I may be simplifying this too much, and in doing so, I may be misinterpreting what you are saying, but it seems like your saying that it is a crafter's duty to act as a gating mechanism to content. If so, I doubt that you have a completely ulterior motive for your belief, aside from wishing to combat mudflation (which really isn't all that ulterior, tbh). While that is a noble goal, as time goes on, the effect of one person (or even a small group) upon mudflation is minimal at best. I don't even raid anymore (mostly because my guild stopped raiding and I have too many friends there to just leave), and I still have strongboxes full of Legendary/Fabled gear for alts. (Granted, it is paltry compared to CoE quest rewards - probably compared to the contested drops as well, but I won't know that for certain until there actually happens to be a CoE contested named on my server that doesn't have a queue of campers. ) Most of it is from WL named mobs, EW named mobs, and Heirloom quest rewards (although some of it is from running the Skyshrine solo instances). None of my alts is currently wearing Mastercrafted (and we're talking more than 30 alts here). The main reason is that, as an example, you can buy a Legendary item in the lvl 24-34 range for 33g - 1.5p, while a MC item in that same lvl range costs 3p - 6p with (and this is the important part) worse stats. Why anyone would choose to pay more to get less is beyond me. (That is comparable to paying a higher subscription rate for a game so that you can access less content.) Now, I know in your other post, you said that you make reactant gear. I can make it as well, and I might, as I get more reactants (although I've got plenty of the lower level ones, since I generally have 12 or so crafters with apprentices going at any given time - but only three are lvl 90+ crafters). As far as the CoE gear goes, the quest armor I received is comparable (and has more blue stats) to the MC gear, and by the time I finished the Signature line, some of my gear was better than the MC gear. Therefore, the only reason to even consider CoE MC gear would be for my alts. And with the current price of both the MC gear and the rares (except for the roots - those are still pretty cheap), it is highly doubtful that I'll even get MC for them. Essentially, the point I am trying to get across (in an admittedly roundabout manner) is that, as a gating mechanism, restricting access to rares is about as effective as making plate armor out of tissue paper. (I mean, sure it might look nice, but one encounter with a fire elemental and *poof*. )
Not sure what you mean here precisely. As succinctly as possible, I think there should be many quality grades of various rewards, and those should be given to players in full measure for the many different amounts of effort of various kinds that each player puts forth. I think that's axiomatic for games of this type. Mudflation fouls that up. Crafted gear can exist in several strata of the reward structure depending on how the game is set up. In this game, making rares so common that they are not scarce removes the reward-relative difference between them and commons, and is an example of mudflation. That's the quick simple of the point.
There are complaints about mass production destroying the market for arrows and boxes and such. They're just swamped out by this stuff. The real differences are: (1) there's no randomness to those trees. Experimenting is +10% or one proc per pass. Mass production is 100 items at a time. Build-component return is 20%. Nobody complains about the +10% to stats from using purified rares, they just complain about the random return on using the refining skill itself. (2) there's no free money in those trees. Experimenting is worth plat, but requires a fair time investment and a small bit of risk for the reward. Mass production isn't generally used on high-value items. The build components saved aren't usually valuable (except adorning parts and skyshrine-fabled bits.) Refining commons is converting valueless things to plat. The rares from the goblin are making two /hails for plat. Now that there's less free plat, some people are miffed. The other trees have no free plat, so there's no oxen to be gored (to torture a phrase). (And, of course, this is the tree that changed. If rares were always at this rate, and experimenting was bumped down to 5%, or multicrafting bumped down to a cap of 10 items at a time, everyone would be whining about those.)
(Emphasis mine.) What percentage of total harvests brought in by the goblin do you feel is fair for the scarcity of rares? 0.5%? 0.25%? The problem with using terms like "scarce" or "rare" is that the definitions of those words are general enough that the meaning of them is subjective. IOW, what you think is scarce, and what I think is scarce are probably two different values. All that is really required for something to be rare is that it is not common. In this respect, as long as the relative number of rares (of all tiers) is less than the relative number of common harvests (of all tiers), the broadest interpretation is still intact. However, none of us are asking for 49% of harvests by the goblin to be rares. Most of us aren't even asking for 5% of total goblin harvests to be rares. Many of us aren't asking for 1% of his harvests to be rare. I'm only asking for 0.125% of his total harvests to be rare (rounded down). Are you suggesting that 0.125% of the goblin's total harvests isn't scarce?
woah woah woah. Hold the horses. Scarcity has only secondarily to do with harvest rate. The primary measure or scarcity is whether or not you generally want more of them around than there are. It's a very loosey-goosey measure. a) Are there so many rares in circulation that most people can do everything they want to with them? Then they aren't scarce. b) Do most people have to pick and choose to what uses they put rares because they don't have enough to do everything? Then they're scarce. c) Are rares so rare that most people don't actually use them? They are so few and far between that they're too valuable to use, people hoard the few they get and save them for when they "really need them"? Then they're too scarce. Calculating some percentage chance of returning rares will ultimately put us in one of these categories, but that percentage chance is completely unimportant in itself. The important difference is based in the perception and behavior of players, not the mathematics that produced it (and yes, this is the quantitative economist saying that). Edit (as in the quantitative economist would love to say the answer is precisely 3.625 e^n / Dv:q or some other calculated number. But the number isn't the answer.)
