Weekly Discussion 81: The Player-Market

[Coyotedancer]

I suspect that the good/bad reference is in terms of inflation and the value of currency rather than anything to do with player interactions with each other in the social sense. 

[Moonscribe]

I absolutely love the CoX market and always have. It's legitimately one of my favorite things about the game, and I don't really enjoy marketeering either - but it's so easy and painless to interact with the market that I don't need to become a professional marketeer to get value out of it, I can just make some bids or dump some items and then go on with whatever I was doing. I love the double-blind system - I think I pretty much stopped using the market on WoW after somebody actually contacted me to complain about how my price was lower than theirs (just wanted to sell the thing and move on). Here, no one can see which prices are mine or even really which prices there are, and that's great.

 

And on Homecoming, the market is far, far healthier than it was on live - I remember the days of Luck Charms selling for millions of influence and grinding lowbie Ouroboros missions just to get "common" salvage, and I definitely don't miss it. I love the converter economy and the way it lowers and evens out the prices of IOs large and small so that I can afford pretty much anything I want with some work, rather than just giving up on ever getting the top-tier enhancements as I did on live. So in general, I think the HC devs have done a fantastic job in this area of the game and am generally willing to go along with their intuition as long as that continues to be true.

 

I do have complaints, but they're pretty much all points that have already been made here. But I guess I should make them anyway so the devs have some idea how many people have them:

 

-- The market bugs are bad, and should be fixed soon. Not getting the history to display, or getting complete lies to display in the history, are confusing and off-putting for new or even returning players, and just plain annoying for vets. Of course, since these haven't already been fixed, I'm guessing doing so is not easy... but I agree it's one of the most important things to do, maybe the most important.

 

-- But, what's also really bad and impenetrable is basically everything about the converter economy and enhancement transactions for new players. Nothing in the in-game tutorials tells you that converters even exist, let alone how useful they are (though the latter became pretty obvious to me once I realized that they did exist); nor does it explain to you that all levels of enhancements, plus attuned, are all merged together in the market. (When I started on Homecoming, I didn't even check this for a long time because I just assumed that OF COURSE attuned enhancements would cost more than other varieties, and I only learned otherwise because I was reading the forums, something most don't do.)

 

I think it would be a terrible idea to get rid of these systems, because they do so much good economically speaking and without them we'd go back to the bad old Luck Charm days... but I think there absolutely have to be tutorials in-game - not just out of game on the forums or YouTube or something, because not everyone uses those or even knows to look for them - explaining the way in which items are merged on the market, explaining that converters exist and are important, explaining that attuned enhancements even exist in the game at all (I didn't know this, either, until someone randomly gifted me an attuned enhancement while I was crafting at the university)...

 

Honestly, this all ties into the larger problem of: there's not nearly enough up-to-date tutorial content in this game just in general. During the SCORE days, everyone playing was someone who had played on live and had plenty of experience doing so (or so I gather, I wasn't there), so they didn't need their hands held. The lack of tutorials was fine then - but it's not fine now, and can make introducing new players to the game a frustrating experience, especially if they aren't comfortable just jumping into the Help channel.

[Saikochoro]

I really like the way the HC market is set up. I really enjoy the double blind system and the things HC did to make it more accessible (item pooling, seeding).  I would not change any of the fundamentals. Only make it more accessible. 
 

Market/Merit/Enhacement Conversion Tutorial
I suggest creating a tutorial that knocks all three of these topics out in one go since they are all crucial to effectively using the market. 
Mission 1:  Have a standard mission (defeat X boss or obtain some item, etc). The important part of this mission would be the reward. Have this mission award 3 merits and 1 yellow recipe. Make the yellow recipe a level 31 Tempered Readiness recipe. 
Mission 2: Talk to NPC that describes the market bid system. This discussion should have in bold colored font that highest bid goes to lowest offer. Then use the market to buy the salvage required for the Tempered Readiness IO.  Craft the IO. 
Mission 3: Talk to NPC that has basic instructions about the merit vendor. Use the merit vendor to convert the reward merits into 9 enhancement converters.

Mission 4:  Talk to NPC that describes enhancement conversation by category. Then use two converters to convert the crafted tempered readiness by category into a rare IO.

