Brain Storm Ideas

[Ukase]

So, after getting distracted by countless posts about Page 5, I'm finally settling in here, where things feel more like home! 

It's no secret that one, some or maybe all of you are working your magic with the rare salvage. I honestly couldn't do what you do, too damned tedious for me. I've had hundreds of bids for rare salvage at 500K, and not one of them has gone through since. Color me impressed. 

To get my salvage, I've done a number of things. Run AE for tickets. I spend more time setting and resetting because the ticket cap per map is so very low, but I do get my salvage for free. At the cost of recipe drops and..other salvage. But, I can select precisely what I want. 

So, I've thought about Brain Storm Ideas. 20 of them, and I can make a random rare salvage. If I don't get the ones I want, I can sell them and get more than 500k. Seems like a no-brainer. 

But..earning brain storm ideas...I'm telling you - it's easier to buy the winter packs and get them from the packs, even with the delay "please wait a moment" message. 
You have to spend two full weeks, one week to get the badge, then log in - to actually get the badge, then log out for a week to get a full 2 hours of a brain storm dropping after each mission. It's quite annoying having to stop playing a given character to re-fill the timer on the bonus. I've got three of them doing it, and I need more still, lol. 

But, it all begs the question - why is this such a tiny reward? 1 brain storm idea after each mission. So, 20 missions and you essentially get a free rare. A random rare, which you may not need. And if you think you can buy the rare for the same price as you sell it, think again. 

I sell them for 500K, get 545k and when I try to buy them, it's closer to 650K. (well, who has patience when you're trying to craft?) 
So, I'll do AE for them, lest I fund the very same market shenanigans I'm trying to avoid. 

 

May I ask - what is the marketer's work around for this hostage taking of the rare salvage? It's lowering my profit margins to the point where I'm just not going to do it.  

[Ironblade]

I'll answer that two ways.

 

1.  When I'm building a character, if it costs me an extra few million to get the salvage I need, I could not care less.  With a high-end build (in my opinion) costing me 300-400 million, a few million extra is irrelevant.

 

2.  Regarding marketeering - I have simply stopped.  I've been buying rare category garbage recipes, crafting and converting by rarity to good stuff to sell.  The profit on each sale can be anywhere from 500K to 6 or 7 million.  I have no idea what my average profit is, but since it can be as low as 500K, paying an extra 200K or more is too big a cut.  I do enjoy working the market in this way and I'm supplying needed IO's.  But, since I have enough inf stockpiled for at least my next 10 builds, I'm just waiting for prices to come back down.  The uncommon salvage came back down.  The rare salvage will also at some point.  I'm not in any hurry.

[Bionic_Flea]

I almost never sell rare salvage unless I've accumulated a bunch of a certain type and its clogging up my salvage.

 

Occasionally, I will put them in storage or in email for other characters to craft.

 

And I also almost never buy rare salvage.  But I don't do volume like some of you guys.  I just play, craft/convert/sell what drops and maybe buy cheap stuff to convert.

 

I would think that you have a gazillion brainstorms from packs.  Have you used those all up, saving them for a rainy day, have them in unopened packs, or just don't want to slow click to get them?

[Yomo Kimyata]

I can tell you exactly what's going on in rare salvage, and it has nothing to do with a shadowy cabal manipulating prices.  Well mostly nothing.

 

Brainstorms are great, but there are way too few of them dropping and trading compared to rares.

[Ukase]

32 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I almost never sell rare salvage unless I've accumulated a bunch of a certain type and its clogging up my salvage.

 

Occasionally, I will put them in storage or in email for other characters to craft.

 

And I also almost never buy rare salvage.  But I don't do volume like some of you guys.  I just play, craft/convert/sell what drops and maybe buy cheap stuff to convert.

 

I would think that you have a gazillion brainstorms from packs.  Have you used those all up, saving them for a rainy day, have them in unopened packs, or just don't want to slow click to get them?

I tend to hoard those BS Ideas for when I'm doing a ton of crafting - like 100 recipes, and the characters simply don't have the salvage. So, it's either let this marketer squeeze 100-200k out of what should be my profits, or just tab out, farm for tickets and get what's needed. The problem is, getting what's needed would be a full time job, and adds to what's already tedious enough. 

The Winter Packs I've got...I still have about 1500 left to open, maybe 2k. So many characters have them, I'm really not sure. And this is a process I wish I could afk, lol. Just [Ctrl + click] the macro I have that opens them, but it seems it's impossible to do that to a macro button. 

I sure would like an "Open all" or a "claim all" button, which I put in the suggestions sub-forum. 

[brasilgringo]

On 10/11/2022 at 9:03 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

I can tell you exactly what's going on in rare salvage, and it has nothing to do with a shadowy cabal manipulating prices.  Well mostly nothing.

 

Brainstorms are great, but there are way too few of them dropping and trading compared to rares.

 

Do tell. recently it looks to me like manipulation is afoot in yellows and rares ..

