What's considered a lot of wealth in the game?

[Yomo Kimyata]

18 hours ago, Andreah said:

 

I've figured we had a Trillionaire or two out there in net worth; it's not impossible, just difficult. In the two years HC has been up, if a player has been accumulating 10 Billion a week for 100 weeks, that does it. As Yomo has noted before, keeping that rate up is very hard purely from market operations; but if someone is also farming consistently, then I think it's very doable.

 

 

I doubt that there is a trillionaire, or even a half-trillionaire.  I just haven't seen that impact of a large-scale buyer or seller on the AH.

 

That said, many people could be 8-boxing farms and just saving inf for the sake of saving it.  I would have no way of observing that.

[Bionic_Flea]

I think she's including all assets, not just liquid.  How many decked out characters do you have?  How much stuff do you have in character e-mail and storage?  Add that to your "cash on hand" and where you at?

[Andreah]

Just now, Bionic_Flea said:

all assets, not just liquid

Almost all assets. Total wealth; including anything that could be sold and those pegged to current market price, but excluding anything that cannot be sold.

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I think she's including all assets, not just liquid.  How many decked out characters do you have?  How much stuff do you have in character e-mail and storage?  Add that to your "cash on hand" and where you at?

 

1.  As @Ukase said, we're all rich for being able to play this game that was taken out back and shot and left for dead.

2.  We are also all rich when we can buy whatever we want, whenever we want it.  I'd probably peg that at around a billion or two of inf.

3.  I stand by my belief that there is not a trillionaire, even if you generously mark-to-market everything your account owns, even to the merits and slotted IOs.  And frankly there is no way of knowing, because if you have 20k purples sitting in 10+ bases, you are simply not going to be able to monetize that at anything close to market prices unless you are very very good.  Except for rare circumstances, I don't bother storing anything in bases.  It's far better for me to sell what I have and when I need something buy it or make it for a fraction of the price.

 

Even looking at @Gerswin's example, which certainly appears to be an outlier (especially those emp merits!  Wow you must have run a lot of itrials because that's a lot more than you will get for running 120 lvl 50s to lvl 99!) doesn't get us close.  I have about 150 characters -- maybe 30 of them are lvl 50+.  If I stripped them all and sold everything, maybe I'd get 75-150bn for them?  Then there are the merits -- I don't have anywhere near 650,000 of them, but even if I had 100,000, I'm not going to be able liquidate them in short order at anything close to 100 cents on the dollar.

 

I think it's safe to say that we are all rich.  And if you aren't, let me know and we can try to help!

[Bionic_Flea]

3 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I think it's safe to say that we are all rich.  And if you aren't, let me know and we can try to help!

[EmperorSteele]

For the sake of pedantry, I would like to make an addition/correction to @Andreah's list: No, Emyrian and Astral merits are not -immediately- fungible, buuut, they can be converted into Threads, which can be used to buy Super and Ultimate Inspirations, and then you can sell THOSE on the Market. Or, more simply, you can also always convert them into Reward Merits (2 RMs for Astrals, 20 for Empy) and then do the merit breakdown as previously described =D

[Andreah]

4 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

For the sake of pedantry, I would like to make an addition/correction to @Andreah's list: No, Emyrian and Astral merits are not -immediately- fungible, buuut, they can be converted into Threads, which can be used to buy Super and Ultimate Inspirations, and then you can sell THOSE on the Market. Or, more simply, you can also always convert them into Reward Merits (2 RMs for Astrals, 20 for Empy) and then do the merit breakdown as previously described =D

Aha! Well, you can also immediately convert one Empyrean Merit to ten Reward Merits, and that's the basis I generally use. Astrals, go through the extra step of going 5 Astrals to an Empyrean first.  

 

I think on the market, going to threads to buy Super/Ultimate inspirations is both a poorer deal and lower volume.

 

1 Emp -> 20 threads -> 2/3 an Ultimate worth ~750K or 2 regular Super Inspirations worth ~1M

 

vs.

