Everything seems to cost too much influence

[Seed22]

On 9/9/2021 at 3:26 AM, Diantane said:

As much as I've tried, I just can't afford to upgrade my enhancement upgrades. Only play a handful of alts and every one's enhancement page is lacking. The enhancements are either red or some have IO's that are 20 levels lower than the character. Now DO's dropping as loot sure helped, but its not enough to catch my characters up. I've been told that when I reach 50 that the influence will be coming in a lot more (course level 50 enhancements are very expensive too). See players with IO sets and I'm thinking how could they possibly afford it.

Run TFs and such as others have said but I want to elaborate on a key point missed by most usually. Get ONE toon to 50. 50s generate mad inf compared to leveling toons. I’d hate to say but you gotta stop making and playing alts full stop until this is done, otherwise you’ll never be able to afford IOs

[InvaderStych]

12 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

It's a lot.

 

I confess, I've sort of been waiting for you to give me an excuse to use that quote. 😉  Had to shoe-horn it in though; I couldn't figure out a good way to imply that the real question is if you knew the server data size of your stash of inf. 🤣

Edited September 10, 2021 by InvaderStych

[Ukase]

On 9/9/2021 at 6:12 AM, Marine X said:

Also, Recipes and Salvage that are only worth 10 - 100 Influence on the Market are worth 250 - 1000 at a Vendor or AutoDoc in your base, it's not much, but it can help.

This goes a bit beyond what the OP was asking, but if any player is patient, I routinely vendor all my excess common salvage for 275 inf (the 250 the vendor would pay, plus 25 for the AH fee). They do not sell instantly. But generally by the next day they have. And I often get more than the 275 I ask for. 

As the son of an economist playing in this easy money universe, it makes sense to me to do this. There are no taxes in CoH, so it makes sense to gather as much influence as I can. Why sell for 250 when I can get at least 275, and often more? 

Now, for a newer player who may not have the luxury of waiting, well, the vendor is a fine option. I have often bought common salvage from the AH at 10-50 inf and sold at the vendor for 250. You can make a tidy sum for a level 2 looking for SO money in fairly short order. 

[Diantane]

I was overwhelmed by the response, but it got me thinking. If a hundred players did each of these ideas, none of them would work. I mean the influence has to come from somewhere. There would have to be a lot more "spenders" than "earners". A lot more.

 

Then the spenders got that influence somewhere. So they too are earners.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Diantane

[Ignatz the Insane]

28 minutes ago, Diantane said:

I was overwhelmed by the response, but it got me thinking. If a hundred players did each of these ideas, none of them would work. I mean the influence has to come from somewhere. There would have to be a lot more "spenders" than "earners". A lot more.

 

Then the spenders got that influence somewhere. So they too are earners.

I don't think this is the case at all.  If everyone did what I do....which is buy cheap yellow recipes and convert to expensive enhancements, the price of the recipes would go up but the price of the enhancements would go down as the supply increased.  Although I don't see this happening as there are plenty of players either unable or unwilling to do this.(FWIW I'm guessing the unwilling is a much larger percentage)

Edited September 11, 2021 by Ignatz the Insane

[Miss Magical]

3 hours ago, Diantane said:

I was overwhelmed by the response, but it got me thinking. If a hundred players did each of these ideas, none of them would work. I mean the influence has to come from somewhere.

 

It comes from AE farms.

 

Farmers produce about 100 M/hr. By contrast, a 54x8 kill-most ITF produces about 10-12 M? over the same time (I can't recall if I had Windfall turned on, but I'll edit this comment the next time I do one). Farm rewards are on the order of 1,000% of those of all other playstyles, and they are scaleable in a manner that is not possible with other playstyles - you can triple-box and afk farm in AE, it's much less practical to do that with story arcs or task forces, and you don't need to spend tine recruiting for a farm, though some do. While farmers try a variety of arguments to defend farming, what they are really arguing for is the special privilege to receive about 10 times the rewards of other people, simply because others choose to enjoy the game differently.

 

I would be interested to see economic data from the HC devs to show the ratio of influence to goods that farmers generate, and hence, to what extent they contribute to prices. But without a large amount of influence in the system in the first place, it is difficult for prices to rise high, and the largest source of raw influence - an order of magnitude above any other - is AE.

[Carnifax]

3 hours ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

I don't think this is the case at all.  If everyone did what I do....which is buy cheap yellow recipes and convert to expensive enhancements, the price of the recipes would go up but the price of the enhancements would go down as the supply increased.  Although I don't see this happening as there are plenty of players either unable or unwilling to do this.(FWIW I'm guessing the unwilling is a much larger percentage)

Yup, this is what I do too and both the common recipes and the selling prices for the results seem reasonably stable.

 

Occasionally some selling points for specific sets seem to drop but generally they perk up again (Kinetic Combats were the last ones I'd noticed, used to be 3-4 million, dropped to 2-3). 

 

Farmers are probably one reason, keeping demand up even if supply had also increased. 

[SuperPlyx]

 @Miss Magical I  wonder about all the recipes and crafted IO the same farmers put on the market.

Isn't that increasing supply and thus helping to keep prices down? 

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, SuperPlyx said:

 @Miss Magical I  wonder about all the recipes and crafted IO the same farmers put on the market.

Isn't that increasing supply and thus helping to keep prices down? 

I farm once in a while.  Usually one if two reasons. I need to 50 a new alt. Or i need enhancement converters.  My main (that i am in 90% time) i hoard merits….  So after a farming session i take all farmed influence and buy converters off market.  Then i transfer all converters and recipes to main.  Who crafts converts and sells for badges and cash.  The community gets another person slapping LOTG Numinas and Perf shifters on the market. I generally list at about z75-90% of average sale price.  The wheel keeps spinning  

[InvaderStych]

5 hours ago, Diantane said:

I was overwhelmed by the response, but it got me thinking. If a hundred players did each of these ideas, none of them would work. I mean the influence has to come from somewhere. There would have to be a lot more "spenders" than "earners". A lot more.

 

 

Well, yes ... but also no.

 

The market here is subject to some amount of ... let's call it Regulation ... by the HC Team.  I don't know what sort of math or logic they use to make regulatory decisions, or even how much/little they Regulate, but ....

 

What I do know is that I've been funneling Merits to Inf in the same minimal step fashion for nearly a year at this point and the sale price rarely fluctuates save but to go up a bit during moments of peak demand.

 

Edit:

 

On average, one should be able convert 100 merits into somewhere between 20-25 million with the amount of time it takes depending on what one chooses to flip those merits into.  Crafter/Flipper types or those who understand how to find and exploit a market niche can probably do a little better.  I am not one of those players - my market strategy is sort that of a tornado: follow the path of least resistance. 🤣 In this case "resistance" can be measured in time. 😄

 

Either way, that sort of consistency over time wouldn't really happen in an unregulated system.  I don't think so anyway; I know we've got some folks who actually understand economics that could give a more accurate run-down.

Edited September 11, 2021 by InvaderStych

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, SuperPlyx said:

 @Miss Magical I  wonder about all the recipes and crafted IO the same farmers put on the market.

Isn't that increasing supply and thus helping to keep prices down? 

 

Yes.  

[Coyotedancer]

9 hours ago, Miss Magical said:

 

It comes from AE farms.

 

Farmers produce about 100 M/hr.

 

Just as an aside... Nope. Not unless you get very lucky with recipe drops (to the tune of multiple purples in that hour-) and then sell them on the AH. AE's influence earnings have been nerfed twice since Homecoming went live, so even a well-built speed-farmer isn't regularly pulling in 100m in an hour. Drops are fickle.

 

You need to marketeer to get that kind of potential rate.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by Coyotedancer
I spel gud. <_<

[Grouchybeast]

6 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

Either way, that sort of consistency over time wouldn't really happen in an unregulated system.  I don't think so anyway; I know we've got some folks who actually understand economics that could give a more accurate run-down.

 

I don't believe that the devs directly regulate the market -- for one thing, that would be very time-consuming, and they're all volunteers who have better things to do with the time they spend on the game.  I think the only direct market supply intervention they've done was to seed salvage, and that's seeded well above normal market prices.

