Open Letter to Qarl, regarding topics discussed in RMT thread

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Qarl wrote:

My apologies, I have no reason to assume you are. While this is something I see a lot on the forums - "All players ..." followed by information that is incorrect, I have no reason to assume this is the case here. Thanks for clarifying your comment, I had indeed read it as you saying players weren't using orbs.

There are indeed players getting improved items from crafting regularly. I won't specify great, as what people consider great varies from player to player.

Yeah, fair enough! And thanks for the interaction :) In a later edit I clarified the "great"ness issue with the direct "powerful upgraded items" phrase from Chris' post. I remain doubtful of that, while I'm able to see how it would have been the case back in February 2011.

And although you're right that what's great varies from player to player, there might be a case for arguing that the definition becomes a little more universal when trading them for currency gets involved. I wanted to highlight that particular quote by Chris because it describes a perfect equilibrium in which the crafting value of an orb is equivalent to the trade value -- something I (and others here in this thread) would like to see, but feel the game has moved away from.

Just to give a crystal-clear example of what we're talking about:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1z4baa/the_currencytrading_system_is_complicated/

Look at the most upvoted reply by bippal. This piece of advice is given to newer players every day. This is what everyone means by "hoard." I'm a little confused on the scope of the statistics Qarl is providing us here, so I don't want to say too much, but it sounds like newer players with suboptimal currency management are skewing the statistics. And yes, I think it's possible to speak in terms of "rational" and "optimal" when you can make a reasonable estimate of the average cost of getting certain rolls versus the average cost of buying a similar item from a player.

And as for the Chris quote, 2011 was before Maps existed, which created what is now the primary function of alchs and chaos. This certainly has an effect on the values of the orbs and when it's a safe bet to roll items with them.

Honestly, there should be a version of the Exalted orb that drops substantially more often but binds the item to your account.

Not all orbs, ONLY the exalted orb. Definitely not eternals. This means that crafting perfect gear still requires massive investment, but crafting fully modded gear a bunch like we did back in CB with yoloexalts is more enjoyable, but without the ability to massively profit from super lucky rolls unless you're willing to spend currency that is many many many times rarer.

You'll then get a mix of people using actual exalts and binding exalts, and overall much more crafting. I know GGG seems to not like the idea of account binding, but i really do think that having ONLY the exalted orb getting a variant like this would help the crafting issue.

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Qarl wrote:

Players definitely still do this. There is a decent portion of players who do use all their currency on items, and a good portion who actively use much of their currency on items. Both these groups tend towards heavy item traders. (Not all of them though, there are those who use their currency on items and do not interact with others at all.)

You are generalising your own experience with the game to others. There are a wide variety of styles of play.

And if I may ask, who are these 'decent portion of players' that you are...well...making what seems to be a general statement about? Are they newer players who, when they get currency via whatever means, start throwing it at items they have and want to try and craft? Ones that are experienced and are trying to craft specific stuff and know they need to hoard and pool before trying? Are they newer/experienced players that are just throwing currency at items as soon as they get it and then wait for a few more currency orbs to drop and then immediately throw them at said items, or what?

I'm not going to speak for anyone but myself here as I have read this thread from start to finish and speak from my experience alone. At first, I did what Chris said...I would trade items that were 'powerful' and ones I didn't need for currency so I could try and craft gear for myself. After all, that's what I thought the notion of CRAFTING ORBS in this game was about. Not talking about trading or the 'barter economy'...to me, and just to me here, if orbs have properties that allow you to craft items in certain ways, then they are CRAFTING ITEMS. Well, apparently I was very, very wrong. As much as I hated to admit it, the reason that I was originally drawn into this game was becoming more and more clear that it was the most unrewarding, illogical, silly thing to do. Crafting, I began to understand, was an absolute CRAP SHOOT 95% of the time.

The ONLY REASON, the ONLY REASON that it is even remotely good is because you have enough people BRUTE FORCING THE RNG and FINALLY getting things that are worthwhile and in the higher end of things, that means mirror-worthy items. BUT, let's step away from that because that's not the main focus here, and I do realize I might go a little all over the place, so I apologize if I'm not as coherent as I would like to be. I, like others, have realized that crafting is not worth the time or the effort, EVEN WHEN I HAVE ITEMS THAT ARE MOST CERTAINLY WORTH CRAFTING. The last successful item I 'crafted' was this:



But you know what? The ONLY mod on there that was crafted (and took 5 eternal orb tries for) was the life mod. Everything else on that item was already there when it DROPPED for me. I didn't start 'from scratch' and try the transmute/alt/aug -> Regal -> Eternal/Exalt route...that would've been a MASSIVE waste of currency to me. ...Ironic...I keep calling the orbs currency and not crafting components, but that's another tangent I'll stay away from. Here are some other items that I have in my stash that I WANT TO CRAFT, but I REFUSE to even attempt to try with:



I have at least a dozen more in my stash as well. Now, most are going to say, "Oh, those are not god-tier items, blah, blah, blah, blah." and you know what? I DON'T CARE! I don't NEED god-tier items to have fun in this game, but instead of this game ENCOURAGING me to try and craft items, it DISCOURAGES me to do so because of excessive RNG amongst other things. I am well aware I have more than a few pieces of mirrored gear that I saved up for and bought and traded for, and that's also telling...I know that when shooting for those kind of upgrades to what I had originally that it's better to hoard and spend currency on those rather than try and do it myself because 95% of the time it's CHEAPER in the long run. That's because the crafting isn't crafting...it's GAMBLING, and I don't want to gamble with the amount of RNG in this game. I weighed the pros and cons of it and in the end it's more logical to just hoard and buy for a set price because the game will not throw me a bone.

What I want to emphasize is not the mirrored items or anything like that, but as others have most likely said, players begin to realize that the crafting isn't crafting and it's just gambling that leads to little to no gains. The game doesn't encourage you to use these crafting resources even as you level up, and while newer players will certainly use them (I know I did) they will eventually realize that it's actually a waste of those resources. Better to save everything up and scrape by with lesser gear that more than does the job until maybe late Cruel and then it's hop on board the poe.xyz train and learn how to search for what you want and looks for the cheap deals and learn better gear management. I had to learn this disappointing route myself and that to me is a real shame, and I think more and more people are beginning to realize this as well.

Again, I know this was a bit all over the place, but it still makes me shake my head. These 'crafting orbs' have lost much of their value in terms of crafting and have become the defacto currency in this game...they are like copper, silver, gold, and platinum of other games, but just have other uses for them. Their monetary value is and has far outweighed their practical crafting value thanks to a multitude of reasons, one of the big ones being (once again) the excessive amount of RNG in this game and it has really hurt these orbs in that way. I feel as if GGG originally wanted the CRAFTED ITEMS that people used the orbs on to be the 'barter currency' that players would use, but from my perspective, players realize that they're true worth is to give to others who brute force the 'gambling RNG' and that hoarding to save up for items (crafted or dropped) is a much more logical decision in the end.

@Qarl: The feeling I get from your comments is that player behavior is the only thing you are considering. You're looking at "orbs used" in much the same way you might look at "deaths" — "well, x% of players are dying, so the game is hard but not too hard." I don't think that's the right attitude to take. To continue my earlier analogy, I understand players are going to experiment with how long to hold the charge beam button, and thus you're going to see a variety of behaviors on your end.

Better questions would be:
1. Out of accounts with at least one account in maps, what do orb use patterns look like?
2. Out of accounts with at least one account in high maps, what do orb use patterns look like?
3. This may be difficult, but: out of the players who were at low maps x amount of time ago, how many have proceeded to the high maps stage, and what pattern of orb use, if any, typifies them?

In other words, as Uvne said, I do believe that players with very dubious currency management strategies are skewing the numbers.

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ephetat wrote:

I wanted to highlight that particular quote by Chris because it describes a perfect equilibrium in which the crafting value of an orb is equivalent to the trade value -- something I (and others here in this thread) would like to see, but feel the game has moved away from.

I actually believe this is a fundamental law of orb value, and thus always true. Each orb's trade value is equal to the crafting gambling value of the orb under ideal, RNG-smoothed circumstances. Thus, I feel what you're referring to is not actually the trade value moving away from the gambling value, but more of a schism between the gambling value you can get from the orb, and the gambling value someone else, the eventual end user, will get from the orb.

In other words, the economy is causing currency to flow from various sources towards the players who can use them most efficiently; this by itself, isn't a problem. However, the most efficient use of orbs is not even remotely egalitarian, elitist, and out of reach of the vast majority of players; this is a problem.

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Tanakeah wrote:

Nice boots!

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Tanakeah wrote:

But you know what? The ONLY mod on there that was crafted (and took 5 eternal orb tries for) was the life mod. Everything else on that item was already there when it DROPPED for me.

It is important that good items drop. Being able to have good items from killing monsters is a fundamental element of the game. We more often get the complaint that nothing good drops.

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Uvne wrote:

And as for the Chris quote, 2011 was before Maps existed, which created what is now the primary function of alchs and chaos.

Also back in closed beta, you won currency from races so there were massive influxes of exalts every week. Everybody would start buying stuff from their buddies for exalts just beacause they can, and in turn everybody was yolo exalting tons of items.

