The Mirror of Kalandra and user retention

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

i dont play in parties with mf cullers etc, ive owned many mirrors, mirrored many items. some of the richest legit players in the game are not mfing, theyre barely even playing the game. they can make multiple mirrors in the first few days of a league without even running a single map.

last time i bought actual mirrors i bought i think 3 of them in the space of about 6 weeks by trading for items and fossils with chaos, crafting them in bulk, selling them and then reinvesting a small amount of that profit in more items and fossils. i was playing the game from hideout to hideout, i didnt really do anything in an actual zone that made any wealth.

this was in standard, im a middle class player. the real chad players could make 3 mirrors like that by day 3 of a league start without even finishing the campaign.






i fundamentally disagree or fail to see any point/relevance in almost everything the op is saying.

Ability to infinitely amass wealth without actually playing the game is another topic (and isn't healthy for the game either, even if GGG may look at it as "whatever makes players to get out of bed in the morning").

Where do you think your purchased mirrors came from originally? People repeat same thing to get broken OP build running ASAP, and rush to levels of juice where mirror droprate goes from "never" to "every few maps". Then they sell mirrors so people like you can get to duping stuff without running a single map :)

If arbitrary duping is considered fine, then fine :shrug:

no ones really finding mirrors every few maps tho. a tiny handful of people in this league alone who have run 10,000s of maps have maybe found 10 mirrors and thats entirely down to the outrageous league mechanic right? its not actually a thing in the core game mechanics.


i think the ecosystem of poe and its economy is a masterpiece of game design. theres people out there whos entire gameplay experience is doing something me and you dont even know is a thing, and theyre getting some kind of reward from it that they value. why is that unhealthy for the game? i think its great.


outside of this league i think most mirrors are just dropping in normal gameplay to random people. more than anything id say its just killing more monsters, people who kill a lot of monsters find more stuff. its as basically obvious as that. quant plays a factor but less than just sheer killing content.

Glad for anyone who enjoys his/her time spent in this environment. It is just that "simply playing the game" feels like least rewarding activity, as in "waste of flipping time", which doesn't fit the definition of masterpiece.

If you're going to play, it must be something capable of clearing 100% deli level of juice, ideally in party too for those MF bonuses, otherwise you are wasting your time

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Echothesis wrote:

Glad for anyone who enjoys his/her time spent in this environment. It is just that "simply playing the game" feels like least rewarding activity, as in "waste of flipping time", which doesn't fit the definition of masterpiece.

If you're going to play, it must be something capable of clearing 100% deli level of juice, ideally in party too for those MF bonuses, otherwise you are wasting your time

Good then they deserve it if they wanna work for it as a goal.

Nothing wrong with that lol

If you wanna do that? Well go work for it too.

i have very strong social democratic views when it comes to real world economies but within a game like this im not that swayed by ideas of morality and righteousness, its just a game. im not entirely opposed to them, we shouldnt be having scammers or cheats, peoples time and investment should be valued, people care a lot about their characters and items, im all for that and respecting it.



but i also think we just start every league from 0, you just go in with your knowledge, skills, social connections and you make stuff happen. some people consistently make things happen, some never do.

you can say simply playing the game is the least rewarding, but if you take most of those simple players who inefficiently farm inefficient content and tell them to go craft for profit they would make even less progress than they do from simply playing. if you told them to flip items they couldnt rly do that either. some people are just kind of useless, bless them, and its fine man its just a game, if theyre happy doing what theyre doing power to them.

if they want to become effective its all there, all the info, the strats, the builds. theres a wealth of people out there endlessly sharing all their knowledge through guides and videos who would love for these people to tune in and learn how to succeed.





i feel like theres a section within that group tho who actively reject the information because they hate "streamers and youtubers". omg they have a job and make a living and money is evil so all their actions must be evil and streamers are popular and we hate popular people because popular people are evil because i watched a movie and the popular kid bullied the ugly kid who had no friends so all popular people must be horrible bullies who hate people like me and bully us so content creators on youtube are horrible evil terrible bully people and i hate them and have some huge moral highground over them by being stubbornly terrible at the game because being terrible is morally correct and good and being good at the game is evil and wrong!

