and 75 for purples or something like that. Then the top 100 merits remains winter IOs and ATOs. I don't know the current drop rates of purples but frankly to me it could be tripled and be just about more right then it is now. I think in the last year I have gotten maybe onlyl 4 purples during TFs or game play, so if I want them I have had to either farm or buy them with merits or on the market. This feeds the inflation of the items and the need to farm to either get them as drops or earn the money to buy them at 20m a pop. 

[MunkiLord]

3 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

Out of pure curiosity, why do you think they should be priced so much higher than the Winters? Given what purps tend to sell for, that seems pricier than they deserve. (Then again, I *also* think the merit conversion price of 100m for them is absolutely absurd, so- *shrugs*)

I think Purples are in a good place right now, so I feel anything too disruptive is unnecessary. Plus if the price needs an adjustment, going cheaper will almost always go over better than raising the price. I see my proposed price as a starter, not something that would need to be set in stone.

[QuiJon]

2 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

I think if a pack for purples was to be added it should be priced 60-75 million. Assuming the same average take of 1.2 enhancements per pack, that would leave plenty of room for normal price changes, still be priced appealing enough for some people to buy, but not so appealing to crash prices. I think the Windfall temp power having a significantly higher chance to drop from such a pack could be fun too. 

If the entire point is to curb inflation how is adding a pack that already would sell for 300 percent more then the most expensive pack already that also offers drops that are about currently equally valued on the AH be a fair plan? It is already bull crap that they cost 100 merits, when if you figure that to buy the merits is like 1 million per merit means the vendors value them at 100million a piece. The entire point is to make the markets work for everyone keeping prices at 20+ million for ANYTHING is basically still saying to the common game player they are priced out of the market. Especially now if they can not even exempt and run TFs for more influence then they could have before.

[Peerless Girl]

On 4/14/2020 at 7:13 AM, ForeverLaxx said:

It's because the people who only farm are trying to change the argument into one about "haves" vs "have-nots" and are pointing out that marketeers have more money than they do. They've decided that the "real problem" is that other players have more money than they do so why did it matter that they were abusing an exploit. It's an attempt to deflect the argument, and 50 pages later, it still isn't working. All they see is that they gain 500 million in a session with multiple accounts and the other guy hits 500 million with one account "doing nothing".

 

No amount of telling them the difference between farming (influence generation) and marketeering (influence redistribution) is going to convince them that they're arguing from a faulty position. In their mind, it's already decided that the devs just hate them specifically.

 

Bingo. Exactly. They know what they're doing, and they're doing it on purpose to misinform and push their agenda...like certain politicians do. 

 

On 4/14/2020 at 11:50 AM, SargentGoGetEm said:

 Find another way to fix the lvl 49 exploit (if you can call it an exploit). Even the Devs from live did not disable that feature and that's saying A LOT!

 

They should have. They probably would have had to solve the problem eventually, and may have done it a different way, but it would've been done, I can be relatively certain of that. 

 

On 4/14/2020 at 1:19 PM, QuiJon said:

It is the exact same thing. The AH is designed to create a means for players to sell items. Players are greedy and will sell their items for as much as they can possibly get for them. The seller has no care if that 10m for that pvp IO is obtained through infl accumulated through marketing or generated by way of farming. All that matters is someone is willing and has the disposable infl in order to meet their prices. This is not the real world were there is only so much wealth to be circulated. It is created unlimitedly. 

 

 

 

Keep pushing that agenda, it won't get you anywhere.

 

22 hours ago, QuiJon said:

See the problem that no one is really touching on here is that marketers are also creating currency 

 

That is patently incorrect. Doing ANYTHING on the market doesn't CREATE any currency, it moves it, and in fact, removes 10% of it. 

 

22 hours ago, QuiJon said:

Look I get that the devs put in volunteer time doing this and keeping the game servers running. But this is also not a profit engine anymore. Its purely for fun. And once a month those devs open donations and ask us to contribute to keeping these servers up and running. 

 

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. 

 

You example compared to this is more like if I came into you house and lit up a menthol, and you told me no we don't allow menthols just the type of smokes that we like are allowed and we think menthols stink. 

 

It was related to an exploit, and exploits are not mentioned or discussed until fixed. Alone it won't "solve" the problem, but it will certainly make a big dent. Re: Patrol XP, answered below.

 

Regarding whoever said "a small group of people controlling the game"--you mean like the small number of Devs and Admins who controlled the live servers?