Mission 5: Talk to NPC that instructs you how to convert by rarity.  The NPC also instructs how to put items up for sale on the auction house.  The discussion should reiterate that highest bid goes to lowest offer. Then have the character convert the now Pacing of the Turtle IO by rarity up to 7 times with the remaining converters. The instruction on sales by the NPC in this mission should instruct player to put the IO after each conversion on the market and click find to get the pricing history. Then place the IO for sale to complete the arc.

Ending Arc Reward: Have the final arc completion award be another 3 merits and a level 31 tempered readiness recipe to give the player another go at the whole process. 
 

Other Notes:

If at all possible, I will echo others and say, please fix the sales history display bug (I.e miracle proc often showing outrageously high sales prices for the last 5). 
 

Also, I would love to be able to access the market from supergroup bases. 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Eldyem]

15 hours ago, Take One said:

Or put Hero/Villain/Winter Packs up for sale on the merit vendor, for 100/250 merits a piece. It makes more sense to roll random loot this way than to be told to buy some meta-salvage enhancement converters, sell it on the AH, then use the inf from that to get what you actually want. At 100/250 merits I think they are competitively priced compared to buying the exact ATO you want, instead of rolling for it randomly. You usually get some other nice stuff in the packs too. But if other people have a better grasp on what you usually get in a pack, and think my prices are way off, then I'm sure they will show up to tell me.

I don't think this really fixes the issue at all - a pack is generously worth ~14 million inf, and 100 merits spent on convertors, sold at 50,000, is still 15 million inf.

If, say, Winter Packs were buyable at 100 with merits, I think there'd be a strong incentive towards buying them with merits during non-Winter months, as it would vastly increase the inf per merit of buying the pack. But it also makes winter IOs extremely accessible - is that something we actually want?

Or, perhaps, if there were merit-exclusive Enhancement sets. But I think that takes out some of the fun of random drops - is "saving" merits worth alienating some of the playerbase?

[Take One]

5 hours ago, Eldyem said:

If, say, Winter Packs were buyable at 100 with merits, I think there'd be a strong incentive towards buying them with merits during non-Winter months, as it would vastly increase the inf per merit of buying the pack. But it also makes winter IOs extremely accessible - is that something we actually want?

Note that I mentioned two merit costs 100, and 250. 

[Grouchybeast]

23 hours ago, Take One said:

The current economic model of spending merits on enhancement converters to sell on the market to get influence to buy ATOs and other enhancements instead of buying the enhancements directly with merits is a convoluted mess, and tends to trick new players into spending more merits than necessary to get what they want for their characters.

 

I suggest reducing the merit cost for enhancements by a lot, to make them a valid choice for spending merits.

 

Or put Hero/Villain/Winter Packs up for sale on the merit vendor, for 100/250 merits a piece. It makes more sense to roll random loot this way than to be told to buy some meta-salvage enhancement converters, sell it on the AH, then use the inf from that to get what you actually want. At 100/250 merits I think they are competitively priced compared to buying the exact ATO you want, instead of rolling for it randomly. You usually get some other nice stuff in the packs too. But if other people have a better grasp on what you usually get in a pack, and think my prices are way off, then I'm sure they will show up to tell me.

I think it would be a really good idea to have a big warning on the Merit purchase screen that the items for sale can almost always be bought cheaper on the AH.

 

However, at the moment Merits are doing an important job, which is they are providing an absolute backstop on AH prices.  Nothing that can be bought on the AH can ever cost more than 1,000,000 x Merit cost, because Merits can be bought for 1,000,000 inf.  It's a completely automated system that requires no dev monitoring or input.  It also means that if prices ever rise that high, a new inf sink also automatically kicks in.  Like a lot of the system around the HC AH, it's very elegant and means that the players automatically act as a force to increase supply and lower prices, which is pretty brilliant.

 

If you think that the absolute cap on AH prices should be lower than 100 million, that's a different thing and fair enough.  But trying to match  Merits costs to AH prices in an active, ongoing way would take up dev time, potentially a lot of dev time.

 

My only objection in principle to making packs buyable with Merits is that at the moment, buying packs is a pure inf sink, which is good for the economy.