 

1 Emp -> 10 reward Merits -> 30 Converters worth ~2M

[Wobegone]

This has been an interesting thread to read.  My own take is when I reached around 8 billion.  It was a meandering path(this is a tribute to Yomo's Meandering path to a billion thread) 

 

I started by accumulating merits with a couple of solo projects. After they reached 50, the next several alts got to level 22 via the AE accumulating tickets, which turned into hundreds of low level IOs.  After transferring 50 million Influence to each character, those IOs were then rare roulette.  Anything I couldn't slot were sent to my main via base storage.  This worked pretty well for most of my early alts.  Frankenslotting works quite well for mid level characters.  

 

After doing that for a couple of months I adopted @Yomo Kimyata's method of each alt being self sufficient.  Once I reached around 8 billion Influence I started just giving it away.  I started by buying large amounts of Performance Shifter and Miracle procs and giving them to any character I encountered who didn't have set bonuses.  And my 8 billion didn't budge.  

 

I continued to have each alt be self-sufficient, while doing occasional market work on my main, and started accumulating ATOs via Superpacks, occasional runs with my farmer for purples, and the rest of my time spent leveling alts.  My 8 billion hasn't budged, while my supply of ATOs and purples have filled my base.  

 

Simply put, once i reached 8 billion, I never had a need for Influence again with minimal effort playing the market, while still giving away rare procs on a daily basis.  

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Ignatz the Insane

[Gerswin]

On 5/5/2021 at 4:23 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

 

 

Even looking at @Gerswin's example, which certainly appears to be an outlier (especially those emp merits!  Wow you must have run a lot of itrials because that's a lot more than you will get for running 120 lvl 50s to lvl 99!) doesn't get us close.  I have about 150 characters -- maybe 30 of them are lvl 50+.  If I stripped them all and sold everything, maybe I'd get 75-150bn for them?  Then there are the merits -- I don't have anywhere near 650,000 of them, but even if I had 100,000, I'm not going to be able liquidate them in short order at anything close to 100 cents on the dollar.

 

 

 

To clarify, I have about 15K emp merits which could be converted to 150K reward merits.  The rest of the merits are already reward merits. Most of them were earned through multiboxing tfs/story arcs with my kids/nephews.

[nihilii]

On 5/5/2021 at 10:23 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

I stand by my belief that there is not a trillionaire, even if you generously mark-to-market everything your account owns, even to the merits and slotted IOs.

I believe there has to be at least one trillionaire, and most likely several.

Let's say one fully IOed out character, sparing no expense, ++ IOs and everything, is 1 billion.

Being a trillionaire is "only" 1000 maxxed out characters.

 

I play on and off, more off than on lately. I've never been a high performer in either the market or farming. Yet I have at least 60-70 maxxed out alts, perhaps close to a hundred even.

For that matter, if you're sitting on 4k Winter Packs... That's another 100B. We know there's people who accumulated significantly more than 4k Winter Packs, and that's just one play amongst their marketing activities.

 

There's people who clock some serious game time, "triple" AFK farm (and that "triple" is a wink to the three account maximum rule, in reality they're multiboxing further).

 

There has to be trillionaires.

 

Is the wealth liquid? You're right, there's no way the market could absorb it in an instant. But it's no different than saying Bezos or Musk is the wealthiest man on Earth, where 99% of that wealth is in stock options that could not be cashed out all at once without crashing the market. I think it's fair to say CoH trillionaires are trillionaires regardless. There is probably enough liquidity on the markets to convert that wealth to inf within a month or so, if not a week.

Edited May 8, 2021 by nihilii

[Bionic_Flea]

I disagree that every "maxxed" out character goes for 1 Billion.  While some do, I'd say most are top-tier builds somewhere between 300k-500k.  Take 1 billion and divide it by 96 slots and you get to just under 10.5 million for each slot . . . and that includes fitness pool, brawl, etc.   There aren't enough IOs that average 10 million over an entire build because there are only so many purples & superiors and most top end builds don't need more than few sets of them.  Even if it was 1B each, 1000 of those builds is still pretty outrageous.

 

I'm not saying it's impossible for their to be a trillionaire.  There are certainly dedicated and crazy people out there capable of doing all sorts of things.  Even accounting for all assets, I consider it improbable.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Bionic_Flea

[nihilii]

5 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I disagree that every "maxxed" out character goes for 1 Billion.

