Open Letter to Qarl, regarding topics discussed in RMT thread

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Nephalim wrote:

The drop rates for high end orbs are balanced around the existence of bots which is why you will never find more than 5 eternals in your entire lifetime.

I never expect to find one ever.

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Splift wrote:

And as for your tinfoil hat implication that GGG is ruining the game to fight botting, that is a laugh and I did not even bring it up for that reason. No sense in trying to argue with something so ridiculous.

It's on record that they've balanced drops with the intention that players should trade for gear. That the botters trade is without question. It is highly likely that this occurs in enough volumes to disrupt the balance of the game, and that's something we all have to sit with. You may not like this fact, but given the way the early risers can dominate an entire league just because of their headstart, and given that RMTing your gear can give you just such a head start, one has to wonder what the point of racing in the 4 month leagues are at all.

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You just like many of the other people crying about the "economy" really just want "MORE ITENS PLOX" even if you don't realize it yourself. And GGG giving you more items won't solve anything, it would actually make it worse.

You have no idea what I actually want, so try not to put words in my mouth. Suffice it to say that in this particular case, I think item stats and the skill tree need to be rebalanced to the point where the two add together to reach your final potency instead of the multiplicative style that it is now, and such an undertaking would imply a drastic rebalance of the game overall, nevermind the current mechanics behind droprates.

And that's not even touching the currency debacle where the main currencies are inherently unreliable with regards to their value and all the shitty consequences thereof in terms of player psychology.

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Qarl wrote:

Well, I know what happens when we up the drop rate of things, people hoard their items more and use them less.

Qarl speaks of orb-hoarding as if it was an instinctive Pavlovian response of a caged animal to a starvation experiment. Players are not that ignorant, we know very well what to expect when we "consume" a crafting orb: NOTHING.

If crafting had more reliable results, we would stockpile only enough orbs as we needed to prepare upgrade items for use. Since this is ludicrously far from the case, we make ballpark estimates of how many dozen or hundred orbs it'll take to burn through the odds against rolling the specs we need. There's nothing instinctive about it, it's a cold assessment of the likelihood of success.

GGG seems to think we should better use our crafting orbs whenever they happen to fall, speculatively poking some dream gear we keep buried in our stashes which we hope to use some lucky day. No one with any grasp of game progression does that, it would be a stupid and trifling way to squander the few orbs that fall sporadically our way.

The practical reality of upgrading your gear is that it's a complicated juggling act of gems, item mods, and sockets that you wrangle together from what's available at specific stages in your character's progression. The key items have level requirements that gate exactly when you can start using them. In anticipation of that point, you stockpile the components you'll need to make everything work together properly. When your character crosses the threshold, you burn however many orbs it takes to get the job done. It would be a futile waste of time and resources to randomly toss orbs at an item before you're prepared and ready to use it.

Experienced players are not dissatisfied with orb drop rates because we don't wait for them to drop. We don't grind for them either. We trade for orbs in mass quantities. If GGG seriously wants players to hoard less and use orbs more often, they should do the following:

1. MAKE CRAFTING MORE PREDICTABLE

It's not the average probability of success that sucks. What we want you to reduce is the extreme range of variance between good and bad luck. This is what directly determines how many orbs we need to stockpile in advance.

2. MAKE ORB DROP RATES MORE PROGRESSIVE

It's not the average probability of an orb dropping that sucks. What we want you to increase is the likelihood of high-level orbs dropping in high-level areas. Why do you persist in making it so easy for RMT bots to farm low-level content for high-level orbs?

3. REDUCE THE HARSH BIAS AGAINST OFF-COLOR SOCKET COMBOS

It's not the average bias against off-color sockets that sucks. What's excessive is how harshly the bias increases for endgame items with high stat requirements. This is why we have to amass many hundreds of Chromatic orbs to make optimized high-level builds work in 5L and 6L gear.

In short: If you want us to use orbs more often, make orbs more usable.

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Veta321 wrote:

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If you read all the way through I am much obliged.