 

18 hours ago, Crimsonpyre said:

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

 

No, because patrol XP also impacts people who make use of rested XP, and the entire day job system, which ads a lot to badging and RPing, you impact far more systems overall. AND the purpose was to reduce influence gain across the board, and one of the biggest ways to do it was to close it via the Exemplar Influence boost. That boost should've been removed prior to i9 once the game developed a "real" economy. When all anyone was doing was paying for costume changes, DOs and SOs and Insp type items, giving it to friends/SG mates via trades and paying out for costume contests, it had little real value, so it didn't matter.

 

7 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

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.

 

That's how it was on live, and IMO how it should be here, I've said that quite often. I kind of wonder if it won't end up that way, to be honest...

[Seed22]

I'm still farming and making decent inf, AND getting all those succulent purps. At first I was a bit irked by the change but now? Eh, don't care enough. Not like my farm build was impacted, so I can just farm like I do, generate my 100s of mill in inf, and pimp out my 50s. Though, I do need to now think about the build long and hard before building it in order to assess whether it's an inf sink(get bored after a week) or a cash cow(play for months like my ice/time blaster and handful of other 50s). I'll always be a "have" so I don't have to worry about the whole argument vs have-nots imo.

[MunkiLord]

40 minutes ago, Peerless Girl said:

 

 

That's how it was on live, and IMO how it should be here, I've said that quite often. I kind of wonder if it won't end up that way, to be honest...

I don't think that will be the case here, the reactions to a change like that would go over significantly worse than anything we've seen in this thread. Plus the developers have been overall very supportive of farming and welcoming to people powerleveling, most would see that as an extreme change in philosophy. 

[Peerless Girl]

45 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

I'm still farming and making decent inf, AND getting all those succulent purps. At first I was a bit irked by the change but now? Eh, don't care enough. Not like my farm build was impacted, so I can just farm like I do, generate my 100s of mill in inf, and pimp out my 50s. Though, I do need to now think about the build long and hard before building it in order to assess whether it's an inf sink(get bored after a week) or a cash cow(play for months like my ice/time blaster and handful of other 50s). I'll always be a "have" so I don't have to worry about the whole argument vs have-nots imo.

 

Which is what we've been trying to tell everyone, starting with Jimmy who said you "wouldn't see much impact to your bottom line".

 

9 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I don't think that will be the case here, the reactions to a change like that would go over significantly worse than anything we've seen in this thread. Plus the developers have been overall very supportive of farming and welcoming to people powerleveling, most would see that as an extreme change in philosophy. 

 

Maybe not, but since many people are giving their OPINIONS as to what they WANT and pushing their AGENDAS versus facts, I figured I might as well throw mine in as well. Torch the AE XP, it's a danger room simulator. Maybe cap it to n amount per 24 hours. I.e. "you can only learn so much in here, Jubilee, now get out there and Hero. Come back tomorrow and practice more" (dev choice arcs would of course be immune to the system, those would be treated as "real" arcs, more or less).

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by Peerless Girl
I forgot to close my parenthesis, oh no!

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, QuiJon said:

The entire point is to make the markets work for everyone keeping prices at 20+ million for ANYTHING is basically still saying to the common game player they are priced out of the market. Especially now if they can not even exempt and run TFs for more influence then they could have before.

I'm terribly sorry that you feel that 20+mm is expensive for the most high-end items in the game.  I cannot imagine how you got a character to level 50 without accumulating at least enough to buy a set of purples.

 

If you want to play chess, that's great!  We're giving free chess lessons, and frankly, those lessons are pretty good.  But please stop asking us to play tic-tac-toe and call it chess.

[ivanhedgehog]

On 4/14/2020 at 6:13 AM, ForeverLaxx said:

It's because the people who only farm are trying to change the argument into one about "haves" vs "have-nots" and are pointing out that marketeers have more money than they do. They've decided that the "real problem" is that other players have more money than they do so why did it matter that they were abusing an exploit. It's an attempt to deflect the argument, and 50 pages later, it still isn't working. All they see is that they gain 500 million in a session with multiple accounts and the other guy hits 500 million with one account "doing nothing".

 

No amount of telling them the difference between farming (influence generation) and marketeering (influence redistribution) is going to convince them that they're arguing from a faulty position. In their mind, it's already decided that the devs just hate them specifically.

On 3/31/2020 at 8:27 AM, Jimmy said:

It's been requested to split this into a separate topic as it was drowning out all other discussion in the other thread.

 

Please use this thread to discuss the change described below rather than the patch notes thread.

