Omg why are IOs so expensive

[Sovera]

12 hours ago, presto2112 said:

I once loaned someone a billion inf, never saw them again

 

money well spent

 

I once let it be known to a friend that I had a lot of WoW gold. They started hinting they would really like a mount and since-I-was-rich... So I bought it for them.

 

A week later they decide they don't want to be friends anymore. I'm not assuming this was the case. I'm not talking about us slowly stop talking to each other until we had drifted apart.  They literally sent me a whisper saying 'I don't want to be friends anymore' and deleted me from the friend list (which insta deletes them from mine which is how I knew they did it). I never did get to the bottom of it because they were a bit burdensome as a friend with little dramas I got drawn into, so I answer Ok and never tried to interact with him again.

 

But, overall, well spent gold if it was the trigger.

[Ukase]

On 8/8/2021 at 9:18 AM, Seed22 said:

Yknow I’m always tempted to make a 2nd acount but all my needs can be met in one account. Got the farming brute, the oodles of merits and IOs, and spare inf for new 50s. If I had it all, I think I’d get bored to be honest(i.e. billions in purps stored). I like being what’d I’d call upper-middle class 😂

The benefit for the alt account for me goes beyond having a farmer to PL my alts if need be. It's the joy of not having to sift through page, after page, after page to find an empty slot to start a new character. 

I really should just delete the ones I haven't played in 100 days...but when I see the names, and think about what I invested in them to get various badges...just can't do it. There's always a redeeming quality to them. And - for those that lack them, I have already deleted those. 

[hejtmane]

If you bid an honest price you probably get IO's cheaper heck I became a marketer about 2.5  weeks ago and I have amassed 4 billion influence in that time. I am not in the habitat of losing money. Depending on how my conversion go I list all my rares at 500k and 1mil and they sell for what they sell for but I have had tons of rares never sell at 500k a fair price for a rare when it cost you 500k for a orange salvage so is it us greedy bastards or people not bidding a fair price. I don't let things sit forever I am a high volume guy;  if it does not sale I pull it converter it to a high ticket high demand and make the big easy money. I try to help the little guys but it is funny when I post something for 500k it should sell right away nope sits there until people bid millions because you  were to cheap and only bid 300k

Edited September 1, 2021 by hejtmane

[Snarky]

2 minutes ago, hejtmane said:

If you bid an honest price you probably get IO's cheaper heck I became a marketer about 2.5  weeks ago and I have amassed 4 billion influence in that time. I am not in the habitat of losing money. Depending on how my conversion go I list all my rares at 500k and 1mil and they sell for what they sell for but I have had tons of rares never sell at 500k a fair price for a rare when it cost you 500k for a orange salvage so is it us greedy bastards or people not bidding a fair price. I don't let things sit forever I am a high volume guy;  if it does not sale I pull it converter it to a high ticket high demand and make the big easy money. I try to help the little guys but it is funny when I post something for 500k it should sell right away nope sits there until people bid millions because you  were to cheap and only bid 300k

you will have btter luck converting 25+ to rares then converting to def, res, heal, end mod, then going for procs.  leave 25- as uncommon, then same gl

[Killing Legacy]

I’m still sitting here in atlas at level 1 waiting for my handout.  

[Neiska]

I didn't play live, it was before my time. But I am curious as to what the prices now are compared to what they were then? Not sure if they had the same tools like AE that we do, or methods of getting INF, so the comparison might not be fair. But still, am curious as to what an average purple might cost, an average AT might cost, and an average winter set might cost.

 

We haven't gotten any new purple sets they didn't have back then, have we?  

[Seed22]

3 minutes ago, Neiska said:

I didn't play live, it was before my time. But I am curious as to what the prices now are compared to what they were then? Not sure if they had the same tools like AE that we do, or methods of getting INF, so the comparison might not be fair. But still, am curious as to what an average purple might cost, an average AT might cost, and an average winter set might cost.

 

We haven't gotten any new purple sets they didn't have back then, have we?  

There's been one more new one but  it was kinda invalidated when fast snipes were made universal w/o any accuracy requirements and such.

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, Neiska said:

I didn't play live, it was before my time. But I am curious as to what the prices now are compared to what they were then? Not sure if they had the same tools like AE that we do, or methods of getting INF, so the comparison might not be fair. But still, am curious as to what an average purple might cost, an average AT might cost, and an average winter set might cost.