I don't mean that it is a standard everyone should abide to. Just that I know that on the characters I personally considered maxxed out, it's probably a good average. Almost every slot is worth about +8 millions than the slotted IO, because of enhancement boosters. Throw in purples (likely 3 to 5 sets), winter sets (likely a full set, if spread across several powers), ATOs (likely 1 full set, perhaps 2 sets, sometimes just 2 IOs admittedly). That's a solid 30-40 slots worth perhaps 20 millions each, once boosters on purples and catalysts on winter/ATOs are averaged out.

 

You could slash the figure in half if it jives more with your expectations. Even at 500 mill per character, I have a strong suspicion there's at least a few players who must have gone all out and have a stable of 2000+ alts - or have enough alts that combined with a few mains they love and overplay, and accumulate merits on, they're in the trillion networth.

 

With "moderate" daily AFK farming (2 accounts), you'd make a couple billions a day just from influence and drops. Someone who'd do that since the server started and with no stops would be close to the trillion mark without even touching the market, beyond "list at 1 inf". There's some big fishes out there who have a lot of free time.

 

[Harlequin565]

Being a saddo I keep a spreadsheet on all my alts. Just so I can keep track of where my money is.

 

Across all my toons, I have 8 billion inf. All my 50s (16 of them) are purpled out with boosters and catalysts where appropriate. Most of that money is sat across the 14 sub-50 alts I'm working on. In SG storage I have a full bin of winter IOs, 1.5 bins of ATIOs, half a bin of Purple IOs and half a bin of PvP IOs. 5 other bins of assorted IOs that I'm trying to use up. I have 1 bin of catalysts and 1 bin of boosters. I don't bother storing converters, just carry 1-200 on each toon.

 

I say all this because I suspect it's considered to be a "small" amount of wealth compared to some, but for me, it's way in excess of anything I need. As I level a character, I tend to convert and sell all my common drops, convert merits to converters and sell the excess, and each character that hits 50 tends to have about the same amount they started with. During the Winter event, all my 50s with excess cash just buy winter packs which I sell the contents of in around Spring. If I ever get a character that looks like it's running out of money, I buy Hero packs and sell the content for profit until I have enough to finish that toon.

 

It's probably been over a year since I did any "marketeering" to try and make money I think.

[Ukase]

Nothing sad about tracking your stuff on a spreadsheet! 

 

[Andreah]

I would not count boosted IO's as being more valuable than any others. Boosting your IO's is pure consumption and has no resale value. It does cost quite a bit more to do, but it isn't a store of wealth, since the boosted attribute can't be traded, and is stripped if you try.

[Andreah]

On 5/8/2021 at 6:53 AM, Bionic_Flea said:

I disagree that every "maxxed" out character goes for 1 Billion.

I agree with the disagreement. 😄 

 

It's certainly possible spend a billion on a build, but it's not the same as the value of the build. When i talk to people who're doing builds and who are concerned it's going to cost "600 Million" or more, I try to ask them how they are coming up with that number, and often it's because they're expecting to overpay hugely for IOs.

 

The market will let you overspend on things incredibly. We even have threads for this. But even without putting in accidental extra zeros, most players have a poor strategy for how to get good value off the market. Or worse, they know how but don't seem to care. I'd say spending and extra thirty seconds to bid-creep and save a million is worth the same time farming. Maybe by quite a margin! And there are even better ways to get good deals.

 

I would venture a guess that most Billion Inf Builds might reasonably only liquidate for half that.

 

However, we have multiple builds. And it would not be difficult to have a billion in value in three carefully tuned builds, but I think this is very uncommon.

[Ukase]

You show me a build that cost you a billion. I dare you! I will find a way to build it for half that. It might take me a long time, particularly if you're making crazy use of 53 Cytos and Micros. 
You might value a 3% def (all) Glad Armor at 8M, I value it at 4m. Why? Because pvp io recipes at level 10 can be bought pretty much instantly at 3.5-4M, and crafting it is 500-600K. 

You might look at an avalanche IO as costing 25M. I look at it as costing 7M, because of the winter pack sale. Catalysts have zero value to me, as while they're useful, they cost me nothing to get. Boosters are essentially a sunk cost. I don't think anyone in this forum would actually buy an enhancement booster unless they were pressed for time, or thought they could get more by relisting them. We use the boosters that came from the packs. 

