Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Coyotedancer]

I almost always have the ATOs and a collection of favorite procs and specials (Which include the GladArmor/ShieldWall/Panacea PvP bits on a fair few of the gang-), but rather or not there are any purple sets or WinterO's involved depends a lot on the individual character and what I'm going for with them. Some use them, some don't.

 

Harry (my farm-boy) probably has the single most expensive build of anyone in my crew, and he uses a number of both. If I had had to buy all of his gear outright (I didn't. I'd been hoarding purples, abusing converters, buying Winter packs on sale and planning him for months before I pulled that particular trigger, because I *knew* his build was going to be in OMGWHAT?!-territory otherwise.) it probably would have come in around 750-800m, easy.

 

My favorite Defender, by contrast?  Ivory has neither purples nor Winters. Her build cost me MAYBE 150m, tops, to put together.... and yet she's a capable enough character to follow Mysh's Titan Scrap right into the middle of huge groups of goons as if it's the most natural place in the world to find a support type.  'Sort of a good illustration of how you may not need a Scrooge McDuck-sized fortune to build a terror. XD

[SwitchFade]

Just a bit of helpful info for people who waste merits on ATO and recipe buys. While you can do this, it's extremely inefficient.

 

1 ATO = 100 merits

 

100 merits = 300 converters

 

300 converters x 75,000 sell on AH each = 22.5m

 

And that's low. Considering you can get 1 ATO for 8-12 mill usually, wasting 100 merits for 1 ATO when you could buy 2-3 ATO, by converter and sell? Questionable practice to spend 100 merits on 1 ATO.

 

Further, considering I can use those 300 converters to make 180million, with only 30 minutes of time invested to do it? Yeah. Others who are more careful can turn 300 converters into 300million.

Edited July 25, 2020 by SwitchFade

[SwitchFade]

8 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

I almost always have the ATOs and a collection of favorite procs and specials (Which include the GladArmor/ShieldWall/Panacea PvP bits on a fair few of the gang-), but rather or not there are any purple sets or WinterO's involved depends a lot on the individual character and what I'm going for with them. Some use them, some don't.

 

Harry (my farm-boy) probably has the single most expensive build of anyone in my crew, and he uses a number of both. If I had had to buy all of his gear outright (I didn't. I'd been hoarding purples, abusing converters, buying Winter packs on sale and planning him for months before I pulled that particular trigger, because I *knew* his build was going to be in OMGWHAT?!-territory otherwise.) it probably would have come in around 750-800m, easy.

 

My favorite Defender, by contrast?  Ivory has neither purples nor Winters. Her build cost me MAYBE 150m, tops, to put together.... and yet she's a capable enough character to follow Mysh's Titan Scrap right into the middle of huge groups of goons as if it's the most natural place in the world to find a support type.  'Sort of a good illustration of how you may not need a Scrooge McDuck-sized fortune to build a terror. XD

Exactly.

 

My extremely twinked out stalker that can solo Lusca with no temps, no lore and no envenomed daggers was 750mill, not even 1billion. She solos AV s and other GM's too 😁

Edited July 25, 2020 by SwitchFade

[Haijinx]

4 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

"MIDS-pron"... I love it. XD

 

But, yeah. When I say "finished build", I'm talking about using IO sets, not commons. I suspect that's true for most of us when we're talking about getting to the point of a character being complete.

There's full set builds but also the really no Influence spared builds.

 

I've done quite a few of the former.  Say in the 200 mil budget range. 

 

 

 

 

[Hexquisite]

I get so few characters to 50, those that do get showered in the most effective builds I can manage, no expenses spared. Hexquisite's build, counting the things I bought and ended up not using because i am a dumb, was nearly 1 billion. But she deserved it. ❤️

 

The total of characters who have managed this so far, is one. I have a second coming up soon, though, and Queen Raccoon will be treated like the queen she is, as well.

[Coyotedancer]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

There's full set builds but also the really no Influence spared builds.

 

I've done quite a few of the former.  Say in the 200 mil budget range. 

