Is the in-game economy weird and broken?

[tidge]

28 minutes ago, Luminara said:

And even if there were a way to make Co* more accessible to players accustomed to gear treadmill progression, without alienating the existing player base, it wouldn't be satisfactory because we don't have an end game. 

 

I am in 99% agreement with the above sentiment. The 1% allows that maybe there is an end-game, but whatever it is is completely variable depending on the player.

 

The market doesn't need to factor into any one particular player's end-game... and if it does, then the market is now part of that end-game, and should be treated as such for the purposes of "winning" that player's end game.

 

Even if I narrow my own understanding of a very general gripe about "equipping" characters to "I wanna equip, I canna afford it" (my words, not anyone else's)... there are SO MANY players who understand how many different in-game strategies exist for "equipping", I can't see this any different than a gripe about "I wanna travel, I canna do it" or "I don't wanna be hit by snipers in FF" or any of a thousand other in-game challenges for which many players can offer advice.

[Azari]

The market was so F’d up on live it almost ruined the game for me. I could not afford to fully build any of my toons. Everything was too damn expensive and as a high school student I didnt have the time to dedicate to making all that inf. People were spending 6 billion on toons regularly. It was insane. I just gave up on getting IOs for a long time.

Edited February 10 by Azari

[Troo]

so weird, so broken..

[Clave Dark 5]

13 hours ago, Azari said:

The market was so F’d up on live it almost ruined the game for me. I could not afford to fully build any of my toons. Everything was too damn expensive and as a high school student I didnt have the time to dedicate to making all that inf. People were spending 6 billion on toons regularly. It was insane. I just gave up on getting IOs for a long time.

It was getting pretty crazy before the end, but I still suspect that was (mostly) by design: the game existed to encourage you to keep playing, and therefor paying to play.  If they put in some really great stuff for you, the longer they can string you along before giving it to you, the better from that viewpoint.  Fully built-out toons were supposed to be an aspirational goal, not something to have after a few hours of farming.  It was meant to be damned hard to achieve, the chase was the thing, not the having.

 

HC is obviously running a very different game now, ha ha.

Edited February 11 by Clave Dark 5

[tidge]

9 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

It was getting pretty crazy before the end, but I still suspect that was (mostly) by design: the game existed to encourage you to keep playing, and therefor paying to play.  If they put in some really great stuff for you, the longer they can string you along before giving it to you, the better from that viewpoint. 

 

I blame the Incarnate grind from Live as the primary reason I do so little of the Incarnate content (including slotting Incarnate powers beyond Alpha) with most of my characters. Homecoming has made incarnate paths much more palatable, just like they did with non-incarnate power slotting.

 

I can sort of judge my own headspace about "what constitutes grinding?", because it appears (to me, from my PoV) that there are an order of magnitude more gripes about the market/economy/auction house than there are about slotting Incarnate abilities.

[Pleonast]

The Homecoming devs have done a great job balancing the economy. Far better than Live. But I’d like to see even more smoothing out of the obtaining and the auction-house pricing of enhancements. 
 

Here's an idea. The first time a player (that is, a global I.D.) completes a task force in a month, they get a special merit. That merit can be used to buy any one IO recipe, which used or traded as normal. 
 

Benefits: 

* Every task force gets run regularly. Because a global ID can only get the merit from a particular task force once per month, there’s no incentive to run only the “easy” ones. 
* Salvage is still needed. Because the enhancements need to be constructed from the recipes. 
* Smooth out prices of recipes and enhancements. Because any recipe or enhancement that is too expensive will quickly be brought down in price by entrepreneurs who will easily increase the supply. 
* Remove the converter lottery. Because you won’t need it to make inf. It’s weird for the game’s economy to have so much randomness. 
* Create a clear path to outfit a character: do task force, make the enhancement you want. 
 

Would this work? Is it possible to implement? 

Edited February 11 by Pleonast

[tidge]

52 minutes ago, Pleonast said:

The Homecoming devs have done a great job balancing the economy. Far better than Live. But I’d like to see even more smoothing out of the obtaining and the auction-house pricing of enhancements. 
 

Here's an idea. The first time a player (that is, a global I.D.) completes a task force in a month, they get a special merit. That merit can be used to buy any one IO recipe, which used or traded as normal

...

Would this work? Is it possible to implement? 

 

It absolutely would work, because it has been implemented already. Merits (from TFs) can be used to buy recipes now.

 

Not every TF/SF offers enough merits to buy every recipe, but running four weeks of the weekly TF/SF certainly would offer more than enough.

[lemming]

41 minutes ago, Pleonast said:

The Homecoming devs have done a great job balancing the economy. Far better than Live. But I’d like to see even more smoothing out of the obtaining and the auction-house pricing of enhancements. 
 

Here's an idea. The first time a player (that is, a global I.D.) completes a task force in a month, they get a special merit. That merit can be used to buy any one IO recipe, which used or traded as normal. 
 

Benefits: 

* Every task force gets run regularly. Because a global ID can only get the merit from a particular task force once per month, there’s no incentive to run only the “easy” ones. 
* Salvage is still needed. Because the enhancements need to be constructed from the recipes. 
* Smooth out prices of recipes and enhancements. Because any recipe or enhancement that is too expensive will quickly be brought down in price by entrepreneurs who will easily increase the supply. 
* Remove the converter lottery. Because you won’t need it to make inf. It’s weird for the game’s economy to have so much randomness. 
* Create a clear path to outfit a character: do task force, make the enhancement you want. 
 

Would this work? Is it possible to implement? 

Probably annoying to implement at least for the account check.

That being said, since we're not limited to one account, people could just have a account grinding to do this.

And we already have a way to buy the recipes via reward merits.