[tidge]

20 hours ago, Grindingsucks said:

Now, for a more personal suggestion.  The currency of the game is called Influence.  Now, why is it called influence, rather than just currency (or wealth, or money, or credits- as in most other games)?  Presumably, because the mechanism for acquiring things is meant to represent not simply raw wealth and buying power, but networks of allies, political connections, fame, reputation, and/or even the ability to leverage threats and fear to get what you need.

It's not called Influence Redside or Goldside.

 

Aside from the user interface to the market, I'm satisfied with it. The fungible market (and converter roulette) has allowed me the freedom to update new characters with IO set pieces on a scale that would have never been available on Live.

 

The most annoying bit of the interface (for me) is that the AH often won't display the most recent sales data (right or wrong!) without me placing a bid and checking my bid. The display delay even shows up when trying to sell, which also is annoying... but eventually it will show. The lag has occasionally led me to buy copies of things I was trying to sell. No big deal, but it is annoying when it (rarely) happens.

 

I believe the cause of a couple issues has been explained; I'll repeat my understanding.

 

"Last 5 sales" bug seems to be caused by one or more database indexing issues. This may required a different sort of 'bug fix' than other code changes. These can be extremely tricky to track down.

 

Not being able to open the Auction House in missions or SG bases: As has been written in this thread, the entire AH needs to be instanced in the map at least once when a player connects to it. This is resource intensive and somewhat wasteful.

[Grindingsucks]

9 minutes ago, tidge said:

It's not called Influence Redside or Goldside.

 

Aside from the user interface to the market, I'm satisfied with it. The fungible market (and converter roulette) has allowed me the freedom to update new characters with IO set pieces on a scale that would have never been available on Live.

 

The most annoying bit of the interface (for me) is that the AH often won't display the most recent sales data (right or wrong!) without me placing a bid and checking my bid. The display delay even shows up when trying to sell, which also is annoying... but eventually it will show. The lag has occasionally led me to buy copies of things I was trying to sell. No big deal, but it is annoying when it (rarely) happens.

 

I believe the cause of a couple issues has been explained; I'll repeat my understanding.

 

"Last 5 sales" bug seems to be caused by one or more database indexing issues. This may required a different sort of 'bug fix' than other code changes. These can be extremely tricky to track down.

 

Not being able to open the Auction House in missions or SG bases: As has been written in this thread, the entire AH needs to be instanced in the map at least once when a player connects to it. This is resource intensive and somewhat wasteful.

It's influence, Blueside.  Infamy Redside.  Information, Goldside.  All of these designations imply that we aren't meant to think of it in terms of raw currency, but rather who's willing to get you things (Blueside) who you can intimidate into getting you things (red) and who you can extort or blackmail to get you things (gold).

[Parabola]

39 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

I think it would be a really good idea to have a big warning on the Merit purchase screen that the items for sale can almost always be bought cheaper on the AH.

 

However, at the moment Merits are doing an important job, which is they are providing an absolute backstop on AH prices.  Nothing that can be bought on the AH can ever cost more than 1,000,000 x Merit cost, because Merits can be bought for 1,000,000 inf.  It's a completely automated system that requires no dev monitoring or input.  It also means that if prices ever rise that high, a new inf sink also automatically kicks in.  Like a lot of the system around the HC AH, it's very elegant and means that the players automatically act as a force to increase supply and lower prices, which is pretty brilliant.

 

If you think that the absolute cap on AH prices should be lower than 100 million, that's a different thing and fair enough.  But trying to match  Merits costs to AH prices in an active, ongoing way would take up dev time, potentially a lot of dev time.

 

My only objection in principle to making packs buyable with Merits is that at the moment, buying packs is a pure inf sink, which is good for the economy.

Further to this the devs have stated that they want to encourage people to use the market in order to keep it healthy. They are therefore very unlikely to bring down merit prices to a level where the market would no longer be clearly the cheaper option. Their efforts to limit inflation seem to have been very successful though so it might be safe enough to reduce the gap between the market prices and the merit prices a little.

[UltraAlt]

On 12/13/2020 at 11:15 AM, Grindingsucks said:

I tend to think of CoX as an online, Superhero RPG. 

I play it as an RPG myself. I like role-playing my characters.

