Lately, on Homecoming, Ive been buying up Superpacks, opening, them, and selling most of the contents. I have like 10 alts on that game and I wanted to get ATOs (both sets) for all of them, so I decided to just buy packs and do it that way. I buy 10 Heroes and Villains and 10 Rogues and Vigilantes packs, keep the ATOs I need for ONE alt, then sell everything else. I usually at least break even, and when I don't, I still come close and I usually get a bunch of ATOs I want for what ends up being a pretty good bargain as compared to buying them from the market.
It occurred to me the the only way ATOs spring into existence ex nihilo on that system is by people buying and opening Super Packs. The packs cost 10mil Inf each and according to the forums there, that Inf gets deleted out of existence when the pack is bought. So my buying packs and then selling them deletes Inf out of the world, then when I sell the contents, I'm gathering up other people's Inf and when I then buy more packs, THAT gets deleted out as well. And the whole time, _I_ am gaining Inf, albeit pretty slowly as compared to farming.
This probably isn't a good enough IGC sink al by itself when you consider how fast people can create Inf ex nihilo by farming, but it has potential.
What if all of the really good items you want in CoH were only created by people spending Inf on randomized "Magic cards" type packs?
What if adventuring and beating down mobs only ever got you Inf and Invention Salvage, but you had to spend Inf on randomized packs, sold only by NPC vendors, to try to get rare and very rare recipes to make IOs out of?
The one issue with the packs is that they, like packs of Magic cards, must have some kind of a "filler items" to contain in addition to the occasional really good rare or very rare, that is, there have to be things we can package in there that are not worthless, but are not really high quality high rarity items either.
Homecoming has Insps, respec token, tailor tokens, temp powers (self rez, ally rez, temporary powerups, etc) as well as Catalysts, Converters, Unslotters, Brain Storm Ideas, and Boosters to use as "filler", plus Reward Merits and ATOs as the "good" items. Could CoT come up with that kind of variety of items to put in randomized packs to be sold STRICTLY for IGC in the game? I think it would be an economic boon if they could.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The problem you run into is the Loot Box problem.
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I get ATO's from the merit vendor. Since I try to do tf's and hami raids every night, it isnt a problem to gear up an alt.
Issue encountered on my current games: no one wants random crap. Logic is simple: players are expending real world resources (either $$ for loot box keys, or time in the case of your Super Packs), only for a lottery chance of getting what they want. Most people are fine with random drops directly from the encounter, but once you add a layer of abstraction (I get tokens, I spend tokens on loot) they reasonably wonder why they cannot spend directly on the Shiniez they seek.
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They're only barely acceptable if they can only be purchased with IGC and IGC can't be bought or made with real money. And then they'd still be preying on those with gambling problems or addictive tendancies.
Possibly a good idea for an IGC sink would be like some sort of bonus that only works with IGC. Like, say pay IGC and your super team gains x bonus for 12/24 hours (doesn't work for pvp). Could have different tiers, a number of different bonuses, and gives people another selling point for their Super Team.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I get loot much the same.
How much does an ATO cost in Reward Merits? 50 or 100? I never looked.
Generally, what I've noticed is that the best use of Merits is to get Converters or Boosters, sell them, then use the Inf to buy the IO or whatever that you want. If you spend the same number of Merits, you end up with the item you wanted plus some leftover Inf that way. People us the converters to convert cheap IOs to expensive ones, but that's a market plan that requires knowledge of which IOs to craft/buy and which ones you want to convert them into. I never looked that deeply into that. For some reason, even the Unslotters in the packs sell pretty quickly for like 150k each. I don't think I've ever had to unslot more than a handful of IOs since MAy, so I have no idea what people are using all those Unslotters for.
The 20 packs I buy at a time usually have berween 15 and 30 ATOs in them, pluis anywhere from 50 to 375 Reward Merits, 0 to 10 Catalysts, 0-10 Boosters, like 20ish Converters, 20ish Unslotters, and 10-20 Rare Salvage worth of Brainstorm Ideas. I tried using the Catalysts to upgrade some of the ATOs into Superior ones, which sell for like 17-20mil each, but they don't sell very quickly. You also end up with toins of unused and unsellable stuff, plus tons of Insps.
As far as loot boxes are concerned, if they're ONLY available for IGC and if IGC ONLY comes from defeating mobs and completing missions, its not pay to win.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising