ATO sales

[The_Warpact]

When I see pricing for ATO's that are below 10 mil I'm confused.

Selling it at 10mil at least recovers the cost, yes, I realize sometimes you get 2. Most of the time with un-slotters, catalysts, etc and miniscule items you don't recoup enough and its a loss.

 

So I guess it falls to people don't care, are willing to get w/e, are just not savvy, or are impatient. 

 

I prefer to keep everything or as much as possible to make the ATO attuned.

 

Is it just me? Am I missing something?

[TemporalVileTerror]

Or, like my spouse and I, intentionally listing at 1 for a reason not listed there.

[Coyotedancer]

I buy them more often than I sell.. and I absolutely refuse to give anyone 10m for the things. 

 

I mean, why the devil would I? For the same 10m I could just go buy a pack myself, and use some the converters it's bound to throw at me to get whatever ATO I wanted, plus the other things in the pack as a bonus.  

[The_Warpact]

1 hour ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

Or, like my spouse and I, intentionally listing at 1 for a reason not listed there.

So...intentionally taking a loss? Whats the point? 

[The_Warpact]

41 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

I buy them more often than I sell.. and I absolutely refuse to give anyone 10m for the things. 

 

I mean, why the devil would I? For the same 10m I could just go buy a pack myself, and use some the converters it's bound to throw at me to get whatever ATO I wanted, plus the other things in the pack as a bonus.  

If you hadn't noticed...convenience.

While you might go do something like that and possibly waste 50 converters getting what you want not everyone is like that.

[EmperorSteele]

Well, there's the chance you won't get ANY ATOs and will have wasted your 10 mil (or, yes, you might get 2!). And, converting to the one you want takes up the most valuable resource of all: time! Sure, you might get the one you want on the first try, buuut you might also be sitting there for a few minutes just clicking "convert" over and over!

[TemporalVileTerror]

That's why you buy 3,000 Packs, store the ATOs you want, and sell the rest.  No need to muck around with Converters when you have supplies that cover all your new Alts for the next two weeks.

 

Here:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/21550-super-pack-super-dump/page/3/?tab=comments#comment-257088

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by TemporalVileTerror
Found the link; sharing.

[Coyotedancer]

33 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

Well, there's the chance you won't get ANY ATOs and will have wasted your 10 mil (or, yes, you might get 2!). And, converting to the one you want takes up the most valuable resource of all: time! Sure, you might get the one you want on the first try, buuut you might also be sitting there for a few minutes just clicking "convert" over and over!

 

Converters are cheap and unless your luck is absolutely awful, you'll still come out ahead. 

[macskull]

2 hours ago, The_Warpact said:

When I see pricing for ATO's that are below 10 mil I'm confused.

Selling it at 10mil at least recovers the cost, yes, I realize sometimes you get 2. Most of the time with un-slotters, catalysts, etc and miniscule items you don't recoup enough and its a loss.

 

So I guess it falls to people don't care, are willing to get w/e, are just not savvy, or are impatient. 

 

I prefer to keep everything or as much as possible to make the ATO attuned.

 

Is it just me? Am I missing something?

Super packs average greater than one enhancement per pack so it makes sense they sell for less than the cost of the pack. Winter enhancements are the same way - when the price was 10 million per pack during the winter event the enhancements were hovering around 8 million. I guess the simpler answer is "because that's what people are willing to pay."

[Bopper]

The averages are posted in this thread. 

Roughly, you get 1.2 ATOs per pack. So to cover your costs of a super pack with purely ATO resells,, you'd sell it on average for 10M/1.2 = 8.33M. Since ATOs aren't the only thing sellable in a super pack, you might see willingness to resell for less than that, but not much less as you need to cover the listing fees.

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

In a world of make believe moneys which fall from the sky when you punch a Hellion in the face, nothing has to make sense.

 

Some strategies are better than others at maximizing make believe moneys, though.

 

I wouldn't recommend converting an ATO until it is exactly the one you want though.  You might get it in one conversion at the cost of one converter, but the expected cost in terms of converters and time spent are pretty high.  IMO you would be better off selling the ATO you have, buying the one you want, and selling converters to make up any difference in price.

 

When I need ATOs (and I put them on almost every alt), I put in middle market bids on 5-10 of each one I want and come back a day or two later.  If I didn't buy at least as many as I wanted in total, I'd increase my bid by 1mm and try again.  If I bought at least as many as I wanted but they weren't the right ones, I'd convert the spares by set until I got the exact ones.  After I have all I want, I will either relist the spares at the high end of the market or, if in my opinion I'm dealing with a lesser desired set, I will convert by category until I get a desired set then relist it at the higher end of the market.

 

In general, I don't play the market much in the Hero Pack to ATO trade.  It's too time intensive for my tastes and my character items page is already full of non-IO items I will never ever be able to use up.  That said, so long as the expected value of the items you get from a pack is more than 11,111,111 inf, you're coming out ahead of the game.  And if you don't care about coming out ahead of the game, so much the better!

