Open Letter to Qarl, regarding topics discussed in RMT thread

That is one bet I would take. Sorry for the derail.

I'll try to actually add something to this conversation when I'm not on my phone.

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pneuma wrote:

To tie this in with Scrotie's suggestion from way back, the character finds 20 exalt dust. He can use 1 on that rare rusted sword, 5 on the sword he's using at level 70, or 20 on the sword he's using at level 90.

This feels like a very elegant solution to the problem of using currency on non endgame gear being always suboptimal, no matter what. To make decision making relevant, all you really need is to make orb usage less of an all in thing.

If I could add an affix to a good lvl30 item at the approximate cost of a chaos orb, I probably would. At the cost of 20 chaos orbs, hell no~

@Scrotie

Here's a thought. I like the exclusivity of high item level base types. So, what if instead of upgrading item level and base type, you could transfer the properties of one (lower base type) item to another (higher) base type. This, combined with property range rerolling would facilitate all manner of 'capacitation'. Although it's highly important that any specific implementation has the desired effect - that is encouraging difficult choices throughout the game - rather than hoarding for the greatest future value. In that sense, it's important these mechanics do not have competing purposes or at least commensurate costs for those competing purposes.

Specifically I'm saying, if you have an orb or recipe that rerolls property ranges it should be way more (prohibitively) expensive to reroll a high base type (or ilevel) item than a lower base type (or ilevel) item - otherwise we'd recreate the same problem of meaningless choice at present.

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gr00grams wrote:

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2. I can let some other fool/rich folk blow all his orbs, and buy it.

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I have hoarded orbs and never crafted since.

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So you do use your orbs for buying things then?

I would consider that using them (perhaps that was not clear in my original question.

I could reword it:

Do you believe hoarding and never crafting with, or buying something with that currency, is always the correct choice?

I was a little terse in my reply to Qarl, and as a result a little oversimplistic. I hope this post helps to clarify my meaning. (Edit: damn, he posted just before I got this in!)

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Polla wrote:

Well this is easy to answer, because its better. Why ? Because you can then buy something through trade of which the outcome is certain.

I view this to be a poor answer. How poor depends on where the emphasis lies.

If the emphasis is on "the outcome of which is certain": In general, I believe this view is fundamentally untrue, and spawned by an irrational fear of chance. Certainty is not required; an understanding of the median or mean result, is.

If the emphasis is on "you can then buy something through trade": I don't consider this to be an untrue claim, but an irrelevant one. When you trade your orbs, you aren't deciding to consume them; you are simply transferring them to another player, in exchange for something else. The core decision — hoard or use? — has not been made; no answer to that question has been given. Instead, you are forcing that question upon another; whether that player decides to hoard or use then becomes the question.

Thus, at the end of the day, trading has very little impact on whether orbs are hoarded or used. The key factor in their use remains whether the player has access to the highest itemlevel items, and whether that player expect ever to have said access. The only thing trading does is make this decision communal, rather than personal. In a trade-free environment, the incentive is to hold orbs until you have access to the highest-level gear, and your value of orbs is based on your anticipation of your character reaching such content; in a trade-heavy environment, the incentive is to hold orbs until players in general have access to the highest-level gear, and your value of orbs is based on your anticipation of characters in general reaching such content.

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Which brings me to some of the factors which I left out in my reply to Qarl, and which do have noticeable impact, but are inevitably eroded by systems common to the four non-race leagues.

In a Hardcore league, more players die before reaching the highest itemlevel content; in a softcore league, death lacks such stopping power. This slows the hoarding effect in Hardcore. However, even in the Hardcore leagues, players reach that content eventually, so the mitigating effect is itself mitigated.

Similarly, the shorter the league has been alive, the less players will have gained access to highest itemlevel content; in a race, there is actually a realistic expectation that such things will be plainly impossible, which indeed brings orb-use decisions far closer to the ideal level of complexity. This slows the hoarding effect in temporary leagues. However, in the temporary leagues, players will still reach that content eventually, so the mitigating effect is itself mitigated.

But perhaps most important to address is the core reason why high itemlevel items are the key determinant in the decision to use orbs. It starts with high maps. Because high-maps are so scarce, themselves gated behind several layers of filtration which occurs at the low-maps and mid-maps level, the itemlevels affixes which are gated behind high-maps are themselves very difficult to farm, while also obviously desirable. Because orbs are essentially rerolls, and farming the same content repetitively is essentially rerolling, orbs have the most value when used to replicate the effects of the most valuable farming. Thus, the single most cost-effective place to use orbs, by far, is on the highest itemlevel items.

This is why I proposed the Dust system months ago (which Veta linked in the OP). Despite the rather daunting game changes it would impose, it was among the very few ways I could imagine of preserving one important quality of the game — that the hardest areas of the game dropped truly valuable items, offering a unique incentive to farm them — while simultaneously preserving another important quality of the game — that the decision of when to use orbs should be a challenging one, rather than a foregone conclusion.

