Idea - Introduction of new Currency orbs - creating better economy

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deteego wrote:

The reason why orbs are being used as gold is because after a certain point in the game (usually level 50-60), the massive RNG aspects in crafting (especially in regards to fusings/jewellers which either kill ur current skill build or require you to farm extra insurence) means the effort required to craft items, out of those orbs, is definitely not worth the risk

So people are doing what they did in D3, they hoard orbs and use them as a form of currency to purchase an item of trade chat/forums

The above is the problem with the economy, introducing new orbs won't fix that problem. They will either become mandatory or useless

The entire point of having itemized currency is for people to use them as currencies, so I don't see why there is a problem. They're called "currency" for a reason. There is supposed to be a choice of "use or trade," and that is exactly what players are facing. Sure, many players will choose to trade some specific orbs instead of use them, but other players will choose to use those same orbs.

The perfect comparison is D2 (which played a big part in influencing PoE's system). The official currency was practically worthless for a slew of reasons, so a handful of items were used as currencies, namely Stones of Jordan and High Runes. For the most part, they were far more valuable in trade than they were in use, just like some of PoE's currencies. Still, there were plenty of players who would vend hundreds of SoJ's in an effort to get a random event, and there were plenty of players who would use hundreds of HR's trying to get a great or perfect runeword. Similarly, there are plenty of players in PoE who use the rare orbs for a chance at something great.

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WhiteBoy wrote:

The entire point of having itemized currency is for people to use them as currencies, so I don't see why there is a problem. They're called "currency" for a reason. There is supposed to be a choice of "use or trade," and that is exactly what players are facing. Sure, many players will choose to trade some specific orbs instead of use them, but other players will choose to use those same orbs.

Its against the intentions of GGG

They purpously created the concept of orbs so people would actually use them to craft not as a form of currency. Thats why the removed the concept of gold, they don't want an AH/trading style system, instead they wan't people to barter for items instead of offering a common form exchange (i.e. gold)

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WhiteBoy wrote:

The perfect comparison is D2 (which played a big part in influencing PoE's system). The official currency was practically worthless for a slew of reasons, so a handful of items were used as currencies, namely Stones of Jordan and High Runes. For the most part, they were far more valuable in trade than they were in use, just like some of PoE's currencies. Still, there were plenty of players who would vend hundreds of SoJ's in an effort to get a random event, and there were plenty of players who would use hundreds of HR's trying to get a great or perfect runeword. Similarly, there are plenty of players in PoE who use the rare orbs for a chance at something great.

Except for the fact you can pretty much replaces "orbs" with "gold" and you won't notice a difference. People are haggling, not battering. Orbs is just gold, there are standard exchange rates, and whenever someone wants an item, they ask for orbs, not something they may find useful.

If you listened to what GGG said, they are trying to emulate D2's bartering, that is, try to sell something that wasn't a currency for an item

In any case, the game is turning into D3 where the majority of loot that drops is useless (and by useless, I mean you can't equip without ridiculous investment), so people are just collecting currency (aka gold in D3) and using an AH (forums/trade chat)

Believe it or not, this is a bad, not a good thing

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deteego wrote:

Its against the intentions of GGG

They purpously created the concept of orbs so people would actually use them to craft not as a form of currency.

http://www.pathofexile.com/item-data/currency

I couldn't find a page that was titled "crafting supplies."

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deteego wrote:

They purpously created the concept of orbs so people would actually use them to craft not as a form of currency. Thats why the removed the concept of gold, they don't want an AH/trading style system, instead they wan't people to barter for items instead of offering a common form exchange (i.e. gold)

This is relevant. It was originally posted well before the closed beta started.

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deteego wrote:

Except for the fact you can pretty much replaces "orbs" with "gold" and you won't notice a difference.

I'd notice that gold doesn't offer any usage other than paying someone. Orbs have uses other than trade, which is quite a difference.

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deteego wrote:

People are haggling, not battering.

You can haggle in any system. If I want to buy your goat and offer you a chicken, we're bartering. If you counter my offer by asking for 3 chickens, we're haggling a price for our barter.

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deteego wrote:

Orbs is just gold, there are standard exchange rates...

If you choose to accept what another player tells you is a "standard" rate, that's your own choice. Sure, many players have set relative rates based on their perception of orb rarities and usefulness, but I guarantee you can find a better deal if you're willing to actually barter and haggle instead of accepting orbs as "just gold."

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deteego wrote:

...whenever someone wants an item, they ask for orbs, not something they may find useful.

That's simply not true. People put up WTB's for gear all the time.

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Pivu wrote:

The first orb is very interesting.

But it shouldnt do 'double the affix'. It should be like this:

1 affix goes 1 tier up, 1 affix goes 1 tier down.

So for example you have +50 life and 5.0 life regen per second on a rare chest. You want to get the life up, so you use this and hope that life regen will go down and life will go up. Very interesting, very risky and very RNG :P. Something like a divine orb, but with much more risk of screwing up an item.

This would be a much better way for the orb to work.

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deteego wrote:

Its against the intentions of GGG

They purpously created the concept of orbs so people would actually use them to craft not as a form of currency.

Wrong. Their intended function was to behave as a currency with their own intrinsic values as consumable items. To contrast, the "gold" in a "gold based" economy has no intrinsic value, purpose, or function, and so its value deflates rapidly without some form of currency sink (a way to remove the currency from the economy), often entirely superfluous, such as armour and weapon repairs. GGG's intention was just that, to avoid a superfluous currency sink as a necessary function of the economy. That is (as was in the beta manifesto) the entire reason they implemented currency orbs that had intrinsic value as consumables; they remove themselves from the economy without being superfluous.