Hi, regarding your comments. Hoarding is only a concern for us when a player holds onto currency orbs when this is not their best course of action.

Specifically, when their progress is markedly slow and their orbs could be used to speed their progression.

For this particular case the depreciating future value is not the issue, as in this case use of the orbs provides more future value. This may be an issue of signalling this.

Regarding capacitation of items, I am not really sure what you mean by this term. I am going to guess you mean the ability of the currency to make the items good. If that is not what you mean, my apologies, you'll have to explain the term to me.

In progression is where currency items have the greatest ability to make items fit for purpose. Its much cheaper to make an ilevel 30 item very powerful for its level than it is to make an ilevel 70 item powerful.

At the moment, I am very happy with the level of orb use of players. And part of this was in fact improving results for linking sockets with fusing orbs, which improved the game in many ways. This would support your comments on capacitation of items (assuming I am understanding the term correctly.

Thanks for your feedback.

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RogueMage wrote:

Qarl speaks of orb-hoarding as if it was an instinctive Pavlovian response of a caged animal to a starvation experiment. Players are not that ignorant, we know very well what to expect when we "consume" a crafting orb: NOTHING.

Taking a behavioural approach is remarkably effective in analysing and changing players behaviour. I also don't think our players are ignorant at all, they show remarkable ability to analyse systems and share information. Our players are also extremely good at getting value out of the orbs.

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Qarl wrote:

Regarding capacitation of items, I am not really sure what you mean by this term. I am going to guess you mean the ability of the currency to make the items good. If that is not what you mean, my apologies, you'll have to explain the term to me.

Sure, thank you for reading. I will do my best to clarify. I mean orbs or recipes that specifically enhance obsolete items i.e. a recipe that upgrades the base item or item level of your current (outdated) weapon, the reagents of which would necessarily be locked behind content gates. Another example would be a mechanic which rerolls property ranges on items, rather than property values within a range like the Divine Orb.

This is all to say that a player would be more interested in using orbs to make a level 28 Bow, if he could later transform that bow into a level 36 equivalent and analogously upgrade its property ranges. I should clarify, these would work best as separate recipes/mechanics with a permissible level of RNG - as directly upgrading a good set of property ranges and base items and item level would be excessively lucrative otherwise.

Edit: I was operating under this definition but I realize now my word choice should have been less technical.

ca·pac·i·tate [kuh-pas-i-teyt] Show IPA
verb (used with object), ca·pac·i·tat·ed, ca·pac·i·tat·ing.
to make capable; enable.

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Qarl wrote:

At the moment, I am very happy with the level of orb use of players. And part of this was in fact improving results for linking sockets with fusing orbs, which improved the game in many ways. This would support your comments on capacitation of items (assuming I am understanding the term correctly.

I agree. I see no problem with the level of currency use per se. My focus was more on the why's and who's of currency use. As put in the OP:

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Veta wrote:

Players don’t use currency as a bulwark for progression because it is rarely necessary or lucrative. This relegates financially sound currency use to few players and only at the very end of progression, with little exception.

This, of course, is patently false with regards to fusing orbs and I highly approve your changes to them. However, I was not focused on fusing orbs (or GCP, Whetstones, Scraps, Regrets), rather I had in mind orbs like Chaos, Regal, Eternal, etc. Whose use at present does not seem encouraged in all but the later stages of the game. The focus of my post then was to make their use (or lack of use) a meaningful choice throughout the game.

I started by framing non-end game crafting with these orbs in a cost-benefit analysis. Why should a player craft versus trade versus hoard. And then, through the concept of capacitation, I presented a means for equalizing these different options. Given such mechanics I should think it more financially sound for players to invest currency, especially high tier currency in low level crafting, than at present i.e. crafting a level 28 bow because you can capacitate it into an analogous higher level bow later. Under that framework a player could perhaps start crafting a powerful item in normal difficulty and, through sundry capacitation, carry it with him throughout the game, as a valuable component of his gear set. That would not be necessary however, but instead a choice the player makes.