 

---

 

The following change was omitted from the beta patch notes due to a related exploit:

• Influence gain can no longer be increased by disabling XP

We’ve made this change to reduce the influence income gap between players who farm and those that do not. The amount of additional influence gained by abusing level 49 missions simply wasn’t healthy for the overall economy of the game, and generally unfair towards those who play standard level 50 content instead of farming.

 

Additionally, there were various exploits that could be abused in order to further increase influence gain through this option.

 

Overall, we concluded it was best to remove the mechanic. Even with this change farming is still far more efficient than every other method of influence gain.

 

That would be Jimmy that brought up income inequality. He(and the dev team) have decided its a problem, not the farmers. Is there a problem with the existence of the large amounts of inf or the distribution? evidently the gap between farmers and nonfarmers was a problem, but the gap between marketeers and non marketeers was not(a far larger gap). That is what is being questioned. Farming is the most efficient method of inf creation, marketeering is the most efficient method of influence gain.

[Grouchybeast]

14 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

 

That would be Jimmy that brought up income inequality. He(and the dev team) have decided its a problem, not the farmers. Is there a problem with the existence of the large amounts of inf or the distribution? evidently the gap between farmers and nonfarmers was a problem, but the gap between marketeers and non marketeers was not(a far larger gap). That is what is being questioned. Farming is the most efficient method of inf creation, marketeering is the most efficient method of influence gain.

Jimmy is clearly talking about the creation of new inf, as you can tell from his last line Even with this change farming is still far more efficient than every other method of influence gain.

 

It isn't that Jimmy doesn't know that the market is a splendidly efficient way to accumulate inf, it's just that he understands it doesn't create inf, something he has explained multiple times already in this thread.

 

For example, here:

On 4/2/2020 at 3:05 PM, Jimmy said:

Read through the thread, specifically the staff posts. This topic has been covered multiple times. This changed was aimed at balancing the ability to produce influence, not amass it. The production of influence is what creates buying power and sets prices in an economy where monopolies cannot exist.

 

And also here:

On 4/1/2020 at 6:37 PM, Jimmy said:

There's a difference between earning (or generating) influence and amassing influence. Earning influence creates more money and inflates the economy. Amassing influence simply moves that money around (and actually causes deflation due to the market cut). The assertion being made by myself and many others is that farming was (and still is) the fastest way of earning influence in the game. This fact is not incompatible with the claim that marketeering allows you to amass influence faster than farming allows you to earn it.

 

The economy is not a one-dimensional beast, we have different tools and options available to us to tweak different parts of how it functions. The primary goal of this change was to reduce inflation and adjust the balance of earning influence - because earning influence is what creates buying power, and ultimately drives pricing in the market.

 

I'll repeat my earlier statement: Reducing the effectiveness of crafting and using converters would do nothing but massively drive prices of rare goods up for everyone. We don't want that.

 

[Rathulfr]

2 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

Even with this change farming is still far more efficient than every other method of influence gain.

Just wanted to emphasize this even more.

 

[golstat2003]

12 hours ago, tidge said:

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

I'd simply delete the useless ones.

[Jaguaratron]

5 hours ago, Seed22 said:

I'm still farming and making decent inf, AND getting all those succulent purps. At first I was a bit irked by the change but now? Eh, don't care enough. Not like my farm build was impacted, so I can just farm like I do, generate my 100s of mill in inf, and pimp out my 50s. Though, I do need to now think about the build long and hard before building it in order to assess whether it's an inf sink(get bored after a week) or a cash cow(play for months like my ice/time blaster and handful of other 50s). I'll always be a "have" so I don't have to worry about the whole argument vs have-nots imo.

A mature reply from within a sea of stupid.

[Panthonca7034]

I'm going to go ahead and try to be smart (I might not succeed but I'll still try) and address some things here, because clearly there's disadvantages. It will NEVER ever be possible to narrow the income gap between any one player or the other, some folks play the market and some don't (I for one DO NOT), some folks TF away non-stop without any effort (I solo too much and not the teaming type) to make some inf, others farm in some form or fashion (AE, RWZ, or Hami Raids), while the rest of us TOIL away normally going through content. Farming can cause one to just get completely burnt out and not want to play any content, nor want to log on.

 

Something ELSE has to be done to address the income gap so that folks can afford to buy crap from the AH, namely the prices of some enhancements in AH. There is absolutely ZERO guarantee you'll ALWAYS consecutively get PvP/Purp/Super-Rare recipes to sell on AH, and more often than not LUCK of the draw is not always on anyone's side.

 

If anything, it's become a lot easier to get burnt out trying to grind for inf or trying to get to level 50 in order to get some kind of inf, and a lot HARDER to get motivated to follow one particular storyarc chain.

