Acquiring Op items or should I say not.....

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by CrappyHeals, Oct 11, 2019.

  1. TheLastSuperman Well-Known Player

    You can buy the ones you need from broker, I just saw a bil plus go poof in a matter of minutes yesterday, few replay purchases later on double marks weekend and bam I have the op neck. I kept waiting for a rare drop they just never came and no I don't expect the top ones to drop in one weekend but it didn't look hopeful and based on my past drop rates I wasn't thinking positive by any means. Then Mirror House Invitation dropped for me in the alert today, first super rare one for me personally but that was after the op neck acquirement so now just a cash recoup.

    This new system is not the way to go, I think it's an improvement over the last attempt but ultimately needs to go back to how it was prior. The number of players if you compare who have the Insidious Power Glove Of Omnipotence is greater than those with the previous OP Back... I wonder why? Well I know why, drop rate and you could run the same missions on your alt for a chance to get collections too so many did - there was no gimmicky system or ranking up the item before unlock. With the recent changes and fluctuations some players don't even realize until it's too late in the race how to use this new system and by the time they do the collection are insanely priced.

    The drop rate is abysmal at best, some of you brag about it like it's everyones luck and it's not. The same goes for having cash, same type of bravado that you mock but in turn display speaking about how you've received 3 on diff alts in 2 days - grats! For some of us we either spend a bil plus or if we're the player type who will never break 5mil, 10mil, 50mil, 100mil and only have rare mats and auras thanks to drop rates... these players are the majority. I have money, I have styles but this game needs to cater to the average player more.

    If not for tc glitching, item duping, and allowing those who were banned "The 400" to return and retain their glitched items and cash things would be better - all of this put the economy in a very odd state. Things are always initially listed within some reason, then kaboom a few with bilionaires just inflate prices and now the avergae player might as well just give up.

    Let's check the top new OP Neck collections and list some prices here, all of them the main ones are over 100mil (most being 200mil average) Mirror House Invitation now has several up none lower than 150mil, two days prior 250mil in broker.

    Math Time! Yay!

    3 New collections

    1. This one has two of four that are expensive. (2)
    2. This one has one that is expensive. (1)
    3. This one has one that is expensive. (1)

    All the others are 2-15mil range on those collections.

    Now let's say your drop rate sucks, or ultra sucks!

    Sucks: You must buy 2 of 4 = 150mil x 2 = 300mil.
    Ultra-Sucks: You must buy 3 of 4 = 150mil x 3 = 450mil.

    The other ones aren't cheap either at 15mil or so range, all of this adds up for any player.

    So now we must finish three collections for the reward which is 1/3 we must use to rank up the item to unlock the op neck... now you've made it cost 3x more for all players to acquire it if their drop rate sucks and let me tell you from all I've ever seen on these forums and in-game chat most players drop rate sucks! I'm still getting female styles in lockboxes and barely ever any rare collection drops aside from today surprisingly on the MHInvitation so my drop rate on anything is disappointing at best.

    Something needs to be done about this, even going back to how it was a few dlc's back I think would be better than what we have currently - how many of you thought that even though it seemed meh back then, that his now is bleh? I mean meh bleh we just can't win!

    We can't fix what's already broken i.e. no economy adjustments many players would quit but we can make changes to improve things going forward.
  2. Healing Juice Active Player

    This is exactly why the economy is messed up. Collections should be nowhere near that high priced. Also, what makes you determine how much to sell things for? Do you just grab a number out of thin air or is there any reasoning to it? Like why choose 700-800 mil for a collection piece? Or why do people throw up 450 when they get it and there’s not one up there yet?
  3. Hraesvelg Always Right


    I'll agree that the OP collection drop rate on this episode seems much lower than usual, which drives up the prices by having a smaller supply for the demand. I did like the JLD method for the OP items much better.

    The ill-informed comment was mostly directed in a meta-forums way, insofar as there seems to be at least one derptastic thread a week asking for something close to a total economic reset button. They're coming more frequently as people who don't know a thing about how basic economies work try to fix inflation by majorly draconian means. They think a reset will fix everything, but it'll just lop some numbers off of some prices, and then the people who know how to work a market will be back on top. Those same people will then start complaining they only have 10k and can't buy the fancy new things for a million.

