A collapse in the market also lowers the game playability

[Diantane]

Recently the auction price for an enhancement booster has dropped below a million influence each on Excelsior. That may sound like a bargain for buyers, but its a huge loss for the sellers. Selling these boosters provides me the revenue I need just to play the game. Of the approximately 8,900 boosters available on the Excelsior auction, about 6-7% belong to me and I can't sell them below one million each. So I'm forced to hold out with about 500-600 boosters in the bank.

 

When I start a new character it cost me 74,000 influence. I pay 24,000 to max out the amplifiers at 1,000 each for 8 hours. And 50,000 influence for a decent travel power until I train one in my teens. I play at double XP so there is no influence coming in. If I relied on the little money coming in from missions with no XP boost, I could not afford to buy more than 20% or less of the enhancements needed. Financing a character through level 40 costs between 7 to 12 million influence to upgrade the enhancements every five levels. It costs about 25 million for level 45 workbench IO's. If you use IO's during leveling, they don't expire, but then your percentage boost drops as you level (compared to the single origin counterparts). So you have to replace them too quickly which is expensive. I found that these workbench IO's only provide a few percentage points increase over buying level 50 SO's which are much cheaper.

 

I enjoy the storyline arcs in the game, but found that the high level arcs (level 40+) are mostly computer generated and boring. Playing them is just a grind which I do not enjoy. Have found that if I grind a level 50 doing these arcs, the influence coming in is decent, but again this is short lived unless the arc has a good storyline.

 

The bottom line is I'm holding out selling the boosters that I made from buying them with the merits I earned while playing the arcs. There will be a lull in the market until the price goes up. My funds have been disappearing and will be forced to play other games until the market collapse is gone.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Diantane

[srmalloy]

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

— Robert A. Heinlein, "Life-Line", 1937

[Random Axis]

I run double XP and can't fathom blowing that kind of money on a new toon. I'm not even sure I'll keep a character until they hit 22-27 and I find I like the powersets. I spend 2 mil at level 27 filling slots with level 30 IOs and consider that a lot to spend. Those IOs will sit there until they get replaced with set enhancements or a level 50 IO if they'll never get a set--like in Hasten. There's no content that's so bleeding edge before 50 that the miniscule boost from upgrading IOs as you level is worth it.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Random Axis

[TheZag]

Items fluctuate.  If you want to sell higher,  craft set enhancements.  Many common ones for my builds were 2 million when i first joined homecoming and they are 4 million now.  Quite the opposite of a price collapse.

 

[Shred Monkey]

*considers flooding the market with boosters selling for 999,999 inf to maximize my profits by undercutting my biggest competitor who just divulged his price point in a forum post*

 

Nah.  Actually, I have the opposite problem of the OP.  I never find myself short of inf because I always play my 50s enough that there's more then enough for a new toon just sitting unused on various alts.   Come to think of it, that's not actually a problem is it?  There's probably a lesson there somewhere.

 

 

[Hedgefund2]

Someone's selling (and buying) for 1M, taken seconds ago:

 

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Diantane said:

Recently the auction price for an enhancement booster has dropped below a million influence each on Excelsior. That may sound like a bargain for buyers, but its a huge loss for the sellers. Selling these boosters provides me the revenue I need just to play the game. Of the approximately 8,900 boosters available on the Excelsior auction, about 6-7% belong to me and I can't sell them below one million each. So I'm forced to hold out with about 500-600 boosters in the bank.

 

When I start a new character it cost me 74,000 influence. I pay 24,000 to max out the amplifiers at 1,000 each for 8 hours. And 50,000 influence for a decent travel power until I train one in my teens. I play at double XP so there is no influence coming in. If I relied on the little money coming in from missions with no XP boost, I could not afford to buy more than 20% or less of the enhancements needed. Financing a character through level 40 costs between 7 to 12 million influence to upgrade the enhancements every five levels. It costs about 25 million for level 45 workbench IO's. If you use IO's during leveling, they don't expire, but then your percentage boost drops as you level (compared to the single origin counterparts). So you have to replace them too quickly which is expensive. I found that these workbench IO's only provide a few percentage points increase over buying level 50 SO's which are much cheaper.

