Currency Orbs scale to ILVL?

My opinion on Dust is that it achieves the same thing, it is merely presented differently. Changing the average result per attempt and changing the cost of an attempt are equivalent in the grand scheme, they just get different edge behaviors.

Segueing into the next topic: it's the expected results that motivate players, and the expected results can be tuned to be the same with both ideas.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The question is: how far would you need to go in order to incentivize actually using your orbs instead of hoarding them? Players put a huge premium on the highest-quality gear, and that premium might be so high that, even if affix ratios were ridiculously warped even for itemlevel 63 (Merci Docks) gear, players still might choose not to use them, because saving up for that endgame is more (market) value per orb. It would still be only the desperate who use them; the only difference would be that, when they do, they'd get a lot more reward with your change than they would now.

I don't think I said incentivize in my OP, I just said support. Players are already playing self found. They don't need to be incentivized they just need better support. It's like you said at the end- the difference is that the people who use them get better reward. This is about giving those players a better experience, not about making more people into those players.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

My opinion on Dust is that it achieves the same thing, it is merely presented differently. Changing the average result per attempt and changing the cost of an attempt are equivalent in the grand scheme, they just get different edge behaviors.

It does indeed achieve the same. The difference however is with regards to rare currency. If it takes 1/60 of an exalted orb to craft ilvl38 then it can be 60 times less efficient than hoarding. Also it's important to note it already takes less currency to craft desirable mods at lower ilvl by virtue of there being less mods. What justifies low lvl crafting is how much time crafting saves you versus how long it takes to make up that lost value in end game. Since items are rapidly outgrown at low levels it hard to save much time at all.

Veta, I thought long and hard about your comment. There were a lot of different options I considered on how to respond. But ultimately it comes down to the same thing I said to Scrotie: my idea is merely intended to support low level crafting, not to incentivize it.

Incentivizing low level crafting is not a goal that I consider wise to chase. Why should it be worthwhile to craft? Sure when you're looking at your orb it would be great to feel like the best possible use is to craft a low level item with it. Better than hoarding. Better than farming? Better than even trade! But take a moment to reflect on just how massive that change is, or if it even makes sense.

Making crafting the best would not be a desirable property for the game to have. So it cannot be used as a yardstick for evaluation. If there's an idea out there that makes low level crafting so valuable that players are incentivized to do that over hoarding, trading, or farming, it's probably a bad idea.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

Veta, I thought long and hard about your comment. There were a lot of different options I considered on how to respond. But ultimately it comes down to the same thing I said to Scrotie: my idea is merely intended to support low level crafting, not to incentivize it.

Incentivizing low level crafting is not a goal that I consider wise to chase. Why should it be worthwhile to craft? Sure when you're looking at your orb it would be great to feel like the best possible use is to craft a low level item with it. Better than hoarding. Better than farming? Better than even trade! But take a moment to reflect on just how massive that change is, or if it even makes sense.

One Moment inside

Arrange in order from most economically profitable to least:
Crafting
Hoarding
Farming
Trading

Making crafting the best would not be a desirable property for the game to have. So it cannot be used as a yardstick for evaluation. If there's an idea out there that makes low level crafting so valuable that players are incentivized to do that over hoarding, trading, or farming, it's probably a bad idea.

Concerning the 1/60 of an orb to craft cruel quality gear

Just because it's 1/60 of an orb doesn't change the value of the orbs relative to each other. In practice it would be 1/60 of an alchemy/choas, not an exalt, because who would burn their exalts like that even if it was just 1/60? Just spend 1/60 of a choas maybe 5-10 times and you probably get a better result for less currency.

By support low level crafting you mean encourage? If so then yes that's something but it is somewhat different from what Scrotie and others are getting at. There's also more subtle ways to encourage low level crafting. Reducing gear drops and increasing orb drops may make players more desperate, desperate enough to craft. That doesn't really add choice however and I'm not entirely sure it's good a thing.

First let's ask what we want because I suspect there may be a difference. I'd like to see more players exposed to crafting sooner. I think its a fun mechanic but doesn't make much sense at low levels. In fact it's a bit of a noob trap. Rare orbs may as well be disabled at low levels. What Scrotie's and similar ideas are getting at is the intrinsic value difference between temporary crafting and non-temporary crafting. Early item progression versus end game progression. And the idea is to adjust temporary crafting costs such that players have an additional choice in their low level itemization.

I like that idea. And while it is inspired by yours it is somewhat different and it somewhat derailed the thread.

Let me be clear however, I'm not advocating replacing trading, farming or hoarding. Rather we want add crafting as an additional choice. Choose to trade, farm, hoard or craft. More choice for deeper itemization.

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Veta321 wrote:

First let's ask what we want because I suspect there may be a difference.

Excellent suggestion. My objective is to allow players who crafted to feel as though their actions were viable, even though they may not have been optimal. "Viable" is something that is going to be measured on a wide spectrum depending on the player. The question is really which audience's "viable" is the measuring stick?

When I say that I want to support crafting instead of incentivize crafting, what I mean is that I don't want to expand the audience that is crafting low level gear, but I do want to promote their opinion of it to feel viable.

A hypothetical player who is purely rational will not favor crafting over hoarding no matter what change is made. The duration of end-game is theoretically infinite, if not for the individual player himself, for the trade life of the item he makes. So the time savings of end-game gear is infinite. Saving finite minutes in leveling cannot compete with infinite minutes in the end-game. Luckily, players are not rational automatons executing only the optimal action in any given situation. Players do different things even though we understand it may not be the absolute best. I am merely trying to give players' irrationality the feeling that it is not foolish.

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I'd like to see more players exposed to crafting sooner. I think its a fun mechanic but doesn't make much sense at low levels. In fact it's a bit of a noob trap. Rare orbs may as well be disabled at low levels.

That's simply a feature of rarity (I'm assuming you mean Regal and better, with Scouring and Chaos on the border).

"Fixing" that would not be a feature of a change that effects all orbs equally like biasing effects on ILVL or using orb dust. It would require rebalancing the ratios of the orbs from common to rare. The common orbs will be more common no matter how much orbs are adjusted on a global basis, and therefore more appropriate for low level crafting than rare orbs. You are correct that what you are looking for is something different.

I was hoping to let another forum-goer earn some cred points by pointing out this flaw, but since no one did I will.

Races:
In races, low level crafting is already in play because the currency doesn't help after the race is over. So there is no need to improve crafting further in these situations despite it being low level. Moreover, it may have a negative impact in that currency orbs would produce better rares than dropped items, meaning a player who used a currency orb would have a better item than one who found a rare of the same type (not currently the case). This reduces the number of ways to achieve equal quality gear and therefore increases the factor of RNG in race results.

However, there is a simple solution. Since the bias of low level crafting is already invisible to the player, the bias may be disabled during races. This is similar to having different drop probabilities during races, which is already the case. Since nothing user-facing needs to be changed, it is easy to change things behind the scenes without causing any player confusion.

Other ideas for low level crafting may not have this property that they are so easily disabled to preserve the race environment.