Weekly Discussion 81: The Player-Market

[Saikochoro]

42 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

That's not really the same thing. It would be like you want to play chess or something like chess, but you have to farm play go buy upgrade for your chess pieces so you can play 'competitively' and 'fun' in the chess world.

The thing is, you don’t have to farm or make extensive use of the market to be competitive. Let’s play devils advocate, and say that to be able to be competitive in the mass majority of the game you have to have a 500m influence build. This is completely not true, but let’s say it is true. 
 

So, how can one get that 500m influence build? There are many ways. The fastest and cheapest methods do use the market, but not necessarily extensively. 
 

No market, no merits, no converters approach - this will be the slowest method because you are purely at the mercy of rng and are not making use of all the tools available to you. It’s possible, but it’s not reasonable to expect it to be as fast as other methods. 
 

No market, no converters approach - still going to be slow, but at least you can use merits to buy the exact recipes you want so you are no longer bound by rng. This will be faster, but definitely not cheaper. 
 

No market approach - using merits and converters will ease the cost burden because you can craft your drops and convert them into the IOs you want. So then you will likely only need to use the merits on ATOs, purples, pvp recipes.  Still not the most efficient method, but don’t have to touch the market. 
 

Market approach - there are SO many ways to use the market to make gearing up cheaper and faster. You make influence by just selling your drops, or selling converters for inf, or craft & convert to sell, or niche marketing and beyond. Some of these methods require more knowledge and time than others. Some literally just take a few minutes to list things and grab the influence. Then you can use the funds to bid on various IOs.

 

Even if you don’t use the market to make money and use it solely to just buy a recipe, IO, or even salvage that you need, it will still save time and money.  You can get screaming deals if you are patient and you can also get them now if you want for more influence. The choice is purely up to the player. 
 

All of the methods are valid and doable, but they aren’t all equal. And why should they be? If a player isn’t willing to use the tools available to them even if only sparingly, then it makes sense that they will get what they want slower. That is working as intended. I’m not trying to be harsh. I want everyone to succeed. But people need to be willing to branch out a little. You can easily fund the most expensive of builds in a short time even if you only use the market for a few minutes each play session.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Yomo Kimyata]

I got a little off topic, since the point of this thread is to talk about the system, not the lack of the system.  There are some really good suggestions about making the process more user friendly that I'm totally going to steal later.

[Demobot]

I'm kinda curious if there are any changes that could be made to seeded salvage without raising the barrier of entry for the invention system. I understand the reasons why seeded salvage was added, but it has the side effect of making common and uncommon salvage drops mostly worthless. Granted, it may just be my nostalgia for the old market seeping through, as I have fond memories of rolling up new characters and building up a fortune from scratch, often relying on that first Luck Charm as seed money.

 

I know there are quicker and easier ways to get inf on new characters (and I could easily mail them a few million out of the billions I already have), but I kinda miss starting from nothing and having to claw your way to that first million.

[arthurh35353]

1 hour ago, Saikochoro said:

I want everyone to succeed. But people need to be willing to branch out a little. You can easily fund the most expensive of builds in a short time even if you only use the market for a few minutes each play session.

The thing with everything about the market (and buying things off the market) is that it really is gated on people willing to spend the most time on... not playing the game. 

Yes, I understand that the market is there to be used, but not everyone is going to be willing to gate hundreds of hours playing the market (on probably multiple characters). Right now, most of the rewards are for people willing to farm and market. 

 

Right now, without some fairly in depth understanding and usage of the market (which is a pain in the butt to use because of crummy numbers and displays and little tutorial help) there is no casual friendly benefit for people that play  and occasionally use the market. Or don't have an option to play a lot of hours playing city of fire/spines farmers so they can even dream of spending 500 million on one character's build.

 

Common and uncommon salvage that drops normally (ie. not event or super packs stuff) is so depressed in worth (not price).

 

Other things are so ludicrously expensive that most people don't even know they exist without being told things (like expensive pay 2 win items, or buying super-packs for the only way to get things like brainstorms and boosters. Boosters are supposed to be *common* salvage according to it description, yet is effectively the most expensive "common" salvage in existence. Even more so, if you factor that you need at least 5 per IO basic or set enhancement to use. That actually makes them effectively more expensive than Catalysts. 

At least catalysts occasionally drop.

 

Why are certain items only able to be gotten from Super Packs or buying them very expensively from Merit Vendors?

 

Are Boosters actually supposed to be super-rare purple salvage? Or actually common? Are brainstorming ideas only supposed to be able to be bought from the auction in superpacks and for merits? Why aren't they super rare salvage drops?

