As things presently stand in the game, the new Invention system is the most “fun” (and profit) for those folks who are starting off with Gobs of Cash, er, Influence (explain to me how the concept of “Influence” translates into Auction Houses again?).
One writer to the boards commented:
I’m puzzled how the whole business is being considered a good, functioning thing. How are players at lower level supposed to participate when everything on the market is selling for millions of influence (sometimes HUNDREDS of millions)? If I combined the total influence earned by all my characters since I began playing, I wouldn’t have that much.
Yes, I could post stuff and earn millions in a moment, but that seems broken in itself. Should a L1 character have millions of influence? Further, a casual player is going to be severely handicapped even GETTING the drops. In other words, the hardcore and the rich will get rich. The casual and the new will languish in mediocrity.
Castle answered, unhelpfully, that it’s easy to play that game — if you win the lotto.
Heh, going to chime in on this one just for a bit of reference on how quickly you can acquire influence.
I was lucky on one of my play characters to get the burned wings recipe within the first 36 hours of the game going live. I scraped up as much influence as I had which was roughly 65 k and put that item up for sale for the max that I could which was 18mil.
It sold instantly… I be rich, I do be rich indeed. Not really compared to a lot of folks out there willing to pay higher prices for items so they don’t have to be bothered getting the drops.
This is a blind auction system so honestly just because you see an item sell for a high price doesn’t mean that same item isn’t also listed for 200 influence.
With a market like this there are always ways to make a bit of influence if you are clever you will find a way.
Which is all fine and well, if you want to take the time to play the market the market that way. In a sense it feels a lot like those folks who spend a lot of time online at stock sites — they claim to be able to make big money with a bit of cleverness and attention, but if you can’t or won’t invest that time (so to speak), it’s not an option open to you. Similarly, it seems to me that you can make a fair amount of money simply actioning the rare and unusual recipes and salvage you pick up at Wentworths, and simply selling the rest — which is not what the system is intended to do, but which is a lot more simple and straightforward than figuring out how to get the four ingredients for a recipe to give you a perpetual DO on a particular power, and maybe let you build additional sets that will add other little power bits.
Margie’s comment, as I chatted with her about this, is that this is all a part of reducing the Influence excess for the long-time Level 50s who have kept playing their characters and getting filthy rich. Those are the people you hear on Broadcast chortling about how they just bought a Wings recipe for 16MM Influence.
In theory, if that’s so, then once they’ve spent all their loose change (or passed it onto their lower friends and alts to spend), then prices should go down. Unlike a “real” economy, the demand is consistent but the supply is inexhaustible. That should mean things reaching a more reasonable equilibrium in a few weeks … assuming anyone’s still doing anything with IOs by then.