[robopop]

On 10/11/2022 at 4:03 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

I can tell you exactly what's going on in rare salvage, and it has nothing to do with a shadowy cabal manipulating prices.  Well mostly nothing.

 

@Yomo Kimyata, please don't leave us hanging. Inquiring minds want to know. What is (mostly) going on with rare salvage?

[Troo]

@Ukase

Workaround 1: Don't craft anything that requires rare salvage. Craft uncommon recipes and convert to rare enhancements.

Workaround 2: AE Tickets.

Workaround 3: Reward Merits (please don't do this).

Workaround 4: Salvage Farming. Rather than +4/8 xp farm, fight greens or higher -1/8, maybe turn bosses off.

 

Drop Rates

Each enemy you defeat has a chance of dropping one piece of invention salvage, provided it is at least level 4 and its con color is green or higher.

• Underling: never
• Minion: 8%
• Lieutenant/Sniper: 10.64%
• Boss/Elite Boss: 25%
• Archvillain: either never or 43.22%, depending on the AV

• Common: 22 in 28 chance (78.57%)
• Uncommon: 5 in 28 chance (17.86%)
• Rare: 1 in 28 chance (3.57%)

 

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Salvage

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Salvage_Tiers

[Ironblade]

21 hours ago, Troo said:

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Salvage

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Salvage_Tiers

ParagonWiki refers to the game as it existed a decade ago.  Much of the information (although perhaps not on those two pages) is out of date (i.e. wrong).

Much better to link to the Homecoming Wiki, which is updated on an ongoing basis.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Invention_Salvage

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Invention_Salvage_Tiers

[Troo]

10 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

ParagonWiki refers to the game as it existed a decade ago.  Much of the information (although perhaps not on those two pages) is out of date (i.e. wrong).

Much better to link to the Homecoming Wiki, which is updated on an ongoing basis.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Invention_Salvage

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Invention_Salvage_Tiers

 

I've found the new wiki to be rife with errors, bias and opinions. The search feature is also awful. As such, I'll use the old and dependable where I can.

 

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Troo

[Yomo Kimyata]

39 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

Well, @Yomo Kimyata said, "I can tell you exactly what's going on in rare salvage, and it has nothing to do with a shadowy cabal manipulating prices.  Well mostly nothing."

 

We're still waiting for elaboration.

 

On 10/16/2022 at 7:44 PM, brasilgringo said:

 

Do tell. recently it looks to me like manipulation is afoot in yellows and rares ..

 

23 hours ago, robopop said:

 

@Yomo Kimyata, please don't leave us hanging. Inquiring minds want to know. What is (mostly) going on with rare salvage?

 

I've been taking a break, but if you say my name three times, it summons me back from the dark realm.

 

I believe that the issue with salvage (and you can see it now in common, uncommon, as well as rare) is that the sell-it-nao supply has dropped significantly.  I don't know if this is because farmer activity has dropped or if people have been spending most of their time on the beta server, but there simply is not as much salvage coming into the system and sold at 5 inf on a daily basis as there used to be in the recent past.  So there is a bid-offer gap (which I've noted many times) that is as wide as it has ever been in salvage.

 

As a result, I see two things happening.  People who are used to buy-it-nao are reaching in order to get their salvage nao.  If there is a print at 1mm, does that mean that the next available piece of salvage was offered at 1mm?  Almost certainly not.  The second thing is that buy-it-soon(tm) people (like me) who are used to putting in bids and having them fill overnight are not getting filled.  So they pull their bids and put in higher bids, so we get upward creep.

 

I do not think people are buying significant blocks of salvage at one price then listing them higher.  First of all, the number on offer doesn't support it, and I generally do monitor that at various points during the day.  Maybe a few hundred here or there.  Second, it hardly worth it to do it in bulk, since there is always a risk someone will underoffer you.  I mean if you can't be bothered to drag and drop a thousand salvage for a few mm profit, why would you expect someone else would be?

 

I think that this is just a case of supply and demand working its way out, and because of the blind bid system where trades generally print at a level (sometimes much) higher than the offer, people find it easier to blame a Shadowy Cabal (which is one of my SG names, by the way) to explain something they don't understand.

 

Maybe I'm wrong?  But anything that would get people to start farming AE for tickets would amuse me to no end, so maybe I'm simply trying to hoodwink you all.

 

Anyway, back to my slumber.  Enjoy your hover blaster battle axe ninjas!

[High_Beam]

Sadly, Brainstorms are those things I E-Mail to a single character then every once in a blue moon craft them for for the rare.  Honestly it would be nice to see some sort of modification or improvement to the mechanism for accumulating them.  Perhaps some sort of radio-like mission structure that can be given out by the Universities that yield a small number of them, not so that they profitable from a farming standpoint but where they are at least not as much of a pain in the buttocks as @Ukase accurately describes.

[UltraAlt]

26 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I believe that the issue with salvage (and you can see it now in common, uncommon, as well as rare) is that the sell-it-nao supply has dropped significantly. 

