Purple IO Demand and Prices

[Manholmes]

I know purples are not what you spend merits on if you want to make the most of your merits, but I am not sure why.

 

In July, I could sell in-demand (Apocalypse/Hecatomb/Ragnarok) purples for 25+ million easily within a day, and I thought it was a good alternative to converters and boosters for using merits to get Inf. I also flipped, and kept one bid in profit range for each piece of these sets at all times. I still do this, and have kept a pulse on trends as a result. However, I put a pause on bids as I consider whether purples will trend up or down at the end of summer in North America.

 

In August, I see sales at 22-23 for most Apoc/Ragnarok, and they are sitting several days.  No complaints, as everything on HC is so much better than live for prices, but I am interested in the factors behind prices. Just today I am seeing a long list of sales at 20m for a few pieces of Apoc/Ragnarok. A continued downward trend, but why? Slump before the weekend? End of summer downtrend?

 

Hecatomb prices seem to hold stronger, I assume due to demand from farming builds needing these and keeping demand up. So a word of caution to any flippers who had a stack of bids at or above 18m, for anything but Hecatomb. As there are more level 50 toons running about, who are already kitted out, I think demand for purples may be dropping overall, and may continue. Does anyone care to speculate on Purple IO long term prices? Will there be a rebound and long term upward trend, or are we in a stable range for...ever?

[Yomo Kimyata]

I always try to ask:  where do they come from, and where do they go?

 

Purple recipes come from random drops and merit exchanges.  Whether or not people exchange merits for them, purples are always going to keep dropping for farmers forever.  There will always be an increase in supply on a day-to-day basis.

 

Purple recipes get crafted, become enhancements, and normally get permanently slotted in end game alts.  In order for demand to increase for purples, one of two things need to happen.  Either more people need to take their main to 50, or existing people need to take more alts to 50 and equip them with purples.

 

I think we are seeing a secular trend towards "end game".  I think most people who are going to build farming builds have already done so and use them as their main source of inf.  I think most people who have a main at 50 tend to play that 50 for incarnate stuff rather than build out new 50s.

 

So I think supply will continue to rise, while demand will stagnate over the long-term.  If inf as a currency weren't so easy to come by, I would predict that would lead to lower prices in inf.  However, it's possible we see inflation effects as people realize that inf really isn't good for anything, so heck, why not pay 20mm for a LOTG proc?

 

My 2 inf.

[Mr. Vee]

I for one have purples in every build. not as many as I used to have but that's only because I have only so many slots, ATOs are must slot, and winters are often a better option. So my demand for them is only limited by my speed of leveling, which is now slow as I don't PL anything unless it's practically unplayable. Thanks to attuned enhancements and a huge bankroll pretty much nothing falls into that category anymore. But I have plenty of friends who PL alt after alt and use the same sorts of top end builds I do for everything. I don't think they're rare either. So I think my demand and that of people like my friends will be pretty well constant for the foreseeable future. But since I don't see any factors increasing demand now I think a general downward trend will continue due to attrition and the fact that most who play actively have their farmers and mains kitted out already. But as Yomo pointed out, with so much influence in play a stagnant demand and increased supply may not necessarily mean as much of a downward price trend as you'd normally expect.

[Robotech_Master]

1 hour ago, Manholmes said:

I know purples are not what you spend merits on if you want to make the most of your merits, but I am not sure why.

Well, generally speaking, if you can get 100K for each converter, then you're going to earn 27 million Inf (30 million for the sales, less the market's 10%) from 100 merits' worth of converters. In actual practice, you're probably not going to make 100K out of them if you want to sell them very quickly, so you may end up with something more like the mid to low 20 millions altogether. So, if the purple recipe's price on the market is more money than you would net from selling 300 converters, then sure, go ahead and spend the merits.

 

But for a purple recipe selling for, say, 15 to 20 million Inf, it's probably a better play to sell the converters and buy it with the proceeds. Then you'll have some money left over. Or you could just look at the extra money you're not making as what you're paying for the convenience of not having to deal with the AH, so there is that.