    Edit:

    How is anything priced in an economy? Something is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. It's a bit of trial and error to see what those thresholds are. You can sit on something a while, hold out that the prices will go up and you can make more, or cut prices down a bit from what you think it will sell for if you want quicker cash.
  4. CrescentMoon Well-Known Player

    There's compulsive people that have billions from *cough* various sources *cough* that have to get their op items done asap. Those are the people that drop 1-2bil every dlc to have full elite and the op item in like 2 days. It got bad around the Complex Crime Scene and that's where my friends first started abusing that section of the community to make over a bil from collections (my first time was from farming the starro alert). Eventually, people found out that the compulsion is so bad ppl would actually spend close a bil just on a single collection. So, with the Luthor being bugged for like a week, people are really panicking trying to find a Luthor and they snatch it regardless of the price as soon as they see it just to satisfy that paranoia. It sold for like 900mil-1bil for the first few lucky people, by the time I had it drop, I was able to sell 2 Luthor's for 750mil each with the first one selling within 10 minutes of putting it in the broker. With double currency coming up, there's a "secondary" group of compulsive people who need to finish collections when they're really close as opposed to the original group that need to finish it before anyone else or to get it out of the way. That secondary group is almost just as bad as the first so I wanted to try my luck and see if they would cough up 700-800mil like the first group did, but someone put it at 500mil. Already 2-3bil deep in flipping, I decided I'd rather let it stay than to buy it and try to force the Luthor up myself. I'm being dead honest when I say it's a cycle of abuse. Players charge other players rl money for in game cash, which they then turn around and charge high prices for new items to make you run through that money faster and need to stock up again. The same way devs of this generation abuse the social status of cosmetics (time capsules and booster bundles) and elitists (artifacts) is the same way players will abuse not having GM's in game, not having a limit on how much we can charge, and not having to worry about the majority of the playerbase getting certain items. As long they have broken RNG that make rarity differences so huge, the playerbase will be stuck in a cyce getting abused by the devs for replays or stabilizers or by other players.
    *Player 1 has entered the chat*
    *Mastercard has entered the chat*
    *Morality has left the chat*
    *Player 2 has entered the chat*
    Player 2: "So uh, what are you looking for? I can get whatever you need, just name it. But my services aren't cheap. If you can't afford it, you can go to someone else."
    *Player 3 has entered the chat*
    Player 3: "I'll charge half of what Player 2 is."
    *Player 2 buys out Player 3*
    *Player 3 leaves chat*
    Player 2: "Where were we?"
  5. Jay Smeezy Dedicated Player

    Just wait until the next dlc and the chase will begin again..unless they have said no OP piece....But i highly doubt that
  6. The Anxient Loyal Player

    Players like you are the problem. Congratulations on driving the economy into the toilet.
    • Like x 2
  7. CrescentMoon Well-Known Player

    If I'm a problem, do something. Instead of complaining about the economy, I farmed and invested and went from what used to be 100-200mil I'd have on me most times, to what is now 10+bil worth of items between auras/base items/sm items and I have 5bil I'm sitting on with 300 detectors I'm farming out because someone decided to throw them in the broker for 2mil each so now I have 1500 cache's to get for another 7bil to add to my bank . I'm in the fortune 500 for USPS and I really could care less what you think. Go vent your emotions to someone who cares.
  8. Brit Loyal Player



    Not to derail the thread, but those options don't actually fix the problem.

    For example, a cash reset designed to reduce funds from the super-wealthy could cut down those billionaires and get everybody to whatever arbitrary number they decide is appropriate. But taking away that cash does not necessarily remove their wealth. That only removes liquid assets. Those people who have dozens of 100million+ items on the broker... that's because they OWN dozens of 100million+ items. So long as they retain possession of those valuable items, they still control the market in the exact same way.