 

We haven't gotten any new purple sets they didn't have back then, have we?  

 

Well I once had an Apocalypse recipe drop--not the crafted IO, let alone attuned--that I got 31 million for when selling. That is a little under double what the finished product goes for now.

[Neiska]

Looks like things were more expensive, and INF was harder to come by then. Still, was just wondering. I am sure there are many reasons why. Supply, demand, player numbers, ways to get INF, so on.

[Luminara]

1 minute ago, Neiska said:

I didn't play live, it was before my time. But I am curious as to what the prices now are compared to what they were then?

 

75,000,000-125,000,000 inf* per purple recipe on the original servers.  Steadfast Protection Res/Def - over the inf* cap (cap is 2,000,000,000).  PvP recipes also traded for over the cap (Gladiator's Armor Res/Def went up to 3,000,000,000  inf*).  Luck of the Gambler Def/+Global Recharge was around 100,000,000 inf*.  A complete mix/max build with all of the trimmings could run as much as 30,000,000,000, fifteen times the inf* cap.

 

Today, you can kit out a level 50 with five purples sets, one or two ATO sets (if you don't upgrade them to the Superior versions, they don't infringe on the rule of five for 10% +Recharge bonuses), one or two Winter sets and all of the uniques and globals you can cram into slots for less than 500,000,000 inf* (smart shopping can cut that almost in half).

[Mezmera]

Um I think Luminara is a bit overdramatizing how much things cost back on live.  There's no way the steadfast and gladiator unique cost THAT much but I do remember the pvp unique being a billion.  The purples usually did range from 40-80 million and the specific uniques were quite a bit pricey because converters weren't a thing yet so you HAD to buy exactly what you wanted.  A really well built toon cost you about 1-1.5 billion not considering a few specific uniques and like others have said that influence seems to come much more free flowing on the player run servers.  

 

I only had a handful of decked out toons on live, the rest of my characters got the scraps.  On HC every character I have gets fully decked out.  Best thing about these servers are that the grind is sooooo much less than what it was before, it's almost like they want you to enjoy playing.  

Edited September 6, 2021 by Mezmera

[aethereal]

22 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

Um I think Luminara is a bit overdramatizing how much things cost back on live.  There's no way the steadfast and gladiator unique cost THAT much but I do remember the pvp unique being a billion.  The purples usually did range from 40-80 million and the specific uniques were quite a bit pricey because converters weren't a thing yet so you HAD to buy exactly what you wanted.  A really well built toon cost you about 1-1.5 billion not considering a few specific uniques and like others have said that influence seems to come much more free flowing on the player run servers.  

 

When I played on Live -- which was not "the entire duration of Live" or anything -- a LotG global recharge cost north of 200M inf.  I remember, because my money-making strategy was to do tip missions until I got two alignment merits, then turn them in for a LotG, then sell it for north of 200M inf.

[Sakai]

Don't recall Steadfast being that expensive, as it is one i use often, but I know that Glads were sold for over 2 billion for quite a while. Too I

Rich for my blood.   First one i saw came from 25 Hero merits I saved I believe. 

[Mezmera]

4 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

When I played on Live -- which was not "the entire duration of Live" or anything -- a LotG global recharge cost north of 200M inf.  I remember, because my money-making strategy was to do tip missions until I got two alignment merits, then turn them in for a LotG, then sell it for north of 200M inf.

 

Early on after people found out how good they were in a build yeah they were pricey.  This was before pvp IO's.  But they tapered down to less than 100 mil after while.  75 mil was about the norm.  Still outrageous though.  

[macskull]

5 hours ago, Mezmera said:

Um I think Luminara is a bit overdramatizing how much things cost back on live.  There's no way the steadfast and gladiator unique cost THAT much but I do remember the pvp unique being a billion.  The purples usually did range from 40-80 million and the specific uniques were quite a bit pricey because converters weren't a thing yet so you HAD to buy exactly what you wanted.  A really well built toon cost you about 1-1.5 billion not considering a few specific uniques and like others have said that influence seems to come much more free flowing on the player run servers.  

 

I only had a handful of decked out toons on live, the rest of my characters got the scraps.  On HC every character I have gets fully decked out.  Best thing about these servers are that the grind is sooooo much less than what it was before, it's almost like they want you to enjoy playing.  

