why ETERNAL ORBS are really BAD for the game !

Agreed with OP.

The expressed purpose of Eternals was good but it didn't work in practice. An orb to alleviate stress from linking, such that gear could be restored if things didn't work out, was a good idea. Unfortunately Eternals were not reserved to linking and ultimately acted as an exalt catalyst.

How is this truly bad though? Sinking eternals into your gear looking for the best weapon is still expensive if it doesnt work out for you. Sure BiS items are easier to obtain but they are still reserved for those who are extremely wealthy beyond even 5% of the most wealthy. Maybe im crazed but this doesnt affect 95% of the people who play the game as they can get nowhere near that level of wealth or even that level of the game.

The weapon previously linked is still a BiS item to my standards as weapons like that are so uncommon anyway that it is still halfway impossible to roll. With eternals its easier, but still unbelievably expensive.

Like almost all of the "SFL" suggestions, the Eternal Orb was a frantic stab in the dark which set its sights on a problem and, utterly ignorant of what actually caused the problem, would have done more harm than good. The difference is: the Eternal Orb actually became reality.

I was against Eternal Orbs 2 months before they were created, back when it was just a suggestion by the SFL-supporting, Suggestions forum regular Courageous. I think my reasoning at the time for said disagreement was kind of sloppy and borderline wrong, but I can't be prophetic all of the time; at least I had the right gut feeling.

Once the Eternal Orb was announced as an upcoming 0.11.0 patch addition, including more details on how exactly it would work, I had this to say:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Eternal Orbs are not good for "reroll" orbs, to include Jewelers and Fusings -- the only exception to this is during a mirror service, for example using Chromatic to change colors first. What Eternal Orbs are good for are "add a stat" orbs -- Regal and most notably Exalted.

Outside of Fairy Tale Land, the only thing this orb will be used for is replacing the functionality of Orb of Scouring in the whole Regal->Exalt crafting scheme.

Pretty sure I nailed that one, still 4 days before it was released... and having no idea what their drop-rate would be like, because it was irrelevant — people will tend to use Orbs for their most value-gaining function, regardless of how scarce they are. Which, by the way, is why the "increase orb drop rates" suggestions are all shit.

When describing the benefits of his Schematic idea, Courageous had this to say:

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Courageous wrote:

"

The current system is not broken so don't try to fix it.

No one called the current system "broken." Rather, there's a portion of the player base who doesn't like certain features of the current system. This side-system would let those players play a little bit more the way they like. That is all.

Did the Eternal Orb really fill that expectation? Hell no it didn't. Instead, let's be honest about what it really was: a buff to Exalted Orbs, and a nerf to Scourings. Is this what the game really needed?

Personally, I'd like to see Eternals removed from the game. They still don't do anything that a sufficient quantity of other crafting materials cannot do (Scouring); it just does what it does at a discount (hard to believe given its high cost, yet true). Since crafting is still almost exclusively the province of ultra-endgame, itemlevel-78 type players, it utterly failed as "A Fundamental Change to Crafting," not just keeping power in the hands of the elite but actually intensifying that power and widening the gulf. (For a more thought-out idea on how to possibly have a fundamental change to crafting, check this out.) And we really, really don't need more godly rare power creep if we actually want the game to have a nice long ten-year lifespan; power creep kills games prematurely.

Bad idea then; bad idea now. And yet another reason not to listen to the SFL, and — to borrow a line from Jim Sterling — to thank God for me.

Let this be a lesson when people congratulate community members on ideas that they like because everything needs to go through testing.

I have trouble believing GGG tested Eternal Orbs much at all. They were advertised as making 6L items easier and some other function they don't perform that I've forgotten now. Even if GGG drank the Kool Aid, the idea still should have been tested to make sure nothing obvious was missed. While I like the rapid release schedule of the game, the QA does suffer.

The damage is done to standard. GGG has three options: do nothing, remove eternals, or modify them such that they function in their expressed purpose.

Changing what existing eternals do isn't necessary but changing how all subsequent eternals work might be. Admittedly that may cause confusion. Eternals should work exclusively on sockets, colors, links and nothing more.