This actually caused LESS perfect gear to be made, because even if eternals had existed back then, if eternals weren't given out as race rewards the exalt price would go down with eternals remaining the same. This means crafting perfect gear would still require a fairly similar investment seeing as eternals are the bulk of the cost, and people would be more likely to yolo exalt their items, resulting in potentially perfect/near perfect craftable 1-5 mod items are now fully modded and cannot be perfect unless yolo'd to perfect.

You don't feel that bad about fucking up on a potentially near perfect item if you know you will have a reasonable chance at making another similar one the next time you get a good crafting base.

Yolo exalting also has more of a sense of accomplishment.
I was EXTREMELY excited and spammed everybody with this ring when i yolo exalted life and cold res after buying it for only 5 chaos:




A good example of an item i would have considered

But when i tried to craft an ES chest starting with chaoses and then eternal/exalting, i ended up actually with nothing but disappointment because in this state of the game, i either need to get rich to finish the item, or yolo exalt it and potentially waste a fucking crazy amount of currency because of the fact that i didn't feel comfortable yolo exalting what i rolled with chaos because of how much currency i would lose just on the exalt, let alone if it rolled poorly.

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morbo wrote:

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a strong barter-based online item economy

A short sentence that expalains exactly nothing...

Nowhere is explained that progression is slow and painfull without trading, that self-found is almost unviable, that even skills/gems must be bought, that game content is gated behind trading, etc...

What's fucking mad, when I was getting interested in PoE, before joining CB; I read that and thought "nice, bring it on".

The reason being, if gear progression was tuned for shopping, I'm just gonna get more longevity out of it. My main concern in any game before playing, is that I'll progress too quick, gear too quick, not face any challenging obstacles and get bored quick. So I was thinking, me playing solo self found in a game centred around 'a strong barter-based online item economy' is just gonna make the game better. And because I don't trade, yay loadsa crafting, I can farm the shit out of content, orbs for crafting galore.

While the progression was as expected to begin with, other than the void crafting orbs, I find myself in the situation I absolutely never foresaw and am amazed the company I had so much faith and respect in, fucked up so badly. Gated from content, gated from crafting, facerolling shit lowball stuff.

What I thought would make the game more hardcore playing the way I do, made it the exact opposite. And to make it worse, NOT playing solo self found would have made it even less hardcore that it is even for me. I just can't get my head around it other than the conclusion I mention a lot, it always was a pretend hardcore game, targeting pretentious hardcore gamers willing to play the GGG way and wear the hardcore badge. I think some of them actually believe it.

Please don't turn this into another self-found axe grinding thread. There are plenty of places for that. And insulting other players doesn't help your case.

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Qarl wrote:

Nice boots!

It is important that good items drop. Being able to have good items from killing monsters is a fundamental element of the game. We more often get the complaint that nothing good drops.

Thank you. :) And yes, I completely understand that good things should drop. I am not advocating or suggesting that they shouldn't. What my main thrust is (and honestly, not sure if you missed it or not) that if those boots had dropped with less mods on them or if I had gotten, say, a white pair of those boots, I wouldn't have tried crafting them at all. I wouldn't have because of the sheer amount of 'work' needed to try and do so, and I have tried it in the past more than a few times. Now, this IS NOT TO SAY that I am lazy or want things handed to me on a silver platter either...what it's getting at and what I want you to see and to take from this is that I DO NOT WANT TO CRAFT SOMETHING UNLESS MOST OF THE 'WORK' IS DONE FOR ME.

Now, let me expand on that. By 'work' I mean the RNG. THAT'S why I went at those boots because I knew the 5/6 affix slots were used, there wasn't much that could roll in the last prefix slot that the life would occupy, and my odds of getting a good life roll were within what I was willing to try with. I knew from plenty of experience that the investment I'd make would be reasonable and in the end I'd get something good out of it. Didn't have to be perfect, but something that's more than usable and I got that. HOWEVER, with many of the other items I linked in the spoiler part, I know that there are too wide a range of affixes to choose from and that it is NOT worth my time or effort to try even though the items I have are more than sufficient to do so.

THIS is what I want you to understand from where I am coming from on that part of my post, Qarl. I am not seeing the crafting for what it should be (in my eyes at least)...I am seeing it from nothing but a MONETARY PERSPECTIVE, and nothing else. It's not about "Can I craft a nice item for myself?" it's "Can I afford to gamble with my currency or is it better to just search for a similar item and pay for it?" Now, I understand the whole risk vs. reward and I get that there should be some money perspective to it, but it's FAR TOO MUCH THE FOCUS on my thought process and I don't think I'm alone in thinking like this.