Prevent artificial inflation, please.

[GM Fiddleback]

Just now, Some Random User said:

QBasic, here.

Too advanced for me. I'm out.

 

[GM Fiddleback]

Meanwhile, questions:

Has Mr. User realized that the AH has essentially hit bottom and stayed there for all but a few particularly desirable things?

Would you be upset if I told you I set price at 1000 for any colored item? (Commons go to the vendor because AH prices are well below what vendors pay.)

Are we all clear that the AH is not the only means of gaining these things nor of spending inf to acquire things?

Can you explain why anything costs anything in the game?

 

Please, everyone feel free to answer. In particular, that last one.

Edited August 1, 2019 by GM Fiddleback

[Vanden]

I assume things cost things because of a scheme set into place by evil marketeers to separate us from our stuff because they hate the idea of anyone having stuff besides themselves.

[Some Random User]

I want to address both the theory and the practice, and I feel there is something going on in-game.

 

In response to justicebeliever the following: We need to define our terms.

 

There are three prices to consider here.

1. The price anchor: There's the price the staff have weighted things to conform to through both Merit Rewards and seeding prices.
2. The ideal rate: There's the price the players would expect to be able to pay through competent budgeting of the Influence and Merit Rewards they earn while leveling. This is generally a semi-fixed rate, and can be calculated based on the amount of XP they earned so far.
3. The market rate: There is the price things are currently selling for.

Inflation (the noun or adjective) is when the market rate is inflated above the ideal rate. Inflation (the verb) is a trend of increasing inflation (the noun). There are things that typically cause inflation. What we have right now is a price anchor above the market rate, which is in turn above the ideal rate. What we have right now is a pattern of the market rate spiking up above the price anchor and then dropping to a middle-ground, and that middle ground is still inflated. What I'm not seeing is consideration of the ideal rate.

 

Economies are systems. Back during C.o.X. free-to-play there was a forum thread that addressed this idea in the terms of making a build work on your budget, and the devs got into the weeds on how they figured out what they wanted knew what the market to do. I kept up on that thread because I had something to apply their logic to. At the time I was using their logic to decide how to handle buying and selling magic gear in a Dungeons & Dragons game. I tried to use the same principles to set up an economy in another system's large (12+ players) ongoing P.v.P. game where trading among players was an important part of the game.

 

In my experience human beings try to game systems, and try to get themselves a benefit where one exists, and react very poorly to having those benefits removed.

 

My perspective by way of an aside: This is regarding an ongoing P.v.P. game mentioned above. Before my changes, when someone ran that game normally there was something like Quake's old rush for the grenade launcher. One person would try to get a plum first, then play gatekeeper by killing everyone who tried to contest their monopoly on that plum. Almost every campaign had to be short term because the game fall into this quickly. Some games added more players and could keep going by running a treadmill. The old cool kids would sit on their plum and recruit new players, who would quit in disgust after remaking characters and still being fleeced a couple of times. Everyone wanted the campaigns to keep going so they could roleplay their characters, so I added a small rule that removed the incentive to bottom-feed, and I set up an environment where long-term players were guaranteed different types of plums if they stuck with the game long enough. Something that I found interesting was that there were a few players who had metaphorically demolished other campaigns. When they heard I'd had a game running for about four months (a long time in that game's community) they visited my game. After examination of what I was doing differently they began privately approaching me and demanding I give them a way to bias the field. They dominated other games I was playing in and wanted me to broker a situation where they'd also dominate the one I was running. I pointed out the game was supposed to be about other things, like the roleplay, and my players preferred that kind of game. I said that I already knew someone who either explored the story or who had good strategy could turn a profit by getting their own unique plum or trading favors in-game with the other players. Those visitors quickly quit, never to return. Two of their friends stayed. About four months later they turned out to have habitually cheated, and had been lying to other players about things like them having official staff positions or lying about what the rules were. They were targeting new players to steal in-game items from the newer players. When this was discussed with them they felt they were quite open about their view that they felt entitled to be the "rich" of the game, and since I wouldn't bias the market against the in-game "poor" (new players) they had decided to cheat the poor players instead. When I insisted I personally referee a few in-game exchanges with other players they went along at first, and later when they tried breaking a rule I calmly reiterated the rule they had been breaking. One of the players literally "rage quit," yelling and everything. Again, that was how they behaved over a game when they found out they had to play by the same rules.

[Some Random User]

45 minutes ago, Vanden said:

I assume things cost things because of a scheme set into place by evil marketeers to separate us from our stuff because they hate the idea of anyone having stuff besides themselves.

No, things cost things because the market has controllable effects going on. I'm trying to discuss that. Please don't derail this into a political discussion. I just want to be able to know what the staff think our budget should look like to build our character and what the resulting build should look like. That will let us have a real discussion about what meaningful goals are for the game.

[Some Random User]

51 minutes ago, GM Fiddleback said:

Meanwhile, questions:

Has Mr. User realized that the AH has essentially hit bottom and stayed there for all but a few particularly desirable things?

Would you be upset if I told you I set price at 1000 for any colored item? (Commons go to the vendor because AH prices are well below what vendors pay.)

Are we all clear that the AH is not the only means of gaining these things nor of spending inf to acquire things?

Can you explain why anything costs anything in the game?

 

Please, everyone feel free to answer. In particular, that last one.

What you said makes me see what the problem is. In economics there's a concept called "anchoring" which is when a person thinks something has a certain value. I think what's going on here is I'm used to working with accounting software and helping calculate how profitable something is, and I'm trying to figure out what the real buying power of 1 Influence is. The rest of this thread seems to be about how expensive things feel. "They used to be more inflated" doesn't mean things aren't inflated.

 

Over the past few weeks I've been exploring the existing guides on a lot of topics and focusing on trying to put together something comprehensive and meaningful for new recruits. That led to me trying to figure out the Enhancement system, which led to me to notice the prices are still inflated, which led me to do a fairly deep dive into what's going on. If I'd realized I'd trigger concerns about out-of-game politics I would have handled this through private messaging at the staff instead of making a suggestion thread. I'm trying to tell the community, we have real, meaningful ways to figure out how much something should cost. The builds posted in the guides section and the archetypes subforums don't have realistic price tags. I'm happy to grind at the game, I'm happy to work at putting them together through in-game play. I don't want to have to memorize a bunch of "going rates" so I can speculate on the auction house. Telling me I should be willing to play converter roulette requires me to know what is profitable. If others want to pay attention to the ever-evolving five purchase history instead of grinding that's fine. The difference is that I can actually look at the two meaningful realities of the game - what a build should be at level 50 and what I earn from playing up to level 50 - and then do math that can help the staff in setting conversion rates. If the staff are willing to listen to that information I'll do the research myself and put that together for them. I'm here to play a video game, not handle marketing when I get home, but if the staff can eliminate the inflation discrepancy, I'll put in the work. I have the skills necessary to do that for them. I presumed other human beings had done at least a back of the envelope calculation trying to figure out what the buying power of an Influence award for killing a Minion is/was/should be.

 

If they don't? I'd rather they be aware there is a discrepancy between what is going on with the auction house and what a budget is really like. There's no shame in trying to solve a problem nobody thought about before, but the responses from the non-staff keep going off-point. This is not about some exterior-to-the-game political disagreement. If not, answering that can only help the staff. If the staff wouldn't want that sort of information available to guide how the prices should be set, well, I respectfully think knowing you're right with data is better than knowing you're right without data. I am not a political opponent demanding $1 000 of free money every month. I'm trying to make certain the game is behaving as intended. I like formulas and I like math. This isn't a complicated economy with a bunch of market forces. I punch a guy and points pop out, and I turn those points in for my choice of several ways I can punch a guy better. This isn't even about things like what I can buy with 1/2 an hour in a "kill all" Mission. This is about how my build looks and how my build should look at different points in the game. If our builds are never supposed to be finished so we have a reason to grind, tell me that.

