ATO sales

[tidge]

My character item tab is where I keep a lot of materials for account use. The most 'grabbed' items tend to be unslotters, converters, and merits; it's the newer/low-level characters that make the most use of them. I used to treat catalysts this way, but extras tend to accumulate in SG storage. I did recently burn through Brainstorms, just to make a dent in some of the rare recipes characters had been carrying around.

[Ohsirus]

I like the Experienced Drops to Burn thru the Vet Levels.

[Sakai]

2 hours ago, Ohsirus said:

I like the Experienced Drops to Burn thru the Vet Levels.

Did not know you could do that ty. 

[BurtHutt]

On 1/27/2021 at 3:34 PM, The_Warpact said:

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

Cuz this is a GAME. It's not real life. I don't farm and just try and play the game. However, I want to make more high end builds and have made some uber builds but that costs a ton. I blame most of that on high priced enhancements. So, I put my enhancements on market for less than half of the recent averages. The casual player who just plays content cannot make the uber builds if they have altitis - yes, I have altitis...le sigh...

 

I really don't get the greed in this game. Don't you get enough of that in the real world? I see threads where players have so much INF that they want new ways to spend it. I once suggested giving it away to friends and SG/VG mates etc - that suggestion was pretty much ignored. 

 

Ah well, to each their own.  :)

[The_Warpact]

8 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

 

8 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

I really don't get the greed in this game.

Cuz this is a GAME.

I answered your question. 

[Andreah]

2 hours ago, Ohsirus said:

I like the Experienced Drops to Burn thru the Vet Levels.

I use those, and I'm always fully amplified while I'm running missions. The defense, offense, and survival amplifiers together are probably about the same in total as being a level higher. Then, you also get "Windfall" temp powers which for an hour greatly increase drops from content. I don't use them always, but I use them often. For example, an ITF being run with your character amplified, running Experience, and also Windfall is hugely fun and even more rewarding that normal.

 

There are also temp powers you can claim to rez yourself and teammates, and you'll have all the Team-Dual inspirations ready to claim from email to boost the whole team when you're in a tight spot. Some of this stuff defies a straightforward inf valuation, but is clearly very useful and beneficial to gameplay.

[TemporalVileTerror]

Regarding the handy-dandy feature of Super Packs being accessible by your alts:

* all of your alts -on one account.-

 

Would be handy to be able to Forward Character Items.

 

Edited February 2, 2021 by TemporalVileTerror
Didn't realize there was another page of posts to the message I was originally replying to.

[Bopper]

Out of strict curiousity I decided to hop into the game to do a quick market analysis. Not detailed analysis, just a snippet based on what I saw on Excelsior at 3pm PST on a random groundhog day.

 

I looked to see what price someone would have to sell an ATO for you to break even on resellable items from a Super Pack. The short answer, 5.84 million. The long answer, read on:

 

Brainstorms average 19.7125 per pack, and Rare Salvage is going for 350k per 20 brainstorm. Avg profit of 310.5k when factoring in the 10% AH tax.

 

Enh Boosters selling for 1mil, at 0.2288 per pack this is an average profit of 205.9k

Enh Catalyst selling for 1.6mil, at 0.1537 per pack this is an average profit of 221.3k

Enh Converter selling for 77k, at 1.4002 per pack this is an average profit of 97k

Enh Unslotter selling for 150k, at 1.4002 per pack this is an average profix of 189k

 

From the above enhancement sellers, Unslotters have the best resell/merit (1 reward merit gets you 2 unslotters which sells for 300k). Each pack averages 9.7146 reward merits which is an average profit of 2.623M.

 

In total (without looking at ATOs), the reselling of Super Pack contents will average 3.647 million inf. So to break even we need to make 6.353 million inf. With an average of 1.2079 ATOs per pack, the auction house listing of an ATO needs to equal 5.844 million to break even.

 

So as long as you're reselling your ATOs for more than 5.844 million on AH, you will average a profit from purchasing Super Packs. Keep in mind, this does not factor in Amplifiers which are purchasable for 2.5million each. That's 331k of value per pack that I did not factor into the above analysis (not that it'll change much...sell for 5.54 million to break even). This also does not factor in the XP, Windfall, Respec, Restore, Revival, Free Tailor nor the Inspirations that you would gain from Super Packs. That value is whatever you choose to set it to.

[Andreah]

Thank you, Bopper. That confirms in detail what I had seen in bulk bottom-line averages selling drops from many, many packs.

 

Free tailor sessions, for some players, will be a pretty big value. If you open enough packs consistently, they would never pay a tailor fee again. 

 

Windfalls are quantfiable after the fact, too. Write down your inf; run an hour of content with a Windfall active, sell everything, and check your inf. 1/3 of the difference would be on account of the windfall -- it's a 50% bonus to virtually all drops, and when you get 150% instead of 100%, then 1/3 of the 150% is the value.

 

All the little bits and bops inspiration drops are not easy to quantify. But if one were patient one could sell them and total it up, but the tedium, ouch.