The Steadfast Protection unique didn't cost that much (because it dropped from mobs) but the Gladiator's Armor unique absolutely sold for more than the inf cap off-market. I made a good chunk of my inf farming PvP IOs and 3-4 billion was the going rate for those. Panacea and Shield Wall uniques were up there too but those were closer to 2 billion. From the last time I can find any meaningful data (early to mid 2012) the more desirable purples usually went for 150-200m each.

 

FWIW, converters were a thing starting around I22 or so but they were character-bound and they cost 10 merits each from merit vendors instead of the 3 converters per 1 merit we have now.

[Mezmera]

33 minutes ago, macskull said:

The Steadfast Protection unique didn't cost that much (because it dropped from mobs) but the Gladiator's Armor unique absolutely sold for more than the inf cap off-market. I made a good chunk of my inf farming PvP IOs and 3-4 billion was the going rate for those. Panacea and Shield Wall uniques were up there too but those were closer to 2 billion. From the last time I can find any meaningful data (early to mid 2012) the more desirable purples usually went for 150-200m each.

 

FWIW, converters were a thing starting around I22 or so but they were character-bound and they cost 10 merits each from merit vendors instead of the 3 converters per 1 merit we have now.

 

Yeah the regular stuff you got from pve content was in much higher availability.  The pvp IO's being only dropped from pvp activity made those ones quite rare which I do recall selling one of those uniques for a billion (I was lukcy enough to have two of those drop for me), but I don't doubt those ones were actually being sold off market higher than I recall due to rareness.  

 

The converters were still a bit new to have an affect yet on the prices for those and like you say the merit cost for those was pretty high.  P2w gaming sure does love its carrots on sticks.  

[presto2112]

7 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

75,000,000-125,000,000 inf* per purple recipe on the original servers.  Steadfast Protection Res/Def - over the inf* cap (cap is 2,000,000,000).  PvP recipes also traded for over the cap (Gladiator's Armor Res/Def went up to 3,000,000,000  inf*).  Luck of the Gambler Def/+Global Recharge was around 100,000,000 inf*.  A complete mix/max build with all of the trimmings could run as much as 30,000,000,000, fifteen times the inf* cap.

 

Today, you can kit out a level 50 with five purples sets, one or two ATO sets (if you don't upgrade them to the Superior versions, they don't infringe on the rule of five for 10% +Recharge bonuses), one or two Winter sets and all of the uniques and globals you can cram into slots for less than 500,000,000 inf* (smart shopping can cut that almost in half).

this entire post is 100% wrong

 

on Liberty anyway. maybe you were on a messed up server

 

Edited September 7, 2021 by presto2112

[macskull]

1 hour ago, presto2112 said:

this entire post is 100% wrong

 

on Liberty anyway. maybe you were on a messed up server

 

The only part of the post that's wrong is the price of the Steadfast Protection Res/Def IO. Everything else is pretty spot-on. Here's a thread on the old forums from a week before the shutdown was announced where players are discussing purples costing between 200-250 million. Another post from April 2012 discusses purples going for about 300m each. Here's a post from August 2012 where a poster discusses prices of set pieces like LotG: Defense (not the global recharge IO) selling for 40 million. This thread is from July 2012 and puts the price of the PvP +def IO at around 1 billion which is significantly lower than its peak, but by that point converters existed and people were starting to get wise to how useful they were (there are multiple threads from mid-to-late 2011 where people are buying/selling these for 2-3 billion).

 

Also, the market was (and still is) cross-server. The items you saw on Liberty were the exact same ones someone saw on Freedom.

Edited September 7, 2021 by macskull

[Ironblade]

17 hours ago, Mezmera said:

Um I think Luminara is a bit overdramatizing how much things cost back on live.  There's no way the steadfast and gladiator unique cost THAT much

Half right.  The Steadfast wasn't that much, but he PvP uniques absolutely went for that kind of money.

I wasn't interested in doing an off-market deal so I just put in a bid for 2 billion and it took about two weeks to fill.

 

 

10 hours ago, presto2112 said:

this entire post is 100% wrong

 

on Liberty anyway. maybe you were on a messed up server

Your post demonstrates 100% lack of knowledge of how the market works.  The market is cross-server and always has been.  Liberty, Freedom, Infinity and all the other servers accessed the exact same marketplace.

[Ukase]

18 hours ago, Seed22 said:

There's been one more new one but  it was kinda invalidated when fast snipes were made universal w/o any accuracy requirements and such.