[Some Random User]

54 minutes ago, 100PercentWorthless said:

I have leveled and fully outfitted somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 characters.

Sounds great. I'm playing the same game. Please provide two pieces of information:

• How expensive these builds generally wind up.
• How you come by enough Influence (normal leveling, playing on the auction house, playing converter roulette for profit, playing converter roulette to get the Enhancement you actually wanted, etc.).

[GM Sijin]

Interesting discourse. Here's some bits to chew on, I remain unapologetic for lengthiness.

 

Quote

One way the moderators were able to forestall a rapid runaway market was to seed the auction house with cheap common and uncommon salvage before opening to the public.

Correction: The salvage was seeded on the AH after the server was live for a while. A week or so after. Why do I point this out? It should suggest that the team reacted to something. And they did, specifically the rapid increase in the cost of rare salvage once people started getting 50s and exploring completing their IO sets in earnest. This was felt most at low utilization times, where supply would drop but demand was still strong. This should suggest that the team is both aware of the economy, and willing to step in with controls/adjustments to prevent 'runaway inflation'.

 

Quote

In another way this leads to levels of wealth that the system was not designed to accommodate. This game has an Influence cap and experience with other games says that seeding high end useful items will just turn those items into a different way to store any Influence you earned in excess of the cap .

The influence cap is, and always has been, mostly meaningless. Something put in there because computer systems demand it more than for any actual meaningful purpose. The cap is notably per character, not on your account. What you say about items turning into currency holding is absolutely true, that does happen, but with the current systems in place capping the cost of everything to a maximum of 100M inf, this will probably never happen en masse on Homecoming unless those caps are removed.

 

Quote

Players can go beyond just earning Influence in game, they can manufacture massive amounts of Influence through a synthetic process.

No, they cannot. They can certainly accumulate influence this way, but this process actually removes influence from the market at a very predictable rate (10% of any transfer, specifically).

 

Quote

When I can't get the Enhancement I want because there are literally zero Recipes for sale, or when I can't get the Enhancements I'm told everyone is using because the actual supply is so small, that's less reasonable. They're not infinitely available, and the Enhancement Converter system seems to be how I'm supposed to craft what I am looking for rather than buy them.

You can always get them. If the supply is small in the moment, it will change over time. Even if it, for some unfathomable reason, remained that way, the second statement is not entirely true. There is no real 'limit' on the number of IOs that can be produced save for time spent. You can produce any IO via merits. Or if you're talking about a standard set IO (not very rare/PvP/ATO/Winter IO), the more time-intensive but (usually) cheaper route, via converters, which are also available via merits. Both of these routes do not require a visit to the AH, as a note, though converters are even more viable if you do.

Quote

The history shown in the auction house is only for the five prior purchases. Cornering the market is just a matter of affecting six purchases.

It's already been called out, but this is false. You can, perhaps temporarily adjust the market price, but this statement assumes there is no market memory. On items that are routinely traded, a sudden change in history is not going to override people's understanding of how much that item sold for in the past. People new to the market may be fooled, but the majority will not. Also: Sellers do not as easily dictate the price, especially on this City's AH, due to the way it works for buying/selling. If the quoted statement was true all it would take to completely 'corner' any product would be buying 5 for an inflated price. This simply doesn't work in practice.

Quote

The guideline they came up with was the idea that by level 50 your build should be finished, and that should be reachable through normal leveling, with the auction house only existing as a place to move Enhancements around (so that builds could be rounded out).

Maybe the live devs did set that guideline on paper. Reality never came even remotely close to reflecting that, though. Unless by "build" they meant something different than what you seem to be suggesting. More on that below.

Quote

Can you point me to what guidelines were used to set the values currently in use?

