Test Discussion GU97: Catalyst Consolidation

Sorry, put this in the other thread, this should go here.

Previously we could trade catalyst cache's which helped with earning money and helping people grind.

You've made these new catalysts account bound, completely stripping the ability to sell them???

Why? I think that is a bad decision, can these please be made tradeable.

Converting 99 stellarium (or any other old catalysts) is a pain to convert individually if the player has a lot, can there be any way to let the player select a certain amount to convert if they have larger quantities?

Please make the catalysts tradeable, PLEASE. I don't want to sell my catalysts now, but I will just to make my money worth. Catalysts were a way to grind out money for me. I for one prefer not to spend real money on the Time Capsules, and prefer to buy all items with in game cash. Now, that option is taken away from me, and I have less income to go by. Its not cool, and this changed should not make it into the game. Please rethink this decision as my ONLY reason to buy the catalysts from Constantine were to sell them for in game cash. Please rethink, again...

Hmm...

I'm going to take the dark side of the coin and agree with the decision to have catalysts account bound (playing devil's advocate once again).

Having catalysts account bound *gently* directs players towards actually playing the game. Without catalysts in the broker, players will have to decide to either purchase them with Source Marks (actually playing the game) or purchase them from the Marketplace; catalysts in turn become another viable source of revenue for the game. Since catalysts are easily available from a vendor (Constantine) and it is easier than ever to obtain Marks, there is little reason to have them available for the broker. It isn't as if players have little resources to make in-game cash from.

I have to disagree with you. We are slowly losing all items that players use as bread and butter selling on the broker. Catalysts are a rarity now as they tend to hold their price, whilst others flood the boker with items discounted so cheaply other players can't make enough to afford items such as Collection pieces. Over the last 6 months the broker has gone out of control with specific items being massively over-inflated in price and the everyday items that normal people sell, have been crushed in price. The 1% who have the billions are making it so hard to get enough money together to enjoy getting items we used to afford with little effort and some time spent grinding.

I have to agree that non-tradable is the way they should be. Unless you want the 1%'s controlling that market aswell, or those 1%'s being the only ones able to buy the bulk of them for 200 break though without playing the game to get them... (or spending real money)

To add the the actual topic of the thread. Click a catalyst 1 by 1 is very tedious if you have a bunch to convert.

Losing Catalysts as a bread and butter item on the broker for sellers is pretty rough.

Hmm..

What do you think will happen if catalysts are tradeable after the consolidation? The broker will become worse with even higher prices for catalysts because there are only 3 of them and they have different prices. The very thing you do not like will become even more out of control. With catalysts off of the broker, it will be one less thing for players to complain about as far as a high-priced broker item.

As far as collection pieces, I agree that those prices are out of control; however, since they do not contribute to game progression in any way, the devs may not think there is an issue about their prices.

If the devs decide to pull catalysts off of the broker on the live server, then I do not think there will be anything left on the broker that significantly contributes to progression in any form in the game; that is what the devs may be going for.

I agree making catalyst account bound means the players have to play the game or go on the MP to breakthrough artifacts. Having the option to buy them off the broker with only 3 catalyst will flood the broker with yet ridiculous prices that only a hand full of ppl can afford. It’s not hard to grind for source marks if you “play” the game like it supposed to be played. If not open your wallet and let daybreak have the money to keep doing what they do. Develope new and fresh content 2-3 times a year. Thank you dvs

These statements are contradictory as anything that gets "flooded" in the broker is by economics cheapened. There are currently people selling catalyst cache's as the purple box, the blue rank boxes, and the individual catalysts. If all of them were forced to sell the same thing in the same way, they'd be forced to start undercutting each other.

Theres nothing forcing you to buy catalysts if you don't want too so if they're tradeable it doesn't impact you, you can just grind them and ignore those sold.

However allowing them to be tradeable is beneficial to all players because all players can grind catalysts, all players can sell them and all can choose to buy or not because all players need them.

Being able to sell them gives players a steady income should they choose that doesn't rely on RNG.

They earn the marks and buy the catalysts they can then use that earned money to buy other things.

Making these items account bound only serves to push more players towards the marketplace at the expense of actually ruining the economy by stripping players of one of the remaining stable sources of income that doesn't rely on the likes of opening capsules and hoping to get lucky enough to sell something decent

The catalysts should 100% be made tradeable, unfortunately this decision smells of the devs just trying to slip a change in that pushes the artifact further towards a pay2win model, no one should be supporting it.

Edit. Nvm, not even gonna try.

Hmm... let me think about that...

Well, I humbly disagree; not everything that is *flooded* to the broker gets cheaper; you can check out the time capsule gear boxes to see it for yourself. A good example of this are the Speed Metal Gear Boxes; they still command well over a million in-game cash for each when at this point, they should be less than 500k and there are about 3 pages of them.

