Open Letter to Qarl, regarding topics discussed in RMT thread

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TheAnuhart wrote:

Wouldn't that be easily solved with...

2(?) low tier orbs combine(vendor) into 1 medium tier orb.
2(?) medium tier orbs combine(vendor) into 1 high tier orb.

?

As for it being a problem that people would hoard and only use at the end-of-tier ilvl, BS, some people would min-max like that, yes, they have to min-max everything. Others would use them as and when they thought they'd get the most fun out of them. Even those that did, are doing exactly what they would now only 1/3rd less hoard.

Unfortunately, not being able to conveniently convert lesser orb to higher tier is exactly why it works in the first place. Only on games that have no way to do that it works like I described, in those that do people hoard them to get better ones, like we did with chipped gems in D2. A half-exception are games that have so low exchange rate for the higher version it just isn't worth the trouble.

As I said about this 'crafting orbs are currency' system, it's basically a good idea, it has been dome before, mostly as an attempt for true barter economy, and it always failed. Why? Because in a currency pool where currency items have some other use besides trading it will always separate into those that are used exclusively for trading and those that are used for its secondary purpose, which brings us right back to the gold system.
Look at orbs that we actually use: chromes, jewelers and fusings, they are used as currency only when the seller wants to amass a large quantity of them to attempt crafting. And on the other hand, chaos, gcp and exalts are almost never used for crafting, just as a currency, they're either too rare or results are too unpredictable, or in the case of GCP - insignificant compared to cost.

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raics wrote:

Unfortunately, not being able to conveniently convert lesser orb to higher tier is exactly why it works in the first place. Only on games that have no way to do that it works like I described, in those that do people hoard them to get better ones, like we did with chipped gems in D2. A half-exception are games that have so low exchange rate for the higher version it just isn't worth the trouble.

That just lies in the conversion ratio.

The only problem that was claimed, is that the orbs are not of interest at all as a shopping currency. As long as they could be combined to make a currency item that is accepted then they retain that use and have more use in crafting at low lvl than now. That is just a pure plus.

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raics wrote:

Look at orbs that we actually use: chromes, jewelers and fusings, they are used as currency only when the seller wants to amass a large quantity of them to attempt crafting. And on the other hand, chaos, gcp and exalts are almost never used for crafting, just as a currency, they're either too rare or results are too unpredictable, or in the case of GCP - insignificant compared to cost.

I always get a smile outa this.

It's true, of course.
Except I've never used an orb for anything other than the crafting use that it says on the tin or exchanging them at the vendor for another to use its crafting use.

I was throwing GCP on qual 0 gems from the very first one I found (post CB) over a year ago. But then I play games differently to how GGG see as fun.

The only time when most people use orbs in mature leagues is when:
1) The item they want does not exist in the market -or it's scarce/hard to get because trading system- (not many times, and as time goes by, the rarer this behaviour is)
2) To access content (mapping), because you are pretty much forced to (unless you leech from others).

People does that because is the rational thing to do under the current paradigm. So OFC there is a shitton of hoarding in the game. The only way is to reduce the importance of gambling and have a real crafting system, and remove the terrible 'pay currency for content' model.

That this is desired by GGG is... interesting. Basically GGG has given up on barter economy and welcomes a completely monetized economy, abandoning one of their initial goals. We just need a full endorsement of the unofficial AH (XYZ), with the addition of the possibility to close deals offline (much needed, but will just reinforce the current dynamics), and PoE will have become vanilla D3 economic model in essence.

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TheAnuhart wrote:

ScrotieMcB wrote:

@raics: This exactly. I'm actually pretty sure Veta here is echoing a previous post I've made on the subject.

The current orb system essentially "caps out" at, what, itemlevel 80? So until players meet, or at least get damn close to, this cap, orb consumption is pretty strongly disincentivized; as I said earlier, each time you gain access to a higher itemlevel, the value of hoarded orbs increases. Once they do meet the cap, that's the time to actually start using, if ever. So if you set a cap for a "Lesser" Orb at, I don't know, itemlevel 40, all that's going to happen is that players hoard them until they get a bunch of itemlevel 40 stuff, then dump on those items. Essentially, each time you set a level range, it's only the highest itemlevel or two within that range which is actually going to matter.

Also, "lesser" orbs would essentially be trash from an economic perspective. I don't think any endgame player would have the slightest trade interest in them, which means the new player who has them, and wants to trade for a twink unique, won't be able to use them to trade for what he needs. It's important for low-level items and high-level items to use the same resource, but to use it at different quantities.

That's why your particular solution wouldn't work.

Wouldn't that be easily solved with...

2(?) low tier orbs combine(vendor) into 1 medium tier orb.
2(?) medium tier orbs combine(vendor) into 1 high tier orb.

...