    Seconds, creating cash caps does not reduce prices. Don't believe me? Premium players play with a cash cap of a couple thousand dollars. Do you ever see expensive items posted in the broker for $3000? How many $3000 Lex War Gauntlets do you see? Heck, even reasonably priced items, how many $3000 Laughing Knight belt boxes do you see? That one is cheap, and it's still always posted at at least 700K. Does this mean that Premium Players never use their Stabilizers? Do their boxes not include collections or gear? Why would the cash cap not cause these reduced prices? It's simple. All of those cash-capped players just stop using the Broker and they start using the Trade Forum, or the Trade Channel, or the Reddit Forums, or whatever. They arrange their trades without the assistance of the broker, and then they meet in game and perform the trades. And since the cash is worthless to them because they are capped, if they have that 10million dollar item, they will not accept your 10 million dollars as payment. Instead, they walk over to the broker and they pick the item or items that they want to trade for, and they direct you to buy those items for them and then trade with them, items for items. If all players were cash capped, it wouldn't matter what the cash cap was. The results would be the same. If we had a 100 million cash cap, then items that are valued over 100 million would be met with a response of "I'll trade you this OG Smoke Aura, but I want 4 Void Materials."

    Depending on how long you've been playing, you may or may not remember this, but when crafting was first implemented, Red Exobits became the new currency for the game. The huge throngs of Premium Players could farm Red Exos, and they could trade them for what they wanted. And if the Premium Players had a rare collection or style that you wanted, they would not accept payment in the form of cash. They required you pay them with Red Exos. Which meant that for Legendary Members, the game actually became a lot more annoying as we had big piles of useless cash that most players would not actually accept as currency. Cash cap the players wherever you want, that will not force them to sell items cheaper. It just moves those sales over to become obnoxious trades. And what's worse, the broker fee is one of the game's few rare ways to actually remove cash from the bloated economy, so obsoleting the broker for those large purchases only means that cash continues to grow faster than it gets removed from the game.

    Yes, you are correct. There is a problem with the economy. But cash caps and broker caps are not a solution; they only increase the problem.

    There is a correct answer. It is a cash sink. There needs to be something in-game for players to spend that money on. Every enemy in the game drops extra cash into the economy, but the way that the game is designed, once that cash enters the economy, very little of it is ever removed. Instead, it just trades hands. Every day, more and more in-game money is being digitally printed, devaluing the dollar, without ever being adequately removed from the cash pool. As people gradually gain more and more money, and have nothing to do with it, it holds less and less value. It's supply and demand. The supply keeps increasing, while the demand for in-game cash remains the same, so the cash reduces in value and everything costs more.

    The game needs a vendor transaction in game, a way for us to spend money that is not a player-to-player transaction, so that it actually removes the money from the game. And it needs to be one good enough that players will use it over and over again. And it needs to be expensive enough that it can actually offset the rate of cash generation from the game. And then, because of the Premium Cash Cap, it needs to be something that is 100% optional, so that non-Legendary players can still play the game without access to it.

    World of Warcraft had their economy get so far out of whack through the exact same methods that eventually they implemented their own cash sink. And it WORKED. Their cash sink was done in a manner where you could spend in-game gold to purchase your subscription, instead of spending real life money. (The also implemented other options like the super expensive mounts, and the Garrison base building, but because those were one-time purchases, they did not work the same way that the subscription option did, because it was repeatable, so players would constantly use it and be perpetually taking money out of the economy.)

    I do not propose that that same method would work here. Our FTP package is far more appealing than WoW's, and basically the cash cap is the primary method to motivate subscriptions. Lifting the cash cap so that the players can make that purchase would remove any incentive to actually make that purchase. However, there are other options.

    For example, in-game currency to purchase Replay Badges. You see it advertised all over the game already. Players pay in-game currency to other players in order to get them to raid-reset for them. If in-game currency could simply purchase Replay Badges, then players would spend those millions to a vendor instead of to another player, so that money actually leaves the economy.

    Or instead, it could be Stabilizers. In-game currency to purchase Stabilizer Fragments. People would then gamble their 100 million in-game currency opening Stabilizers, hoping to open up contents that they can sell to make the money back, and throughout the process, the money actually leaves the economy via vendor transactions.