 

 

 

 

Same for me. I'd say my "average" for the gang is somewhere in the 250/300m-neighborhood... a little more for some, a little less for others... depending on AT and what I'm going for. It's really only the favorites and the off-the-wall "concept builds" that tend to creep up into the "pricey" range. 500m+ for a favorite is justified, I think,

 

I'm not a devoted enough farmer to toss that much at every single member of my crew, though. Not right out of the gate, anyway....

 

Given enough time without new alts demanding resources, though? Who knows.  Maybe someday I'll have revised and updated all of them to that point... But it hasn't happened yet. XD

 

 

Edited July 25, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[EmmySky]

On Sundays I like to spend a couple hours farming, maybe invite some friends along for chatter.  Other than that, it takes me a couple weeks running on any team that will have me to build incarnates for a character.  I do not like the DA stuff too much and iTrials confuse me so this is building incarnates from drops and ver lvl rewards mostly.

 

I had enough inf to outfit my latest completed toon (about 400 to 500m build I dont remember exactly) almost immediately so all she has earned in the last 2 week just playing casually and doing whatever is sitting in my email ready to outfit the next girl.  That is 500m unless I miscounted somewhere.  If I do a couple hours on Sunday on TankYou, thats another 200 to 250m I can add, at least.  I do also like to turn reward merits into inf through converters or boosters or whatever.  I only use merits for ATOs if there are none for sale on /ah for a few days (I am looking at you sentinels ward and opportunity strikes).

 

Different players will obviously have different experiences, but for me, a couple weeks playing whatever I find fun is not too much 'grind' to pay for a fairly pricey build.

[Nyghtmaire]

I appreciate seeing everyone’s approach to this process. For me, I build as I go, hoard purples for later that drop for my small number of 50s, and expect each character to pay their own way after ~10 million or so gift (mainly Panacea proc and maybe, MAYBE another 1 or 2 IOs, the rest being an outright gift). If I don’t like a character by about level 20, then their slot is recycled for another concept. I respec fairly often, so level 25 IOs are often passed between characters as they cycle through the leveling process. By the time I get to ~43 -45, I’m filling in my level 50 build I’ve been working towards for some time on the self-funding model. Trading merits for converters, flipping IOs after roulette on the market, etc...

[Yomo Kimyata]

4 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

Just a bit of helpful info for people who waste merits on ATO and recipe buys. While you can do this, it's extremely inefficient.

 

1 ATO = 100 merits

 

100 merits = 300 converters

 

300 converters x 75,000 sell on AH each = 22.5m

 

And that's low. Considering you can get 1 ATO for 8-12 mill usually, wasting 100 merits for 1 ATO when you could buy 2-3 ATO, by converter and sell? Questionable practice to spend 100 merits on 1 ATO.

 

Further, considering I can use those 300 converters to make 180million, with only 30 minutes of time invested to do it? Yeah. Others who are more careful can turn 300 converters into 300million.

That said, there's no shame in spending merits directly for things.  It may not be the most efficient way, but it gets the job done, and if you don't mind paying more than you have to, do as ye will.  Just because it may be more efficient to bake your own bread doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with buying a loaf at the grocery store!

[Haijinx]

6 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

Just a bit of helpful info for people who waste merits on ATO and recipe buys. While you can do this, it's extremely inefficient.

 

1 ATO = 100 merits

 

100 merits = 300 converters

 

300 converters x 75,000 sell on AH each = 22.5m

 

And that's low. Considering you can get 1 ATO for 8-12 mill usually, wasting 100 merits for 1 ATO when you could buy 2-3 ATO, by converter and sell? Questionable practice to spend 100 merits on 1 ATO.

 

Further, considering I can use those 300 converters to make 180million, with only 30 minutes of time invested to do it? Yeah. Others who are more careful can turn 300 converters into 300million.

Important buying tip for high price items 

 

Bid 50%-75% if the "Buy now" rate (what most the recents sold for) and wait a week or so.   You often get a bargain.  

 

You can save a lot of Inf that way.  

 

 

[AboveTheChemist]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

Bid 50%-75% if the "Buy now" rate (what most the recents sold for) and wait a week or so.   You often get a bargain.  

