I've been playing CoH Homecoming for some time now, and I want to share something I've noticed about the way that game's auction house system works.

In the days when the game was live, it had a cash shop and the sold Super Packs for real money. Homecoming is now non-profit so they only take donations, but you can still get Super Packs. They are sold via the Auction House for 10 million Inf each (the Winter ones cost more, details).

What I like about this is as follows. I got a toon up to the level cap and then got like 300 mil Inf by doing missions, etc. I don't AE farm and I don't do PvP. I just made a Bots mastermind and did Tip missions and other stuff until I had 300 mil Inf one day. At that point, a friends and I decided to try to play the market a little, so we bought 20 Super Packs each, opened them, and then sold the contents. We both made more Inf than we spent. That was in like August and I've been doing that like once a week or so ever since. Spend 200mil Inf on packs, open them, sell the contents. In some rare cases I'd failt to make Inf on the transaction due to market forces or just bad luck in the packs, but I usually make like 20 Million Inf or more, depending on pack luck. Sometimes you get 30 ATOs you can sell, sometimes only 18-19, and the Reward Merits can sometimes determine how much Inf the profit is all by themselves.

I'm telling you this story because it occurred to me that this system is way better for the game economy than what it replaced. On homecoming, people are going to farm for Inf. By doing what I do, i.e. flipping packs, I realized that I am not only flushing Inf out of the economy, but also providing players with a supply of ATOs, Boosters, Catalysts, etc from the packs. I spend 200 Mil Inf on packs, that Inf is effectively destroyed, since no player gets that Inf. Then, I sell the stuff from the packs, causing Inf to drain away in the form of the AH's 5% rake on transactions. Then, I use that Inf to buy more packs, thus flushing another 200 mil Inf again. Every iteration of this process destroys like 200mil Inf for the packs plus the 5% rake on the gross sales. which averages like 240mil, so that rake is like 12 mil. So while ATOs are selling for 8+million each and there ar elike 0-3 ATOs available on the market for some of the more popular ATOs, like the Brute ones, I get to make Inf by selling stuff people want to them, all the while destroying Inf in the process, which acts counter to all the Inf being generated ex-nihilo by farmers. Now, I'm not saying this totally prevents inflation, but it definitely helps.

So the Super Pack economy in Homecoming acts to some extent as a control rod on inflation. When prices of ATOs on the AH are high, it's beneficial for the individual to buy packs and sell the contents. When there are too many ATOs on the market, the prices fall and people buy fewer packs. Its a supply/demand system that tends to balance itself.