On Long Term Leagues, Trade, Loot Devaluation and PvP: Ethereal Orb Item Sink

Not being able to find good loot or hating the trade system is a recurrent complaint. I decided to take a look at the underlying problems from an economic perspective. I wanted to understand why players felt they didn't find good loot and why reservation exists in implementing an efficient trade system. It turns out players actually aren't finding good loot and we might not want an efficient trade system just yet. Let me explain.


I know it's long but if you've read the TL;DR and disagree I encourage you to read the appropriate section above as I go in much more depth. If you did read the whole thing, I'm much obliged.

Your idea is roughly addressed by "Animate Guardian" I think...

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Mordron wrote:

Your idea is roughly addressed by "Animate Guardian" I think...

That is an astute parallel to draw, thanks for making it. Animate Guardian could indeed function as an economy-correcting item sink with proper incentive to invest wealth. However, running a powerful guardian at the expense of skill gems and wealth investment would need to be extremely lucrative before players consider it. Either in terms of competitive advantage in PvP or in terms of return on investment, as in PvE farming. I'm not sure that would be good for skill balance and unless the benefit is confined to PvP it would actually have an effect opposite of what is desired. The idea being to sink item wealth, not generate it.

My expectation of AG then is that players will invest wealth proportional to its benefit. And, assuming the skill is balanced, this will likely not be a significant amount of wealth as to offset the effect of market saturation and loot devaluation. Indeed, Chris demonstrates the skill with white items he found on the floor. While not increasing demand and sinking wealth, I think AG will provide a use to items that previously had none and in that way is similar.

The purpose of Ethereals is to give value to items that are powerful but weaker than what you are using. In that way players would continue invest wealth in additional (Ethereal) items, even after acquiring BiS, in order to take a competitive advantage in PvP. Combined with the currency sink that is crafting and mapping, this would result in a more stable economy and return on loot.

Ethereal'd items as a high-end item sink just hits all the right notes. Everybody would be satisfied, it seems. I think this kind of choice dynamic is exactly what the game needs and can reignite the excitement of gambling/crafting for the rich, or even just the excitement of adventuring as your power level may not be as constant - and, even though I can't quite find the words to describe why, I know randomness is good for excitement in gameplay.

Did I mention I love this idea?

Very risky but could work.

It's atleast worth some serious


I'm just very afraid this will cause high end players to have 1 set of items (practially BiS) which they never Ethereal, and every time they find something new (and reasonably good) they will ethereal it. When their new item degrades past the old (BiS item) they will swap and rinse and repeat.
Now what's so bad about this?
Well, worst case scenario you will never be able to buy better gear because people keep using Ethereal orbs on items they'd otherwise want to sell.

I understand that Ethereal orbs won't be so common that this scenario will happen, just trying to expand on possible scenarios so the idea could evolve. Because as I said before, it could work and is a possible solution to a serious future problem

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Narvdin wrote:

I'm just very afraid this will cause high end players to have 1 set of items (practially BiS) which they never Ethereal, and every time they find something new (and reasonably good) they will ethereal it. When their new item degrades past the old (BiS item) they will swap and rinse and repeat.
Now what's so bad about this?
Well, worst case scenario you will never be able to buy better gear because people keep using Ethereal orbs on items they'd otherwise want to sell.

This is an excellent point. Like Animate Guardian, it is important that wealth invested into this sink does not return or generate greater wealth. Therefore the exact mechanics behind ethereal wear are extremely important and must not be sustainable in PvE.

I may be mistaken but Diablo 2s mechanic is a chance to lose durability after being hit. This would not do for our purposes as casters or totem users could get away without penalty. We want to wear any kind of ethereal use. Simple duration would make sense and it's relatively easy to balance but it doesn't account for severity of use. I would recommend something that accounts for actions taken, damage taken, damage dealt and experience gained. Maybe even distance traveled. We don't want to reward any particular builds.

As far as cycling ethereals over BiS for PvE, this could be avoided by choosing mechanics that make ethereals less sustainable in PvE versus PvP. So, if ethereals wore as a result of distance traveled you may get far more use out of them in PvP arenas than mapping runs. Of course we don't want to encourage the use of item switch macros and other such nonsense, so it's important we account for everything else mentioned. Conversely, their duration should be significant enough to not pose a serious hassle to regular PvPers. They should be fun to use.

Why would I use an ethereal orb? Say I have my dagger with 300 dps, which i payed a lot of curacy for (10 ex let it be). Then I find a dagger that is slightly worse, 250 dsp. I could either ethereal it, have a weapon that does 320 dps for couple hours, or sell it for 2 ex and get currency. Now, I would rather sell it, find more, sell em and buy a better dagger rather than waste 2 ex.

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Avenroth wrote:

Why would I use an ethereal orb? Say I have my dagger with 300 dps, which i payed a lot of curacy for (10 ex let it be). Then I find a dagger that is slightly worse, 250 dsp. I could either ethereal it, have a weapon that does 320 dps for couple hours, or sell it for 2 ex and get currency. Now, I would rather sell it, find more, sell em and buy a better dagger rather than waste 2 ex.

That's right but not in the long term. As more players find and trade 250DPS daggers the market for them saturates and their value diminishes. As the dagger market becomes more saturated those daggers will become more affordable and viable ethereal candidates. In that way the economy is self regulating. My expectation is that over time item value will be more closely correlated to drop rates. So, if a 250DPS dagger is 2x more common than a 300DPS dagger then it will be worth 1/2th as much, as opposed to 1/5th as much because the market for such daggers is saturated. That has a huge impact on the value of farming.