So, I have played here on Homecoming, but I've also got accounts on Rebirth server. 
The thing about the Rebirth server is that it's just as CoH was at shutdown, for the most part. 

There are a number of what I would call "stark" differences when it comes to the cost of enhancements. 
The first is converters. 

Converters are available on HC here via a random drop (ya might get 20 from leveling 1 to 50), and from the AH, and from the merit vendor at a cost of 3 converters for 1 reward merit. 

Back on live, this cost was 10 reward merits for 1 converter. They are not tradeable. Not accessible on the AH. But they will drop randomly at about the same rate as on HC. 

Another big difference is the cost of enhancement on the AH. On Rebirth, the population of their single server is..well, pretty low. Last I looked, the most players on during a weekend evening were about 60-70 players. As such, most folks don't even use the AH for big ticket items. They have a thread on their forums to trade for items in game. 

Here on HC - all invention salvage is seeded with a max cost for each tier. All rares cap at 1M. Back on live (and on Rebirth) there was no cap. Someone could buy all of a specific rare at whatever the cost, and repost it for 2-5x and if you weren't inclined to earn 540 tickets at AE for that specific salvage, you either had to burn merits at a merit vendor for a random rare, or pay the price, whatever it was. Would you like to pay 10M for a Chronal Skip? 

Purples/Very Rare recipes on HC - in the AH, I usually see them at 11.5 to 14M. Crafted, they might go for 14 to 20M. On Rebirth, or Live, they'd go for 150M to 275M, depending on your patience level. Just like here on HC, the sleeps, holds, immobs, confuses - they go for less than the melee, ranged & AoE damage ones. 

Leveling on HC is easier, even without the 2xp buff, because XP is awarded at a higher rate. 
On Rebirth, as back on live, there was no 2xp buff. 

Builds - stuff like ATOs, Winter-Os, Overwhelming Force...those also came from merits like here on HC. But on live, it was 400 merits for 1 ATO. Same with Winter-Os. They are not the inexpensive 100 merits like they are on HC. 

Now, one thing they did have - was they allowed you to get pvp IOs with emp merits and astral merits. Luna and her fabulous inspirations were not available in live. But they did have Astral Christy and Empyrean Mike. And you could get a number of recipes from them for 60 to 75 Emp merits. Even so - HC is far, far cheaper. We don't have Emp Mike, but we do get vet levels for threads and emp merits. That didn't happen on live, nor does it happen on Rebirth. 

Suffice it to say - things are about 10X cheaper on HC than on live. No exaggeration. 

[Mezmera]

46 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

Half right.  The Steadfast wasn't that much, but he PvP uniques absolutely went for that kind of money.

I wasn't interested in doing an off-market deal so I just put in a bid for 2 billion and it took about two weeks to fill.

 

 

Your post demonstrates 100% lack of knowledge of how the market works.  The market is cross-server and always has been.  Liberty, Freedom, Infinity and all the other servers accessed the exact same marketplace.

 

I saw that steadfast statement and was like "lol what you got scammed" so I immediately had a dismissal attitude of the rest of what she had to say.  Looking at the rest of what was said she wasn't far off on some other things.  Although the pvp uniques I do recall being sold off market early on they tapered down to a little over a billion after bit.  I get it though selling off market saves from the auction's cut.  The other thing is that in no way did anyone's build at any point total out to be anywhere near 30 billion, unless you added diamond engravings to your IO sets of course.  

Edited September 7, 2021 by Mezmera

[Luminara]

10 hours ago, macskull said:

The only part of the post that's wrong is the price of the Steadfast Protection Res/Def IO.

 

I know the Steadfast Protection Res/Def went as high as inf* cap plus because I specifically recall an interaction in a global chat channel in which one player was complaining that there were zero of that recipe or IO, at any level between 10 and 30, on the market, and after several other people rushed to the market to see if he was full of shit, and verified that it was bone dry, another player offered a level 10 Steadfast Protection Res/Def in exchange for 2B inf* plus certain HOs.  It was in late December, 2009 or early January, 2010.