[Manholmes]

Some great comments here, thanks for chiming in. I do agree that Incarnate play is going to limit alt leveling, and that alone could be a reason I don't level many more alts. Getting that T3 or T4 incarnate ability is really impactful, and I tend to go that far on any alt I like. So with all the play at 50, inflation may yet become a thing again, with a pretty hard cap, due to the ability to exchange inf for merits and vice versa. 

[Eclipse.]

On 8/9/2019 at 3:07 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

I think we are seeing a secular trend towards "end game".  I think most people who are going to build farming builds have already done so and use them as their main source of inf.  I think most people who have a main at 50 tend to play that 50 for incarnate stuff rather than build out new 50s.

 

I think the availability of the Winters sets at about the same price, and the AT sets at a [generally] much lower price also plays a huge role.

Depending on what you're building for (Defense...) then the winter sets offer much better bonuses. Other than my dom I've found my self slotting the winter stuff far more often than purples, or at least having to have a serious decision on design goals for which I'd rather have.

If converters didn't exist I suspect ranged Purples would increase in price and Melee  Winter sets would rise in price. Since converters exist though they all end up staying roughly even because they can easily be swapped to a more desirable set if prices got too out of wack.

[DSorrow]

Many great points here, but personally I'd list the following:

• Limited number of slots per alt and purples are no longer the obvious choice for "best in slot" as we have winter IOs and ATOs to compete with them.
• I only need to buy them once per alt and right now it's been a month since my last character hit 50, though I'll probably have a handful hitting 50 in short succession in a few weeks.
• I'm patient. Really patient. And I plan ahead. I get most of my purples for ~15mil or less because I usually have an end game build planned by the time my character is in the 20s so I have several weeks to wait for my bids to fill.

Then there's the more speculative part. I'd guess the supply mostly comes from the more hardcore folks who sell their own surplus. With summertime coming to an end the more casual players have less time to play which translates into less demand, while the supply side from hardcore players is less affected. Converter prices are also down, maybe for the same reason, but if the going rate for them is at around 85k each, that makes 100 merits worth around ~23 million after you subtract market fees which just so happens to coincide with the purple prices.

 

I'm not sure where the trend will go, but there are definitely some soft and hard caps: 

• Hard cap: 1 merit = 1 million inf at the merit vendor. If we assume that the players act even somewhat rationally, the maximum prices of items will never go much above that. The only potential exception I can think of is people with loads of inf but no merits who want the item right now, and might be willing to pay some extra for the convenience of avoiding some TFs.
• Soft cap: 1 merit = however much influence a fairly optimized farmer can make in one minute. Most TFs can be done at a pace that equals about 1 merit / minute and I'd be really surprised if the 1 merit = 1 minute for semi-speedy TFs and 1 minute = x inf for good farmers weren't consistently transitive relations.

[Firi]

Purples arnt top IO anymore with ATOs and such in a lot of cases. They are still good, but not always the best. 

IMO they are to common and cheap

This will kinda derail this, so Ill try to keep it mostly on topic

Things will inflate as time goes on because in the long run inf is worthless. There is no where near enough inf sinks in the game that actually useful.

The truly build valuable stuff will eventually outpace the merit price of stuff just because players will have piles of it laying around (this would be the case if nothing at all changed)

[MunkiLord]

4 hours ago, DSorrow said:

M

 

I'm not sure where the trend will go, but there are definitely some soft and hard caps: 

• Hard cap: 1 merit = 1 million inf at the merit vendor. If we assume that the players act even somewhat rationally, the maximum prices of items will never go much above that. The only potential exception I can think of is people with loads of inf but no merits who want the item right now, and might be willing to pay some extra for the convenience of avoiding some TFs.
• Soft cap: 1 merit = however much influence a fairly optimized farmer can make in one minute. Most TFs can be done at a pace that equals about 1 merit / minute and I'd be really surprised if the 1 merit = 1 minute for semi-speedy TFs and 1 minute = x inf for good farmers weren't consistently transitive relations.

Influence per minute for dedicated farmers on the low end is 333,333 influence per minute, and just starting out on my Ice/Fire Blaster I'm already around 400-500k a minute, which will only get higher as I upgrade Incarnate abilities and become more efficient in general. And I don't think I'm anywhere near the top end of that either. That also doesn't take into account drops which will raise that number likely a significant amount. Now this is all running solo, having door sitters will lower those numbers. 

 

I imagine the better farmers doing it a few hours a day can easily surpass a million influence a minute.

 

edit: This is for when farming at level 50. On farms that exemplar you to 49, you can double the numbers. I completely forgot about that.

Edited August 13, 2019 by MunkiLord

[Obus Form]

11 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

Influence per minute for dedicated farmers on the low end is 333,333 influence per minute, and just starting out on my Ice/Fire Blaster I'm already around 400-500k a minute, which will only get higher as I upgrade Incarnate abilities and become more efficient in general. And I don't think I'm anywhere near the top end of that either. That also doesn't take into account drops which will raise that number likely a significant amount. Now this is all running solo, having door sitters will lower those numbers. 

 

I imagine the better farmers doing it a few hours a day can easily surpass a million influence a minute.

 

edit: This is for when farming at level 50. On farms that exemplar you to 49, you can double the numbers. I completely forgot about that.

From personal experience and reading farmer forums on /brutes (Spines/Fire and TW/Fire), the high end of inf/minute is about 4-6 million inf/minute.  Since merits are earned at approximately 1 merit/minute, but usually less, and at the best case of markets or converters you could earn 27 million (after tax) for 100 merits, farming via /brutes is the most efficient use of time.

 

The purple supply has doubled since July, going from 20-30 IOs for damage types (hecatomb, apoc, armg, rag) to 50+, even 89 Apoc: Damage IOs. 

 

Based on personal experience of having successfully played the AH to earn billions in a few weeks, I am bored of my handful of 50 brutes that I used to game endlessly on live.  It is only my conjecture that some of the playerbase bores of their 50s after complete IO'ing, and incarnate optimization, and 4 passive accolades.  It took me 2 weeks to achieve this (optimized IOs, incarnates, and 4 passive accolades) on a single 50, and another 1 week for my next 50.

 

The large coalition of which I am part of exhibited an enormous and somewhat continued decline since August.  Although the Excelsior server is always busy (3 red circles upon login), there seem to be less and less 50s playing at any moment. 

 

Just my 2 cents.

[DSorrow]

14 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

Influence per minute for dedicated farmers on the low end is 333,333 influence per minute, and just starting out on my Ice/Fire Blaster I'm already around 400-500k a minute, which will only get higher as I upgrade Incarnate abilities and become more efficient in general. And I don't think I'm anywhere near the top end of that either. That also doesn't take into account drops which will raise that number likely a significant amount. Now this is all running solo, having door sitters will lower those numbers. 

 

I imagine the better farmers doing it a few hours a day can easily surpass a million influence a minute.

 

edit: This is for when farming at level 50. On farms that exemplar you to 49, you can double the numbers. I completely forgot about that.

That's actually quite a bit more than I expected, but then again it's been 8 years since I've last touched a farm. Then again, because most of the player population can't get anywhere near 500k inf / min and a few can get far above it while just about anyone can make 1 merit / min and few people can make significantly above that, I don't think the inf economy is in that great of a risk.

 

3 hours ago, tinygodzilla said:

Based on personal experience of having successfully played the AH to earn billions in a few weeks, I am bored of my handful of 50 brutes that I used to game endlessly on live.  It is only my conjecture that some of the playerbase bores of their 50s after complete IO'ing, and incarnate optimization, and 4 passive accolades.  It took me 2 weeks to achieve this (optimized IOs, incarnates, and 4 passive accolades) on a single 50, and another 1 week for my next 50.

 

The large coalition of which I am part of exhibited an enormous and somewhat continued decline since August.  Although the Excelsior server is always busy (3 red circles upon login), there seem to be less and less 50s playing at any moment. 

I haven't really played my 50s all that much compared to live, but then again back in the day I had around 30 50s and I wasn't that interested in making new ones. Right now I'm just setting up my stable back to a situation where I can join a group no matter what role they're playing so I'm mostly just getting my 50s IO'd up and into T3s and then back to leveling alts. Once my current handful of alts (4 characters in the 30-40 range) hit 50, I'll have a lvl 50 of each role and most ATs at which point I'll probably start running more lvl 50 content. I might also get back into badging depending on what the discussions with NCSoft yield, as so far I've been wary of committing myself into such a long term goal with no practical rewards.

