Please let your less experienced friends know.

[Intrinsic]

The real jackpot in the super packs used to be the reward merits.  Back when enhancement boosters were selling for 1.5-2 million inf each, a 100-merit card from a pack was worth 30-40 million inf.  They're not worthless now, but the value of reward merits has been hit hard by long-term deflation.

 

[UltraAlt]

On 12/10/2024 at 2:17 PM, Ilaria said:

Did I miss the party of "Profits for Super Packs"?

 

I'm honestly tending to be on the other side of what you intend to mean by "Profits for Super Packs".

 

 

 

My "Profits" are "for Super Packs". I do use my profits to buy enhances, but, seriously, I probably open more Super Packs than I buy set enhancements for slotting from the market (I tend not to buy ATOs, Winter, or Universal damage for slotting - as I get those other ways)

... versus your "Super Packs" "For" "Profits".

 

I had forgotten about the things until a friend sent me one years ago.

It wasn't long before I started buying them.

 

My issue with the super packs was not understanding that I could sort thing things in the email window.

Before I realized you could sort them in alphabetical order in email, I had already converted one SG base to hold ATOs and built another to hold Winter Lord enhances - so I could use the enhancement tables to sort them by set.

 

Now I don't pull them out of email until I want to slot a ATO - which is usually a whole set at a time- (I have plenty of the the Winter Lord stored away ... but because I have so many Merits from super packs, I tend to just buy the one or two I need with merits ... I only tend to use a couple of the same kind when I use them), give full sets of both ATO sets for an archetype to someone I'm gaming with recurrently, or - at this point - if I have over 20 of one in stock ... put them up on the market for sale ... and they can sit until they sell.

And, yes, after a time, merits from story arc and task forces really means very little to me as I have a good quantity of merits saved up from super pack purchases.

 

So, if over time you are going to alt out, then super packs can be useful in the long run.

I am not buying the to "turn a profit"; I'm buying them "with my profits", but, in the end, it is a "profit" to my characters in the long term.

 

"Profit from the market"? I gain that in other ways.

It isn't "by" farming, but I suspect most of my profit comes from the inf generated by farmers ... when they buy the goods that my characters have posted on the market.

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

Before I realized you could sort them in alphabetical order in email,

 

Yup, that was a game changer

[Andreah]

On 12/10/2024 at 2:26 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

Booper did an analysis a while back, and I don't have it on hand

Got you covered, here's Bopper's post:  

 

 

[TheSpiritFox]

That's line cutting. 

The AH can get clogged up. Runs slowly, takes time to resolve things. Tacking the extra 1 influence means you just jumped ahead of every single superpack transaction that's going for 1 less. Especially since people buying these tend to buy them in bulk, doing this can ensure your bulk purchase moves quickly. 

[Intrinsic]

On 1/1/2025 at 4:27 PM, TheSpiritFox said:

The AH can get clogged up. Runs slowly, takes time to resolve things.

 

The few times I've bought 100+ of anything at 'buy it now' prices those orders filled in seconds.  Granted I've barely played in the last few months, but are players nowadays experiencing longer delays?

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 1/1/2025 at 5:27 PM, TheSpiritFox said:

That's line cutting. 

The AH can get clogged up. Runs slowly, takes time to resolve things. Tacking the extra 1 influence means you just jumped ahead of every single superpack transaction that's going for 1 less. Especially since people buying these tend to buy them in bulk, doing this can ensure your bulk purchase moves quickly. 

 

I say this with 100% certainty:  the only way you are going to buy a seeded item faster by paying a higher price is if someone bought all the seeded items and relisted them at a higher price.  Pay what you want, but you're not cutting the line since there is a supply of millions of that item being offered at the seeded price.

[TheSpiritFox]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

I say this with 100% certainty:  the only way you are going to buy a seeded item faster by paying a higher price is if someone bought all the seeded items and relisted them at a higher price.  Pay what you want, but you're not cutting the line since there is a supply of millions of that item being offered at the seeded price.

No its about currently processing transactions. If the AH is clogged with pending pulls and lists and cashouts paying more jumps you higher in the queue. Its an impatience measure, but the extra 1 influence can save you 5 minutes, maybe 10 while you wait for the transaction stack currently occurring to thin out or get to your number during peak times on the server. 

Edited January 4 by TheSpiritFox

[TheSpiritFox]

2 hours ago, Intrinsic said:

 

The few times I've bought 100+ of anything at 'buy it now' prices those orders filled in seconds.  Granted I've barely played in the last few months, but are players nowadays experiencing longer delays?

Its during peak times. When the AH is clogged with current transactions because a bunch of people are all using it all at the same time. Most of the time its like you say. But I've had times where like, I put in rare salvage bids for 500k when its going for 500k and it takes 10 minutes to actually fill, and if I sit there and watch it it wont like have one or two go through, itll be like nothing goes through at all, and then suddenly it all goes through in 2 seconds after waiting for the AH queue to clear out. 

Happened with superpacks before too. Bought a shitload of winters back when they were 10mil each and sometimes I would have to wait 5-10 min to fill my order and then it would all land at once. 