 

Why are we still being charged a super premium in time-gating (ie. Inf farming) to buy super packs? Why isn't there a way to get Super Packs for doing the weekly TFs and then selling them on the market?

Edited December 16, 2020 by arthurh35353

[EmperorSteele]

Man, why do people always want everything for no effort?

 

Btw, still waiting for everyone to send me all their monies!

[Saikochoro]

59 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

The thing with everything about the market (and buying things off the market) is that it really is gated on people willing to spend the most time on... not playing the game. 

Yes, I understand that the market is there to be used, but not everyone is going to be willing to gate hundreds of hours playing the market (on probably multiple characters). Right now, most of the rewards are for people willing to farm and market. 

 

Right now, without some fairly in depth understanding and usage of the market (which is a pain in the butt to use because of crummy numbers and displays and little tutorial help) there is no casual friendly benefit for people that play  and occasionally use the market. Or don't have an option to play a lot of hours playing city of fire/spines farmers so they can even dream of spending 500 million on one character's build.

I’ll let the devs respond to your questions about various salvage.  So I’m just quoting this part of your comment. 

Contrary to some people’s belief, the market IS part of the game. It’s is literally part of the game and is thus part of playing the game. It may not be how you prefer to spend time on the game and that is perfectly fine. However, it is part of playing the game. 
 

That said, effective use the market does not require in depth knowledge at all.  Nor does it take even close to hundreds of hours on the market. I consider myself an extensive user of the market. I have used many different market methods and have bought/sold thousands of items on the market. I do not spend more than 1-3 hours per week on the market. I didn’t spend more than that even as a beginner, in fact, I spent less time because I focused just on selling converters. At least half of my market time is bidding on enhancements for my characters to use and not for some marketing scheme.  
 

For someone just looking to make some quick cash by dipping their toes into the market (i.e selling converters) doesn’t even need an hour per week to allocate to marketing. Effective use of the market can be as simple as selling converters on the market, which takes less than 5 minutes per session. I think it’s unfair to give people the impression that they need deep knowledge of the market and need to spend countless hours on it to be effective. That is just not true at all. 
 

The problem is lack of an in game tutorial on the market, converters, and merits. Once people are instructed on the BASIC principles they can proceed to use the market effectively and quickly. They honestly only need the basics. If they find that they enjoy it they can go further and deeper into the market by reading guides, but that is honestly not necessary. 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Yomo Kimyata]

57 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

The thing with everything about the market (and buying things off the market) is that it really is gated on people willing to spend the most time on... not playing the game. 

Yes, I understand that the market is there to be used, but not everyone is going to be willing to gate hundreds of hours playing the market (on probably multiple characters). Right now, most of the rewards are for people willing to farm and market. 

 

 

I want to address this right away for two reasons.  First, just like we have seen that there is a real need to provide an (optional) tutorial on the basics of how to use converters and the AH, there is also a real need to provide clearer or simpler guides on the forums.  There are a lot out there already, but there is nothing saying READ THIS for people who have zero interest or zero aptitude.  Second, I want to address what I think is a real misconception in your above quote.  There is no gate -- not in terms of time, not in terms of knowledge, not in terms of scale.  And spending a few minutes, literally spending three minutes at the beginning or the end of every few sessions, can provide tens of millions of inf so long as one is willing to actually try it.  I'm not saying this as "Learn to Market, lol" or by trying to downplay or upplay the mechanics of the marketplace.  And I speak from experience that you can make "ultimate" builds without using the market AT ALL, but that's like saying you can get from San Francisco to Honolulu without flying AT ALL.  My two inf.

 

Apologies again for getting off topic!

[arthurh35353]

2 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

The problem is lack of an in game tutorial on the market, converters, and merits. Once people are instructed on the BASIC principles they can proceed to use the market effectively and quickly. They honestly only need the basics. If they find that they enjoy it they can go further and deeper into the market by reading guides, but that is honestly not necessary. 

Actually, I think a problem with it is without a good understanding in the real numbers and the fact people do corner items in the market, a basic understanding only gets you basic results and can get you fleeced if you don't have any patience.

 

When you just leveled up and need to sell an item at a worthwhile cost, going by the history, you find it doesn't move for days. And if you want to be able to afford the recipes you need, you seem to be the one that always gets fleeced.

 

This gets especially bad for real money items that were changed to only Inf costs, like Super Packs. Why are Winter Packs better than Hero/Villain or Vigilante/Rogue Packs?

 

So it all feeds back to drop rates (and things that do not ever drop), how much they can buy things for INF or Merits.