 

I enjoy the storyline arcs in the game, but found that the high level arcs (level 40+) are mostly computer generated and boring. Playing them is just a grind which I do not enjoy. Have found that if I grind a level 50 doing these arcs, the influence coming in is decent, but again this is short lived unless the arc has a good storyline.

 

The bottom line is I'm holding out selling the boosters that I made from buying them with the merits I earned while playing the arcs. There will be a lull in the market until the price goes up. My funds have been disappearing and will be forced to play other games until the market collapse is gone.

 

'k.

[Scarlet Shocker]

2 hours ago, Diantane said:

 

When I start a new character it cost me 74,000 influence.

 

 

It needn't. This is entirely a choice. You can start a character for zero inf. If you choose to do this, it's on you and you alone. Thus any consequences of that choice belong to you alone also.

[cranebump]

I'm assure what I'm supposed to make of this:

2 hours ago, Diantane said:

The bottom line is I'm holding out selling the boosters that I made from buying them with the merits I earned while playing the arcs. There will be a lull in the market until the price goes up. My funds have been disappearing and will be forced to play other games until the market collapse is gone.

 

Feels like the thread should be called, A collapse in the market may force me to play other games.

 

Which basically makes this a warning to the community that you may be going, and we're supposed to...?

[SeraphimKensai]

First off the Auction House is cross server so Excelsior/Everlasting/Indomitable/Torch/Etc. All the same pool.

 

Secondly if the market is so flush with Enhancement Boosters that the price is falling, that means the supply is high. These boosters are created from super packs and reward merits so that requires players to create them. You're competing against everyone else selling and the non marketing players making their own.

 

The demand for things like Enhancement Boosters is that they are optional for players using at least generic IOs. When players attune set IOs l, enhancement boosters lose demand. That said towards the end of a Page prior to an update I would imagine (and this is just speculation) that players are beginning to hoard their resources to prepare for the page 6 patch where people will look at building a Storm Blast character and respecing several others such as Assault Rifle. I imagine as usual, once the new page turns, demand on the market will temporarily climb.

 

I would suggest diversifying your brokerage portfolio and not only sell boosters, but look at a broader spectrum of items on the market.

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, Diantane said:

Recently the auction price for an enhancement booster has dropped below a million influence each on Excelsior.

 

18 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

First off the Auction House is cross server so Excelsior/Everlasting/Indomitable/Torch/Etc. All the same pool.

 

3 hours ago, Diantane said:

When I start a new character it cost me 74,000 influence. I pay 24,000 to max out the amplifiers at 1,000 each for 8 hours. And 50,000 influence for a decent travel power until I train one in my teens. I play at double XP so there is no influence coming in. If I relied on the little money coming in from missions with no XP boost, I could not afford to buy more than 20% or less of the enhancements needed. Financing a character through level 40 costs between 7 to 12 million influence to upgrade the enhancements every five levels. It costs about 25 million for level 45 workbench IO's

 

I start off all my characters with at least 200 million. That's for some of the P2W stuff and to start their own market share.

 

3 hours ago, Diantane said:

If you use IO's during leveling, they don't expire, but then your percentage boost drops as you level (compared to the single origin counterparts). So you have to replace them too quickly which is expensive.

 

I use SO's, ATOs, Universal Damage IOs, Winter IOs, and attuned set IO's only at this point.

I slot SO's starting at level 3.

I start slotting the others as soon as I have the slots and the level.

By the time I get to the level and have the slots, the character has enough to by their own or pull out gear out of one of my bases, transported by email, or pulled out of my stock of stuff from card packs.

 

3 hours ago, Diantane said:

enhancement booster

 

I don't even bother selling them.

I generally have better use of my auction house space.

And, I don't play the end-game. And that is where the boosters are going to be used.

 

3 hours ago, Diantane said:

I enjoy the storyline arcs in the game, but found that the high level arcs (level 40+) are mostly computer generated and boring. Playing them is just a grind which I do not enjoy. Have found that if I grind a level 50 doing these arcs, the influence coming in is decent, but again this is short lived unless the arc has a good storyline.