Edited January 4 by TheSpiritFox

[lemming]

I have never had that issue with seeded items. And with Super packs, I've seen it take a little bit of time, but since I tend to buy 100 at a time, by the time I'm clicking on the 10th order of 10, the others are filled.

I think there was a issue some years back with the auction house being slow overall, but that got fixed.

[Andreah]

I sometimes buy Superpacks 1,000 at a time, and never had an issue with the auction getting behind on it.

[tidge]

Perception bias: I've probably had the "Auction House is too Busy" message once in the last 12 months, and it happened to be last week... and I was rapidly flipping between alts to clear out inventory and transactions. This instance was not a queuing issue for purchases, as I was trying to claim inf for sold items.

 

I'd be surprised if there was much of an affect based on folks trying to purchase seeded items for the same price... I've put it a lot of the identical bids for non-seeded items (10xconverters, 10xsalvage of same rarity) and the AH doesn't fill one bid before starting to fill a second. I think it is just the queueing of the database at play.

[Andreah]

26 minutes ago, tidge said:

the "Auction House is too Busy" message

I think this message and the timeout is just automatic when there's more than about 30 items sold to claim inf on. You could be the only player on all the servers and it would still tell you that.

[lemming]

50 minutes ago, Andreah said:

I think this message and the timeout is just automatic when there's more than about 30 items sold to claim inf on. You could be the only player on all the servers and it would still tell you that.

I think it's 32 of any interaction in a time period, but when you hit the "Get all inf" you'll hit easily.   I was screwing around with it the other day after retiring a char and selling off a bunch of excess items.   I'm unsure how a multiple item counts, but when I did 32 or less of singles, it worked without an issue, but if more than that with a claim all caused the "Too Busy"

 

Pretty sure a multiple counts more than 1 transaction, but two singles count more than one group of 2.

[Andreah]

9 minutes ago, lemming said:

Pretty sure a multiple counts more than 1 transaction, but two singles count more than one group of 2.

Should be easy to test by selling four stacks of ten salvage. That's forty items but only four listings.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I’m pretty confident that my experience and testing matches with my understanding of the model.  I can think of three basic ways why the /AH hangs up:

 

1. the individual client is having trouble establishing connection with the /AH interface.  I’ve certainly had this happen to me and that’s going to be about issues on the individuals computer.  In this case upping your bid isn’t going to help.

 

2.  The overall /AH is currently suffering from more unresolved transactions than normal, so the hamsters are grinding.  I can see how this happens more at peak times than at other times.  I also don’t think upping your bid helps out here — the problem isn’t necessarily that your bid isn’t crossing with a seller, but that the sorting algorithm hasn’t gotten to your trade yet.  I feel that is what led to the “Claim All” limitation as well as governors on opening packs.

 

3.  The item you are trading has a lot of unresolved trades.  There are not a lot of categories that seem to trigger this, but if you sell a thousand of anything at 1inf into outstanding bids, it’s going to take a few minutes generally to process.  This is working as intended, and if you are buying and selling things that lots of other people are buying at the same time, the system has to periodically reassess new trades.

 

If you are trying to buy common salvage at 250, and there are hundreds being offered there and you are not buying them, it’s almost certainly because someone else is buying at a higher price and you need to wait until the higher matches cross before yours will.  
 

Packs don’t have an active two way market.  If I put in 1000 bids at 25mm for winter packs, you will buy 1000 at your price because we know they are listed there, and you will buy them within seconds.  There aren’t new bids and offers coming in every few seconds like say for common salvage.

 

feel free to do your own testing, and pay what you want, but paying over list price for seeded stuff isn’t saving you time.

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, Andreah said:

Should be easy to test by selling four stacks of ten salvage. That's forty items but only four listings.

This will be somewhere between four and forty transactions, and that will entirely depend on the current outstanding bids.

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 hours ago, lemming said:

Pretty sure a multiple counts more than 1 transaction, but two singles count more than one group of 2.

 

This depends on whether or not there is already someone who's got a trade to cross.  If you bid 1,000 for a Chaos Theorem, and it doesn't transact, if you do it again it will stack your unmet bid with your other one up to 10.

[UltraAlt]

On 1/4/2025 at 11:34 AM, tidge said:

"Auction House is too Busy" message

 

This seems to be triggered when you try to cash in more than 30 or so things that have been sold by clicking on the button to get all influence.

 

I don't think I have ever had it happen when I was manually clicking each sold item to get the infl.

However, if some of those transactions for infl retrieval that you were manually clicking on to retrieve are still processing + your character still has slightly below 30 more completed sales and then click the button to get all the remaining infl, you may get the busy message. 

 

Generally, I'm collecting inf for well over 30 sales, so I have been watching the behavior for a long time and trying to manipulate it to avoid the message as seems to make sense at the time.

 

When pulling card drops out of email, that doesn't seem to hang at all if you wait to hit the button to retrieve the next one until the message that displays on the screen for the item retrieval starts to fall toward the bottom of the screen.