City of Heroes The Purple Answer

City of Heroes The Purple Answer by TopDoc

I’ve seen a few posts recently in which people complain that they can’t get the nicest stuff in the game (purples). I wanted to explain a few things, so that in the future I can just point to this thread every time someone complains.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, the Devs set the drop rate. There is absolutely nothing that we as players can do about that. The Devs want purples to be ultra-rare, so they are. Complaining here about the drop rate is not productive. Go to the Developer’s Corner forum, or the Suggestions and Ideas forum.

SECOND MOST IMPORTANT, purples are not needed. People played the game before purples. Characters loaded with just SOs can usually take on 3 even con minions, unless they made some bad choices when picking powers and slotting. No content is limited to chars with purple IO sets. I’ve never seen anyone require purples for a team, or even set IOs. Granted purples make the game easier. Purples make it possible to do some silly hard things, like solo AVs, or Rikti Pylons, or massive spawns of high level mobs. But the Devs DO NOT want everyone doing that, so purples will NEVER be easy to obtain.

Purples are an end-game activity. You only earn them by fighting high level mobs, a WHOLE LOT of high level mobs. They are designed to be a time-sink, something to do with your char after you hit level 50. If you want purples, you better be prepared to play your level 50 chars a WHOLE LOT. It used to take hundreds of hours to hit level 50, and the Devs probably started out with that same general time scale (or longer) to fully IO out a character with purples.

If you are not prepared to jump through the hoops the Devs created in order to earn purples, then you do not deserve them. If you feel you deserve them simply because they exist, and you pay your $15/month, I recommend you keep it quiet. You have a sense of entitlement that people in this forum will laugh at. It’s about as silly as demanding a Hummer just because you have a Driver’s License. Things do not work that way in the real world, and they don’t work that way in the game. The high end loot in this game is already far easier to get than in most other MMOs. The Devs will NEVER make purples common enough that casual players can get lots of them.

How long does it take to get purples? My average from farming is one purple every 1500 minions. I could get on average one per hour with my very fast farming char. Your average character is significantly slower, and it could take upwards of 10 hours of play per purple. Teaming may take longer, just due to the lower defeat speed on teams. I’m giving you these numbers to help set your expectations. Run Hero Stats and find your kill rate, divide it by your team size, figure out how long it’ll take to defeat 1500 mobs, and that’ll give you an indication of how long on average it’ll take to find one random purple.

You only deserve the purples that you get as drops. If you want MORE than that, you have to convince other players to give them to you. Other players can be very unreasonable. You may have to give them a WHOLE LOT of Inf to get what you want. This is normally done on the Market. If you want to complete a purple set, you have the same problem. It is unlikely you’ll get a whole set from drops, given their random nature. The Devs added the Market specifically so people could sell the recipes they don’t need and buy the ones they do need. You may be able to complete a set by asking friends, SGmates, or global chat channels. But for ultra-rare things, the Market is often your only choice.

A LOT of people come to the Market looking for purples. Casual players don’t play enough to get many purple drops, so they want to buy them at the Market. People who like playing lowbies don’t get purple drops, so they come to the Market. Players with purples who want to finish a set come to the Market. Powergamers who want to solo AVs come to the Market. On the other hand, not a whole lot of people are selling their purples at the Market. If I find one that I think I may be able to use some day, I’ll store it in my base, or keep it in my Enhancement Tray. Lots of people would never consider selling a purple. Low Supply and High Demand have massively increased the price of purples.

Supply has taken a lot of hits recently. You can’t earn purples in AE (except in Dev Choice arcs), and a WHOLE LOT of people were just doing AE for months. Issue 16 has gotten a lot of people out of the AE building, but there’s at least one bug that has significantly reduced recipe drops. I’m getting 1/8 of the usual Recipe drops on one of my farm maps. Some farmers have simply stopped farming till the bug gets fixed. Nothing has reduced Demand. In fact Demand has increased significantly in the past few months, due to the amount of PLing that went on in AE. And all that PLing has produced a lot of Inf that can go to purchasing purples.

The absolute richest players in the game set the price for purples. If a single Armageddon: Acc/Dam enters the market each day on average, then it will be purchased by the one person who bids highest. Now there are a LOT of rich people in the game. There are Ebil Marketeers, farmers, PLers, and hardcore players who have a LOT of Inf. There are probably people who have used exploits (snake egg farm or some Duping hack) to rack up huge amounts of Inf. And there may be people who buy from the RMTers. So there are plenty of people with a billion or more Inf. That single Armageddon: Acc/Dam each day will go to the single ultra-rich person who bids the highest.

The Market is a PvP zone. You are competing with other players to buy purples. You need a WHOLE LOT of Inf to win there. You need to be the single ultra-rich person who bids the highest. Patience helps too, as you may be able to win with a lower bid if no ultra-rich person happens to be bidding that day. Now there are a lot of different ways to earn enough Inf to become the winning bidder. You can become an Ebil Marketeer, or a farmer, or just a hardcore player. But there’s no way you’ll ever earn enough Inf to buy multiple nice purple IO sets if you remain a casual player.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to become good at Market PvP, and most marketeers believe the rewards are better than anything else in the game. There are a lot of threads in this forum about earning Inf fast and easy using the Market. Complaining about the price of purples won’t really accomplish anything. But earning massive Inf using the Market will.

tl;dr THE PUPLE ANSWER: Play your 50s a WHOLE LOT, or play the Market.