Thinking Outside the Box: What if we had dust instead of orbs?
" I like both of those vendor recipes. So long as you can indeed get shards of higher orbs and not be wasting the full orbs if you use them on anything but max level items, then that'd be good. However that system is implemented doesn't matter so much as long as the goals are met. IGN: Asser, AssDelver, Assphobic, AnointedAss, BetrayedByMyAss, CrackedAss, FracturedAss, FulcrumedUpMyAss, ImpaledAss, IncursionOfTheAss, WarForTheAss, UnleashTheAss, ScreamingAsshole, SwampAssKing, Yui
|
|
|
Seriously though, it seems like there are no drawbacks with this.
However, what Charan says is right in one aspect: there is a certain psychological "blow" that comes when you can no longer expect that Exalted Orb at lvl 1. Yes, you can say "Well, 1 Exalt would be roughly 10 Exalt dust. We can just make RNG be able to give any player 10 Exalt dust on lvl 1 and it's the same thing! But on top of that, you can get 1-9 exalt dust on lvl 1 as well, when before you would get 0 Exalt Orbs". There are a couple of things with this: 1)You can't really ADD the chances to get 1-9 Exalt dust to the chances to get 10 Exalt dust. What I mean is: Right now the probabilities to get 1 Exalted Orb on lvl 1 is X. So, you'd make the chance to get 10 exalt dust on lvl 1 X as well right? But if you also have a chance to get 1 ED, 2 ED, 3 ED, ....9 ED, then your chances to get ANY Exalted dust are actually greater than X. You just increased the net gain of Exalted dust/orbs, which impacts the economy bla bla bla. 2)The alternative is dropping the chance you get 10 Exalt Dust, so all the chances added up still go to X. But here comes what Charan said, you won't feel that "I hit the jackpot" feeling, you'll just find more 1 Exalted Dust, then some 3 ED drops, and once in a million you'll find a 10 ED drop (but you'll have accumulated more than 10 ED by then, so you think "meh, I already have more than 10 ED, this drops means nothing to me"). 3) Even if you can make everything perfect, with the only difference that 1 Exalted Orb equals 10 Exalted Dust, then the psychological blow is still there. Being able to get smaller quantities gradually, is not the same as being able to get big quantities instantly. Again, when do you feel better, when you win 100$ in the jackpot (but it happens every 10 days), or when you steadily win 10$ with smaller bets, but you gain that every single day? You'll end up with the same net gain, but you'll feel like "meh" in one scenario, and "HOLY SHIT IM RICH" in the other one. If GGG want to cater for that later feeling, then making the dust thingy will lessen it to an extent (not so much, because getting an exalted ANYTHING would be awesome and make you feel rich anyways). It basically introduces a paradigm change in how you want players to react, feel, etc about the game and the drops. Is that good? Is that bad? I dunno. Personally I'd like to do this, I hate that "hoard these orbs because you HAVE to use them late-game, and using them now makes you waste them anyway" feeling, but I do like the awesome feeling I get when getting an Exalted. Personally I prefer leaving that "awesome" feeling apart, if I could actually use those dust thingys. But can you say the same from other people? Will they get bored by gathering dust, indeed like if it was gold? They'll have 1354 Chaos Dust, and will feel indifferent about gaining 10 or 100 more; whereas if they had 52 Chaos Orbs, they would feel a difference if they gain a new one, or gain 10 new ones, as they would feel the difference when they use it and it goes to waste. I don't really think having the possibility of having 119241.334 dust of anything is a good idea. People aren't good with numbers, and I'd say they generally would not feel good about something like that (if even subconsciously). Maybe you could "categorize" this stuff even more. Maybe you can make a convertion between dust and orb, so 20 Chaos Dust is 1 Chaos Orb, and the conversion happens automatically (like with Scrolls and Scroll fragments), but you can still "decompose" a chaos orb into the smaller chaos dust chunks. Dunno |
|
|
You could also just add charges to some orbs - that would minimize the disadvantages you listed.