 

As for the decline in general, I'd guess there are two main factors that contribute to it besides it being pretty easy to max out a 50: the "novelty" is wearing off and summer holidays are coming to an end. A lot of people constantly move from one game to another, for some the nostalgy just wasn't enough and then for many jobs / school / whatever is again starting to require time in their schedule.

[TheAdjustor]

Price moves of any kind are caused by the relationship of supply (# available to the market) to demand (am

On 8/13/2019 at 11:41 PM, tinygodzilla said:

From personal experience and reading farmer forums on /brutes (Spines/Fire and TW/Fire), the high end of inf/minute is about 4-6 million inf/minute.  Since merits are earned at approximately 1 merit/minute, but usually less, and at the best case of markets or converters you could earn 27 million (after tax) for 100 merits, farming via /brutes is the most efficient use of time.

 

 

You haven't been to a hami raid or done an apex tin mage lately have you ?  Try about 4-6 merits/min

[Obus Form]

20 hours ago, TheAdjustor said:

Price moves of any kind are caused by the relationship of supply (# available to the market) to demand (am

You haven't been to a hami raid or done an apex tin mage lately have you ?  Try about 4-6 merits/min

Team formation time makes those unreliable as a "farm" for merits

[TheAdjustor]

17 minutes ago, tinygodzilla said:

Team formation time makes those unreliable as a "farm" for merits

I am sorry the implied assumption that I didn't take that into account when making the calculation is erroneous.  5 Hami Raids in an hour from team formation to killing the last of the buds are very common. Apex and Tin mage fill very quickly.

[Obus Form]

Lately lots of hecatombs on the market.  Everyone!! Please continue supporting the  melee IO economy 😃

 

*Power Pool: breath holding until purple 💜*

Edited August 27, 2019 by tinygodzilla

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 hours ago, TheAdjustor said:

I am sorry the implied assumption that I didn't take that into account when making the calculation is erroneous.  5 Hami Raids in an hour from team formation to killing the last of the buds are very common. Apex and Tin mage fill very quickly.

I've noticed that in general, people like to use shortcuts that may exaggerate how profitable things are.  For example, when people say they are making 2mm inf a minute farming (which I do not doubt), other people are going to assume that means if I sit down and play for an hour using this method, I'm going to make 120mm inf.  And if I can get in an epic six hour session, then I'll make 720mm!  Of course there are various frictions.  So I'm assuming that if you log on at 5pm and log off at 7pm, you are probably not walking away with 5 merits/minute * 120 minutes = 600 merits. 

 

What do you think is a "good" number that a merit-farmer could pull off consistently if logged on for two continuous hours a day?  Does that rely on a scheduled raid or is that something you can do on your own?

 

[Chirikiti]

Interesting topic and observations.

 

Here's some observations and anecdotes.

 

-Lots of people stick to a few of their tricked out 50s and that mostly it. Most of the people I SF/TF with will be on a familiar toon and will occasionally alt to another tricked out 50.

-Merits. Merits accumulate over time. And you can farm them. People without farmers (and with) with lots of merits are going to use em for 100 merit recipes. I have a base that's filling up because I'm at the merit cap and almost 1000 emp merits, and accumulating Villain merits. By the time I may want another 50 alt I'll have enough enhancers stored to create 2 or or 4 AND the merits will accumulate in th emean-time.

  -Merit farming: Pre-50 I use Tech Naylor flashback 13 Merits in 12 mins. Pretty good.

                           Apex/Tin mage (I just love playing these 2) but you gain 80 merits and 4 emps so 120 merits bam! AND it's worth running a second time (because they're super fun heh) for another 80 merits (including the emps) ((These can take as little as 12-15 mins to complete)

                           Tips 40 merits

                           SSA 20/20 then 20 once per week

                           Speed SFs/Tfs serious you can bang out 4 of these in an hour as most will well know

                           DA Flashback(s). 2 empyrian merits (20 merits) in 11-12 minutes.(+ 2 incarn loots, by far the fastest and easiest way to t4)

    With some or all of these merits pile up. Why wouldn't you use em for 100-merits recipes.