 

But I am RPG-lite. I'm not 100% RPG all the time, especially when I'm with my old gaming buddies from RL.

 

This post was going much better before the forums ate 30 minutes of my work.

 

On 12/13/2020 at 11:15 AM, Grindingsucks said:

Also, I can't deny the fact the the word "influence" sticks in my craw.  If it isn't going to function according to its label (mechanically speaking, I mean), then just call it what it is:  Resources (or wealth, or whatever).

Page 66 of the book that came in the original box set talks about influence.

I had typed all that in, but I'll just go with the definition part. 

"Influence represents the respect you have earned from Paragon City, its citizens, and your fellow heros, and you can use it to improve your ability to combat the forces of evil."

Most of the respect from other heroes comes from this quote "You may also trade Influence with another heroes."

 

The Market of Might

So my Empathy Defender that was unslotted and weak (back before Wentworths), went to the University to learn a craft(ing) and went to Wentworth to see who wanted to purchase his goods (they were goods because they were made with Influence and not Infamy!). Pretty soon thanks to that (and a Charles Atlas training course), he was fully slotted and had some influence to throw around to other players to show how influen(ce)tial he was.

 

Don't Cross the Streams

Then this happened which totally ruined with Influence was and turned it into outright currency. This was another major strike against RPG'ing in THE CITY. (I think some know how I get about Farming, so I'm not going to go there)

What is this?

You want it all, but you can't have it.

It's in your face, but you can't grab it!

The villains had Infamy and not Influence.

They didn't earn Influence for doing good.

They earned Infamy for breaking the legs of Long Bow Agents and for dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

The villain Black Market was tiny compared to the Wentworths. 

Of course, it was. There was far fewer villains.

The villains were locked off from the good produced by good/Influence because of their evil ways.

And besides, they were villains! Why should the benefit from the good/Influence work of Heroes?!!

Villains whined and conned the DEVs into taking down the dividing wall, breaking another bit of the canon.

The Wentworths and the Black Market merged. Influence and Infamy became the same thing. The currency of doing good was intermingled with the currency of evil.

A little too real world for me.

I'm here to escaped the muddled gray and play with the stark dividing lines. It seriously hurt me that the DEVs thought that the currency for doing good was the same currency gained for evil acts. Not very comic book at all. Or maybe just simply the de-mythicized retconned stuff produced by people that don't even like superhero comics anyway.

 

Isn't there a way to RPG being Good any more?

Well Influence ain't it.

It's the badges.

I might not need an stinking badges, but I'm going to get some along the way and my characters are probably going to sport one that helps show my RPG vision of them

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by UltraAlt

[Chris24601]

23 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

However, none of this addresses what I think is the real issue. The HC dev team has expressed their opinion that ALL players are expected to utilize the market on at least a basic level (selling drops), but nothing in the game really directs a player on how to go about doing this. The invention tutorial, while it does break down the basics in crafting, never has you interact with the market and can be completely skipped/ignored with no indications that you're missing anything. This is fine in a world where the original dev team wanted these systems to be unobtrusive and optional, but we're in a version of CoH now with a different team that fully expects all players to be taking advantage of this system.

The invention tutorial doesn't even pop up when you get in the level range and isn't even a part of the "Find Contacts" list. If you're a new player you literally have to know its there to even be aware of it.

 

Similarly, the Shooting Stars/Dr. Graves "tutorials" barely touch on the Auction House, you basically run by it and unless you're actually paying attention to Flambeux's blather you could zip right past it too.

 

Frankly, we have an /ah command. I think the proper solution if the Market is intended to be used by everyone is to do what every MMO who's added such a market after launch has done... Add a big shiny button that says "Auction House" on it to UI (basically a free-floating /AH macro) and attach a "Help/Guide" button to the top of the Auction House UI that goes over the parts of the Auction House.

 

In addition, if the intention is that people are going to use merits primarily to buy items to sell on the AH for inf, then in addition to the notice that "You've received your first Merit Reward" that you can just click OK and promptly forget about, how about having it drop a mission into your mission log that tells you to go talk to a Merit Vendor NPC (not the generic terminals, one of the ones in the ugly gold and purple outfits) who will have a bit of dialogue that also includes, "Many things available from merit vendors are quite valuable and can be sold for large amounts of Influence/Infamy/Information using the Auction House. You can access the Auction House by clicking the big gold button that says AH on your screen."