 

What they have done, rather brilliantly, is to give the players tools to regulate the market themselves, primarily by pooling recipes, IOs and salvage, and making converters freely available.  If there's an increase in demand for an IO, then prices rise.  Marketeers will spot that and start converting other IOs to supply the niche.  It's very easy to do, and while there are some high-volume marketeers there are also a lot of people playing converter roulette on a small scale, and in combination it keeps supply pretty smooth.  The CoX market system also inherently buffers prices via the existence of tranches of high listings and low bids.

 

Another thing they did, which seems to have had a very good effect on the market over time, is to remove an inf-generating exploit from AE, and at the same time remove an unwanted side-effect of adding post-50 XP to the game which was also increasing inf flow into the game.  That nudged the ratio of inf:recipe generation via farming more towards recipes, and that seems to have had the desired effect of stopping runaway price rises.

[macskull]

9 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

 

Well, yes ... but also no.

 

The market here is subject to some amount of ... let's call it Regulation ... by the HC Team.  I don't know what sort of math or logic they use to make regulatory decisions, or even how much/little they Regulate, but ....

The only "regulation" that happens on the market is invention salvage being seeded, which is just a safeguard in case salvage prices spike since the going rate for salvage typically never even approaches the price it's seeded for (rare salvage is seeded for 1 million inf but typically goes for 450-600k).

 

Several market-wide changes have been made but they're less about regulation and more about how the market as a whole works and were designed to keep the market functional with a much smaller playerbase. Those changes happened post-shutdown but before HC popped up, HC just used that codebase as a starting point.

[Wavicle]

10 hours ago, Miss Magical said:

 

It comes from AE farms.

 

Farmers produce about 100 M/hr. By contrast, a 54x8 kill-most ITF produces about 10-12 M? over the same time (I can't recall if I had Windfall turned on, but I'll edit this comment the next time I do one). Farm rewards are on the order of 1,000% of those of all other playstyles, and they are scaleable in a manner that is not possible with other playstyles - you can triple-box and afk farm in AE, it's much less practical to do that with story arcs or task forces, and you don't need to spend tine recruiting for a farm, though some do. While farmers try a variety of arguments to defend farming, what they are really arguing for is the special privilege to receive about 10 times the rewards of other people, simply because others choose to enjoy the game differently.

 

I would be interested to see economic data from the HC devs to show the ratio of influence to goods that farmers generate, and hence, to what extent they contribute to prices. But without a large amount of influence in the system in the first place, it is difficult for prices to rise high, and the largest source of raw influence - an order of magnitude above any other - is AE.

 

I do find this unfair and annoying...but...

 

Overall the increased supply of goods is probably worth the basically minor annoyance.

 

Actually, I take it back. I think this disparity ought to be addressed so that more players will join teams outside of the AE.

 

This is absolutely right:

"While farmers try a variety of arguments to defend farming, what they are really arguing for is the special privilege to receive about 10 times the rewards of other people, simply because others choose to enjoy the game differently."

Edited September 11, 2021 by Wavicle

[Wavicle]

Or am I just behind the times, and in fact this disparity was addressed and is no longer quite so disparate?

[macskull]

15 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

 

I do find this unfair and annoying...but...

 

Overall the increased supply of goods is probably worth the basically minor annoyance.

 

Actually, I take it back. I think this disparity ought to be addressed so that more players will join teams outside of the AE.

 

This is absolutely right:

"While farmers try a variety of arguments to defend farming, what they are really arguing for is the special privilege to receive about 10 times the rewards of other people, simply because others choose to enjoy the game differently."

If the "farmers contribute more in inflation than they do in supply to the market" argument had any leg to stand on we would have seen a gradual trend upward in prices over the last two years. The market was all over the place for the first few months when HC popped up but eventually players figured out what things were worth and prices have stayed pretty stable, if not lower. You can grab some of the more desirable purple recipes for 11-15m right now, during the summer of 2019 that was closer to 20m.

 

EDIT: Also, anecdotally, I'm idling on Excelsior right now and LFG is mostly people forming teams for non-AE content with the occasional one or two people spamming about looking for a farm.