No, but I would speculate (pointlessly, but hey it's fun) that it was based on price history for rares. The other two (uncommon especially) seem particularly 'from thin air'. I don't think supply/demand will ever consistently get to a place where they're going for anywhere near the cap for those two specifically, short of maybe a significant reduction in active player counts.

Quote

Let's have a conversation about what a reasonable build is and how different the cost for one is from what we earn when leveling.

Okay. We'd have to start with a few definitions:
What, exactly, is a reasonable build?

What, exactly, is the amount you earn when leveling?

Also: when, exactly, does 'leveling' stop? (There is post-50 progression after all)

Also: What is counted as 'earned'? Just inf from rewards? Vending anything produced? Average AH price of high value items?

Also: Do we include all routes to 50 in the data? Exclude higher volume cases which can skew the data (PL via farming, those who routinely use +100% XP boosters, etc)

 

I put forth that a reasonable build in the context of this question is level 50 generic IOs. That cost static, and is comparable to live, and is roughly 45-50 million influence. I also put forth that all routes should be considered, as a true representation of an average. This is, in my personal opinion, what's reasonable to expect by 50 while: buying nothing from the AH; using only what you gained via leveling; ignoring merits; not using dropped enhancement converters to try to maximize any earnings.

 

Full IO sets from the builds you find on Pines are *the* end game for an individual character. Once you get those, combined with incarnate abilities, the majority of content is trivialized. Compare this to raiding in any other game, not what you should have by max level, but what you earn after getting there.

[Mr. Vee]

OP needs to remember that the live devs also balanced the game around SOs so it was quite easy to have a build finalized by level 50 without touching the auction house. You can do that on HC too and have more leftover inf because you'll be getting more drops to vendor. You could probably even fully common IO yourself without AH on HC by 50. If you're at regular XP and only run merit-rewarding arcs/TFs you could probably have a pretty decent set build by 50 without touching the AH. If the live devs had any intention of people being able to finance full IO set builds without touching the AH by level 50 then they failed miserably somewhere. 

[Some Random User]

1 hour ago, GM Fiddleback said:

Can you explain why anything costs anything in the game?

 

Please, everyone feel free to answer. In particular, that last one.

Yes, I can. That literally used to be my job. I can also tell you how much things would cost if our goal was to optimize for any of several scenarios. I would do this by using math to show you how much Influence someone earns through normal gameplay as they level a character, and how many Merit Rewards they usually "accidentally" find as they do so. Then I would show you what the guides and Archetype forums say a normal level 50 build looks like, then I would work backwards to see what reasonable builds in the 20-25 range and level 35-40 range look like. I would say: "This is your budget in this level range, that build should cost an amount that pays attention to your budget. You can set things so they have to come up sort if you want them to work harder, or you can set things so they have extra flexibility. Once you've set your standard anything higher is either because you want the players to have to work more, or is an inflationary market fluctuation you didn't account for. If you have inflation you need to address that with market intervention/controls."

[Some Random User]

Just now, Veelectric Boogaloo said:

OP needs to remember that the live devs also balanced the game around SOs so it was quite easy to have a build finalized by level 50 without touching the auction house.

So how did the game wind up this way? The short answer is that the game has never been able to work the economy out because J. Emmeret was a tabletop pen-and-paper roleplaying games developer and the game was designed to lack an economy. The idea of Enhancements becoming obsolete was partially dropped with Inventions, partially dropped with Attuned Enhancements, and the N.P.C.s' Enhancement stores and the continued presence of T.O.s, D.O.s, and S.O.s was never addressed. Those things are still in the game. I.O.s and Sets are supposed to be for the high-standards high-tier min-maxing player. Other players are sort of guided into crafting and the auction house right now. That doesn't fit the reality envisioned.

 

So how would I personally fix this situation? How does this look to you?