 

Alternately... MERGE the Merit Vendor UI into the Auction House so you open the Auction House UI to spend your merits. Another thing that would be extremely useful to merge into the Auction House UI would be a built in window that displays your enhancements, recipes and salvage instead of needing to open them separately.

 

I can't begin to tell you how much trouble people I've introduced to the game have finding all of the sub-menus and systems that veteran players take for granted. Yes, you can ask for help and we're friendly, but a lot of the people I've brought in are hesitant to ask in general chat (instead they shoot Tells at me) because they expect the community here to be like all the other MMO communities; toxic e-peen jerks who mock or even give bad advice to newbies for the Lolz.

 

Basically, I feel like there is a ton of badly designed UI elements related to rewards (inf, merits and drops) and markets (NPC vendors and the market) that CoH veterans only find acceptable because they're used to them rather than because any new person joining the game would be able to figure them out.

 

We may be extremely tolerant of people running missions and building toons their own way, but a lot of this game's interfaces are their own exercise in "Lern2Play Newb!"

 

Associated side-bar to the above. The Outbreak/Breakout/Precinct 5 Tutorials are just so much better for completely new players to actually figure out the game than the Galaxy City one. There are actual explanations of things while the Galaxy City one just throws you into the deep end with just the barest of "click this now" from a voice over.

 

I would suggest that if you really wanted to improve the accessibility of all these various systems, you should look at updating Outbreak/Breakout/Precinct 5 to include merits and the AH and move the Galaxy City Tutorial to a "know the game, but still want a quick intro scene" line vs. the genuine new player tutorials that give the player the time to actually read through mission dialogues that explain things like enemy threat color coding, inventory tabs and how to rearrange items in your power trays.

[Doc_Scorpion]

47 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

I can't begin to tell you how much trouble people I've introduced to the game have finding all of the sub-menus and systems that veteran players take for granted.

This.  There's a lot of moving parts in this game - and when it comes to Merits and the AH and how the devs intend they be used (let alone using them at all)...  They're opaque as [word that would be moderated].

[gameboy1234]

19 hours ago, Moonscribe said:

-- But, what's also really bad and impenetrable is basically everything about the converter economy and enhancement transactions for new players.

What's really bad with these systems is that they're a time sink.  Not a money sink, but fiddly and obtuse for players to deal with and time I'm not spending actually playing the game.

 

I've got some new bids on the market, and I now have a literal spreadsheet I'm using to track bids, costs, sales and profit.  I'm not joking.  This is bad design, I'm sorry.  What I'd like to do is get the stuff I want and move on, but I really can't do that because I have to "play" the market to get them.  (And I don't grind or use the AE so I have to do this or I have to go without.  Not great.)

 

 

[Saikochoro]

19 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

What's really bad with these systems is that they're a time sink.  Not a money sink, but fiddly and obtuse for players to deal with and time I'm not spending actually playing the game.

 

I've got some new bids on the market, and I now have a literal spreadsheet I'm using to track bids, costs, sales and profit.  I'm not joking.  This is bad design, I'm sorry.  What I'd like to do is get the stuff I want and move on, but I really can't do that because I have to "play" the market to get them.  (And I don't grind or use the AE so I have to do this or I have to go without.  Not great.)

 

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with not liking the market and not wanting to use it. I have always hated using the markets in games and have always hated farming too. I have nothing against them being part of the games, I just never enjoyed them. That said, the market IS part of the game. Although it is not required, using it varying degrees can speed up build progression. This is true of many games.  It all depends on how fast you want your builds. COH is awesome in that you have so many ways that you can make influence including many ways to make use of the market in varying degrees from heavily to barely at all. 
 

Despite a few bugs and some minor UI complaints, this is one of the most well-designed game economies of which I have been a part. I think people just assume that they have to put in a lot of time and effort on the market to accomplish anything and that is just not true at all. Even for beginners.