    It could be feat unlocking or style unlocking or Quarks. Instead of paying Source Marks for these things, worthless Source Marks that we haven't needed for years, the game could have them cost in-game cash. Go to the Booster vendor and buy Quarks with your cash, and suddenly every player has the option to just pay their however-many-hundred-million-dollars in order to unlock of Void Material.

    It doesn't matter specifically what the cash sink is. But there has to be one. So long as the game doesn't have a sufficient option to spend our money on, then the only thing left to do with the money is player-to-player transactions. And the longer the game goes, the more money is generated, and the higher the prices will continue to increase. At this point, it has less to do with the rarity of the items, and more to do with the overabundance of the cash. And that doesn't get solved with caps; a cash cap just ultimately means we're all capped. Instead, we need a real cash sink to remove money from the economy and help us restore some balance.
    • Like x 1
  9. Illumin411 Loyal Player


    Yes you are the problem and now you've confirmed that you only care about yourself and that you wouldn't piss on the rest of the community if it was on fire.
  10. CrescentMoon Well-Known Player

    You act as if it's possible to care about the community in a way other than just blatantly giving out money xD Words of enlightenment: Trade chat and the broker are stalked 24/7 by people like me looking for things that are cheaper than a normally accepted rate. Throw an arctic mat in the broker for 100mil and it'll be gone within 5 seconds. Throw a og smoke in the broker for 400mil and it'll be gone before the "You have successfully place an item in the broker" is halfway through showing. Throw a ink material in for 100mil and 10s later you'll see a fresh one put in for 200mil. Go in trade and shout that you'll sell a Luthor for 150mil, and you'll see it in the broker for 350mil within the next minute after selling it. I stayed on constant refresh for duration descending for hours and I can say for a fact that the collections and styles tabs are stalked hard. There are times where I can see 999 exo-material put in the broker for 10k, 40 dionesium for 100k and it makes it to the 2nd, 3rd page even, but if a Dark Metal goes in the broker for 5mil, it's snatched before you can even refresh the page. This imaginery world where everyone puts reasonable prices is a fake vision. There are too many people with the greed persona, especially those with access to previous exploits to fund buying out reasonable prices, for anyone who even wants to try to be nice to do anything of substance. Prime example is the Luthor collection. It doesn't matter if you have 3-4 "nice, caring members of the community" that put it in the broker for 50mil, all it takes is 1 person to buy all 3-4 of them and then re-list it at 500mil. And because of the rarity of the Luthor, you won't see anymore for the rest of the day. And there's nothing any of those caring members or anyone else on the game can do about it. And because of the OCD that people have that you seemingly want to ignore as the root of the problem, that 500 collection is going to sell. It's not going to sit in the broker as the only Luthor for over half a day and no1 buys it. Either you flip yourself, or you get flipped. That's how this works. If you don't like it, have the devs make the rare's not tradeable or cap the broker price extremely low. I'm not sure about you, but irl, I'm not donating shoes to the homeless just to see those exact same shoes end up on eBay. I'd rather sell them on eBay myself. Otherwise you're just a victim wishing the world was a better place.
    • Like x 1
  11. Illumin411 Loyal Player


    That's not necessarily true. When someone is selling their home, which is unique not unlike a brand new rare collection piece, they don't just guess a number and "wait and see". They use an appraisal process which relies heavily on comps.

    Why would the Luthor start out at $800M when the Leo Shard started at $160M?
  12. Illumin411 Loyal Player


    You don't have to give money away. How about just letting the price naturally come down slowly LIKE IT WAS. It had slowly over a month come down little by little to $240M, until you greediness kicked in. OBVIOUSLY if you got a drop and listed it for $50M it would be snatched up by a reseller. Nobody has suggested you do that. That has nothing to do with emptying out the supply and resetting the market price at double what it had NATURALLY settled to. That's just evil and unnecessary. How about this, when other people gt the drop and list it for 1%-10% less than the current low price, just LET IT BE.
  13. CrescentMoon Well-Known Player