 

Experienced powers either speed on even faster to level cap, which gains on increased inf drops at cap for the leveling time saves. Or they increase the rate of gaining veteran levels, and the Emps/Threads those drop. That's harder to set a inf value to.

[Andreah]

If one is listing ATO's, and some are not selling for at least Bopper's 5.84Million, one can use one or more converters on each one to convert the to ones that do. So long as the sale price increase on the converted ATO exceeds the value of the converter used, then it's worthwhile.  Just do the out-of-set conversion for one converter to make another randomly chosen ATO.

[Andreah]

4 hours ago, BurtHutt said:

Cuz this is a GAME. It's not real life. I don't farm and just try and play the game. However, I want to make more high end builds and have made some uber builds but that costs a ton. I blame most of that on high priced enhancements. So, I put my enhancements on market for less than half of the recent averages. The casual player who just plays content cannot make the uber builds if they have altitis - yes, I have altitis...le sigh...

 

I really don't get the greed in this game. Don't you get enough of that in the real world? I see threads where players have so much INF that they want new ways to spend it. I once suggested giving it away to friends and SG/VG mates etc - that suggestion was pretty much ignored. 

 

Ah well, to each their own.  🙂

Being rich from marketeering lets me help people and I enjoy that. I get the inf from people who are impatient, who're unwilling to risk pack opening RNG, or who don't care enough to bid incrementally and get good value for the auction-house spending. 

 

I give away large amounts of inf to friends, sg-mates, and even to strangers in /help or /general frequently. Just today I sent a tidy little sum to a player I never met before who seemed to need it from banter in /z chat.  For a lot of people, especially new players, it's hard to get inf for those enhancements or for the very helpful items in P2W. I help them out, and I enjoy being able to do that without skipping a beat in my own play -- a few million is nothing to me, but everything to the right recipient.  I can also pass money to people running costume contests when I think the theme is one I like. Those I like especially, because they help build community.

 

Some of it I keep for myself; I can make and gear those new alts when I want to, with no hesitation.

 

And more is for purpose of score, because it's a game, and nothing says you're winning quite like being a trillionaire.

 

Not that I am. >.> Yet.

[TemporalVileTerror]

Perhaps, @Andreah.

But I also give away large amounts of Inf, IOs, ATOs, and Salvage to random players and I intentionally list everything on the market at 1 Inf.

Not going to try to knock your fun, but I do want to emphasize that a players doesn't need to be profit-driven to still positively contribute to the game in a prosocial manner.

[Andreah]

Just now, TemporalVileTerror said:

Perhaps, @Andreah.

But I also give away large amounts of Inf, IOs, ATOs, and Salvage to random players and I intentionally list everything on the market at 1 Inf.

Not going to try to knock your fun, but I do want to emphasize that a players doesn't need to be profit-driven to still positively contribute to the game in a prosocial manner.

Everything that I get in normal content I list back at 1. In my case, I want it to sell fast. Secondarily, people who want to buy and use or resell benefit and I'm happy with that, too. 

 

When I'm doing market arbitrage, upselling items I've crafted or converted, or selling drops from packs I've paid for is when I'm careful about the prices I list at.

[Andreah]

I recall a few weeks back, or maybe a month or two, (time flies), someone in /general was complaining they'd listed rare salvage at 1, and it was bought at some silly low price -- less than 100k iirc. Chat was kind of mean, you know how that goes, people said the person would take "1" for it, so be happy they got more than 1? 

 

Rare salvage sells pretty consistently between 350k and 450k, depending on whether winterpacks are on sale. (I think brainstorms from pack drops are a big part of rare supply). So I thought, does it hurt me at all to put in a mess of bids at, say, 200k for rares, and keep those refreshed? I can relist for 222k, get my money back, and ensure someone listing for 1 doesn't get burned hugely. Heck, one could probably put those in at 300k, and still set a bottom for the market. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

9 minutes ago, Andreah said:

I recall a few weeks back, or maybe a month or two, (time flies), someone in /general was complaining they'd listed rare salvage at 1, and it was bought at some silly low price -- less than 100k iirc. Chat was kind of mean, you know how that goes, people said the person would take "1" for it, so be happy they got more than 1? 

 

Rare salvage sells pretty consistently between 350k and 450k, depending on whether winterpacks are on sale. (I think brainstorms from pack drops are a big part of rare supply). So I thought, does it hurt me at all to put in a mess of bids at, say, 200k for rares, and keep those refreshed? I can relist for 222k, get my money back, and ensure someone listing for 1 doesn't get burned hugely. Heck, one could probably put those in at 300k, and still set a bottom for the market. 

The last time I checked, the bottom 10k bids or so on rare salvage were under 100k.  I doubt anyone has changed those, so check the number bidding before dumping your rare salvage!

 

 

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

The last time I checked, the bottom 10k bids or so on rare salvage were under 100k.  I doubt anyone has changed those, so check the number bidding before dumping your rare salvage!

 

 

As long as someone is bidding more, those low bids will never fill. 