There is a lot of nuance I am glossing over in all this, especially in a topic as broad and complex as the economics and itemization of POE - so please do not hesitate to tell me what I can do a better job of clarifying or explaining.

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Veta321 wrote:

we have another option available, the option of obviation. In this I mean orbs or vendor recipes whose sole purpose is the capacitation of items with depreciating future value. These orbs or recipes would serve exclusively to enhance otherwise obsolete and worthless items (and thusly appreciate their future value without affecting present sacrifice). This would be done specifically by rerolling property ranges (not values), base item type and potentially item level (although I understand item level is to be gated away by content progression). The best candidates for capacitation then would be items with attractive but low level property ranges, base item types and item level. Some RNG would be permissible in this regard and would, like the rest of the game, keep the mechanics from becoming stale and predictable. With regards to gated item progression, I think it necessary that the reagents for capacitation are also gated by progression. This may be accomplished through reagents which are of a certain base type and item level only accessible in later content, i.e. a white sword base type above yours with a higher ilevel. Additionally, such reagents should not serve a significant dual purpose, as to confound their utility as capacitors. Capacitated items should also take on an appropriate required level, commensurate with their enhanced property ranges and base type. There is also the matter of uniques whose properties may not be necessarily balanced with higher base types or property ranges. As with mirror'd items I would recommend their exception from any capacitating mechanics.

Man, when i read this i thinking about Vaal orb and Corrupted items. Take a look at recent news post: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/805730
Chris linked "corrupted items that came from three maps of the same base type". And one of this item has higher base item type and level! Another map has more than regular 6 mods, and i think it gained extra mods from consumed "reagents". In previous news there was other corrupted items with irregular mod types and values... So after reading your post i came to idea that GGG already prepared things that you wanted - new Vaal orb will consume some item (as reagent) to corrupt and empower other item. OMG! ]:->=-

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Dissolator wrote:

Man, when i read this i thinking about Vaal orb and Corrupted items. Take a look at recent news post: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/805730
Chris linked "corrupted items that came from three maps of the same base type". And one of this item has higher base item type and level! Another map has more than regular 6 mods, and i think it gained extra mods from consumed "reagents". In previous news there was other corrupted items with irregular mod types and values... So after reading your post i came to idea that GGG already prepared things that you wanted - new Vaal orb will consume some item (as reagent) to corrupt and empower other item. OMG! ]:->=-

Actually, with respect to otherwise undesirable uniques, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I don't care to speculate about the drawbacks of corruption or its other merits but if I were to draw an analogy between corruption and 'capacitation' it would be that they both make desirable what otherwise is not. For the latter, that is low level items and crafting.

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Qarl wrote:

Hoarding is only a concern for us when a player holds onto currency orbs when this is not their best course of action.

Specifically, when their progress is markedly slow and their orbs could be used to speed their progression.

I use none of them, have tons more, this is just one tab, and it's not in my best course of action. This was just one of my Domination tabs.

You're obviously free to browse my stash on your internal backup, and see all the items etc, I could work with, or improve, or sell for hundreds upon hundreds more of these orbs. There's no shortage, and I keep accumulating more.

About the only thing I do with orbs is try to get a few 'easy' things like one off-color socket, etc, because the rate of success on orb use is too low for me.

I raised a Scion up to level 51 before it got killed without using ANY orbs at all as a test.

@above So you're proving Qarl's point?

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kasub wrote:

@above So you're proving Qarl's point?

In that it's a concern yes. I am trying to.

For note: I did find 6 exalted drops over the course of domination, and those 5 missing were my only trades for the entirety of Domination.

EDIT* The only orb use I do whenever I absolutely can, is the "level 20 gem + Gemcutter".
Why? It's assured obviously.

I had almost 30 GCP self found/made with 40% recipe through all of domination, and only 9 left. That is one 'orb' i use whenever I can.

The rest, they all just sit there.
I look at it simply;

value of orb vs. chance of success using orb.