[tidge]

21 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

In a world of make believe moneys which fall from the sky when you punch a Hellion in the face, nothing has to make sense.

 

Some strategies are better than others at maximizing make believe moneys, though.

 

I wouldn't recommend converting an ATO until it is exactly the one you want though.  You might get it in one conversion at the cost of one converter, but the expected cost in terms of converters and time spent are pretty high.  IMO you would be better off selling the ATO you have, buying the one you want, and selling converters to make up any difference in price.

 

I generally try to have ATO available for use by a new character around lvl 12, unless leftover attuned PVP pieces will serve better for the character.

As an aside of what I will typically do to meet the needs of a new character:

1. Buy/open packs
2. Play Converter roulette, stopping when either

• I get an ATO of the type I want, or
• I get an ATO that I can dump on the market for BIG/QUICK INF

I never try to get 'complete' ATO sets this way; I almost always stop when I am 'within one' and then buy the missing piece I need.

 

I find the roulette approach to be be slightly more efficient when I am looking from pieces from both ATO sets.

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

46 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

I generally try to have ATO available for use by a new character around lvl 12, unless leftover attuned PVP pieces will serve better for the character.

As an aside of what I will typically do to meet the needs of a new character:

1. Buy/open packs
2. Play Converter roulette, stopping when either

• I get an ATO of the type I want, or
• I get an ATO that I can dump on the market for BIG/QUICK INF

I never try to get 'complete' ATO sets this way; I almost always stop when I am 'within one' and then buy the missing piece I need.

 

I find the roulette approach to be be slightly more efficient when I am looking from pieces from both ATO sets.

 

Absolutely.  And lest anyone forget, you can convert an ATO by category if it's not the set you want for the low, low cost of 2 converters.

 

The real time/converter sink is changing something from a sentinel set into a brute set.  Once you get a brute set, however, you can quickly convert by category if it's the wrong brute set, and then convert within set until you hit your bogey.

[dopeninja]

I usually buy a bunch of packs all at once, horde the ATO's and grab them as needed. I'll convert the lesser used ones to something else. I will use all but the Arachnos and Keld ones. I already have enough of those classes. I have a build ready before I roll the character and most of the time I have the IO's in a bin waiting to be slotted.

[Coyotedancer]

What I typically do is check my "spare parts" bins first, then hit the AH to try to pick up anything I'm missing. I set middling bids for those pieces and check back every few days, and most of the time they'll fill within a reasonable time frame.  If a couple of weeks have passed and something still hasn't filled, I'll grab an extra of the least expensive available piece of the AT type I'm collecting and play Converter Bingo. Typically, I only have to do that with one or two, so not a huge converter investment.

 

I don't go the "Buy a pack and turn the Spider's Bite into a Brute's Fury"-route unless every single piece in either AT set is missing or over 10m and looking like it's to going to stay that way for awhile. 

 

If I was part of the rolling-in-billions Tophat Crowd rather than just a "poor relation" farmer? I'm not sure if I would do things differently. It just seems silly to me on principle to throw more than 10m at an ATO, even if I could basically do it with pocket change. 

[Spaghetti Betty]

It's kinda on/off topic, but I just wanna throw out an observation I had back around the release of i27. With Energy Melee going to scrappers and getting a bunch of nice buffs, scrapper ATOs saw a HUGE hike (specifically Critical Strikes) in price - something around 16-18m a pop. I was being cheeky during that time and converting Kheldian ATOs off the market into Critical Strikes for mad payout, since no one plays Khelds.

 

Player demand plays a great part in pricing. I think it shows the most with stuff like ATOs and Purples.

[macskull]

11 hours ago, Leetdeth said:

It's kinda on/off topic, but I just wanna throw out an observation I had back around the release of i27. With Energy Melee going to scrappers and getting a bunch of nice buffs, scrapper ATOs saw a HUGE hike (specifically Critical Strikes) in price - something around 16-18m a pop. I was being cheeky during that time and converting Kheldian ATOs off the market into Critical Strikes for mad payout, since no one plays Khelds.

 

Player demand plays a great part in pricing. I think it shows the most with stuff like ATOs and Purples.

I remember seeing common complaints on the HC Discord shortly after I27 dropped about how players were having a hard time finding certain Blaster and Brute ATO pieces which made sense to me since 1) Blasters got a new secondary and almost every existing secondary got tweaked and 2) more new alts = more new farmers = more new Brutes needing ATO pieces. There are a surprising number of people who refuse to play converter roulette even though it would solve all their problems and probably cost less inf/merits than buying specific pieces.