The current catalysts all cost the same price; 10 mark and they sell pretty much the same across the board, because you can break the catalyst caches down into parts and sell them individually.

The future ones will have different price points; 7, 10, and 15 marks respectively (common, uncommon, rare). If the consolidated catalysts become tradeable, then the players to play the broker will buy as many of the 15 mark one as possible and sell them at the usual too-high price. I am sure many players are buying and saving catalyst caches right now just to utilize the future 10 mark conversion as much as possible to do this.

It doesn't matter if they buy heaps of those ones because it comes down to supply and demand, you also don't have to buy them, you can ignore them and farm your own using marks.

The only people that should be considering purchasing off the broker are people that need a lot, cause they're rushing or leveling alts etc..

By making them account bound you're saying to these players either wait cause relevancy limits source marks or open your wallet and spend replays or buy them off the market place which is more expensive.

Are you sure you don't have shares in Daybreak?

No idea what broker you're looking at. I just typed in Speed Metal for USPS/PC and I see 2 pages. And out of all the pieces, the shoulders are the most abundant at 5 of them, 2 of them being the same price which is probably the same person. I hardly consider 5 pieces of gear "flooded". And if they're tradeable, you can't buy all the 15 mark one's and sell them at a "usual too-high price" because the people who farmed them would keep putting them in the broker. That's why Exo-Materials don't have out of wack prices because you can't buy a stack and flip it before a farmer gets another stack. You'd be in an infinite cycle of buying and if they see you constantly buying, they'd raise the price until you stop and then drop back down when noone else is buying as well. You can only flip items that get rarer or harder to get. You're not going to flip catalyst cache's when there are players with 1000's of source marks and regular people who farm across main's and alt's for source marks. Every single day you'd have a fresh stock of catalyst being put in from people doing dailies, got forbid when reset happens or they have a bonus weekend and there's always a dip in prices. The reason people would be buying catalyst cache's rn is because currently they can't buy in the future -_- If I had the cash to buy 1000 catalyst cache's and have 10k source marks, cool, I can buy 666 15 mark catalyst. What even makes you think it's possible to sell 666 of them before I get undercut because the dlc just launched everyone is spammed raids. People are getting 15 source marks every 30-40 minutes for the next week'ish and my entire plan of ruling the market goes down the drain.

We are still looking for an answer regarding this Mepps.

Is this is a goof on the Developer's part or is there are good reason as to why this was done?

LOL! I'm not good enough to have *shares* in anything, even though I am playing devil's advocate.

And yes, I am saying that by making them account bound players will either have to *play the game* to get marks to purchase them OR finance the game and buy them from the Marketplace. As you have pointed out, players can grind for marks for the catalysts and ignore the Marketplace to avoid spending real money those catalysts and replays.

Now, for end-level characters this change will be harsh I'll admit, because they will only have a few choices of content to gain Source Marks from. The upside to that is the Teen Titans currency turning into Source Marks when Metal 1 is launched, so there is a potential mark source from that.

I simply just do not see how keeping the catalysts account bound will hurt the broker/player economy, since there are other types of items that can be sold for a good profit.

Ahh., but that is the thing; why would players even farm for marks if they know that they can buy catalysts off of the broker? This is what many players do now; they buy their catalyst caches from the broker or from someone who is in shout/trade chat selling them outright. Why should they *farm for marks* to buy them when they become consolidated and are tradeable? Why would they go through that much work when they did not have to before? By keeping them account bound, players will have to choose to either do a little farming or buying from the Marketplace outright.

As far as the Speed Metal, its not so much about the type of gear box (shoulder, head, feet, ect) as the fact that there are a lot of them on the broker for a high price, period. Just like the gear boxes, the new catalysts will flood the broker because players will post them according to how much in game money and broker space they have. Those who have a lot will simply continue to dominate the broker, and I think we have enough of that already.

As I have stated to Proxy, I really do not understand why the new catalysts need to be tradeable.

At least this change isn't as harsh as when seals became account bound.

I don't know if you're aware, but playing devil's advocate by playing ignorant of the community doesn't work in your favor. If anything, you're just replicating the instance of players accusing the staff of not playing the game. The vast majority of things (outside of common collections and catalyst like the 1st tier op back drops) put in the broker aren't things played just have leftover they farmed for other reason. They're things players set out to farm specifically and sell. That's like saying why would players even farm for exo-material if they know that they can buy exo-material off of the broker? Why woud players buy stabilizers for gear pieces and collections if they know that they can buy them off of the broker? That argument bypasses the entire point of hte broker even existing. You can put a blank and do "why would players even farm for ____ if they know that they can buy ____ off of the broker?" and have an argument format for why even have any item tradeable in the game. The only people who would want a removal of the broker are whales who don't want others to reach their status in game.