Edited September 11, 2021 by macskull

[Wavicle]

17 minutes ago, macskull said:

If the "farmers contribute more in inflation than they do in supply to the market" argument had any leg to stand on we would have seen a gradual trend upward in prices over the last two years. The market was all over the place for the first few months when HC popped up but eventually players figured out what things were worth and prices have stayed pretty stable, if not lower. You can grab some of the more desirable purple recipes for 11-15m right now, during the summer of 2019 that was closer to 20m.

 

True, but that isn't really the argument. The argument is simply "rewards/time should be close to equal across the board", which I still think is a good idea.

 

17 minutes ago, macskull said:

EDIT: Also, anecdotally, I'm idling on Excelsior right now and LFG is mostly people forming teams for non-AE content with the occasional one or two people spamming about looking for a farm.

 

Yea, my experience is similar. So maybe the last round of AE nerfs was sufficient, but not excessive.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Wavicle

[macskull]

14 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

True, but that isn't really the argument. The argument is simply "rewards/time should be close to equal across the board", which I still think is a good idea.

What amuses me about this is farming is pretty awful in terms of inf gain over time compared to much lower-effort things like playing the market. If it helps, you can look at farming as a necessary evil of sorts. Regardless of your views on farming the majority of recipe/enhancement supply probably does come from farming and if that goes away supply goes away and prices go up accordingly. For an actual in-game example of this we can look back to the time when PvP IOs were first introduced in Issue 14. Originally there was no time-based lockout on getting a drop from defeating the same target and the drop rate was low but reasonable. People started farming PvP IOs in arena matches which prompted the developers to both nerf the drop rate and implement a lockout period. All this really accomplished was to cause the price of the desirable PvP IOs to skyrocket to the point where some of them couldn't be bought through the market because sellers could get more inf by selling them directly to other players.

[Grouchybeast]

10 minutes ago, macskull said:

If it helps, you can look at farming as a necessary evil of sorts. Regardless of your views on farming the majority of recipe/enhancement supply probably does come from farming and if that goes away supply goes away and prices go up accordingly.

 

Another good thing the HC devs have done (in terms of balancing inf and recipe supply) is to allow normal drops in AE.  Now AE produces the same output as normal play, just at a much faster rate.  The old AE system where farming there generated inf through enemy defeats but recipes via tickets was one of several bafflingly terrible choices that the original devs made with AE, and contributed significantly to the market issues on live.  And they never managed to fix the problems they'd created.  The fact that you could spot the regular arrival of a new AE exploit because of their predictable effects on market prices was interesting but depressing.

 

(I'm still sad that the huge potential of AE as originally conceived never came to fruition.   I hope one day HC will give it the overhaul it deserves.)

[Miss Magical]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

If the "farmers contribute more in inflation than they do in supply to the market" argument had any leg to stand on we would have seen a gradual trend upward in prices over the last two years. The market was all over the place for the first few months when HC popped up but eventually players figured out what things were worth and prices have stayed pretty stable, if not lower. You can grab some of the more desirable purple recipes for 11-15m right now, during the summer of 2019 that was closer to 20m.

 

I think this argument is naive, because it ignores the fact that inflation in COH is subject to a negative feedback loop, i.e. the greater the rate of inflation, the stronger counterinflationary pressures become. And the reason for this is that inf has value as a commodity itself.

 

As the supply of inf in the economy increases, spending inf on things such as super packs, amplifiers, P2W summons, etc. becomes more attractive, which then increases the rate of inf removal from the economy. Eventually, we reach an equilibrium where the inf inflow and outflow become approximately equal. However, this equilibrium would be much lower were it not for the continuous and massive influx of inf from AE. So, AE farming does cause inflation.

 

[A Cat]

7 minutes ago, Miss Magical said:

 

I think this argument is naive, because it ignores the fact that inflation in COH is subject to a negative feedback loop, i.e. the greater the rate of inflation, the stronger counterinflationary pressures become. And the reason for this is that inf has value as a commodity itself.

 

As the supply of inf in the economy increases, spending inf on things such as super packs, amplifiers, P2W summons, etc. becomes more attractive, which then increases the rate of inf removal from the economy. Eventually, we reach an equilibrium where the inf inflow and outflow become approximately equal. However, this equilibrium would be much lower were it not for the continuous and massive influx of inf from AE. So, AE farming does cause inflation.