 

High cost Merit Items (100+ items recipes or more) and incredibly expensive Gacha marketing makes things not about playing things normally, but playing things super abnormally. Daily specific trials for Merits, not because you really want to defeat Hamidon, but because he gives a crud load of Merits that you churn right back around to buy your Purples/ATOs or PVP enhancements.

 

If they switched Super Packs to being exclusively something you could only earn on a once per day per account, a great deal of farming would disappear in a poof. Would that be a good idea? It might, as a person that can play 1 or 2 hours a day is suddenly able to earn some of the best rewards as good as any farmer.

 

Really, I see someone having to make a very massive loot drop spreadsheet, a merit cost spreadsheet and what you have for costs in the P2W and Auction House to even slightly get things on tracks. They need to decide if they want 'trash salvage' to actually be worth something via the upgrading path we talked about. 

 

And some of that is going to be a full meta decision level of do the Devs want people to farm hugely all the time for the best loot (gating out the more casual player) or do they want to make it more account based where they are rewarding people at a large burst up front and then sharply declining rewards afterwards (something anti-farming). (And yes, I know that farmers will just create more accounts to try getting around things, because they'd rather unbalance things to them.)

 

So right now, they need to look at all items that are going for a lot that don't drop and if that's a good design choice (things you have to purchase from Super Packs) and maybe decide if they should look at adding them to drop tables or making them easier to purchase via merits.

 

Some people would hate it if Purple/PVP enhancements were suddenly only 50 merits and regular Rare enhances were only 10, because suddenly all that INF isn't really worth a lot because people don't have to spend a huge time accruing INF to get what their characters need.

 

Or should Super Packs become a every 5th level thing of Vets? Or can we spend threads and Emperians for them?

[tidge]

3 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 But not backgammon.  That's the WORST!

 

Beyond the beautiful history of the game of backgammon, there are some (possibly) interesting parallels to the implementation of the (modern) market on Homecoming: Backgammon was a rather straightforward game relying on random elements, complete knowledge and skilled positioning for all of its ~5000 year history... until some crafty Americans added the doubling cube to the game (approximately 100 years ago) which added a completely new dimension to the game, making it possible to do so much more (including making money easier!) than without the doubling cube. Playing backgammon without the doubling die is like playing Homecoming and ignoring the market.

[EmperorSteele]

Edit: double posted on accident, sorry!

Edited December 16, 2020 by EmperorSteele

[Troo]

The market is actually pretty good.
The /ah shortcut is an epic gift to players.
Recent tweaks have worked out really well.

 

Fix Bug: Showing correct prices
Maybe an overbid/sell alert for an extra decimal place or more.

Fix Bug: At or near the infamy cap, claiming all sales should have some error checking to avoid just making the infamy disappear.

A 'claim all' option would likely require similar error checking for full inventories.

 

No market in base (just not a fan of this idea). No need to encourage more mass crafting or resource hording.

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Troo

[Coyotedancer]

3 hours ago, Demobot said:

I'm kinda curious if there are any changes that could be made to seeded salvage without raising the barrier of entry for the invention system. I understand the reasons why seeded salvage was added, but it has the side effect of making common and uncommon salvage drops mostly worthless. Granted, it may just be my nostalgia for the old market seeping through, as I have fond memories of rolling up new characters and building up a fortune from scratch, often relying on that first Luck Charm as seed money.

 

I know there are quicker and easier ways to get inf on new characters (and I could easily mail them a few million out of the billions I already have), but I kinda miss starting from nothing and having to claw your way to that first million.

 

Salvage isn't cheap because of the seeding... The seeded price is much higher than what it typically sells for, effectively giving us an "upper limit" on price that we never actually reach.

 

Salvage is cheap because the supply that all of us players are adding every single day is large enough to meet demand, *and* consistently posted for far less than that seeded price.   

[Hedgefund]

Fix this bug

 

 

 

I have other thoughts, other suggestions regarding the market and its interface but nothing compares to the urgency I think this bug deserves.   At the very least I'd like to hear some communication on why the devs have so far deemed this to not be worth fixing.  

 

 

[Wobegone]

I just want to clarify a little more.  I like the current system regarding IOs converters, and recipes.  I've been successful using the current system to outfit all my alts and have a LOT of leftover influence.  I'm rich....by no means the richest player, but I have billions in cash and billions more in stored ATOs/Purples/Winter IOs.  But I still have reservations on the current system because the friends I've recruited to play have been at best lukewarm with the same system, and have ended up leaving the game.  Perhaps this simply wasn't the right game for them.  One thing in common though is they were extremely casual players with limitied play time.  They didn't want to spend extra time 'playing the market'.   I just wonder how prevelant that attitude is, and want to make it as easy as possible for new players to enjoy he same benfits with as little effort possible.  It's entirely possible I'm just unlucky regarding my friends.  This simply wasn't the right game for them.  That doesn't take away the sting of seeing them play for a few weeks and leave forever.  I don't have answers unfortunately.  But I continue to have questions.