 

I have successfully used the market in many ways to fund my alts and have never once had to use a spreadsheet. The market and conversion process is only as cumbersome and time consuming as you make it. If you want to know exactly how much profit you make at all times, then, yes, it will be more time consuming. But, it would also be time consuming to track all the merits you earn in a spreadsheet instead of just checking your salvage tab every so often to see how many have accumulated. Or tracking your drops and influence from kills in missions via spreadsheet. That would certainly be time consuming and unnecessary, same as it is for the market. 
 

If you just want to make some money to fund an alt, then it is just a matter of taking 10-15 minutes to craft/convert even just 10-15 enhancements.  Doesn’t even have to be every play session. It can really be as simple as converting until you get something that sells for ~2m, which usually takes no more than 6-8 converters.

 

If you start with a level 31 yellow recipe your total costs even if you use 10 converters is less than 750k. That is a bug margin. Sometimes you will get the big sellers like LOTG within those conversions, which results in huge profit. Then just watch your inf balance grow. 

 

Heck, you can forget crafting and converting altogether.  You can just do a ton of task forces, story arcs, and trials and load up on hundreds, or even thousands, of merits. Turn those merits into converters and just sell those on the market. It is as simple as listing your stacks of converters on the market at the end of each play session. The fact that crafting and converting is a huge part of the market, enables people to just make their money selling converters. Takes less than 5 minutes and has very minimal use of the market. That will support even purpled out builds pretty quickly as well. 
 

I think the real problem is getting the appropriate information easily available to everyone.  There are plenty of guides that detail pretty much everything you need or even want to know. I have even written one describing many methods to making money. The problem is that people have to come to the forums and find the guides rather than having the info easily accessible in the game. That’s why I think there should be a tutorial arc, like the one I proposed in this thread, that is a pop up on every new character at say level 10 for people to go learn how to use these functions. 

[tidge]

4 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

Alternately... MERGE the Merit Vendor UI into the Auction House so you open the Auction House UI to spend your merits. Another thing that would be extremely useful to merge into the Auction House UI would be a built in window that displays your enhancements, recipes and salvage instead of needing to open them separately.

 Hard NO. I like having a merit vendor in my SG base, and we can't have AH in SG bases for the reasons posted above.

[Heraclea]

The good news is that the hyperinflation that plagued the old game appears to be well under control.  Setting price ceilings on salvage has helped a lot. 

 

The less than great news is that I find I have very little incentive to bring things like white recipes and white or yellow recipes to the market to sell.  There's no percentage to it, in that both salvage and white recipes vendor for more than you'll get from the market for them, IME.  With such things as yellow recipes, that's not the case, but in almost every case I think it's better to just hoard them until the salvage to make them eventually drops.  Then I play converter roulette on them until they land on something a character of mine will eventually want.  Depending on the urgency of that need, this will entail catalysts and unslotters to get a catalyzed version to a levelling character.  I tend to acquire scads of useful enhancements but they're mostly level 50, unhelpful when you want to slot them at level 7 or 17. 

 

I am a habitual market avoider. I still don't see inf as a reliable store of value. It's generally something to pool and get rid of at the first opportunity. 

[arthurh35353]

6 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

Similarly, the Shooting Stars/Dr. Graves "tutorials" barely touch on the Auction House, you basically run by it and unless you're actually paying attention to Flambeux's blather you could zip right past it too.

The Shooting Stars/Dr. Graves 'tutorials' probably need to be auto-included and more meaty, IMO.

 

I've noticed some issues with things that are only via purchasing Villain/Hero/Vigilante/Rogue/Winter packs or are so incredibly rate they might as well not be drops.

 

Catalysts are supposed to be fairly rare, but are actually less rare (effectively) than enhancement boosters. At most you will only ever have to use 1 or 2 of them per Set IOs, where as with Boosters you have to use a minimum of *5* to boost an invention enhancement of a set to +5.

 

 

Right now the only way to 'earn' packs is via farming. 10 million to 25 million is not really within range of everyone unless do they do dedicated farming. I mean, you can leave that in for farming but an additional way to earn 1 of the packs per month via an account wide reward would give you an entrance for non-farmers.

 

We've kind of turned into City of Farmers for all the good 'loot'.