 

The short answer is that I'd institute all of the following:

1. I'd do away with T.O.s entirely. Only D.O.s, S.O.s, Salvage, and Recipes as drops from level 2 on.
2. I'd give a meaningful incentive to slot D.O.s by giving them a straightforward trade-off: Making them only drop as Attuned versions of themselves. This gives a player a reason to ever slot them, even with the lower bonus (because they're more cost effective). This doesn't eliminate the math advantage S.O.s and I.O.s already have, so some players will use them instead.
3. I'd make a design principle that the effects created by higher-level S.O.s are balanced to always be better than equal-level I.O.s (this would require adjustment of either S.O.s or I.O.s for some levels). That way there would always be a reason to use S.O.s (some players just want the best bonuses).
4. I'd bring back the relevance of the N.P.C.s' stores by making the prices of D.O.s and S.O.s something that made sense. Since you still want to be able to slot Sets and your own cool crafted stuff there's still a reason to use Wentworth's, but would allow skipping the auction house for any players who didn't want to. I can still have my level 40 with nothing but Common I.O.s if I want, and can still hook him up with some less frequent Set I.O.s if I want, and if I want to just use Attuned D.Os and wait until level 50 I can.

[Some Random User]

40 minutes ago, GM Sijin said:

Interesting discourse. Here's some bits to chew on, I remain unapologetic for lengthiness.

I love you and I want to metaphorically have your babies.

[Some Random User]

42 minutes ago, GM Sijin said:

They can certainly accumulate influence this way, but this process actually removes influence from the market at a very predictable rate (10% of any transfer, specifically).

Asking because I'm checking the math. Is this just due to the auction house fee or is there more to this?

[Some Random User]

44 minutes ago, GM Sijin said:

You can always get them. If the supply is small in the moment, it will change over time. Even if it, for some unfathomable reason, remained that way, the second statement is not entirely true. There is no real 'limit' on the number of IOs that can be produced save for time spent. You can produce any IO via merits. Or if you're talking about a standard set IO (not very rare/PvP/ATO/Winter IO), the more time-intensive but (usually) cheaper route, via converters, which are also available via merits. Both of these routes do not require a visit to the AH, as a note, though converters are even more viable if you do.

The way I'm reading this is that the staff would prefer we flesh out builds by playing converter roulette. If that's what we're supposed to do that makes a lot of the rest of this mostly a matter of educating the playerbase. I can make Enhancement Converters a big deal. I guess I have to live with that.

[GM Fiddleback]

22 minutes ago, Some Random User said:

Yes, I can. That literally used to be my job. I can also tell you how much things would cost if our goal was to optimize for any of several scenarios. I would do this by using math to show you how much Influence someone earns through normal gameplay as they level a character, and how many Merit Rewards they usually "accidentally" find as they do so. Then I would show you what the guides and Archetype forums say a normal level 50 build looks like, then I would work backwards to see what reasonable builds in the 20-25 range and level 35-40 range look like. I would say: "This is your budget in this level range, that build should cost an amount that pays attention to your budget. You can set things so they have to come up sort if you want them to work harder, or you can set things so they have extra flexibility. Once you've set your standard anything higher is either because you want the players to have to work more, or is an inflationary market fluctuation you didn't account for. If you have inflation you need to address that with market intervention/controls."

Fine fine fine.  So then, why?

[Some Random User]

46 minutes ago, GM Sijin said:

People new to the market may be fooled, but the majority will not. Also: Sellers do not as easily dictate the price, especially on this City's AH, due to the way it works for buying/selling. If the quoted statement was true all it would take to completely 'corner' any product would be buying 5 for an inflated price. This simply doesn't work in practice.