Now, why would anyone ethereal an item? If it's reasonably affordable and, once ethereal, more powerful than your current gear you could use it as a temporary boon. But if you're interested in amassing wealth then it's not necessarily a good idea because it sinks both the item and the orb. Who would be interested then? Players who have accumulated wealth and care about competing in PvP. Therefore, it is important that ethereals be economically unsustainable in PvE but powerful enough to make a difference in PvP.

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Veta321 wrote:

I may be mistaken but Diablo 2s mechanic is a chance to lose durability after being hit. This would not do for our purposes as casters or totem users could get away without penalty. We want to wear any kind of ethereal use. Simple duration would make sense and it's relatively easy to balance but it doesn't account for severity of use. I would recommend something that accounts for actions taken, damage taken, damage dealt and experience gained. Maybe even distance traveled. We don't want to reward any particular builds.

The most sought-after Ethereal items in D2 took advantage of the Indestructable mod that came with certain item types and Rune Words. I think your idea would add a lot to PoE, assuming GGG can implement a build-neutral version of Ethereal items that have no exploitable loopholes...

Posts from other thread, which I had locked

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arkiver wrote:

A well-written post. Too bad it was so long that the attention span of the average forum-goer doesn't have a chance of finishing it. That said, here are my thoughts on your proposal...

Very few will use them because players who live in this realm need long-term value. They aren't going to take a 2 exalt item and make it a 40 exalt item that disappears after 20 maps. The money is better spent elsewhere. Even mid-value items are usually valuable to the person wearing them and they rely on the eventual sale of those items to upgrade to better and better gear. The PvP crowd might like this idea A LOT, but your post is how to fix the economy, not make imba items for PvP.

*Edit*
I see potential for this to remove items by players who want a small boost to items they're using while leveling alts, but the orbs would have be very cheap to acquire and the items removed from the economy would be (for the most) fairly trivial (< 1 alc).

This is sort of the idea. Ethereals could not and should not be sustainable in PvE. The idea here is to sink item wealth such that markets desaturate. Cheap powerful items would be ideal ethereal candidates for PvP. I revised some phrasing in OP and got into the matter more in the Feedback thread linked at the top.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

Ethereal items are interesting from some perspectives, but my suspicion is that these would not have the kind of effect you are anticipating. Here is how I imagine Ethereal orbs would be used: to "upgrade" tier 2 gear into tier 1 gear temporarily. Once players develop a loop of this behavior, the non-ethereal T1 gear becomes backup when you run out of ethereal T2 gear that exceeds it. Consider from opportunity cost perspective: T1 gear loses huge amount of value from etherealization, but T2 gear loses virtually nothing because it's value is so much lower already. Promoting it to T1 gains the usage of the item if it's just slightly stronger than your T1 gear.

This is intentional. Introducing ethereal orbs into a market saturated with T2 gear would cause T2 items to be consumed. Assuming the rate of consumption is faster than the rate of T2 items entering the economy then the market will desaturate, at which point it will no longer be sustainable to consume T2 items and the process will begin over again with T3. The idea here is to sink items until they have value again which in turn makes them more exciting loot.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

This makes a new game where you're constantly looking for new gear because the old stuff is degrading, which could be interesting, but might also be annoying. Let's go with interesting. Then the idea almost works until you evaluate this according to the objective it was supposed to accomplish: managing scarcity.

As markets desaturate it will become prohibitively expensive to use impermanent ethereal gear which can compete with BIS for PvE. The mechanics of wear could also be designed such that PvE wears items more quickly than PvP. I discuss that a little more in depth in the Feedback thread.

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kaross579 wrote:

What I wonder is, even if we were to assume that PvP would be well attended and competitive enough to make a major impact on the economy via Ethereals, the distribution of items that have the effect applied to them might make things a bit wonky.

I anticipate that items will be consumed according to their relative scarcity and power. PolarisOrbit made the astute observation that T1 items would not be consumed while T2 items would be. After T2 items become prohibitively scarce and the market desaturated then the process will begin over again with T3 and T4 and so on. As items are consumed they will become more scarce and therefore prohibitively expensive. The market itself will find an equilibrium at an item strength that enters the economy as quickly as ethereals consume them. The duration of ethereals therefore is extremely important to the health of the economy. I should note, we don't want ethereals to expire extremely quickly and be annoying to use. That shouldn't be a problem however.

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kaross579 wrote:

I'm not sure what this will do to the economy long term, but it seems like we would be in an odd situation if basically the top X% of items are all equally common in the game (not in terms of drop / craft rate, but existing at any given time) due to different percentages of them getting destroyed.

I would anticipate that item values would correspond more closely to their relative drop rates. So an item 100x more common than Koam's would be valued at about 1/100th as opposed to 1/1000th. The equilibrium of the market would be a function of the rate at which items enter the economy and leave the economy, not how many exist concurrently.

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SirLoin wrote:

The only problem I see is getting the links you need on ethereal items. No one's going to be willing to use a bunch of currency on an item that's going to disappear eventually. It's really only going to be useful if the item already has the links you need, which would be a pretty rare occurrence. There would have to be some solution to this issue. Maybe ethereal items could be made easier to jeweler/fuse?

That is correct. The cost will be a factor in an item's eligibility for etherealization. But I see that as a good thing not a bad thing. Ethereals being prohibitively expensive in PvE and spending currency on them will actually amplify the wealth sink, which is desirable. It is, actually, extremely important that over the long term using ethereals in PvE is not sustainable. Although maybe finding an orb and using it for light crafting would be fun it should not make economic sense. In any case even if you don't PvP, the value of ethereal items and ethereal orbs would stem from competitive PvP players for whom these items make a significant difference. My expectation is that ethereal orbs will find their way into wealthy PvP players much as exalts find their way into wealthy mappers.