[gameboy1234]

2 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

I have successfully used the market in many ways to fund my alts and have never once had to use a spreadsheet. The market and conversion process is only as cumbersome and time consuming as you make it. If you want to know exactly how much profit you make at all times, then, yes, it will be more time consuming.

I'm probably going to ditch the spreadsheet after a while, I'm just confirming about how much inf I'm actually making.  Once I have a better idea of how much I've made and the effort/expenditure involved, then I'll be able to decide better which items I want to pursue.  Since roughly last Friday (I realize now I'm not recording the *time* of a sale) I've made about 20 million, in about three to four days time.  That's still a little bit short of where I need it, but I'm inching up in the right direction. But the point is that I really don't find it fun.  There's a bit of interest finding recipes and IO sets that are going to be profitable, but I'm basically running an item shop at the moment, and I don't even get to have a store front to go with it and watch customers browse my shop.

 

1 hour ago, Heraclea said:

I am a habitual market avoider. I still don't see inf as a reliable store of value. It's generally something to pool and get rid of at the first opportunity. 

This is kind of the way I feel too.  If I didn't feel I needed certain IO sets for the bonuses, I'd never touch the market.  I'd rather the game reward me *directly* for doing fun things in the game, not making me perform some dubious/unfun side activity in the the name of "player interaction."

 

 

I think "junk the whole thing" probably isn't advice they are looking for, so I'll try to add something constructive.  The first thing I think of is my salvage, which is all pretty much worthless.  That's a good sign that your system is broken btw.  I think perhaps if all salvage were convertible to another type we actually could use, then it would be worth something.  So maybe any three common salvage can be converted, for free or a small amount of inf, to what you need for a recipe.  Same for uncommon salvage.  Rare salvage I think should take one merit to convert to another other rare salvage you need for a recipe.  Now those salvage drops are actually worth something and maybe I'll feel excited again at getting a drop, rather than "ugh, gotta clean that out of my inventory."

 

Same for recipes.  I mentioned earlier that I think recipes could go down in price (merits) by around 70%.  Maybe allow that price for converting a useless recipe into something I want.  Now at least I can get the recipe I want from a drop, again instead of having to vendor it for next to nothing (no one else wants it either) or just delete it.

 

 

Summary: one of the *big* problems I see is people just using the market to dump unwanted junk. Drops have to be valuable or no one wants them and no one is excited when they arrive.  This includes sellers as well as buyers.  A junk recipe that no one wants just sits around on the market, and that isn't "player interaction," it's being told to clean your room. It becomes a chore "managing inventory" and that's a problem squarely on the designer.  You need to find a way to make those drops interesting and exciting.

 

[BurtHutt]

I don't mind the markets. I would rather the Devs allocate time and effort to adding more playable missions/TFs/SFs/Trials etc. 

 

The only think I'd suggest is having the auction price sell price history show on a consistent basis. It often is blank when you click on an item. Not a big deal but maybe it's an easy fix.

[Saikochoro]

11 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

This is kind of the way I feel too.  If I didn't feel I needed certain IO sets for the bonuses, I'd never touch the market.  I'd rather the game reward me *directly* for doing fun things in the game, not making me perform some dubious/unfun side activity in the the name of "player interaction."

I’m not going to touch on your other points as there could be a lot heated debate on those items. Instead I’m just pulling this part out. 
 

You absolutely can ignore marketing almost entirely and focus just on what the game awards you as you play content. Task forces, story arcs, trials, and various other content gives you reward merits. You can entirely forgot about enhancement conversion, figuring out what to sell and when, and the whole marketing part of the game. Just buy converters with the reward merits and sell them on the market.
 

It requires no deep marketing knowledge as converters are always on demand.  It also requires at most 5 minutes on the market each day to just list stacks of converters and claim the influence. You can even sell them for 1 inf each and still usually get 50-60k per converter. Or you can list them for something like 55k - 60k if you want more. When I do this I just list them for instant sales though as it is honestly profitable enough. 

 

You can fund even the most expensive builds relatively quickly.  Depending on how much you play can accumulate merits very quick. 100 reward merits is roughly 16-19m influence.  Do a hami raid or MSR, the weekly strike targets during the week, a couple other task forces, a couple signature story arcs, perhaps the new vahlz/freak arcs, and you could easily accumulate 500 merits in a week, which is 80-100m influence. All with hardly touching the market at all other than a few minutes each day to list stacks of converters and claim the influence. This is a very easy and reliable method to fund builds when you hate both marketing and farming, but enjoy other game content.  Just food for thought. 