[Mr. Vee]

6 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

Salvage isn't cheap because of the seeding... The seeded price is much higher than what it typically sells for, effectively giving us an "upper limit" on price that we never actually reach.

 

Salvage is cheap because the supply that all of us players are adding every single day is large enough to meet demand, *and* consistently posted for far less than that seeded price.   

True, but the seeding chased the manipulators off of rare salvage for good. It was a real problem early on.

[tidge]

7 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

I have other thoughts, other suggestions regarding the market and its interface but nothing compares to the urgency I think this bug deserves.   At the very least I'd like to hear some communication on why the devs have so far deemed this to not be worth fixing. 

I am no HC dev, but this appears to be more an issue with the underlying AH database , and not so much the code.

 

I am still occasionally getting surprised by (what I think are) display oddities (as opposed to simply odd winning bids/sales). The easiest way to have a clue that the prices displayed may not apply to the item displayed is to look at the for sale/bidding ratio (those appear to be unique to the displayed item). I agree that the display bug is a barrier to entry, but it is not insurmountable.

 

50 minutes ago, Veelectric Boogaloo said:

True, but the seeding chased the manipulators off of rare salvage for good. It was a real problem early on.

Both seeding and making the salvage fungible across rarities work against market manipulation.

[Zepp]

11 hours ago, Demobot said:

I'm kinda curious if there are any changes that could be made to seeded salvage without raising the barrier of entry for the invention system. I understand the reasons why seeded salvage was added, but it has the side effect of making common and uncommon salvage drops mostly worthless. Granted, it may just be my nostalgia for the old market seeping through, as I have fond memories of rolling up new characters and building up a fortune from scratch, often relying on that first Luck Charm as seed money.

 

I know there are quicker and easier ways to get inf on new characters (and I could easily mail them a few million out of the billions I already have), but I kinda miss starting from nothing and having to claw your way to that first million.

All of my toons are required to make 3.1mil before I let them venture outside of Atlas (mystic fortune, random mutation, a rez, and reveal +1 mil picket change), I only have 2/38 all 38 of my toons that haven't have hit that benchmark.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Zepp

[Ura Hero]

18 hours ago, arthurh35353 said:

So it all feeds back to drop rates (and things that do not ever drop), how much they can buy things for INF or Merits.

 

High cost Merit Items (100+ items recipes or more) and incredibly expensive Gacha marketing makes things not about playing things normally, but playing things super abnormally. Daily specific trials for Merits, not because you really want to defeat Hamidon, but because he gives a crud load of Merits that you churn right back around to buy your Purples/ATOs or PVP enhancements.

 

If they switched Super Packs to being exclusively something you could only earn on a once per day per account, a great deal of farming would disappear in a poof. Would that be a good idea? It might, as a person that can play 1 or 2 hours a day is suddenly able to earn some of the best rewards as good as any farmer.

 

And none of these things are required to make an enjoyable and playable build.  Sure they can make a build better, but they certainly are not required.  On Live I never used high value recipes and my toons did just fine using supposedly "sub-optimal" builds.  My usual build on Live was around 30M-50M which was dirt cheap and still is.  I regularly did Master of Runs and hard mode content without dying and contributing just as much as any other player.  

 

Drop rates are just fine as is.  The market works as is, although as most everyone has agreed, a tutorial and fixes are sorely needed.  I can take anyone and teach them to make money on the market in ten minutes or less.  I taught my wife and she is about the most disinterested person I know in playing meta games.  I get it, some folks just hate dealing with the market, but just because those folks hate it, I can 100% guarantee that there are just as many who love the whole market meta game and that is just about all they log in for.   Same can be said for farmers.  Some folks hate it and for some it is literally all they do.   Whether you realize it or not, marketers and farmers help round out the game balance even though glancing at it from the outside it might appear that they create imbalance.  If it weren't for them, all those rare recipes would be hyper-inflated and next to non-existent to buy.

 

Finally, I am just going to say this:

 

Not everyone needs a FOTM build.  Not everyone necessarily wants a FOTM build.  That is part of what makes this game so nice.  FOTM.  JUST.  ISN'T.  NEEDED. 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Ura Hero

[UltraAlt]

12 hours ago, arthurh35353 said:

The thing with everything about the market (and buying things off the market) is that it really is gated on people willing to spend the most time on... not playing the game. 