I do not see any reason to bother implementing a dust system when it can be dine this simple. |
|
"Elaborate. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
|
|
" I have to get to a proper computer my phone is a huge annoyance. |
|
" Re: Dust system I like the overall idea, but it still leaves the exalted dust wide open to collecting for the sole purpose of making exalted orbs. I'd suggest an alternative. 1) The items below never drop instead of an exalted orb - those rates remain as is. 2) 5 new currency items are created and one renamed: Lesser exalted orb and Lesser exalted shard Exalted orb and exalted shard Greater Exalted orb and greater exalted shard 3) Existing exalted orbs would be converted/renamed to greater exalted orbs. 4) The new exalted currencies have a very slight chance to drop based off the area level, and they drop instead of a lower level currency (kind of like a normal item dropping as a rare) For illustration (Orbs and odds and levels could be changed)- if the player is in normal warehouses and an augmentation orb is slated by RNG to drop, but 1% of the time that orb will re-roll as a lesser exalted shard. If a chance orb drops, there is a .5% chance it will re-roll as a lesser exalted orb. The lesser exalted orb would be limited to modifying lower tier ilevel items - say lvl 1-lvl 40. The new exalted orb would modify items from levels 1 - 60, but it would have slightly better rolls on items lvl 40 and below. (and it would drop from slightly different orbs (say fusing and scouring, but only in areas level 45 and above) The greater exalted would modify any item, but have much better chances of good % rolls on 1-40 items, slightly better chances on 41-60 items and the usual chances on items level 61 and up) Again, the shard would drop as a very low chance instead of another orb, say .01% of regret orbs, and only in areas level 61 and above. This proposed system would have the advantage of creating 2 new usable crafting orbs that can't become top tier exalted orbs, so they won't dilute their value. The shards should be set up (imo) rare enough but often enough so that players playing a long time have a chance of building up a couple of orbs over a few months time. The return rate on collecting shards would be less than selling items for alts/fusings and trading, but still allow players who want to craft a chance to do so. The lower orbs would also have an intermediate trade value and might form a decent chunk of mid level character trading. The levels on the orbs could be tweaked to bridge that level 40-60ish struggle that GGG has identified. I realize this is similar to your dust idea, but it doesn't require any valuation of items dust usage and avoids the dust just becoming another way of garnering exalts for trading. It also allows GGG to tailor the drop rates a little more, so that characters leveling through areas have better odds of obtaining these new exalted than higher level characters farming the zone. Although higher level characters can clear these areas more quickly, the % chance to convert to new exalts could be further adjusted for character level beyond normal currency rates. This would allow characters to grind decent leveling areas and possibly gain useful orbs, while vastly overpowered characters would have very little chance of obtaining the same orbs. PoE Origins - Piety's story http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2081910
|
|
|
People are getting hung up on drop rates, that isn't the main idea here. The idea is adjusting low lvl crafting costs such that players have an additional economic choice to make. Do I potentially save myself a lot of time grinding by crafting or do I save the currency. Right now it's impossible to save enough time crafting to justify crafting anything temporary. That is because of the inherent greater value in crafting non-temporary gear and farming non-temporary items in maps.
There's a couple ways to address that. But first let's ask why we even want to. I think the crafting in POE is fun, it's a great system and it's a shame it doesn't make economic sense at low levels. Indeed, many currencies were designed with only end game purpose in mind. It might even make sense to disable low level crafting with these currencies because otherwise they are a noob trap. I don't want to do that. In fact I'd rather more players are exposed to the fun mechanic that is POE crafting, and sooner in the game. So how that be done? Adjusting crafting costs to account for long term versus short term crafting would work. If we consider low level items short term and high level long term then we can adjust costs as such. Scrotie's idea and all the variations of it set out to do just that. There are other more subtle ways to encourage low lvl crafting. Reducing gear drops and increasing orb drops would make players more desperate for gear and that may encourage using currency to speed up progression. But that wouldn't make the game more interesting, it certainly doesn't add choice. You just recognize you've hit a wall and drop currency. Adjusting crafting costs however could add choice and would introduce players to all facets of POE crafting, not just the occasional chaos and alchemy. I like Scrotie's suggestion. I do admit the main concern is whether this would feel too much like gold, even if dropped in large sudden sums. Want to Fix the Economy, Bad Loot, Trade and Legacy PvP? pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/548056 Open Letter to Qarl on Crafting Value pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/805434 Biggest Problem with Mapping: Inconsistent Risk to Reward pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/612507 Last edited by Veta321#3815 on Oct 15, 2013, 5:07:13 AM
|
|
" If someone is looking to upgrade an item, why would they farm higher levels when lower ones drop the same amount of dust? That's why there would have to be increased drops at higher level. |
|
|
@DalaiLama: The "lesser orbs vs greater orbs" suggestion, which isn't original and comes often (I remember seeing it on the forums during Closed Beta), simply fails to solve the actual problem; instead, it compartmentalizes it. The core of my suggestion is about spending less of a currency to do low-level things, and more of the same currency to do high-level things. Yours doesn't do this at all, because it isn't the same currency both times; instead, it's two completely separate currencies.