[macskull]

A "get all" button. I swear it used to exist.

[gameboy1234]

  

On 12/13/2020 at 2:28 AM, GM ColdSpark said:

Things to think about:

• What makes an effective player-market work?
• What changes might you like to see made (less so on UI changes as we discussed that recently)?
• How might you make it more accessible (if you feel it's not already)

Contrast the above with:

39 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

You absolutely can ignore marketing almost entirely and focus just on what the game awards you as you play content.

I think telling people how skippable the market is doesn't help improve things.  (In fact, now that I type that, it feels a lot like gate keeping.) The goal is to find ideas to improve the market, make it work better for players, and make it more accessible.  Not tell people that if they don't like it they can not bother.

 

[Saikochoro]

1 hour ago, gameboy1234 said:

  

Contrast the above with:

I think telling people how skippable the market is doesn't help improve things.  (In fact, now that I type that, it feels a lot like gate keeping.) The goal is to find ideas to improve the market, make it work better for players, and make it more accessible.  Not tell people that if they don't like it they can not bother.

 

The market is already designed incredibly well and functions superbly. It is the best designed game market I have used.  Making money on the market is already one of the most accessible way of funding alts because you can do it from level 1 starting with nothing.

 

The accessibility is mainly only a problem because of the lack of easy information regarding the market, conversion, and merits. I suggested a tutorial arc to cover this flaw in the system. It is really the only glaring flaw.

 

The only reason I put out the selling converter method is because you have said you’d rather not touch the market. So, I offered that you don’t have to be knee deep in the market to fund what you need to fund.  This method is still participating in the market process, but does so at a simpler and less time intensive way.  That is not gatekeeping. That is tailoring a solution for you that seems to be in line with what you have been saying. 

Selling converters on the market is an essential part of the economy because it is one of the items in most demand and it fuels the enhancement conversion process, which is an essential part of the market. It is perfectly acceptable and expected to have varying levels of marketing going on. If you want to be heavily involved in marketing that is perfectly fine. There are plenty of people happy to teach you how to be successful. If you want to use it as minimally as possible while still making good money and supplying an important good that is also perfectly fine.

 

There are multiple ways to market. Some require more time and experience and some require less, but all are participating in the market. The market system itself is awesome. It is well designed and functions very well at its core. Yes, there are some bugs, but those are bugs. The system design itself as well as the changes the devs made are amazing.

[Ura Hero]

On 12/13/2020 at 1:03 PM, Zepp said:

As someone who uses the market quite a bit, there are not many issues.

 

The key issues, however, are:

• reliable sorting
• an increase in market data (at least making the list of recent purchases longer)
• access in base (and possibly PvP zones)
• text scaling (even if I change my text size preference, the size of text in the Auction House remains static)
• a claim all button for purchased items...

 

This is pretty much my list of things as well. 

 

1. The game needs sorting in a bunch of places, not just the market.

2. Market data is lousy and broken as is.  There isn't enough data to make a decent purchase/posting decision.  Today Miracle +Recovery were showing @11M which is way out of line for reality.

3. Base access is a non-starter.  While it would be awesome, there are some pretty serious technical hurdles to overcome.

4.  Text scaling would be great.  On a 4k screen it is next to impossible to read.

5. Claim all, yes please.  And a Post all would be nice. 

6. Posting/Buying more than 10 at a time.  It takes forever to drop any amount of salvage on the market.

7. Search function could be improved greatly.  As it is, you get tons of irrelevant items instead of a short list of things that actually make sense.

8. Broken record...  Fix the bugs.

 

It is still one of the best MMO markets that I have used, but it really needs some love.

[Troo]

16 hours ago, Grindingsucks said:

It's influence, Blueside.  Infamy Redside.  Information, Goldside.

Hold on.. in Vietnam it is Dong. Trading a handful of Dong to acquire something is just how it works.

Dong is simply a medium that can be exchanged for goods and services & is used as a measure of their values on the market. No need to over complicate it.