I'll chime in.

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Qarl wrote:

I could reword it:

Do you believe hoarding and never crafting with, or buying something with that currency, is always the correct choice?

No, not always. For simple things, you absolutely can craft. I transmute flasks all the time. I'm doing early leveling, find a 4L chest of the right base-type, I alc it. Need the right colors? No problem chroming it, unless you're going for all off-colors or 5 off-colors on a 6s chest. Because of the chrome-link items that I always pick up and vendor, I always have some chromes, so I don't worry about spending them.

But other than that? You're probably better off hoarding. For example, say I wanted a ring, right base-type, 4 specific mods that I need, I can probably buy it for a few chaos, depending on what I'm going for. Maybe even I pay an exalt. Crafting it, reliably, using transmute/alt/regal/etc method, I'm putting everything I own on the line with no guaranteed result. Maybe I get it in 1alc. Maybe I dont get it after 20ex worth of currency. Only way to get it is brute-force method, keep throwing orbs at it til the slot machine posing as "crafting" spits out what I need.

How about an extreme example, to show you something really funny. If I asked you to craft a ring with 6 specific mods, and every mod has to be lowest-tier, how much currency would you have to spend crafting that vendor trash item?

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Xarog wrote:

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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.

Sorry, maybe I am tired but I am trying to connect what I said to your counterpoint and I am just not seeing it. If anything you are agreeing with me indirectly? In order to balance things for trade items need value. In order for items to have value they have to maintain a certain scarcity. This is the basics behind any economy. The drop rates were not balanced around botting, they were at this rate before botting and rmt became commonplace.

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Xarog wrote:

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Splift wrote:

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.

Your original complaint seemed to focus on the economy as if its some desperate issue that needs fixing and I am just not seeing it. Ok rare items are expensive and hard/impossible to get? Seems fine to me. Rmt happens? sure, like every other game. Like I said it all these "economy" complaints seem to boil down to people wanting it to be easier to get endgame gear.

Addendum to my post above:

Oh, and this isn't something which can be fixed properly with modifications to the map system, or to the highest-level affixes in the game; the problem is far more systemic than that. Orbs, when cashed in, essentially buy you farming time at an arealevel equal to the item's itemlevel. Thus: Every time you (or, if trading, anyone) progress(es) from one arealevel to a higher level one, the value (in terms of time spent farming) of the orbs you've hoarded increases, proportional to the value of items farmed at the new arealevel relative to the old one. My orbs are gaining value as I type this.

The only thing which stops this endless progression is the inability for it to happen further — that is, gaining access to the highest itemlevels in the game. (And there is even an argument that, in trading environments, the value of your orbs increases as you hoard even then, as other players join you at the apex.)

Certainly this problem is most pronounced on the jump from mid-maps to high-maps, but it is by no means exclusive to that jump; it pervades every area progression in the game. There is no way to fix this defect in the orb system without attacking the very core of risk-reward itself, by turning the "new areas farm better items" premise on its head... unless you change the nature of the currency system from the ground up. A completely paradigm shift is necessary, or the problem shall either persist, or be substituted for a worse one.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

This is why I proposed the Dust system months ago (which Veta linked in the OP). Despite the rather daunting game changes it would impose, it was among the very few ways I could imagine of preserving one important quality of the game — that the hardest areas of the game dropped truly valuable items, offering a unique incentive to farm them — while simultaneously preserving another important quality of the game — that the decision of when to use orbs should be a challenging one, rather than a foregone conclusion.

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Qarl wrote:

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.

The main pro of this system is already in place. Because low level items have a much smaller affix pool they are easier to roll with top values. For example it might take 100 chaos to roll a decent lvl 68 armor whereas with a lvl 30 one you might spend 3, or it would take 1000 alterations to roll a weapon with a top %damage affix while on a low level weapon it might take a dozen.

The reason why people don't use them on low level stuff is because they simply don't need to usually (in softcore especially).

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Splift wrote:

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Qarl wrote:

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.

Because low level items have a much smaller affix pool they are easier to roll with top values. For example it might take 100 chaos to roll a decent lvl 68 armor whereas with a lvl 30 one you might spend 3, or it would take 1000 alterations to roll a weapon with a top %damage affix while on a low level weapon it might take a dozen.

This is incorrect. Either:
1. the affix pool is indeed much smaller with lower itemlevel items, so much smaller that lower arealevels actually farm better than (or equal to) higher itemlevels. At this point, risk-reward has been turned on its head, and although the orb situation is kinda fixed, an even more important mechanic has been turned to shit.
2. the affix pool is smaller, but it's not a big enough difference, and farming the higher itemlevel is more productive than farming the lower itemlevel — as it rightfully should be. However, the orb system piggybacks on this, making it so using the currency on the higher itemlevel item is superior to use on the lower.

Without a fundamental change to the currency system, it's a game of Lights Out which you can't win. As far as I can tell, the nature of this fundamental change must be to have currency cost per "reroll" increase with itemlevel.