Or, if Scrotie's dust idea were adapted then costs could be adjusted for different uses. In that case a certain threshold of dust would be required to eternalize an item and upon its restoration it would consume more or less dust based on what about the item was altered. Sockets, colors and links would be relatively cheap while restoring properties would be cost prohibitive. Then again that's somewhat complicated and may not solve the underlying problem which stems from eternal-exalt. If so, then eternals should lose their crafting capacity.

Indeed, being able to sink unlimited currency in one item de-values the items people find and make actual good items too expensive. I mean if someone can spend 10-15 ex and perhaps make a 350 dps 1h, then the good item drops which are like 200-250 dps become much, much cheaper which in turn makes the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (Not exactly, but you catch my drift)

Its worth noting that, while previously "decent" items can now be afforded by the masses, the unfortunate but very obvious detrimental effect is that perceived expectations go up - that is, what was previously decent is no longer acceptable as the threshold has shifted upwards.

Obviously if you lower your own expectations, you can find very good gear for reasonable prices. But in general this will not be the case. The "standards" will have changed and society expects you to keep up with it. Not exactly healthy when anything that isn't tri-res gets vendored.

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Lyralei wrote:

Its worth noting that, while previously "decent" items can now be afforded by the masses, the unfortunate but very obvious detrimental effect is that perceived expectations go up - that is, what was previously decent is no longer acceptable as the threshold has shifted upwards.

Obviously if you lower your own expectations, you can find very good gear for reasonable prices. But in general this will not be the case. The "standards" will have changed and society expects you to keep up with it. Not exactly healthy when anything that isn't tri-res gets vendored.

This is sadly a group/societal thing that has plagued games more and more recently and it's a real shame. People get this notion that they need godly gear and therefore overlook pieces that may have one or two stats that aren't 'optimal' but would still be very good and quite useable. It's also a case of more and more of this really good gear being shown off and people getting that green-with-envy feeling along with the huge sense of entitlement that has grown by leaps and bounds in society in the past few years for a multitude of reasons. Instead of sitting down and thinking calmly and rationally and indeed lowering expectations to find the good deals they instead stamp their feet and throw temper tantrums saying, "THEY HAVE WHAT I DON'T AND I WANT IT NOW, NOW, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW! GIMME GIMME GIMMEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

In a sense these perceived expectations are brought about not by the eternal orbs themselves, but by the community's (in this case) conditioning as well as other outside forces that inevitably lead to this. One might say it's also a case of, "This is why we can't have nice things", and while I know there's other problems I don't think it's Eternal Orbs themselves that are the root cause in this case.

The problem isn't that you can use an infinite amount of exalted on a single item and roll a BIS. That's what people wanted, a way out of frustrating exalted rolls.

The problem is that if you have eternal/exalted orbs, you are encouraged to either roll a BIS item or trade the orbs away for an upgrade. This is because buying the upgrade is a far superior option to 99.99% of the playerbase, due to oversaturation of the item pool.

If GGG wants to keep eternals, this less frustrating form of end-game crafting, they must balance it by doing at least one of the following:

1. Introduce a proper end-game item sink. (such as making eternal orb usage bind the item to account)

2. Make rare affixes far more personalized, so trade value of end-game gear goes down. Example: +300 armour = not personalized, +400 armour if standing still = personalized

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Personally, I'd like to see Eternals removed from the game. They still don't do anything that a sufficient quantity of other crafting materials cannot do (Scouring); it just does what it does at a discount (hard to believe given its high cost, yet true). Since crafting is still almost exclusively the province of ultra-endgame, itemlevel-78 type players, it utterly failed as "A Fundamental Change to Crafting," not just keeping power in the hands of the elite but actually intensifying that power and widening the gulf. (For a more thought-out idea on how to possibly have a fundamental change to crafting, check this out.) And we really, really don't need more godly rare power creep if we actually want the game to have a nice long ten-year lifespan; power creep kills games prematurely.

Bad idea then; bad idea now. And yet another reason not to listen to the SFL, and — to borrow a line from Jim Sterling — to thank God for me.

What I dislike most is their rarity. They do nothing for the game at that rarity. It's not experimental, the average player still crafts in the same shitty gambling method that the majority of players will never see any benefit to - it only effected the guys with 50 exalts in their stash.

To do what? Make them richer. Most pointlessly badly implemented addition.