Let Us Break Alch Orbs Into Shards?

"

Chypre wrote:

do you have any argument for why it would cause problems?

I admit, no. But what I mean is - I dont want to have more different "curreny value items" as absolutely needed. Its just like adding a 2/3$, 12,5$ or 236$ note... The value of an Alchemy Shard is only 'defined' as a part of the whole orb - who would really define a relation to any other orb? -> is an transmutation worth 1 shard, or an augmented 3, or 4? what about the other shards?? The only "problems" I see caused by this is less transparency and more confusion.

Pretty sure you are supposed to use lower level orbs as the "change"

Not worth 1 Orb of Alch ? Let me give you 2-3 Orb of Chance instead... let him trade those for something else if he wants too.

Also for most good items I think that Orb of Alch will be the low level "change"

Anything below this is probably vendor trash.

"

Mr_Cee wrote:

"

Chypre wrote:

do you have any argument for why it would cause problems?

I admit, no. But what I mean is - I dont want to have more different "curreny value items" as absolutely needed. Its just like adding a 2/3$, 12,5$ or 236$ note... The value of an Alchemy Shard is only 'defined' as a part of the whole orb - who would really define a relation to any other orb? -> is an transmutation worth 1 shard, or an augmented 3, or 4? what about the other shards?? The only "problems" I see caused by this is less transparency and more confusion.

There's plenty of things in this game more confusing than alchemy shards. Anyone who has played for any amount of time knows that 20 adds up to an alch. It is like a nickel into a dollar, not some awkward amount like 3/17ths or having to go to --link removed-- and see that chroms trade 5:2 with jewelers and then those trade 1:4 with alchs and giving mixed change.

A lot of people are going to reject chroms or alt as part of an alch (I know I would) and it is obviously more enticing to get something you know is a portion of exactly what you want (an alch).

Yes, we can get by with the system now, but letting us break alchs up would be better because we would then have something which more accurately meets the criteria of what it means to be money.

In my own experience, I know I have passed on even offering on things like lvl ~50 white 4L because I expect people will be wanting an alch and it is too much. It is smarter to save lower currency to use yourself or sell at a good rate and only take them in at a favorable rate, so not having anything which functions as money halts trade.

"

Knyvez wrote:

Pretty sure you are supposed to use lower level orbs as the "change"

Not worth 1 Orb of Alch ? Let me give you 2-3 Orb of Chance instead... let him trade those for something else if he wants too.

Also for most good items I think that Orb of Alch will be the low level "change"

Anything below this is probably vendor trash.

I use chance orbs on jewelry a lot. What if I want to buy 2 chance orbs with an alch? There's all sorts of transactions under an alch going on, or that would more often if it was easier.

It also helps bigger transactions when you want people to sweeten the pot a little. Maybe I am just a cutthroat trader, but when I know somebody wants something, I will often pressure them to throw in lower orbs and they will often value them way less than otherwise. This is just another option to bid a little more than asking whether or not somebody will accept some chroms or whatever.

The OP echoes my own thoughts.

Low-tier currency items are supposed to be used as "change", but the lack of a fixed exchange rate makes that inefficient and annoying.

People will eventually settle on one or two "regular" currencies (GCP, Alch & Chaos orbs, maybe others). Being able to precisely express fractions of those currencies will greatly improve the trading experience.

Not sure about this, but pretty soon the economy will start moving away from being centered around the alch as more rares are introduced into the market. Like in CB, alch will be tossed to the side as people have higher demands for items such as chaos, and gcp.

Not having definite exchange rates can make things difficult, but it makes sense with the battering system this game wants to portray. The values are definite, but relative to the needs of the players.

Just from being on the trade channel this idea should definitely be implemented. I have absolutely no problem with asking for alch shard for items. I traded a rare away today, that I stupidly crafted with 4 whetstones and 1 alch but it was useful to me at the time, for 4 alch shards and 2 whetstones (level 8 item). I was perfectly fine with that because it had just been sitting in my stash for a week.

Absolutely NO REASON WHY this shouldn't be implemented at some time. If you dont want to use it fine. But what if you are negotiating with another player who wants 2 alch for an item but you dont think it is that valuable. Offer them 1 alch and ten shards or something. No logical reason why this should not be available in the future.

"

tinghshi wrote:

Not sure about this, but pretty soon the economy will start moving away from being centered around the alch as more rares are introduced into the market. Like in CB, alch will be tossed to the side as people have higher demands for items such as chaos, and gcp.