What I mean by compartmentalized is this: Imagine one form of orb effects items with levels from 40 to 60. Within this particular level range, the exact same problems manifest. Players will be extremely hesitant to use the currency on their level 42 items; almost all of them will instead by used on level 58, 59, and 60 items instead. You have narrowed the range, but you haven't actually fixed the problem behavior. Since there would be multiple versions of the same currency, players would end up resorting to "leapfrogging": you get to level 38-40 items, dump all of your currency into crafting upgrades, essentially ignore itemization as you blaze through content with your new gear, get to level 58-60, dump all your currency again. You might argue that this is still superior to the "hoard forever" strategy you see now, but it's also not exactly what I'd call dynamic gameplay that encourages players to make tough choices. You essentially have an orb system which plays itself. Worst, however, is the fact that the lower currencies are now useless to high-level players. It's no secret that the in-game economy is dominated by massive farming of early endgame (Docks, Lunaris, and low maps) with a strong desire for the masses to acquire the farm-product of the highest possible itemlevels (high maps). Due to massive oversaturation of the market by lower endgame goods, pretty much anything that isn't viable for items over 60 is a joke, doomed to be near worthless in trade. What is the point of introducing a new currency that won't be taken seriously by players who have reached endgame content? Furthermore, as Charan brought up, right now at least low-level characters can look forward to the occasional Divine or Exalt while leveling up to get some serious wealth, even in Normal. Dividing orbs into "lesser" and "greater" kind of ruins things here; you can either just give out Lesser Orbs in Normal, which would utterly destroy their farming value, or you could give out Greater Orbs, which would just be flat-out counterintuitive from a pure gameplay perspective. There's no way to win that battle, at least not that I can see. As I said earlier, the core of my suggestion is about spending less of a currency to do low-level things, and more of the same currency to do high-level things. That's the real key there: sameness of currency. You can't solve this with new types of currency; instead, you need to solve it by dividing the costs up, making it so getting effect X on a lower-level item is straight-up, no-currency-conversion-ratio cheaper than getting the effect on a higher-level item. There are alternate means of doing this (such as the PolarisOrbit suggestion), but yours is not one of them. "Um, this is how it is right now. Actually, areas in Normal are slightly more likely to drop Exalts, Eternals, and Mirrors of Kalandra. People still farm higher area levels anyway, because the gear which drops is better, providing stronger incentive than the very small currency advantage which low-level areas have. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Oct 15, 2013, 5:34:50 AM
|
|
" The Advantages of Your System: 1. The Dust Usage stat on different items could be modified, to balance low-level crafting and high-level crafting. If Orbs had charges you could ultimately have the same system. E.g. if the Chaos Orb had 10 charges it could cost 1 charge to reroll a ilevel 20 bow whereas it would cost 10 charges to reroll a ilevel 78 Vaal Regalia (this is just an example, obviously). The result would be the same: "Converting to a dust system [or charge system] would allow GGG to adjust the cost of low-level crafting relative to high-level crafting." 2. Dust drop rates could be adjusted, to balance consistency against loot-finding excitement. I don't know how I feel about this one; it's both an advantages and disadvantage. Some people like the fact that you can't find fractions of Orbs but instead have to be lucky. I do however like the idea. But your idea can be used with this system as well, e.g. instead of finding a whole Exalted Orb you could find one with only 4 charges. 3. Increased haggling precision. Well, this is a minor advantage of your system. If one where able to divide ones charges, e.g. one full Exalted Orb could be divided into two Exalted Orbs with 5 charges each, then this system also provides this advantage. The Disadvantages of Your System: 1. Since the numbers are bigger and each unit is smaller, it feels more like gold. If one is not able to find an Exalted Orb with any less than full charges this system does not have this disadvantage. It would be more up to GGG how they wanted to implement it; the system is open to both possibilities. 2. Not all orbs convert to dust very well. As the system only modify orbs (and doesn't use a whole new system) it can easily be applied to the right orbs and the other orbs can stay the same. 3. We already have an orb system, with a "no more wipes" promise. This is where this system truely differs. If we continue to use the old Orbs but implement charges on them we wont have a problem with "legacy orbs" and wipes. 4. Implementation would take significant developer effort. I'm not a developer so I wouldn't actually know if this system is much less a bother to implement. |
|