    Because it depends on who's the first person to get it that wants to sell it. The same thing happens when people come back to the game after being gone for years that don't know current prices. They have a friend or leaguemate that want a cosmic or void and they'll let it go for 400mil not knowing there are people that will pay a bil+. There'a also the broker fee of whether the 1st person can afford to drop 40mil for the fee to begin with, and then the calculated risk of if they'll be undercut before it sells based on the rarity of the item. The toxicity of the instance is also another factor. The atlantis solo was fast and convenient with skipping, while the current solo requires a setup to skip through ideally and it's alot harder mechanically than what you had in atlantis. If people don't feel like running the content, it doesn't drop. If it doesn't drop, it stays rare in the broker and eventually someone is going to push the bar up to see what they can get out of it if it stays that way.
    • Like x 1
  14. Illumin411 Loyal Player


    Exactly. It's whatever random number pops in to the heads of whatever random players get the first few drops. No consideration is given to comparable market value whatsoever.
  15. CrescentMoon Well-Known Player

    No, that's called abusing a situation that's going to happen regardless. When the new dlc dropped and everyone got to cr 270 to get their op back the old enhanced catalyst went up in price. There weren't cleared out of the broker where only 1 was in there like someone reset it. That's just people buying the same thing in bulk, obviously buying the cheaper options first. It doesn't matter if people bought out the enhanced catalyst and reset it to 15-20mil or if everyone bulk bought out everything that was 14mil or less. There are set markets that reset at certain times, and control'ing what that market resets to is up to an individual. It doesn't matter if I didn't buy those Luthor's because they were going to get bought regardless, either from legit ppl or another flipper. The person that I said helped me cleared out the broker the night before, had full intentions to go through and buy them all himself but I beat him online to do it. The entire purpose of flipping is to maximize a guranteed profit. Barely going up on your flip is not how you do that. Because if you fail for various reasons, you lose money. When you reset, you reset high so if you get undercut, you still keep a profit. Because whatever you sell for, has to include the broker fee. If I reset it to 350mil from 250mil, and I looked up like I did that day and saw 3 other luthors underneath mine, all undercut'ing 10+mil each from the other, not only did I lose that broker fee, but now I have a 2nd broker fee to do, in addition to the buying price of the Luthor I paid originally. Meanwhile, If I reset to 500mil, I'd still have ~100mil leeway in profit. You're too busy concerned about yourself to realize the risk that goes into flipping to begin with. And if it wasn't for the "selfish, evil" flipping community, you wouldn't have anything left in the game. All the rare auras, materials, collections, all the seasonal base items you need to buy 3-4+ months after it's gone, all the Batman and Aquaman posters and statues you want,ALL OF THAT IS SUPPLIED BY US. THERE IS NO LOGICAL REASON TO HOARD ANYTHING AT ALL FOR MONTHS/YEARS TO SELL AT THE SAME PRICE YOU BOUGHT IT AT. You calling us selfish rejects our purpose in the economy. We're not selfish, you're just broke.
    • Like x 1
  16. Dene Devoted Player

    Because it is selling

    if it didn't sell at the high prices people would sell them cheaper

    If you could make 2 million just as easy as 1 million, why sell at 1 ?
    • Like x 1
  17. Dene Devoted Player

    So the buyers are the issue ????
  18. 1 ncmike Dedicated Player

    The real issue with the OP collections and even the time capsule collection is always going to be the drop rates and the only people who control that are the developers. People need to realize that you can take all the money away tomorrow and it won't fix the drop rates or solve the problem .
    • Like x 1
  19. kingmasternova Loyal Player

    They should remove the cash in the mail & make the currency account bound, & reset cash to 0.

    It would fix the broker a bit, if that don't help increase the deposit %
    If it's set as 10% increase it to 25%
    • Like x 1
  20. kingmasternova Loyal Player


    I agree the drop rate is the problem but the real problem is how much times 1 person getting a collection piece to another person who haven't gotten 1 piece of collection.
    Say Player 1 opened 8 tc & get all get all 8 pieces of gear, then player 2 open 100 tc & haven't gotten 1 piece of gear. Now that is unfair to that player.

    People who was that player 2 has the right to say it's unfair.