 

A new easier and painless way of making inf needs to be implemented, along with some fresh new content to address this problem.

 

Anyways, that's all I got on this...

[Obus Form]

Is this thread going to be the new "Disabling exp doesn't increase influence" thread?

 

What will happen now that Sensei QuiJon has joined the fight?

 

Tune in next time on.... FORUM!  BALL!  Z! 

 

 

[Peerless Girl]

48 minutes ago, Panthonca7034 said:

A new easier and painless way of making inf needs to be implemented, along with some fresh new content to address this problem.

 

Anyways, that's all I got on this...

 

Gonna vote a big hard pass on "new easier way to make inf" as if this game isn't one of the easiest MMOs ever made already, and was before it was revived. As for new content, I'm all for that.

 

 

[Myrmidon]

1 hour ago, Obus Form said:

Is this thread going to be the new "Disabling exp doesn't increase influence" thread?

 

What will happen now that Sensei QuiJon has joined the fight?

 

Tune in next time on.... FORUM!  BALL!  Z! 

 

 

While I would rather be set on fire than watch that show, this one did make me laugh.🤣

[Myrmidon]

1 hour ago, Panthonca7034 said:

I'm going to go ahead and try to be smart (I might not succeed but I'll still try) and address some things here, because clearly there's disadvantages. It will NEVER ever be possible to narrow the income gap between any one player or the other, some folks play the market and some don't (I for one DO NOT), some folks TF away non-stop without any effort (I solo too much and not the teaming type) to make some inf, others farm in some form or fashion (AE, RWZ, or Hami Raids), while the rest of us TOIL away normally going through content. Farming can cause one to just get completely burnt out and not want to play any content, nor want to log on.

 

Something ELSE has to be done to address the income gap so that folks can afford to buy crap from the AH, namely the prices of some enhancements in AH. There is absolutely ZERO guarantee you'll ALWAYS consecutively get PvP/Purp/Super-Rare recipes to sell on AH, and more often than not LUCK of the draw is not always on anyone's side.

 

If anything, it's become a lot easier to get burnt out trying to grind for inf or trying to get to level 50 in order to get some kind of inf, and a lot HARDER to get motivated to follow one particular storyarc chain.

 

A new easier and painless way of making inf needs to be implemented, along with some fresh new content to address this problem.

 

Anyways, that's all I got on this...

I am going to give this one a try.

 

 

It’s not so bad as you think. While “TOILing away normally going through content” (story arcs, morality missions and The occasional Taskforce for your Taskforce Commander badge), you will earn merits, which are your best friends. The easiest way to use these beauties is to simply exchange them for Enhancement Converters and sell them in Wentworths for an 80,000 to 90,000 each. Between these, drops that can be sold and influence earned during play, you can pick up pretty much anything you like without having to resort to living in the vegetable patch.

[Haijinx]

2 hours ago, Peerless Girl said:

 

Gonna vote a big hard pass on "new easier way to make inf" as if this game isn't one of the easiest MMOs ever made already, and was before it was revived. As for new content, I'm all for that.

 

 

If you focus on one Character you can easily afford to be "All Purpled Out" and have Hundreds of Millions in Influence only playing a few hours every week. 

 

With no marketing.  Just doing Solo Story Arcs and Task Forces.  

 

That character is just as good as one of some extreme farmer/marketers 50 "All Purpled" out characters.  

 

 

 

 

[Peerless Girl]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

If you focus on one Character you can easily afford to be "All Purpled Out" and have Hundreds of Millions in Influence only playing a few hours every week. 

 

With no marketing.  Just doing Solo Story Arcs and Task Forces.  

 

That character is just as good as one of some extreme farmer/marketers 50 "All Purpled" out characters.  

 

 

 

 

 

That is correct.

[tidge]

9 hours ago, Panthonca7034 said:

Something ELSE has to be done to address the income gap so that folks can afford to buy crap from the AH, namely the prices of some enhancements in AH. There is absolutely ZERO guarantee you'll ALWAYS consecutively get PvP/Purp/Super-Rare recipes to sell on AH, and more often than not LUCK of the draw is not always on anyone's side.

 

You are in luck! The HC devs have implemented the converter system which allows you to converter non-common recipes and IOs from one type to another type (and rarity as well!) It is orders of magnitude less expensive to get the the PVP/Purple/ATO/Winter enhancements that you want then it ever was on live. The fact that you can convert uncommon and rare recipes into IOs that PEOPLE WILL BUY will put you on the path to accumulating the Inf you need to buy the ones you want, even if they never drop (ehem, ATO).