This is precisely how I get my builds to fall in the 150-175 million range, when the 'buy now' cost is in the 250-275 million range. Patience has served me quite well.

[EmmySky]

2 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Important buying tip for high price items 

 

Bid 50%-75% if the "Buy now" rate (what most the recents sold for) and wait a week or so.   You often get a bargain.  

 

You can save a lot of Inf that way.  

 

 

But... NAO!

 

I am terribly impatient but I tend to put in all my bids knowing its gonna take me a couple weeks to do incarnates so I bid a little low in hopes of a bargain.

[Sir Myshkin]

9 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

.... and yet she's a capable enough character to follow Mysh's Titan Scrap right into the middle of huge groups of goons as if it's the most natural place in the world...

Slightly level of irony in calling out that character in this thread given previous comments about top-hat and monocle crowd:

 

His build is the poster-child for "expensive" 🤣🤣🤣

[Coyotedancer]

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Slightly level of irony in calling out that character in this thread given previous comments about top-hat and monocle crowd:

 

His build is the poster-child for "expensive" 🤣🤣🤣

Dex is great fun, though, and keeping up with him was definitely a good test for my defender's build.

 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[ForeverLaxx]

All this talk about multiple "tricked-out" 50s, to people upset they can't instantly equip a new 50 that got PL'd, to others going on about how cheap a build really can be with the right approach and I'm still sitting here with well over a year on these servers and my highest character is only 35-38.

 

I don't even have 30 alts. I just change characters and stand around too much.

[Grouchybeast]

22 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

All this talk about multiple "tricked-out" 50s, to people upset they can't instantly equip a new 50 that got PL'd, to others going on about how cheap a build really can be with the right approach and I'm still sitting here with well over a year on these servers and my highest character is only 35-38.

 

I don't even have 30 alts. I just change characters and stand around too much.

And there's nothing wrong with that, if it's what you enjoy!

 

One of the reasons I think about the levelling/equipping poll is I'm curious about where the mismatch between expectation of what feels reasonable to someone and their actual in-game experience is spoiling people's enjoyment.

[Coyotedancer]

1 hour ago, ForeverLaxx said:

All this talk about multiple "tricked-out" 50s, to people upset they can't instantly equip a new 50 that got PL'd, to others going on about how cheap a build really can be with the right approach and I'm still sitting here with well over a year on these servers and my highest character is only 35-38.

 

I don't even have 30 alts. I just change characters and stand around too much.

You're not alone in that. I know a few people on Everlasting who see the main draw of the game in "social RP". They spend most of their active playing time doing that instead of bashing goons, and so... a year-and-change into the game... most of their characters are midlevel at most, with no real plan for ever seeing 50.

 

For them, that's just not the point of being in the City. All this build-stuff, and the power-level conversations, and the debates over Incarnates, and the back-and-forth over buffing or nerfing Power X or IO set Y? They couldn't care less. And while I may not personally understand their perspective, it *IS* still a perfectly valid way to do "the City-thing".

 

Takes all types, right?

[EmmySky]

When I buy from AH, I carefully go through and put 1 inf bids on every enh I need then on my bidding page use the find button to nail down the going price and make a 'real' bid.  

 

When I was decking out my farmer, I was following this pattern and BOOM something with a 1 inf bid moved to my bought tab.  I don't remember what enh it was, that was back in October, but it was probably an orange because I remember thinking I just saved about 10m.

 

Only pertinent to the 'get a bargain' discussion not the inf is rare discussion.  I still buy my enh this way and keep hoping it'll happen again 😁

[ForeverLaxx]

16 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 I know a few people on Everlasting who see the main draw of the game in "social RP".

I don't even RP. I'll do a mission or two for 8 different characters in a play session or stand around waiting for a TF to form. In just about every other game with character builds and concept builds, I'll min/max my characters to fit the concept I have for them but, for some reason, City never evokes that part of my brain. I was here in 2004 so I've had plenty of time to "get bored" and I just never did. So when people get upset that they can't farm another alt up as fast as they used to, when they're already sitting on a stable of 20-50 characters that are "done", I'm just dumbfounded.