 

Embrace you altitis. No need to grind when  you can have fun making a new character and find a different path to level up before the funneling intensifies.

 

1 hour ago, Shred Monkey said:

Nah.  Actually, I have the opposite problem of the OP.  I never find myself short of inf because I always play my 50s enough that there's more then enough for a new toon just sitting unused on various alts.   Come to think of it, that's not actually a problem is it?  There's probably a lesson there somewhere.

 

Yes.

Thanks for your influence and for buying my products on the market. But mostly for the influence for buying my products.

 

3 hours ago, Diantane said:

The bottom line is I'm holding out selling the boosters that I made from buying them with the merits I earned while playing the arcs. There will be a lull in the market until the price goes up. My funds have been disappearing and will be forced to play other games until the market collapse is gone.

 

Cast a wider net.

 

How did they used to say it? ... oh ... I think it was .. don't put all your eggs in one basket.

[Yomo Kimyata]

*Twirls mustache*
 

You must pay the rent!

[Mjolnerd]

4 hours ago, Diantane said:

Selling these boosters provides me the revenue I need just to play the game.

 

Weird, I don't sell boosters at all and the game works for me just fine.

[Uun]

cya. can i haz yur stuff?

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

*Twirls mustache*
 

You must pay the rent!

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, Random Axis said:

I spend 2 mil at level 27 filling slots with level 30 IOs and consider that a lot to spend. Those IOs will sit there until they get replaced with set enhancements or a level 50 IO if they'll never get a set--like in Hasten.

I swap earlier, running SOs until 22, when I swap them for 25 IOs, accepting the small reduction, and using higher IOs as I level for new slots. Then, when replacing them with sets, I use unslotters to pull them out, dumping them in base storage for the next character, so besides the incremental cost of the unslotters, there's essentially no cost involved in switching to IOs at 22. And at 50, I go back and replace any leftover 25s with 50s.

[Fan Mail]

So many ways to earn INF.  If you don't like to spend a ton of time on the market, go get your 5 Merits for badges in Atlas, KR, PP and Echo Galaxy City.  That should earn you 20 Merits.  Buy Converters - should net you 60, sell on the Market for 1 INF.  That should net you around 1.7 million INF.  On a new character.  Each character.  

[tidge]

Level 50 IO recipes sell at vendors for an average of 100K Inf.

[FupDup]

I've noticed the booster price drop too so what I've been doing is spending my merits on winter IO's, making them purple, then selling them to the market. I think (?) it's the most profitable inf-per-merit conversion at the moment, but of course that can change at any moment (when I started this the winters went for 32m, now they're only 25m or less). Well, it's the best "direct" conversion anyways. Playing the converter minigame might still be better if you don't mind RNGesus. 

 

There was a point when individual converters went for 120-150k consistently, but now they're like 60-70k. Anything that can be bought for merits seems to be trending down in price over time, which means you both get less for selling but you can also buy cheaper, so there's no real progress in either direction. Basically all you can do is periodically check the inf-per-merit ratio of all the different reward merit items so you can make sure you're selling the most efficient ones. 

 

Also, when it comes to leveling, you should be using attuned IO's where possible. They will grow with you as you level up (to their maximum level) and will also let you keep set bonuses if you ever exemplar down. If you don't need them at max level anymore you can always unslot them and hand them down to your next toon so you can build some "generational wealth" of sorts. 

Edited April 17, 2023 by FupDup

[Clave Dark 5]

5 hours ago, srmalloy said:

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

— Robert A. Heinlein, "Life-Line", 1937

This is why in the real world the rich do what they can to control the government, so they can set such into statute and common law as much as possible.  But that's just redside commie talk, heh heh

[cranebump]

27 minutes ago, Fan Mail said:

So many ways to earn INF.  If you don't like to spend a ton of time on the market, go get your 5 Merits for badges in Atlas, KR, PP and Echo Galaxy City.  That should earn you 20 Merits.  Buy Converters - should net you 60, sell on the Market for 1 INF.  That should net you around 1.7 million INF.  On a new character.  Each character.  