 

I could just have a poor understanding of the economy, but IMO, Merits/Merit Vendors are the great regulator. At the end of the day, prices will have a hard time rising above the "price" at the merit vendor. You can always get that very rare recipe at the vendor. Currently, no one does this, since the price of the thing on the AH is generally CHEAPER compared to the equivalent merit vendor pricing. It doesn't matter if everyone has 1 billion Inf from farming (I know I personally don't farm and there must be others like me), the prices would not rise beyond that since everyone has an alternate way to purchase things for cheaper. Maybe things might be otherwise be even cheaper than that. But it is hard to say. The Inf to merit ratio is also controlled by something not really related to farming since farming earns no merits and barely any convertors/catalyst.

[Miss Magical]

12 hours ago, SuperPlyx said:

 @Miss Magical I  wonder about all the recipes and crafted IO the same farmers put on the market.

Isn't that increasing supply and thus helping to keep prices down? 

 

Not necessarily, because farming also increases demand for those same recipes and IOs. Farming produces new characters very quickly; you can go from level 1-30+ in a single run, and to reach 50 takes between 2 and 3 hours. All those mass-produced characters that come out of the AE factory are going to want enhancements as well.

[macskull]

25 minutes ago, Miss Magical said:

As the supply of inf in the economy increases, spending inf on things such as super packs, amplifiers, P2W summons, etc. becomes more attractive, which then increases the rate of inf removal from the economy. Eventually, we reach an equilibrium where the inf inflow and outflow become approximately equal. However, this equilibrium would be much lower were it not for the continuous and massive influx of inf from AE. So, AE farming does cause inflation.

 

The items available through the market or P2W vendors have had (for the most part) fixed prices since they were introduced but prices for other items have remained relatively constant over the last two years. Are you suggesting that there was a sudden and massive amount of inflation due to AE farming right at the start and that equilibrium has been in effect since then?

 

6 minutes ago, Miss Magical said:

Not necessarily, because farming also increases demand for those same recipes and IOs. Farming produces new characters very quickly; you can go from level 1-30+ in a single run, and to reach 50 takes between 2 and 3 hours. All those mass-produced characters that come out of the AE factory are going to want enhancements as well.

The amount of inf earned PLing a character from 1-50 is far less than the amount of inf it costs to fund a build for that character - even less if the character being PLd is using a 2XP booster. I can crank out all the 50s I want but the act of leveling them alone isn't going to get me the inf I need to pay for their builds.

[Miss Magical]

2 hours ago, Wavicle said:

 

I do find this unfair and annoying...but...

 

Overall the increased supply of goods is probably worth the basically minor annoyance.

 

Actually, I take it back. I think this disparity ought to be addressed so that more players will join teams outside of the AE.

 

This is absolutely right:

"While farmers try a variety of arguments to defend farming, what they are really arguing for is the special privilege to receive about 10 times the rewards of other people, simply because others choose to enjoy the game differently."

 

Thank you for understanding the real issue at stake here. Ultimately, I consider all economics arguments a distraction from the issue of a subculture of players demanding the privilege to receive vastly more (as much as 10x) rewards than anyone who simply chooses to have a different playstyle, for no reason.

 

However, I also do not think AE farms can be balanced in a vacuum. If you do that, the farmers will just move on to the next farmable thing. It may slightly less convenient and lucrative for them, but they will still find some way to vastly outstrip the earnings of casual players. What I think this game needs is a comprehensive review of reward systems that ensures all kinds of content and playstyles are incentivized -- and I don't think that is ever going to happen. Right now, the only thing that has anything close to the sort are task forces (balanced by time-based merit rewards, the WST, and diminishing rewards).

 

I was astonished to hear that there was apparently never anything of the sort in this game -- that the vast majority of all content was just made with the assumption that people will do it simply because it exists, and no thought was given to the questions of "how will we keep this content rewarding long into the future? What can we do to support players who enjoy it so they'll continue being able to find teams for it?" It all made sense when I learned that this was apparently the developers' first MMO, because there are a lot of clues in this game that it was someone's first rodeo, and this is the most obvious one.