Not having definite exchange rates can make things difficult, but it makes sense with the battering system this game wants to portray. The values are definite, but relative to the needs of the players.

These are poor arguments against being able to do this. A more rare currency than alchs (or two) could also be made divisible. I also suggested that GCP could be made from combining 6 prism shards, 2 each of red/blue/green.

The penalty here would be having to match up two each of the right color and that they would only drop, not be downwardly divisible through a vendor like alch shards. This would make the game more fun finding a lesser currency more often. I've had, since OB started, easily over 100 GCP of value flow through my hands but only noticed 1 drop (and it got ninja'ed because of FPS lag and needing to click twice).

I think that too many people are using GCP as currency versus using them to improve gems. We could keep normal GCP drop rate the same and "double it" with the double being 1/3 chance for each type of shard.

Although I still feel that 2 alch is worth more than a chaos, the 2 alch = 1 chaos and 3 chaos = GCP thing sort of works okay, so I think that something more rare should be made divisible too. We just don't need everything like jewelers and alts to be able to be broken up.

I think something more like a Divine would be best, but there is a separate problem with the game design that certain rare orbs just lack a usefulness fitting their rarity (Blessed/Regal/Divine). This is how I would fix those:

Regal is basically a bad idea to use unless you can follow through with several exalted, even scouring and re-regaling. Rather than only ever giving a 3rd mod, it should be maybe something like 60% chance to give 3 mods, 33% chance for 4 mods, 5% for 5 and 2% for 6 mods.

Would you actually trade for Regals with this change? I would, and I would use them more often too. Isn't there some sort of problem with the other currencies if you only see alch/chaos/GCP being traded or attempted to be used as money?

I don't know how to fix Blessed. There's some possible minor buffs, but no matter any changes made there is always going to be something less useful relative to its rarity. This is unavoidable and not really the main issue here at all.

Divine I think is the best candidate for the higher divisible money (note: money, not currency). Talking with the little group I play with tonight, they didn't even realize how divines work. Usually we want to take what a skill or item says literally, but divines are confusing. Maybe what I read is bad info, but I always thought that an item with some mod like 5 Str would then be able to roll up to 30/40 or whatever, but it actually just takes from the range in the pool of affixes it is already from (5-12 Str or whatever).

Blessed could be made to always, or have a large chance to, improve the implicit value rather than just picking randomly. Divine could work the same way and also have a decent chance to have random mods "break through" to the next tier.

I don't feel like looking up what real mods in this game are (and the available info on this sucks), so this is not realistic:

I start with an item like a gold amulet.

Implicit mod 15% rarity (12-20 range)

4 random mods

24% Weapon Elemental damage (ranges 12-20, 21-28, 29-36)
13-28 Fire damage (ranges 1/3-9/12, 4/8-13/22, 9/14-23/36, etc.)
+5 life per enemy hit (ranges 1-3, 4-7, 8-12)
16% item quantity (ranges 6-12, 13-20, 21-30)

Divine how it works now, just rolls randomly between 21-28 WED, 9/14-23/36 fire, 4-7 life per hit, 13-20% quantity.

New divines would have a good chance to still just roll randomly within the same range, say 70% chance to stay in the 13-20% item quantity, 20% chance to bump up to the 21-30 range, 10% chance to fall down into the 6-12 range.

So, it would be about the same, but more exciting because you could keep spending on the 2nd most expensive orb knowing odds are your item will improve, but always be running the risk the 120%+ weapon damage thing you have could fall to be 5-10% and take many orbs to get it back up, possibly then also ruining the life leech or whatever is also important to your item.

Bumping.

I want to hear LOGICAL (key word LOGICAL) reasons why this would be a BAD (key word BAD) idea.

"

ThorOtheBIG wrote:

Bumping.

I want to hear LOGICAL (key word LOGICAL) reasons why this would be a BAD (key word BAD) idea.

Overall, I obviously think this is a good change, but I think this would influence the economy, so if GGG did it they ought to maybe give some notice so people could modify their holdings in advance.

I think that if you had some sort of penalty like that alchs would only result in 19 shards, but then people still accept and use this, it would prove the importance of divisibility.

With having some currency now be better at functioning as money, Gresham's Law will apply, just for slightly different reasons than in real life economies currently.

As time has gone on, I think that having a higher currency be divisible is important. I still suggest Divines, because even without improving their intrinsic utility, making them divisible will increase their utility by making them function better as money.

bump

More discussion on reddit here in light of "that site" going RMT.