I don't spend most of my time in the market instead of playing the game.

 

When I log into a character, I check the market. It might take 5-10 minutes dependent on what I have sold/purchased, etc. I watch LFG while doing this and join a team if one pops up that I want to/have time to join. Once done with my marketing I may decide to run missions until a team shows up, start a team, or alt/server-jump. I check the character before I log out again, and this doesn't take more than a couple of minutes.

So, if I join a mission before I'm done marketing, I spend the time waiting at a door to do my marketing. Of course, as per above, I check the market before logging the character out.

 

But sure, people can take a lot of time doing anything.

If you want to spend all you time digging through everything on the market every day then I guess that is possible.

 

I make decent profit on the market and I don't spend a lot of time doing it.

[UltraAlt]

9 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

Fix this bug

 

 

 

I have other thoughts, other suggestions regarding the market and its interface but nothing compares to the urgency I think this bug deserves.   At the very least I'd like to hear some communication on why the devs have so far deemed this to not be worth fixing.  

 

 

So this screenshot is incomplete.

I can't see how many bids there are and it looks like the number for sale is cut off.

But I can tell you what could happen in these cases.

1,600,000 - someone put on the market for over 5,111 and the purchasing player either guessed at the price or raise it from some point until they purchased one.

5,111 - someone put in a X# of bids at 5,111 and someone put a new one on the market below that and no one else had a higher bid. (lower the price you place an item the less it cost you to put it on the market)

4,000,000 - someone really wanted it and kept upping their bid until they got one.

1,200,000 - someone put a new on the market below 1,200,000 above 1,111,111 or below 1,111,111 but the guy that was bidding 1,111,111 had all their bids filled

1,111,111 - someone put in a X# of bids at 1,111,111 and someone put a new one on the market below that and no one else had a higher bid.

 

So you see, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what the DEVs did. I could very well be how the market works when players are involved.

[Hedgefund]

1 minute ago, UltraAlt said:

So this screenshot is incomplete.

I can't see how many bids there are and it looks like the number for sale is cut off.

But I can tell you what could happen in these cases.

1,600,000 - someone put on the market for over 5,111 and the purchasing player either guessed at the price or raise it from some point until they purchased one.

5,111 - someone put in a X# of bids at 5,111 and someone put a new one on the market below that and no one else had a higher bid. (lower the price you place an item the less it cost you to put it on the market)

4,000,000 - someone really wanted it and kept upping their bid until they got one.

1,200,000 - someone put a new on the market below 1,200,000 above 1,111,111 or below 1,111,111 but the guy that was bidding 1,111,111 had all their bids filled

1,111,111 - someone put in a X# of bids at 1,111,111 and someone put a new one on the market below that and no one else had a higher bid.

 

So you see, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what the DEVs did. I could very well be how the market works when players are involved.

That's a link to a whole thread with many examples.  I suggest reading that rather than just commenting on the image used to represent the thread, your "coulda beens" are dispelled with many examples.

[UltraAlt]

1 minute ago, Hedgefund said:

That's a link to a whole thread with many examples.  I suggest reading that rather than just commenting on the image used to represent the thread, your "coulda beens" are dispelled with many examples.

What I said could very well have happened because it could happen for those exact reasons.

Without evidence to prove that did not happen the way that I explained it, there is no evidence to prove that it did not.

 

My examples are based on the system working correctly.

Because you believe the system isn't working correctly, you disbelieve an explanation that explains why this could occur with the system working correctly.

[Fingernailgun]

Converters are the defining factor in the current game for deciding who is fighting for inf, and who has more info than they know how to use. The prices of every enhancement are so dependent upon the conversion process that any use of merits other than for buying converters is sub-optimal. It is fundamentally wrong that every use of merits beyond enhancement converters is throwing away money. It's fine for level 20-24 reward rolls to be worth more or less than 25-29. But for all merit uses to be categorically inferior to enhancement converters is broken and should be nerfed.

 

Bring back the other uses of merits. Nerf converters.

 

P.S. nerf standard rewards for architect entertainment plz kk thx

[Coyotedancer]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

Both seeding and making the salvage fungible across rarities work against market manipulation.

 

Exactly... and not being a huge fan of marketplace shenanigans, I'd say that's a Good Thing. Even if it means you can't sell your Luck Charms for ridiculously inflated prices. 

[Zepp]

One issue I see is that, especially at 50, the cost to craft recipes is often more than you will get from selling the crafted enhancement. Maybe take a look at moderating the influence cost (especially seeing as it is cheaper to P2W to get the portable workshop than to get it through the badge...).