 

The market has a lot of low bids and a lot of very high asks that will never fill on many items. The AH has some issues (bugs) where it might not report stats correctly for an item, and I believe it's possible it might hiccup and fill a bid out of order, but withstanding those, if someone were to bid for thousands of rare salvage at, say, 300k, and keep those bids refreshed frequently, then no one would ever sell a rare salvage and get less than 300k for it, not have it not sell instantly at that price. 

 

And if that person consistently relisted them at 333.334K (the first increment over exactly the market fee), then no one who wanted to buy a rare salvage would pay more than that. All the purchase bids lower than 300k would fail to fill, and all the sell bids over 333.334k would fail as well. The person doing this would become the "Market Maker", and control rare salvage at that price point. People could buy higher that the market maker, but not resell at a profit. If the market maker has sufficient inventory and liquidity, they can outlast anyone who tries to challenge them. This is hard when there's a fixed amount of rare salvage you can store. It would require using some alts and shifting inventory around a lot using shared base storage.

 

The problem is, unless that price point was very carefully chosen, monitored, and occasionally adjusted, their inventory that backs it would get unbalanced (too many bought at 300 and not enough sold at 333; or too few bought at 300 and too many sold at 333) and they either get flooded with goods they can't sell or run out and can't maintain their sell position. 

 

Getting on this horse is not difficult -- try it some time! The ride can be a lot of fun ... but getting off without breaking something is tricky.

 

 

Staying on topic, sort of, one could do this to an ATO as well, and deliberate push the price up. But this is really not practical. There's too much supply, and with converters your low bid price would end up tied to the price of the cheapest ATO set plus the price of a few conversions.

[Grindingsucks]

I list everything I sell on the PM a 1 inf, unless I'm trying to outfit a character with a lot of IO sets, then I'll sell them at whatever the list price happens to be at the time (usually between 10 and 20 million).

 

I want to play City of Heroes, not the Wolf of Wall Street.

[nihilii]

22 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

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.

Between Return to Battle and the Super Packs Revivals, I haven't visited a hospital in a long...

 

Loooooooooooong...

 

VERY long time.

Flip enough Super Packs, and you never have to leave a mission unless you want to.

I suppose I could also, uh, not die so much, but, y'know...

[Troyusrex]

On 2/2/2021 at 6:55 AM, Andreah said:

 The most valuable of these, imo, are the three amplifiers and the Windfall power;

I thought the Windfall power was nerfed and really doesn't do anything anymore. Is that incorrect? In testing I see no difference in inf gain. 

Edited February 3, 2021 by Troyusrex

[Myrmidon]

23 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Pull off a few converters and either sell them if you are a horrible human being

And now I want to sell 32 hero merits worth of converters.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Myrmidon

[nihilii]

59 minutes ago, Troyusrex said:

I thought the Windfall power was nerfed and really doesn't do anything anymore. Is that incorrect?

I'm not sure if it does anything with recipes or influence (although the latter should be easy to verify), but it definitely gives you tons of medium and large inspiration drops.

[Ura Hero]

IIRC Windfall was only nerfed in AE.

[tidge]

The last few times I used Windfall, I was unimpressed with it. The scenario:

• level 50+ character (the test character had a +3 level shift, but drops are independent of level as long as there is XP)
• running Heather Townshend's Dark Astoria 1 arc (via Ouroboros) at +0/x8, defeat everything.
• The character did have 'patrol XP' to burn, but not a massive amount.
• The only 'reject' option chosen from P2W was on resurrection (my choice) and dual/team (default) inspirations.

Recipe drops are how I evaluate runs on this arc. On average, the arc takes my DPS characters (with some AoE) 30 minutes to clear all 4 missions. Two runs back-to-back will almost always result in a Very Rare or PVP drop. I vendor the common recipes (~100K each), craft the uncommons, and I have an ad hoc approach to the rares (I do various things, trying to avoid taking up space in personal inventory).

 

I saw no noticeable changes to recipe drops after using Windfall. I used Windfall on three different days. The volume of recipe drops was not noticeably different, nor was the ratio of drops. From the three tries, I only got 1 PVP (no Purple) recipes which is reasonable for 'standard' (non-Windfall) runs. I can't say anything specifically about Salvage drops. I often get around 5 rare salvage drops from such a run, but I don't pay that much attention. I didn't notice my salvage filling up any faster.

 

 

[macskull]

On 2/2/2021 at 9:15 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

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.

The one drawback here is if you have multiple accounts. I made the mistake of opening a bunch of super packs on one account so now that account has a huge list of character items but my other accounts have almost nothing.

[Hyperstrike]

4 hours ago, macskull said:

The one drawback here is if you have multiple accounts. I made the mistake of opening a bunch of super packs on one account so now that account has a huge list of character items but my other accounts have almost nothing.

Supergroup base.

Claim the items.
Put them in SG storage.
Pick them up on the alt account.
Have your wicked, wicked way with them.

Yes, this still leaves you screwed for activation temp powers.  But for everything else...