The reason I remember that interaction is that I was, at that point, grinding a CoT radio mission with my TA/Dark, trying to generate enough inf* to pay for 5/6 Armageddon recipes, and there's very little else to do during an activity like that other than read global chats.  Reading the debate on the ethics of charging more than the inf* cap, the complaints over the lack of Steadfast Protection recipes/IOs on the player market at that time, the discussion about parking characters at specific levels in order to generate a constant stream of recipes at those levels and the questions and speculations about where it was best to try to farm specific recipes provided far more stimulation than pressing 1 and 2 sequentially for an hour.

 

And yes, they made the trade.  The purchaser thanked him profusely in the same global chat channel.  I thought they were both insane, the trader for asking that much and the purchaser for paying, but they were both satisfied, so no skin off of my nose.

 

The market on the original servers was all about monopolies, and he/she who controls the supply controls the price.  Steadfast was one of those things which was most definitely controlled, at every level from 10 through 30, recipes and crafted IOs, by marketeers, some of whom weren't hesitant to clear out the entire market by placing a few hundred 2B bids in an attempt to gain control of a competitor's niche, or to drive the price up even higher, or to protect their segment.  It was the most glorious shit show I've ever had the privilege to witness.  Pure 80's greed, uncontrolled, unregulated.

 

That's why I say it was inf* cap plus.  Regardless of what the price might've been when the recipe/IO was available on the player market (which was definitely not "always", not even taking into account that every level of the recipe/IO was unique in availability and pricing), it was being traded outside the market for inf* cap plus and that reflects its true perceived value in the context of the state of the game at that point in time and how it related to players and their expectations.  If someone paid 2 inf* for a Steadfast recipe/IO, we wouldn't (then or now) value that enhancement at 2 inf*, we'd value it at whatever the market peak was (presuming a continuous inflationary cycle rather than a depression or repression (atypical in a video game outside of mass player hemorrhaging)).  If that confused some people, my apologies.

[macskull]

24 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Some things

I don't recall this happening but I have no reason to doubt your story. I suppose I wouldn't be surprised considering it was a highly desirable enhancement that only dropped below level 30. I did do some digging while researching for my previous post but didn't find anything about prices for that IO specifically - I did a bit more just now and found a thread from July 2010 at which time the going rate was 40m. Keep in mind that's also from back in the time when the redside and blueside markets were separate and things were really weird with certain enhancements.

 

I do remember a whole bunch of threads back on live where people would complain about prices and then insist putting price caps on enhancements would solve the problem. This always made me laugh because anyone who understood the market would realize if an item was worth more than the arbitrary price cap imposed by the AH, sellers would simply take their item off-market to the highest bidder and the already-low supply would get even worse.

[ForeverLaxx]

On 9/6/2021 at 4:01 PM, Neiska said:

I didn't play live, it was before my time. But I am curious as to what the prices now are compared to what they were then

I distinctly remember during Live certain PvP IOs that would frequently be traded for numbers approaching (and sometimes exceeding) double the influence cap. Obviously this meant these trades would be done in-person and a lot of trust was involved (since nothing technically stopped the person who has the half-payment from bailing, or the one getting the IO from leaving early with the goods).

 

The PvP IOs got that expensive because of their very low supply. I'm a PvP player in other games, but even I know that the community who frequently PvPs here is very very small compared to the size of the rest of the playerbase, and that's even considering Live's much larger playerbase than we have now. Inflation also played a major role in all IO pricing and nothing the Live devs did really brought the rampant inflation down -- it was just part of the system by that point and had to be accounted for. Even something as simple as a Luck Charm would be 5k a piece, or 10k on a lazy day.

 

While many of the in-demand IOs would hover around 40-80 million, which is more than double what they cost here currently, they could at least be reasonably "farmed." PvP IOs were so hard to get and so powerful to a build that the price ballooned to a crazy value. You were usually just better off not even bothering to use them in a build since you had to spend awhile farming or trading to even afford a single one if you didn't get lucky.

 

This is probably why I still play the game like a "poor person," even today when everything is much more affordable. I'm just used to basic IOs because I decided on Live that making a character with sets would take me too long and I'm not a fan of partially-finished projects.

[ForeverLaxx]

3 hours ago, macskull said:

anyone who understood the market would realize if an item was worth more than the arbitrary price cap imposed by the AH, sellers would simply take their item off-market to the highest bidder and the already-low supply would get even worse

Not to mention that an arbitrary price cap just becomes the price floor also without sufficient, overwhelming supply like we have with the seeded salvage here. The people complaining they can't afford it without a price cap probably wouldn't be able to afford that new cap when it's now also the floor, either.