I fail to see how raics' suggestion, with the above mechanics would be worse than now. It would be a lot better, imo.

Assuming such vendor formulae were added, it actually wouldn't be that bad. Essentially, it would be a piecewise-function, rather than continuous-function, version of what I was proposing.

I want to emphasize that, without such vendor formulae, it would be a disaster.

There would be three potential problems with it, however, both of which are workable:
1. It would be important to have a sufficient number of tiers, so that the next "tier break," where orb use would be incentivized, is never too far away. I'd consider 6 different tiers to be the bare minimum, preferably 9, assuming the issues in point #2. The final tier should only drop naturally in high-maps, with the vendor formula being the only other method of (non-trade) acquisition.
2. Due to the number of tiers required to get the correct pseudo-continuous effect, inventory management might get a layer of tedium. Such a change would probably require simultaneous changes to the vendor UI to ensure that exchanging orbs wasn't any more convoluted than necessary.
3. One of the tier breaks would undoubtedly occur somewhere at or above itemlevel 70. This could potentially be problematic, as it could warp the way players view the map system; at one particular maplevel break, the cost of rolling maps suddenly doubles. Some adjustments to the map system, to make this highest tier of maps more intrinsically desirable, may be required.

As a side note, due to the large number of tiers required for a pseudo-continuous effect, the only ratio which makes sense is 2:1 or better; 3:1 would devalue early currency drops too severely.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I was having a cigarette and something occurred to me, and I realized I should probably address it directly, rather than waiting on someone else to bring it up.

It's something I call the Infinite ChargeBeam problem. Which I guess doesn't make sense unless you've played one of those nice 2D sidescrollers with someone in a suit with a ray gun for an arm — Samus, Megaman, doesn't really matter. Point being, there's a common attack there were, the longer you hold down the button, the more damage your shots do when you actually release the button, but it also takes up time.

So imagine if you got 1% more damage (calculated PoE style) for every 8 milliseconds you charged up, and your default attack speed was one attack per second. In the time of one attack, you'd get a 125% more bonus, which means it would just be more DPS. (Yeah, even 2D sidescrollers have DPS.) 250% more for 2 seconds of charge, which is more than the 200% of two attacks. And so on. With no cap whatsoever; you could charge up for a full hour and do 450000% more damage.

If you extrapolate this math and lose touch with reality a bit, you might make the following argument: "Since value is always gained over time, there's no reason to ever stop charging up. You just hold down the button forever." With a few formulas and such to back you up, you could make a really convincing argument for this.

But that argument is obviously erroneous; at some point, you have to release, because otherwise you simply don't kill things. The point of the ChargeBeam is not to be charged up forever, but eventually released for some kind of payoff.

Pretty good analogy. The key insight here is that in your side-scroller, you have to release the beam to progress. In PoE, there is absolutely no need to "release the beam" of currency until the end-game because you can have your cake and eat it too. You can charge the beam while you progress -- and even if you did release it, it would only be a marginal boost to your DPS.

And on the back end, you actually cannot do the endgame unless you charge the beam quite a bit. The incentive structure strongly encourages you to keep holding that beam until you finally get to that point where the DPS is actually required to move forward at an enjoyable rate.

Big picture, the fastest route to beating the game in the side-scroller is using the ChargeBeam early and often. In PoE, the fastest route to beating the game is hording currency until it is required to either buy end-game gear or roll maps.

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raics wrote:

As I said about this 'crafting orbs are currency' system, it's basically a good idea, it has been dome before, mostly as an attempt for true barter economy, and it always failed. Why? Because in a currency pool where currency items have some other use besides trading it will always separate into those that are used exclusively for trading and those that are used for its secondary purpose, which brings us right back to the gold system.
Look at orbs that we actually use: chromes, jewelers and fusings, they are used as currency only when the seller wants to amass a large quantity of them to attempt crafting. And on the other hand, chaos, gcp and exalts are almost never used for crafting, just as a currency, they're either too rare or results are too unpredictable, or in the case of GCP - insignificant compared to cost.

That's how it works, it was expected by some (ekhm like me) way before whole trading went live and it can't be fixed.

First of all hoping that so many orbs (whole orb pool or at least large part of it) would work as a currency was dead wrong. GGG thought that they identified properties of currency items from some older games (being scarce, possessing a utility value and so on) and they were sure that it would be able to recreate it on a grand scale in PoE (if you like to dig you can try to find some old dev diaries from back 2010/2011). In fact they haven't (or didn't want to) recognize few fundamental properties of CU.
For currency (items) to work on the market there has to be only few of them. 3 or 4 max while majority of trading will be executed with only 2 most popular (like gcp and exalts or perfect skulls and sojs in D2).
Secondly for an item to become a currency at some point of the game it has to lose its utility value for a player.
Like GCPs in PoE or SOJs in D2. You can use several or a bunch of sojs/gcp but if you acquire more of them you don't need them for your own use anymore. They are on a surplus and can be easily tossed on the market since there will be players willing to buy them. That what gives them value. Not their utility part for any side of a trade just universal need for them among large part of playerbase.