Whether you're using attuned or level 50's for your build, you can still buy the recipes, craft them - then slot them, or sell them and re-buy the identical item attuned. It's quite nonsense to consider your buy it now price as the value of your build. Something is only worth as much as someone else is willing to pay. 

The 5 luck of the gambler 7.5% your build has - that you think are worth 6M each? They're only worth 6M total to me, because I can get a red fortune recipe for 1M - craft, convert and off I go. Converters come from packs to - plenty enough where I wouldn't need to buy them for converting some IOs to save some inf. 

I have often thought about offering to do the "shopping" for some sg mates. They pay me a billion, give me the build from mids, I give them all the enhancements for the build. I keep the change. 

[nihilii]

34 minutes ago, Andreah said:

I would not count boosted IO's as being more valuable than any others. Boosting your IO's is pure consumption and has no resale value. It does cost quite a bit more to do, but it isn't a store of wealth, since the boosted attribute can't be traded, and is stripped if you try.

Oh right, entirely fair point. This significantly lowers the net value of some builds.

 

Hmm, then again, I kinda want to argue I never sell a boosted IO on the market if I'm stripping a character. I just pass it to another character who can use it. So the IO still holds its value in that said value doesn't need to be spent again.

But, I think you're right ultimately. We can't count used boosters as wealth. Probably? (...I keep going back and forth in my head as I write this.)

Edited May 9, 2021 by nihilii

[Monty Haull]

I think the conversation has switch a little.  Yes, you can do a build by being frugal and doing conversions.  The point of a high dollar build would be "what can I sell it for?" 

[Bionic_Flea]

8 minutes ago, Rugor said:

The point of a high dollar build would be "what can I sell it for?"

 

The point of a high dollar build is "what crazy s**t can I do with this"

[Andreah]

Right; the point is what you can do with it, the market valuation is what you could reasonably liquidate it for. 🙂

[Andreah]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

Catalysts have zero value to me, as while they're useful, they cost me nothing to get

I understand where you're coming from, but in a more strict accounting sense, they're worth what you could sell them for, which is pretty consistently 1.8M each. (2M less market fee)

 

When I do analysis of my marketing schemes, I value everything, no matter how cheaply I buy it, at the price I could reasonably expect to sell it at, less fees. Let's say some kind benefactor was gifting me rare salvage, and I was using those to craft recipes to feed up-conversion marketing, I'd still estimate my profit margins counting those at 450k. Because if I can't sell what I'm making for more than the sum of the parts, it's not a real profit.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Andreah

[Yomo Kimyata]

6 hours ago, Ukase said:

I have often thought about offering to do the "shopping" for some sg mates. They pay me a billion, give me the build from mids, I give them all the enhancements for the build. I keep the change. 

 

I considered doing something similar, and still may if there is demand.  But I have a different pricing model.  You give me a build and 1bn, I buy you everything you need and either email you or meet you in game and transfer everything and return the excess.  Then I get paid my fee, which I'm trying to figure out if it should be 500mm or 1bn.  My rationale is that sending 100 emails in and of itself takes up so much more effort than I want that I'd charge a fee for the effort.

 

I also think that people would try to game the system and send you a build with 9 lvl 53 cytos (I have one).

[Yomo Kimyata]

Also, although I agree it is technically possible that someone has amassed one trillion in influence and spent it all on their characters, I still highly doubt that it has actually happened on HC.  I would be over the moon if someone proved me wrong, but really the only way to prove it is to liquidate everything and since we are all crazy rich anyway that wouldn't (in my opinion) be worth the effort.

 

Once you have enough inf to do whatever you want, it's kind of irrelevant whether you can do that ten times over, or a thousand times over.  IMO.

 

 

[Black_Assassin]

20 hours ago, Harlequin565 said:

Being a saddo I keep a spreadsheet on all my alts. Just so I can keep track of where my money is.

 

i also have a fat spreadsheet that i track stuff on.

 

i also use mine to monitor what im working on and it tracks amount in bids/listings and even does profit margins etc. Its real super sad 🙂