Let me preface this by saying that I understand (in general terms) your point of view (I don't necessarily share that viewpoint, but I understand it). But due to my bad luck, or bad timing or whatever it is that makes my rare harvest rate lower than many others, I'm firmly in category C. I hoard those things, because I may eventually need them (either for my alts or to help a guild member). This is mostly because the price I am willing to pay for those rares is less than the price at which people are willing to sell them. Whether this means that I am a cheapskate, or that the sellers are greedy, is all a matter of perspective. (To be honest, neither characterization is entirely true.) BTW, should I assume that, in your example number, the e just indicates an exponent of 10 (so 3.625 * 10^n), not Euler's number?
The example was gobledygook. I didnt define n or q. It was just a placeholder equation for some formula a numbers-person would like to have. You're in C. I'm in A. (I'm doing all I want to and I'm still accumulating rares). We still need to know what 'most' people are in order to have any direction. (and not 'most-people-who-post-on-boards' either )
We're about a month past the xpac date. The expert-spell-making rares themselves are cheaper than before the xpac, even though demand is (obviously) way up. It's not a change in the plat supply since other rare things' prices are behaving "properly": distilled mana are about 1/3 the pre-xpac price, frozen manas are about 3x the pre-xpac (distilled) price, colossal reactants are about 3/4 the pre-xpac price, and banyan roots (which were nigh-useless before and now make unadorners) are more expensive. I'd say that has to mean there's a glut of rares, as a serverwide average, no? There's your "most people".
This is the kind of data that helps show a direction. The server I'm on has similar trends. However there have been supply and demand shocks recently, and the fact that not all items appear on the broker, which makes conclusions from this kind of data non-obvious. However I am inclined agree with your assessment.
I'm not saying that you are wrong, as the numbers will vary somewhat, but perhaps part of the reason that demand may not be up as high as would normally be expected is that SOE made it a heck of a lot easier for someone to upgrade their spells via the market place research reducers. Instead of having to navigate to the marketplace to buy the research reducers, they made it where you can spend the exact amount that would upgrade the spell to the next higher quality tier (e.g. from Journeyman to Adept, etc). This allows people to spend much less time reducing the research time, which in turn makes some people more likely to part with their SC. I don't know about you, but since I have amassed quite a bit of SC with all the promotions going on, I would rather spend the SC at a fixed rate than trust the RNG to actually drop a spell I need, or pay the rates that those spells are listed for on the broker. Although I don't have any solid data on whether anyone else is doing the same, I have a hard time believing that I'm the only one.
Based on very small sample size, I might be getting 1 rare every 3 or 4 harvest episodes with the goblin. I seem to be getting about the same number of rares from my apprentice crafters, although from different tiers. I'm not complaining. I've made maybe 40 plat from the goblin off just 3 rares, which is 40 more than I would have otherwise. I have only had my apprentice crafters for 2 days and did not realize when I first got them that they returned rares. My only disappointment is that I do not think their gear can be used in pvp. Although, maybe I am wrong.
Point granted, but I sell spells on the broker, and they're selling. Not many people are paying 2x-4x the SC to go from a lower level to master; they're buying experts for the one-station-cash expenditure upgrade. (Or buying/harvesting/goblining the rares, and LFC in the world channels. I see that several times a day.) (And that's why I picked "expert spells", it's a market I've seen through several xpacs. In fact, pretty much all of the xpacs.)
That's why I said that numbers will vary somewhat. Also, what are the relative sale prices of the experts vs. the masters. I ask because I usually see expert spells (T1-T8;I don't remember the relative prices on my server for T9 - since at that point I tend to wait until double station cash days and get my spells via research reducers - and I haven't bothered to look at T10, since my sage is only lvl 90 and only recently so) listed for >= the price of rares. Although I know there have to be some people that manage to hoodwink others into paying more for a lower quality item, I can't see that as a viable consistent pricing strategy, since eventually people would learn to check the master spell prices. Also, I wasn't saying that nobody was buying experts. Just that if there seems to be a lower demand than would normally be the case after a level cap increase, there may be a valid reason for it. That reason being that they made it a lot easier than it used to be to reduce the research time.
That does seem pretty bad. I have gotten maybe 10 rares using maybe 2 runs per day over maybe 10 to 14 days. I have not been keeping track of the number of runs or days, so those are just guesses. I am only harvesting in tier 10. I got a 'dark' or 'black' something or other and three ores and 2-3 roots and a reptile hide and 2 lumbers. The dark something or others are selling for about 38 plat on Nag. I put mine in the bank. I have one level 90 illy and thought maybe he could use it. I have not checked. Yesterday I organized my provy's bank and packs upgrading to the bear hide backpacks. In the process I tried to sell off redundant common harvested material (leaving him with one or two stacks of the 7 'food groups' and 6 or 7 typical non-food items from each tier in the game). Turns out virtually all of these items are now selling for 2 copper to 1 silver on the broker. I have never seen anything like it. It used to be that many common harvested material items would sell for 1 - 5 gold each. I do not think this is because of guild harvester 'bots' or the harvest pony. I think this is something new and probably is the result of many people sending out the harvest goblins in search of rares. Although I am not certain. But some people on this forum write about sending out an army of goblins and some individual people on Nag are selling 30 or more of an individual tier 10 rare. Selling common harvested material on the broker is now not worth the time. If this keeps up even the harvest pony has become obsolete. I have destroyed massive amounts of common harvest material even with an army of crafters most still leveling, because I do not need the material and it is not worth anything on the broker.
