Make different-level SO enhancements fungible on the AH

[aethereal]

It seems a little weird to me that invention-origin enhancements are fungible across all levels, and even attuned, on the AH, while SOs are kept rigidly segregated in single-level buckets.  This means that there is very little liquidity in SO enhancements -- I was just trying to buy some endurance reduction enhancements for Tech, and there were 0-3 enhancements offered for sale for each of the levels that I was able to slot.

 

There's now a meaningful niche for low-level slotting of SOs, when they provide considerably better enhancement values than below-level-25 common IOs, and you can't slot most sets, and it would be cool if we could get these things on the market.

 

So I'm proposing that for a given Origin/Enhancement Type combination (so for example Tech/Endurance Reduction), the market provides fungibility across all levels for that enhancement.  So someone can sell a level 33 Tech Endurance Reduction enhancement and someone else can buy it as a level 15 Tech Endurance Reduction enhancement).

 

(Alternately, I suppose it would also be reasonable to provide fungibility across origin types (so I could sell a Science SO and someone could buy it as a Tech SO), instead of or in addition to fungibility across level ranges.)

[Hardship]

I haven't done an SO build since the changes but aren't they available in the stores at 5 level increments?  And available for auto-upgrade (for a price) whenever once slotted?

 

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Hardship said:

I haven't done an SO build since the changes but aren't they available in the stores at 5 level increments?  And available for auto-upgrade (for a price) whenever once slotted?

 

They are.  The AH is potentially quite a bit cheaper.  (Not that the store cost of SOs is all that meaningful, but for example my level 12 corruptor was having some endurance problems, and I could pick up a few AH EndRdx SOs for cheap, to tide me over until sets start being available.  But I couldn't buy many, because there's no liquidity on the market.  So I had to transfer to another character, send over a few million, and go from there.  Not the biggest deal in the world, but also...  if we think it's okay for someone to sell a level 12 IO and for another character to buy that IO at level 50, or level attuned, why should it not be okay to do the same with SOs?)

Edited February 8, 2022 by aethereal

[Wavicle]

Pretty sure this is intentional.

 

The Upgrade system is, in part, intended to be an Inf sink. They don't want it to be cheaper to buy SOs.

[aethereal]

27 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Pretty sure this is intentional.

 

The Upgrade system is, in part, intended to be an Inf sink. They don't want it to be cheaper to buy SOs.

 

On the one hand, it may be cheaper to buy SOs.  On the other, if there was a relatively robust market for them, people might sell them instead of vendoring them, and that would reduce the inf addition to the game.  In both cases, I don't think it's material.  Does any character spend more on SOs than one farmer makes in one run of one map?

Edited February 8, 2022 by aethereal

[macskull]

3 hours ago, aethereal said:

It seems a little weird to me that invention-origin enhancements are fungible across all levels

Generic IOs are not fungible. I assume this is because the buying power of a level 50 is going to be much higher than the buying power of a lower-level character and generic IOs (and SOs) are intended to be the most basic enhancement types. Fungibility across origin would be nice for SOs though.

Edited February 8, 2022 by macskull

[Outrider_01]

Meh, you are wasting influence.  Scrap the AH of 48+ SO, by dirt cheap for less than a 1000 or sometimes 100 inf.  Sell to vendor, profit! ACC and Damage are like 15k, resist are like 11k and some are as low as 8k.  It takes time, but you are able to buy the generic IOs around level 10-15s, by 30 your should have enough influence for generic 30 IO.

[Greycat]

21 hours ago, aethereal said:

It seems a little weird to me that invention-origin enhancements are fungible across all levels, and even attuned, on the AH, while SOs are kept rigidly segregated in single-level buckets.

 

 

To be nitpicky, that's only sets. Standard IOs (Invention: Damage, for instance) are not in a bucket, or creating level 10 standard IOs would be a gold mine instead of the INF sink going for crafting badges is (to the point it's cheaper to buy the portable workbench at 10m than craft for it.)

 

I could see this going across origins, though, or even (if possible) a 5-level-range bucket... but I also suspect the spaghetti would strike back.

[srmalloy]

30 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

Meh, you are wasting influence.  Scrap the AH of 48+ SO, by dirt cheap for less than a 1000 or sometimes 100 inf.  Sell to vendor, profit!

This was how I funded characters back on Live, when the vendor value for high level SOs were better and the stores still gave you better buyback value for their own origin -- buy high-end Mutation SOs on the AH, run to the SubGenetics store in south Steel Canyon, and sell them there.

[TheZag]

Vendors paying for them is why they wont be fungible.  You can create a money loop.

 

Buy lvl 5 SOs at the vendor,  put them on the AH for your alt to buy as lvl 50 and then sell them to a vendor for a profit.  2 accounts and an auto clicker program and you can lag the AH while making a profit.

 

The devs could make the above example not possible but its also not as easy a decision as it initially looks on the surface.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, TheZag said:

Vendors paying for them is why they wont be fungible.  You can create a money loop.

Yep, guess that's true.