 

On converters, I'd love to see a "Just change it to what I want" cost.  Cost being what it would be in converters expect 50% of the time.  (Maybe 75%)

So for a simple conversion in set where you want the 2nd bit and you have the 1rst out of six.  For a 48.8% threshold, it would be 9 converters. 12 converters is the 59%

I think people would want to just spend the converters to avoid the click click click nature.

 

More complicated math when switching sets of course, but just an extra step or two.

[ZekeStenzland]

It’s hard to overstate how much converters have improved the ability of all players to enhance their characters affordably and effectively. I would not look forward to going back to high value enhancements being traded off-ah to avoid the 2B inf limits. 
 

The only improvement I would like to see wrt converters is being able to use them on HamiOs, DSyncs, etc. 

 

Edited February 11 by ZekeStenzland
Spelling

[Grouchybeast]

On 2/11/2024 at 6:49 AM, Clave Dark 5 said:

It was getting pretty crazy before the end, but I still suspect that was (mostly) by design: the game existed to encourage you to keep playing, and therefor paying to play.  If they put in some really great stuff for you, the longer they can string you along before giving it to you, the better from that viewpoint.  Fully built-out toons were supposed to be an aspirational goal, not something to have after a few hours of farming.  It was meant to be damned hard to achieve, the chase was the thing, not the having.

 

I think that's somewhat unfair.  I agree that top-end builds were supposed to be aspirational, and I think that's reasonable for an MMO.  But on live the devs were struggling with the results of years of inflation in an economy that had grown up haphazardly starting in a time when MMO economies were less well understood than they are now two decades later.  Now, they certainly made some choices that didn't help (AE was bad for the economy in so very many ways), and they stuck to some principles that were detrimental (PVP IOs only dropping in PVP) but they were trying to fix the worst issues.  Combining the auction houses gave redside an actual functioning economy.  Converters, even in the limited supply on live, did start to bring down the most ridiculous prices.

 

 

[Duckbutler]

4 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

 

I think that's somewhat unfair.  I agree that top-end builds were supposed to be aspirational, and I think that's reasonable for an MMO.  But on live the devs were struggling with the results of years of inflation in an economy that had grown up haphazardly starting in a time when MMO economies were less well understood than they are now two decades later.  Now, they certainly made some choices that didn't help (AE was bad for the economy in so very many ways), and they stuck to some principles that were detrimental (PVP IOs only dropping in PVP) but they were trying to fix the worst issues.  Combining the auction houses gave redside an actual functioning economy.  Converters, even in the limited supply on live, did start to bring down the most ridiculous prices.

 

 

 

There's so much difference between this and the former live economy! I played a lot of red side on a low population server and... yeah. There was no economy to speak of prior to the merged markets. And when I did play blue side, I remember bumping into market slot and inventory limits very frequently. One of the other things that has struck me since returning has been how much is available through the P2W vendor and how good some of it is. And I'm going to cut myself off there before I say something regrettable.

[LinkAiris]

On 2/2/2024 at 1:51 AM, Zombra said:

I'm glad to be back in CoX after 15ish years away 🙂

 

However I feel really overwhelmed by what's going on with the economy now.  I'm being told "read my newb guide, this is the way you're SUPPOSED to progress.  Farm these task forces for merits, then take the merit rewards to the worktable and turn them into splanges, then sell the splanges for a billion inf each at the auction house, then use that inf to buy shoobadoo enhancements, then break those in half and smear peanut butter on them, then ...."

 

Like, I just want to run missions and get a little inf, and buy enhancements appropriate to my level.  But I feel like I'm doing it wrong and the economy is only set up to support billionaires.  I don't remember the early/mid levels being this rough, contacts don't even sell enhancements any more even though they all say they do, can't even afford DOs for my level 15 characters when I finally get to the zones that have stores.  The auction house looks like a Wild West of "exploit or die".

 

So .... what's your take?  Is the economy perfectly fine if you don't do these weird exploits people are talking about?  Or should I give up on fun and get $50 loan instant app in real life?

 

Thanks in advance for any perspective.

I completely understand feeling overwhelmed by the changes, especially when it comes to the in-game economy. It seems like there's this pressure to follow a specific progression path, complete with all these intricate steps involving merits, splanges, and shoobadoo enhancements. But hey, that's not everyone's cup of tea.

You're absolutely entitled to play the game your own way, running missions, earning inf, and picking up enhancements that suit your level and playstyle. The beauty of CoX has always been its flexibility and the freedom it offers to players.

Sure, the auction house might seem like a chaotic mess at times, but there are still plenty of opportunities to thrive without diving deep into the high-stakes economy game.

Edited May 22 by LinkAiris

[Snarky]

I played on Live with a truly broken economy.  Here, with any effort, you can kit out a “real build” in a reasonable time.  
 

By this i mean the merits, drops, and constant gifts showered on regular play will make all your biggest needs fulfilled.   In 3 hours play?  No.  But by the time you are vet level 30?  Probably.  

[BazookaTwo]

On 2/3/2024 at 2:02 AM, Andreah said:

There are other, non-gameplay, ways to make money, too. Both take some artistic skill: 

 

• Enter and win costume contests
• Make and sell Supergroup Bases

 

I gave away a perfectly awesome SG base when I migrated everything to Excelsior from Reunion, back in the day. What does a cool non-bespoke base go for usually? What about a bespoke one?

[Andreah]

7 hours ago, BazookaTwo said:

I gave away a perfectly awesome SG base when I migrated everything to Excelsior from Reunion, back in the day. What does a cool non-bespoke base go for usually? What about a bespoke one?

 

My guess is a well designed generic base is worth at least a billion Inf. A bespoke base could go for many times that.

 

If you are good at doing base building, I think you should be able to get at least 100 million inf/hour for your work even on existing bases.