 

It seems a lot of people are spending their time ToT'ing and salvage drops seem to be reduced while door-knocking.

 

-or-

 

 

 

 

[tidge]

Something peculiar I noticed with DSyncs: I had one character with an outstanding bid for 4x of a particular DSync at a rather high price, I had two other characters with 1 open bid each for the same Dsync at lower prices... the lower price bids cleared where the higher ones did not. I don't trust the 'last 5 purchase prices', but they looked like DSync prices, and at one point those prices were below my outstanding bid. The character with unfilled bids put in a slightly higher bid and won one. I wasn't selling anything on those characters.

 

I only mention this, because it is possible that the market may be legitimately buggy in a previously unseen way while the availability of items is low.

[Perfidy]

Certainly possible. 

Alternatively - the last 5 prices shown are a known glitch at times. It's probably easier to chalk it up to the display glitch, rather than assess a malfunction of the AH glitch.  

 

It's just a good thing the salvage has a capped price from seeded salvage, so our HC devs don't have to spend time investigating anything. 

 

[Sanguinesun]

On 10/20/2022 at 7:19 AM, tidge said:

Something peculiar I noticed with DSyncs: I had one character with an outstanding bid for 4x of a particular DSync at a rather high price, I had two other characters with 1 open bid each for the same Dsync at lower prices... the lower price bids cleared where the higher ones did not. I don't trust the 'last 5 purchase prices', but they looked like DSync prices, and at one point those prices were below my outstanding bid. The character with unfilled bids put in a slightly higher bid and won one. I wasn't selling anything on those characters.

 

I only mention this, because it is possible that the market may be legitimately buggy in a previously unseen way while the availability of items is low.

 

Sometimes clicking multiple times to see the prices results in different, well, results.  

[tidge]

I'm aware of the market display bug, but two of my characters were winning with lower bids than an outstanding bid on the third character. The third character had accumulated a lot of personal inf, but it isn't one I'm crazy about playing (because of the necessary playstyle... it's a Dom with a Hasten-assisted permadom, yes I know the tricks, yes it still bothers me) so it has bids for items I know will use. Let's say it had bids for a D-Scync at 28M... a couple other characters I enjoy scrapping with also have some inf, so on a whim I put in a lower bid at 25M and win... I go back to the semi-hemi-permadom and it still has 4x outstanding bids at 28M, he bids 28.1M and wins one. There is no theoretical reason why none of the 28M bids should have gone unfulfilled. As implemented, I can totally believe that the database for the AH is capable of screwing with bids just as it can screw with display. I've never seen the AH deliver something that wasn't bid on, but without being able to run queries against the system, it is impossible to know how the transactions were being handled, and if it was something like an error trap that was preventing those bids to be filled... because taking inf for stuff the player doesn't want would probably be the worst transactional error the code could possibly allow.

[Zect]

It amuses me how, even after all these years, market manipulation still gets blamed for everything, and how the remedy is to cut off one's nose to spite one's face by forgoing a much higher income stream to farm AE tickets, just to stick it to the purported marketeer.

 

As someone who actually did and does market manipulation, both on Live and here, I can tell you that manipulating the salvage market is not all that easy, nor all that profitable. Rare salvage on HC is a high volume and fast-moving market, it strongly resists attempts to move the needle. And even if I could buy at 500k and sell at 700k, that's still only a profit of 1.3 million per 10-stack. That's peanuts.

 

The real reason is probably some imbalance in the ratio at which salvage to recipes drop, due to all the ToT EB's being farmed, (either dropping more recipes or less salvage than standard, or dropping more orange and purple recipes than normal) causing demand for rare salvage to rise higher than normal. You may have noted purples dropped in price lately.

 

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Zect

[Yomo Kimyata]

21 minutes ago, Zect said:

It amuses me how, even after all these years, market manipulation still gets blamed for everything, and how the remedy is to cut off one's nose to spite one's face by forgoing a much higher income stream to farm AE tickets, just to stick it to the purported marketeer.

 

As someone who actually did and does market manipulation, both on Live and here, I can tell you that manipulating the salvage market is not all that easy, nor all that profitable. Rare salvage on HC is a high volume and fast-moving market, it strongly resists attempts to move the needle. And even if I could buy at 500k and sell at 700k, that's still only a profit of 1.3 million per 10-stack. That's peanuts.

 

The real reason is probably some imbalance in the ratio at which salvage to recipes drop, due to all the ToT EB's being farmed, (either dropping more recipes or less salvage than standard, or dropping more orange and purple recipes than normal) causing demand for rare salvage to rise higher than normal. You may have noted purples dropped in price lately.

 

 

 

I swear, I had to check to make sure that one of my alternate personalities didn't write this.

 

Except for the AE ticket thing.  Farming tickets is clearly the future of this game!

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Farming tickets is clearly the future of this game!

 

You gain farming tickets for farming or do you get ticketed for farming?