-Interest/Summer Time. Interest will wain over time especially leveling and going through the whole thing in tricking out. More people with free time in summer. It's not a sandbox game (not trying to start something) but the content is the content and peeps will become familiar and tire of same (1 answer to this on an individual level is alts soooo....)

 

I still want a farmer though. I enjoy farming, put on a movie or whatever and relax. But I won't have to buy anything because everything will be crafted and ready and bought with merits mostly (what else are you going to do with em)

 

 

                           

[tidge]

Minor correction on using the Dark Astoria 1st arc to farm: At the completion of the arc the reward is 1 common incarnate salvage (random) , 1 Empyrean merit, and then a CHOICE between a second Empyrean merit OR another piece of incarnate salvage (level is random but the particular piece is not).

 

I only took the time to write this out because IMHO this is the best arc for farming several Tsoo defeat/gladiator badges. Chasing Tsoo all over is a huge waste of time (especially if a lower level toon doesn't have a full powerset) when the 3rd mission in this arc stacks them all up for you. Naturally if you want the badges/gladiators/accolades before lvl 50 you don't have this option, but any lvl 50 who wants these shouldn't have to run all over Independence Port or Talos Island hunting for them. Off topic advice to be sure.

[Mr. Vee]

9 hours ago, tidge said:

Minor correction on using the Dark Astoria 1st arc to farm: At the completion of the arc the reward is 1 common incarnate salvage (random) , 1 Empyrean merit, and then a CHOICE between a second Empyrean merit OR another piece of incarnate salvage (level is random but the particular piece is not).

 

I only took the time to write this out because IMHO this is the best arc for farming several Tsoo defeat/gladiator badges. Chasing Tsoo all over is a huge waste of time (especially if a lower level toon doesn't have a full powerset) when the 3rd mission in this arc stacks them all up for you. Naturally if you want the badges/gladiators/accolades before lvl 50 you don't have this option, but any lvl 50 who wants these shouldn't have to run all over Independence Port or Talos Island hunting for them. Off topic advice to be sure.

I'll add to the off-topic advice by telling you to run an Ice Mistral SF for all your lowbie Tsoo needs. Big kill all on the giant boat map.

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Veelectric Boogaloo said:

I'll add to the off-topic advice by telling you to run an Ice Mistral SF for all your lowbie Tsoo needs. Big kill all on the giant boat map.

My problem with Tsoo needs is I simply cannot deal with any more eight sorcerer spawns.

[Mr. Vee]

Back to topic - anyone else's purp drops get turned back on by the patch? I know they've always been super streaky cuz of the low rate and rng but i got one in like 3.5 weeks and 9 since yesterday's patch. Not that I'm complaining.

[TheAdjustor]

On 8/27/2019 at 9:04 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

I've noticed that in general, people like to use shortcuts that may exaggerate how profitable things are.  For example, when people say they are making 2mm inf a minute farming (which I do not doubt), other people are going to assume that means if I sit down and play for an hour using this method, I'm going to make 120mm inf.  And if I can get in an epic six hour session, then I'll make 720mm!  Of course there are various frictions.  So I'm assuming that if you log on at 5pm and log off at 7pm, you are probably not walking away with 5 merits/minute * 120 minutes = 600 merits. 

 

What do you think is a "good" number that a merit-farmer could pull off consistently if logged on for two continuous hours a day?  Does that rely on a scheduled raid or is that something you can do on your own?

 

It's a more than fair question and I thought I had already posted a reply, but here we go again. If you can log in for daily hami raids 500  and can follow up with an apex tin mage combo 500 merits in two hours is very reasonable most will follow that up with a STF or RSF but that's at +4 so not really an exercise in gaining merits.

[Scientist]

On 8/27/2019 at 2:54 PM, TheAdjustor said:

I am sorry the implied assumption that I didn't take that into account when making the calculation is erroneous.  5 Hami Raids in an hour from team formation to killing the last of the buds are very common. Apex and Tin mage fill very quickly.

Oddly, I don't think I've seen a single Hami raid in the 7-8:30ish AM EST time slot that is almost my only play time.  This morning I saw a TM/Apex forming, and it took them half an hour to get from 4 to 8 members for it.  That was about when I needed to log, unfortunately.