[Glacier Peak]

38 minutes ago, macskull said:

I remember seeing common complaints on the HC Discord shortly after I27 dropped about how players were having a hard time finding certain Blaster and Brute ATO pieces which made sense to me since 1) Blasters got a new secondary and almost every existing secondary got tweaked and 2) more new alts = more new farmers = more new Brutes needing ATO pieces. There are a surprising number of people who refuse to play converter roulette even though it would solve all their problems and probably cost less inf/merits than buying specific pieces.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't tuna fish. Easier for some becomes a diversion in their focused efforts elsewhere. Of course, nothing I've encountered in this game has required me to big brain a solution, there are usually three or four methods for accomplishing most everything I've found. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

Hehe, I remember posting 10 of a brute ATO at something like 12mm and none sold over a Friday night (they were the only ones listed).  So the next day I took them down and offered them one at a time for 16mm and sold them all that day.  

[Saikochoro]

I refuse to pay 10m for ATOs. They are some of the best sets out there, but I will not pay that much because I know I can get them cheaper. When I make a new characters I put bids out for both sets of the applicable ATOs immediately. I usually bid 6-7.5m. I usually have all of them by level 20. Given the changes to SOs I don’t usually slot IOs until late 20s anyway. 
 

If I decide I don’t like the character I strip them of the ATOs and then put them in base storage. So I have a small supply in my base, but I still always bid for both sets with each new character. 
 

Long story short I can get them for 6-7.5m 95% of the time within a few days. If I am missing a couple I will bid creep to 8.5m. At that point I will just be patient and I usually have it by the next day. If I’ve waited several days I will buy a cheaper one and convert. That may end up being more expensive, but at that point it is the principle of the matter 😁

Edited January 30, 2021 by Saikochoro

[Yomo Kimyata]

11 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

I refuse to pay 10m for ATOs. They are some of the best sets out there, but I will not pay that much because I know I can get them cheaper.

This is a great example of why I am not particularly worried about inflation in this game.  There is certainly an overabundance of inf, and basic macroeconomics will tell us that will lead to higher prices.  But the real demand that is driving buying (which I feel is veterans making alts) is done by people who know how the AH and conversion process works.  So instead of people paying 10mm for an ATO, they will spend less and either make it themselves or will be patient (because they have other alts to play while they wait).

 

That said, things would be more interesting with a little bit of inflation.

[Andreah]

Just like back on live, there is a lot of "Dead" Inf. Inf that lies on characters who are no longer played by inactive players. Inf that is being kept for purposes of bragging rights or "Score", Inf that's being saved for non-specific future uses, and so on.

 

Between that and the fixed price seeding of superpacks, I don't see there ever being an inflation problem. The excess inf-supply will funnel into dead inf before it can create a general rise in prices.

 

Finally, I would turn the OP's question around for more insight: Given that ATO's sell for less than 10 Million inf each, why does anyone buy superpacks? 😄

[The_Warpact]

3 hours ago, Andreah said:

Finally, I would turn the OP's question around for more insight: Given that ATO's sell for less than 10 Million inf each, why does anyone buy superpacks? 😄

This is the root of my question. Why waste your time buying a pack when you make zero attempt to make a gain off of it.

To me it makes no sense, I could come up with a multitude of reasons, philosophies, mental issues, ignorance, etc, etc, etc.

But, ultimately people are people so I'll leave it at that, and like most things in the world, I'll shake my head, sigh, and move on.

[Andreah]

7 hours ago, The_Warpact said:

This is the root of my question. Why waste your time buying a pack when you make zero attempt to make a gain off of it.

To me it makes no sense, I could come up with a multitude of reasons, philosophies, mental issues, ignorance, etc, etc, etc.

But, ultimately people are people so I'll leave it at that, and like most things in the world, I'll shake my head, sigh, and move on.

Well then, I will answer you directly. I have bought thousands of super packs, and will buy thousands more. I make approximate a 20% margin selling the pack drops. The packs drop a lot of valuable items in addition the ATO's.  They drop Brain storms, which one can easily convert to rare salvage and sell, enhancement boosters, catalysts, converters, and unslotters one can sell; reward merits which can be used to exchange for items to sell, special inspirations which can be sold (but generally not worth the effort), and a lot of temporary powers which have value even if they cannot be directly sold. The most valuable of these, imo, are the three amplifiers and the Windfall power; those in concert improve the rate of drops from content or farming which has a substantial value.  

 

It would be easy for an inexperienced person to lose money on packs by not pricing their sales on the Auction wisely. Once one understands how the auction works and how to price ATO's especially, then it's not difficult to make consistent profit. In addition, one can use the converters that drop from the packs to change the less demanded and lower priced ATO's into better ones to sell, and increase profitability. That's not necessary, but improves results.

[Yomo Kimyata]

This is an added bonus that I didn't think of ahead of time, but there is an advantage to opening a lot of packs:  everything goes into your Character Items tab, which is automatically accessible by all of your alts even in instances.  I've found this extremely useful.

 

Example:  New alt getting kickstarted inf-wise.  Pull off a few converters and either sell them if you are a horrible human being or use them to make something worth selling.

Example:  Solo alt getting his ass kicked by an AV.  Pull off a few dual inspirations while in mission.

Example:  You'll never need to buy unslotters, costume tokens, respecs ever again.