And that's how gold works. Both in game worlds and in real world. It has its utility uses (electronics and so on) but demand for it comes from gold being universally considered valuable. And there's a large surplus of gold on the market so it's enough of it to facilitate trades.

So basically 90% of so called currency items could be just removed from the game and it wouldn't affect market at all - they can't met any of those 2 requirements above.

It would affect gameplay greatly and in my opinion vastly improve it. But again it won't happen.

Orbs are nothing more that rewards for playing but in contrary to 'regular' items they are meant to be sunk at some of the game by a player and they are given to them instead of 'regular item' drop.
They are crucial for PoE in terms of preventing inflation aka slowing down players advancement which in arpg as represented by players gear and char lvl to smaller degree.
And on contrary to 'regular items' you don't know what you are getting with an orb before you actually roll it which makes it imo worse. In terms of digits, chances it can be similar but a direct reward (mob x dropped unique item y wowowowow) is always more fun than getting an orb stockpiling it and then maybe in a distant future trying to craft it (more likely trade it). It disjoints getting rewards from killing monsters - arpgs modus operandi and main source of fun from the gameplay for many. And it greatly lowers 'regular item' drops. Imagine there's no orbs in PoE, what kind of drops you should be getting to end up with what you have now. What's the drop chance of a regular rare now and consider that you are using orbs only on certain and prepared items (base) on contrary to how regular items drops work (vast majority are useless just because of wrong base - affixes notwithstanding).

So it all comes back the concept and need of sinkage (and a bit of GGG own ambition of delivering feature that would change arpg genre - a 'game selling' feature along with passive tree).
There's no ladder resets in PoE. Once you get something it stays (in SC at least). You can't purge all realm and start over.
You can't add content to occupy players it's not WOW.
Also game is designed to be advanced in 'gear/lvl/wealth' check mode.
Once you are able (gear wise or $wise) to play certain area you are expected to play through it until you no longer get exp and there's nothing left there to come back.
So as a dev you must employ dependable and universal sink scheme to try to postpone this - to not let players run out of content after 2 weeks.
You also can't make crafting much less random (aka better results) since it would propel inflation - it would be easier to get better items and advance faster.
There's no better sink scheme than orbs probably.

It's somewhat opposite of D2 where you could get to the end game fast with crap gear on low lvl. You could somehow manage and the point of playing the game was to gear and lvl up to do it more efficently/faster. PoE advancement curve is more about completion than efficiency. For good or bad depends on one's taste

Basically orbs existence are consequence of several other core mechanics in PoE. No global resets, "checkpoint" advancement curve, small emphasis on efficient playing (playing safe is being promoted here since day 1) and few others.

To fix crafting you have to fix currency orbs -> you have to address a need of sinking scheme -> you have to turn half of core mechanics/game concepts of PoE inside out.
Not likely to happen.

It's won't change just like D3 non-randomly created game maps won't change.
It's just embedded too deep into the game to GGG being able (and willing) to change it.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I've explained in this thread how there is a serious, fundamental flaw with the game's gambling system. However, the core design behind that system — the idea of, instead of using a universal gambling fuel like gold, splitting that gold into an entire slew of separate gambling materials — well, that's just genius. Such genius, in fact, that even with its ridiculous disincentive against using orbs, I sometimes find myself unable to help myself, knowing I'm losing value but sucking it up because I'm using a gambling system which, at the very core of its design, is truly amazing.

As such, I view PoE's gambling system not as something to hate, but as a beloved system which, unfortunately, has one hell of a monkey on its back. The only point I'll readily grant its detractors is: no, it's not a crafting system, it's a gambling system. But that doesn't make it bad; it just means you need to hold it to gambling system standards, not crafting system standards.

Great, great point. People approach crafting and gambling with two very different mindsets.

I would add though, with a large enough bankroll, gambling takes on the form of crafting. You just have to get to a point where you can wait-out streaks of bad RNG luck. Even chasing a 6L, there is some finite number of orbs at which the cumulative likelihood of success approaches 100%.

But currency is so vital to end-game progression that people feel compelled to save up for this eventual brute-force reality. They expect to get to a point in the game where the odds of RNG success diminishes drastically, making large stores of currency required for progression. Thus, they're very hesitant to currency for "fun" gambling for fun in the early game.

But on the front page it doesn't say "gambling system" it clearly states "crafting", right?

It gets people confused on what to expect from the game. The same as with trading - nowhere is explained that the whole game is actually cantered around it.

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morbo wrote:

The same as with trading - nowhere is explained that the whole game is actually cantered around it.

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