 

As a PvPer it makes a bit more sense to want to "skip" all the nonsense because you're trying to make a character to fight other players, but many of these people aren't those types either. Maybe it's just because I don't consider a character "unfinished" just because it isn't at the level cap or is fully slotted? I see characters as "done" once they leave the costume creator because at that point, it's about power refinement and expansion for me. Wolverine is just a dude that heals fast and cuts things with claws, which you're already doing from level 1. Getting Wolverine to 50 so he can cut things *differently* or heal *faster* than he was before isn't really changing the character's concept so maybe that's why I take so long to level.

 

I didn't do Incarnate stuff on Live either, though that had as much to do with the expense of it all as anything else back then.

[Banni]

I have mixed feelings about the power leveling and Influence farming. 

 

I would love to play through the levels like in the old days. But I find myself more than often doing missions alone. Being a high level as fast as possible opens more opportunities to play. 

[Stunticon_Mechanic]

So stupid to disable the double influence. So what if some players are whining that others have more than them? Does it hurt gameplay at all? No.

[ForeverLaxx]

11 minutes ago, Stunticon_Mechanic said:

So stupid to disable the double influence. So what if some players are whining that others have more than them? Does it hurt gameplay at all? No.

At the risk of starting this all over again, I suggest reading the thread. This has been hashed back and forth a million times and had absolutely nothing to do with some people having more influence than other people. It was to slow down inflation and it worked for that purpose.

[SwitchFade]

1 hour ago, Stunticon_Mechanic said:

So stupid to disable the double influence. So what if some players are whining that others have more than them? Does it hurt gameplay at all? No.

I'm very sorry, you're incorrect. Rampant inflation is good for no one. I invite you to read the numerous explenations why in this thread.

[Ironblade]

On 7/31/2020 at 9:23 PM, Stunticon_Mechanic said:

So stupid to disable the double influence. So what if some players are whining that others have more than them? Does it hurt gameplay at all? No.

If that had been the reason for disabling the double influence, yes, it would have been stupid.

But, since it wasn't, your comment is meaningless.

[QuiJon]

On 8/3/2020 at 9:35 AM, Ironblade said:

If that had been the reason for disabling the double influence, yes, it would have been stupid.

But, since it wasn't, your comment is meaningless.

But one reason that was given was that the creep in the cost of items on the AH was being caused by players that had all that farming money to spend and didnt care about prices. And yet since the change went through what has happened? Most everything i would seek to buy on the AH has gone up in price. All purples are mostly around 20million now where there used to be some flex between the different types, all winters are around 20 million even though the drop rate on them is more like 1.5 per pack. ATOs stayed about the same got a bit more expensive if you are impatient. Any pvp IO is now atleast 10 million, most all procs and their sets have gone up dramatically in price, And over all converters have dropped. When all this went down converters sold for about 85-95k per pretty reliably and now i can log in just about whenever i want and buy them for like 65k. Which is a direct hit to those that "played the game" and used merits instead of farming in that one of the means they did make money on is becoming less of a gain for them. 

 

Absolutely nothing has gone down and most has continued to go up. This idea that you can treat a fake game with fake money with real economic principles is just not true. If they want to control price creep they need to set a ceiling on the prices for items. I get that a change might have been needed but if the issue was that patrol xp boosted and screwed up the AE farm earning without requiring extra effort (50 down to 49) there were multiple ways to handle it beyond just nerfing the extra Inf.

 

For example, change the exemp rule so that you only earned the xtra influence if you were down at least 10 levels. Then you are argue you have made the game harder in that to earn the extra influ you would have to drop down far enough to lose at least your last 2 power choices and far enough to lose incarnate boosts and powers. You also could have just got rid of patrol xp for everyone. There is already double xp at will in the game, the idea of needing a "boost" off logging off really to me was obsolete to begin with.  So if that was the problem then remove it, or hell do both of these and then put it back in the game for everyone. Let me decide if farming at level 40 or 50 produces the most infl per hour and let people that want to shut down xp while playing the game running TF and such keep earning the extra as well. 

 

But no matter what, none of the problems that this change was suposed to have fixed has been fixed, prices still rising, people still farming. 

Edited August 4, 2020 by QuiJon