Yep. That's usually how I start a new character (though I just do AP and Echo:GC, once someone drops an Ouro portal). If you're just playing basic story arcs into the 30s, as the OP said they did, you should be able to do this same conversion (along with crafting/selling recipes and other valuable salvage [Prismatic Aether, for instance]) all through those levels, and have plenty of $$ to slot SO's/IO's (albeit not so much with sets, attuned or otherwise).

[Diantane]

I once created a FF Defender and three slotted the shields with SO's @ level 7. Noticed when we were doing the Wincott missions @ +1 and Flux @ +3 (Frostfire @ +4); not only did no one die, but everyone's health was maxed out. Right there I saw the the importance of the single origin enhancements so I kept on buying them and upgraded every five levels. Kept on doing this and my savings ran out. That's when I learned how to make money in the game.

 

Didn't know that! That all server auction pools are the same. Glad to see it.

 

I've never done anything with the incarnates. Frankly its mostly because I could never afford it. Read that some players spend billions on their character and I thought workbench IO's were high.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Diantane

[RCU7115]

That's sounds like a lot of wasted influence to start a toon. You definitely need a financial advisor. 

[nihilii]

I started a new character last week. I decided to start with 0 inf and no help whatsoever, as I do every once in a while. Although I should know a lot about the market, I'm not as skilled as many nor do I have the patience to do things right or even remember how things work. So I figure it out as I go, and it always seems to work out.

Which is to say anyone should be able to replicate my results easily, by following the same patterns. Here's what I did last week:

 

1) get the 3 inspirations P2W power.
This will be your seed money, medium insps always sell for a little bit on the auction house. You defeat a couple lvl 1 mobs to have more than 0 inf, so you can put the insps for sale.

2) select recipes, filter by "rare" and lvl "50-50" (min and max, just lvl 50 recipes)

Look for recipes where there's many for sale and hardly any bidder. Last sale price must be under 10k, ideally around 5k. Put bids on these.
When the bids fill, you turn around and sell these to NPC vendors. Doubling your money.

3) once you have at least 50k, change your filters to: "uncommon" and lvl "10-20"
Hunt for typically undesirable recipes. Confuse, sleep, and so on. Once again, your ideal scenario is many for sale and few buyers. An OK buy price is about 10k inf.
Make sure the crafting ingredients do NOT require Rare salvage. Some yellow recipes lie to you that way.
Get the recipes. Craft them.
Your total cost should be about 50k per recipe.
List them back for 101k (= worst case scenario, you double your money). They will typically sell instantly for 350k. I assume professional converters buy them at that price.

4) once you have 5M to 10M, get pvp recipes
Again, lower level is good because it costs less to craft.
A good buy price is 2M6 or so. Throw in the cost of salvage (mainly the Rare piece at 450k-500k) and the listing price, you should plan to spend about 3M5 per IO.
List them back for 4M1. They will typically sell within a day, for 5M to 7M.

This method got me to 0 to 100M in 4-5 play sessions this week, for about 2h of total market work, and no brainpower required.

 

There are better paths as others suggested. It would make sense to go the merit exploration route rather than bother with 1) and 2). Seems much more efficient!

 

So, do whatever you want. As long as you sell things for a higher price than you get them. There's limitless ways to make inf in this game.

Edited April 17, 2023 by nihilii

[Yomo Kimyata]

Every seller needs a buyer.  For those paying attention, 5 merits will buy one booster, or 15 converters.  I would expect that the trading levels would approximate 15:1, and at 66,666 inf per converter, that's 1mm per booster.  That said, I can't recall the last time I paid that much for either one.  Sounds to me that there are a lot of people who switched from selling their merits as converters to selling their merits as boosters.  Now the question is:  what's the ongoing demand for either of these?  As a (semi-retired) marketer, I've bought literally millions of converters, and as a person with a bunch of tricked out 50s, I've probably bought between 1,000 and 10,000 boosters.