The issue now, is that this economy functioned well with a group of 2-3000 players, as the distribution of players too afraid to use currency, players willing to use some of it, and those willing to craft 'till the cows come home, compared to the amount of trade-worthy items entering the economy, was just right for the economy to naturally balance itself and (mostly) function for everybody. Now the distribution is skewed much more heavily towards those too afraid to use any, with many more players finding many more valuable items worth trading, and the orbs are remaining in circulation for too long.

To that end, the solution is not the introduction of more orbs, but the introduction of an orb sink that continues to perform an orb's intrinsic function, but without the RNG -- at least to a certain extent (as that is the source of apprehension, when there are enough items to simply trade for instead). In that way more players will use more of their orbs to achieve minimal-but-RNG-independent results when crafting, and the currency will once again find its way out of the economy.

A possible way to create a currency sink would be something that worked quite well in real economics too: A currency that looses ist value over time (demurrage currency; freigeld)

e.g. an exalted orb Drops - after 96 hours the exalted orb devalues and becomes a blessed orb if it is not used, after 96 hours that blessed orb turns in a gcp .... and so on.


So people would be really intrested to use orbs or to trade with them fast. The ammount of currency present would never really increase and so there cant be any Inflation.

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return33 wrote:

A possible way to create a currency sink would be something that worked quite well in real economics too: A currency that looses ist value over time (demurrage currency; freigeld)

e.g. an exalted orb Drops - after 96 hours the exalted orb devalues and becomes a blessed orb if it is not used, after 96 hours that blessed orb turns in a gcp .... and so on.


So people would be really intrested to use orbs or to trade with them fast. The ammount of currency present would never really increase and so there cant be any Inflation.

Not a bad intent, but horrible methodology.

The cause of inflation in Chaos Orbs (and other lesser orbs) is the vendor formula. It works pretty well at inflating them. Since we're going to have inflation for those anyway, we might as well inflate Exalts so the Chaos:Exalt ratio remains a little more steady.

My suggestion for a vendor formula:

• Full set of rare gear -> Chance/Chaos/Regal (these formulas already exist)
• Full set of unique gear -> Regal/Divine/Exalt (these formulas doesn't exist yet)

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Pivu wrote:

The first orb is very interesting.

But it shouldnt do 'double the affix'. It should be like this:

1 affix goes 1 tier up, 1 affix goes 1 tier down.

So for example you have +50 life and 5.0 life regen per second on a rare chest. You want to get the life up, so you use this and hope that life regen will go down and life will go up. Very interesting, very risky and very RNG :P. Something like a divine orb, but with much more risk of screwing up an item.

I'll add one more thing to my previous post.

If we had an orb that works like this, it would be much easier to create a powerful item from alteration -> regal -> exalt.

For example - you want an axe with max +% IPD. You roll a high +% IPD value and use this orb to get it even higher. After using 5-6 orbs and praying to the RNG gods to make the roll high enough you get your desired value. Then you can regal -> exalt.

Now - why we will never have an orb that works this way. First of all it would require too much knowledge from players imo. You would need to know values of the affixes, know how many affixes are below one and how many are above one.

For example lets say there are 6 affixes levels.

1. affix -> 4th level of an affix
2. affix -> 2nd level of an affix

So max you could get is 5th level of your desired affix. If a player doesn't know how many affixes there are, he will just use the orbs and not get what he wants.

That's my opinion. But if we look at the current state of the game, we can see that there are already 2 orbs that funcion in a similar way. Jeweler orb and Divine orb. If a player wants 6s on an item, he needs to know what's the itemlevel and what's the required itemlevel for 6s. For divine players needs to know the possible range an affix can get.

So on one hand it would fit the current state of the game, but on the other hand, do we want more orbs that require players to dig deep into the game mechanics?

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WhiteBoy wrote:

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deteego wrote:

The reason why orbs are being used as gold is because after a certain point in the game (usually level 50-60), the massive RNG aspects in crafting (especially in regards to fusings/jewellers which either kill ur current skill build or require you to farm extra insurence) means the effort required to craft items, out of those orbs, is definitely not worth the risk

So people are doing what they did in D3, they hoard orbs and use them as a form of currency to purchase an item of trade chat/forums

The above is the problem with the economy, introducing new orbs won't fix that problem. They will either become mandatory or useless

The entire point of having itemized currency is for people to use them as currencies, so I don't see why there is a problem. They're called "currency" for a reason. There is supposed to be a choice of "use or trade," and that is exactly what players are facing. Sure, many players will choose to trade some specific orbs instead of use them, but other players will choose to use those same orbs.

The perfect comparison is D2 (which played a big part in influencing PoE's system). The official currency was practically worthless for a slew of reasons, so a handful of items were used as currencies, namely Stones of Jordan and High Runes. For the most part, they were far more valuable in trade than they were in use, just like some of PoE's currencies. Still, there were plenty of players who would vend hundreds of SoJ's in an effort to get a random event, and there were plenty of players who would use hundreds of HR's trying to get a great or perfect runeword. Similarly, there are plenty of players in PoE who use the rare orbs for a chance at something great.

Great one white boy, I couldn't have said it better!!