Unlike online games like Team Fortress 2 or Diablo 3, we don't have a third party tracking site that shows a market trend hour by hour across multiple months. That means the players can't, and shouldn't, have to learn the market memory for the item they're buying before the purchase. You're overlooking something here. In the scenario we were discussing I can show you why what you're saying about the market memory isn't actually a fact. I'm arguing that players should be able to show up to make a one time purchase without knowing the market memory already and without getting ripped off due to either insufficient knowledge or a market-inflated price. Right now that is happening. Can the full purchase histories for Set Enhancements (at least) be logged and posted somewhere conspicuous? If this was done I would totally agree with you.

[Widower]

6 minutes ago, Some Random User said:

The way I'm reading this is that the staff would prefer we flesh out builds by playing converter roulette. If that's what we're supposed to do that makes a lot of the rest of this mostly a matter of educating the playerbase. I can make Enhancement Converters a big deal. I guess I have to live with that.

Well, no. We don't care how you flesh out your builds, exactly. We do care about providing people with multiple ways to do so, and we also care about limiting the endemic market PvP from live Beyond that, the economy is going where it's going - hang on for the ride.

 

For your edification, I'll also tell you that we didn't set the rates for salvage. Those were devised by Leo and his GMs years ago in order to limit market PvP and let people focus on playing the actual game to build their characters rather than the market.

[Some Random User]

54 minutes ago, GM Sijin said:

What, exactly, is a reasonable build?

What, exactly, is the amount you earn when leveling?

Also: when, exactly, does 'leveling' stop? (There is post-50 progression after all)

Also: What is counted as 'earned'? Just inf from rewards? Vending anything produced? Average AH price of high value items?

Also: Do we include all routes to 50 in the data? Exclude higher volume cases which can skew the data (PL via farming, those who routinely use +100% XP boosters, etc)

 

I put forth that a reasonable build in the context of this question is level 50 generic IOs. That cost static, and is comparable to live, and is roughly 45-50 million influence. I also put forth that all routes should be considered, as a true representation of an average. This is, in my personal opinion, what's reasonable to expect by 50 while: buying nothing from the AH; using only what you gained via leveling; ignoring merits; not using dropped enhancement converters to try to maximize any earnings.

 

Full IO sets from the builds you find on Pines are *the* end game for an individual character. Once you get those, combined with incarnate abilities, the majority of content is trivialized. Compare this to raiding in any other game, not what you should have by max level, but what you earn after getting there.

I have similar views to yourself.

 

Personally, I feel the post-50 content is different, and I am more concerned with how the post-50 content impacts lower level play.

 

I think we can ignore high value drops as "pocket money" for the moment. Let them be spent on going above and beyond level-appropriate I.O. crafting. Aside from that I'd count everything you listed except intentional interference with the X.P. track. "Power leveling" and X.P. boosting are there, and we shouldn't take them away over this, but I don't think you need to count different routes for this reason: The amount of Influence awarded can be tracked per X.P. earned. That's your baseline for every other calculation. This amount should be roughly consistent, and should be easily trackable. The amounts earned through other means (except X.P. Boosters) are generally proportionate. The X.P. Booster just needs to be clear that the player is giving up their Influence awards for double X.P. instead.

 

There are other Influence awards worked into the game, like the N.P.C. victims around Atlas Park (and other low level zones). If you wait for them to walk back up to you there's a trivially small Influence bonus as they say something like, "thank you, thought they would kill me." Are there any other rewards after level 20 that are not paired with an X.P. award but are statistically significant? (I didn't think of any; is this a thing?)

[GM Fiddleback]

Just, for everyone's benefit, maybe watch these:

 

 

 

 

[Some Random User]

7 minutes ago, GM Widower said:

Well, no. We don't care how you flesh out your builds, exactly. We do care about providing people with multiple ways to do so, and we also care about limiting the endemic market PvP from live Beyond that, the economy is going where it's going - hang on for the ride.

Without a recipe I can only craft an I.O. or buy something. If we're saying I may as well sell Enhancement Converters and buy stuff that's a very different conversation from using them to get the Sets I'd want. If we want both to exist that's lovely. Most of the participants in this thread want to use them and I would prefer not to. I'm concerned I have to if I want to achieve anything beyond Common I.O.s that I craft myself. If that's the baseline, nothing but a full array of level-even Common I.O.s I craft for myself, I can achieve that, but I'm doing so by selling everything I find and buying Salvage to craft with. (We do that all through Wentworth's, which is fine if that's what we're supposed to do, but I'd rather be able to use N.P.C.s' shops.) I want to point out what that means for me:

1. Level up a character to level 50.
2. Get all of the crafting Badges on them.
3. Sell everything my other toons find at either an N.P.C.'s store or Wentworth's (depending on volume of purchases for the item).
4. Send the Influence to my "crafter" toon.
5. Make I.O.s and e-mail them back.

Is this undesirable? I feel this will lead to there being one or two Enhancements that will always be in extreme demand because the money you have left over will go toward buying them on many toons, over and over, because they're generically applicable to many different builds (like with Luck of the Gambler right now).

[GM Fiddleback]

1 minute ago, 100PercentWorthless said:

You are God damn cruel.

 

Now I want some Giordano's Pizza.

 

Oh. They still put commercials in YouTube videos?  How quaint. 😛

[Some Random User]

3 minutes ago, 100PercentWorthless said:

Now I want some Giordano's Pizza.

 

Chicago style deep dish?

*cartoon drool face*

The only place that sold that around here closed ten years ago.

[kelly Rocket]

I don't feel inflation is any sort of concern. Considering that prices are VASTLY, EXPONENTIALLY cheaper for everything now than they were back on live. Getting a Panacea unique would have run you billions in the old days, not the mere 10-20 million it runs you now.

 

And that's with a smaller population which should theoretically be causing higher prices.

 

So the existing controls are doing their job, and everything is fine IMO.

[Bionic_Flea]

Back of napkin numbers*

 

85 slots x 50,000 for store bought SOs = 4,250,000  You could probably get those SOs off the market at a fraction of that price, but you might have to wait.

 

85 slots x 800,000 = 68,000,000 for generic IOs bought off the workbench and personally crafted.  You could probably get those off the market for, on average, about 300,000 (x85=25,500,000)

 

85 slots x 500,000 = 42,500,000 for the average price of uncommon, crafted IO piece from the market.

 

85 slots x 1,000,000 = 85,000,000 for the average price of the cheaper, non-uber rare set piece from the market.

 

--12 slots of ATOs x 10,000,000 = 120,000,000

--06 slots of generic IOs x 300,000 = 1,800,000

--18 slots of Winter Os x 25,000,000 = 450,000,000

--10 slots of purples x 25,000,000 = 250,000,000

--05 slots of LoTG +7.5 x 6,000,000 = 30,000,000

--34 slots of other stuff x 3,000,000 = 102,000,000

all that equals 953,800,000, lets just call it a billion.

 

All of the above assumes that you do not get any usable drops and that you buy everything from the vendor, worktable, or market at current buy-it-now prices or average prices.  It also assumes that you do not buy anything with merits, have nothing stored, and used no converters.

 

Some builds are more expensive then others.  For example, a perma-dom Dominator might need to slot more purples for the recharge than a blaster that has plenty of attacks and isn't chasing recharge.

 

So . . . a build costs anywhere from 4 million to a billion influence.  In my personal experience, a build like the last one ends up costing me about 300,000,000 - 400,000,000 when using base storage, drops, and converters.  And you could probably have a fully SO'ed build "for free" with nothing but drops in about 20 hours of running missions and killing critters.

 

 

Edited August 1, 2019 by Bionic_Flea

[Clave Dark 5]

18 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

...now where we can expect a purple drop just about every hour or so of playing...

Man I haven't seen anything near that!  I have a 50 at +3, a 45th level and a 32nd level, all of whom have been teaming, a lot, with groups lead by 50s (and even the odd farm), for hours and hours and hours and I've only gotten 3 purple drops since the game came back.