and they just fester in their toxic, deluded, hateful world of judging other people and feeling hard done by, refusing to ever take responsibility for their own inability to grow, learn, make friends in the game, achieve their goals.

you just cant help people like that, they refuse to learn and change so they will always be bad at everything they do, it doesnt matter if its farming maps or flipping gumballs theyre just doomed to fall behind while other people with positive, open minds who are willing to learn and find a positive place within the games social spheres succeed. communities and knowledge sharing form around guilds, streams, discords, if our natural impulse is to reject and attack these communities out of some sense of vulnerability then were digging our own ruts.




social mobility in poe is actually incredibly high, but we have to be willing to get out of our little bunkers and move. if we dont change our situation wont change. i dunno, my opinion is that the game is in a pretty good place these days. you can map, boss rush, do side content like delve/essence/alva/blight, you can craft, flip items, you could legitimately do any of these things and make 100s of divines in a league if you really commit to it. i think thats amazing for a game to have such a diverse, vibrant ecosystem.

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Echothesis wrote:

Not related to user retention, but frankly mirror is another bizarre GGG-only feature. Do you know many other arpg where item duping is not only allowed, but encouraged?

Add to it how mirrors are hard gated behind MF stacking, this splits community even worse. Elite of the elite who can afford MF culler party runs eventually get self-sustaining fortune with mirror shops (which attract RMT too), while peon players never see a mirror in their life and never will unless they break the game first with said MF and party abuses.

Said it before and will say until I am banned: MF on items is way too impactful, it needs to be nerfed with diminishing returns, as well as close party culler abuse hole where loot is calculated from whoever did the killing blow. Solution may be personal loot for every party member, maybe (if sticking with shared loot) calculate from player who did the most % damage to mob.

Not a fan of the mirror itself, but fundamentally disagree with everything else you wrote in the same way as Snorkle. I too have gotten plenty of mirrors and mirror-tier items through regular play and trade and experience. I believe I may have already hashed this out with you in particular so I won't go any further than one post here:

I amass everything and anything I could ever want, mf or no mf. I enjoy occasionally slapping on the mf and doing the "flavor of the month" farming strategy, but it is definitely less than 10% of my overall time in PoE. The amount of time and energy that is sucked out of MY enjoyment by OTHER PEOPLE running mf is exactly ZERO. If it bothers you so so so much and interferes with your game enjoyment....I'm sorry but you are doing something wrong.

Let people do whatever the hell they want, whatever the hell they find fun. I will continue to do what I have done for 12 years with absolutely no real interference from any other player. Each new league is a brand new start, and as such you play WITHIN the new market and new environment you are provided. In a league like this one, where mf and the mechanic have created massive inflation....well that just means you sell things at a higher price and maybe it takes a bit longer to collect what you need. Other leagues it might be totally different. That is the nature of playing the game and I could care less that things change like that. I've never once felt that the game has been "broken" because of mf.

Let's change it up... Divine orbs now:



Now grab that image of player retention and place it on top of a price-over-time graph. That's not how it works, but it sure drives the point home.

Here are the paradoxes of this graph:

1. As demand decreases / inventory increases, prices INCREASE 🤪

-- Law of supply and demand says that with a decrease in demand / increase in inventory, the price should DECREASE. --

2. From week 4, and onwards there is a plateau.

"Regular players won't acquire wealth, they will RMT". You know why that bot owner said that? Because all of these modern-day soldiers have come to the same conclusion on their own or through their friends. The price must go UP. That's the only way the system works for them.

Knights, you are being priced out of the game. That's why most of you have not done even basic challenges (https://steamcommunity.com/stats/PathofExile/achievements) as incomplete as that data may be.

It's not just that players don't like X, Y, Z league and they leave.

It's not just that some people have ZERO idea of the intrinsic value of an item. So they blindly price item depending on what a price checking tool tells them.

It's not just that bots markup items.

It's not just that bot owners feed excess currency to mirror-tier crafters to eliminate inventory from the market, but also to increase demand of the highest byte-per-dollar item in the game (The Mirror of Kalandra).

When he said: "If items/currency would become worthless the game is totally unattractive for RMT. Look at D2 where the value of HRs goes from 20$ to 1$ per HR within 1 week of ladder".

Imho, this thread doesn't belong in "Feedback and suggestions". So, I'm requesting for a third time to please move it to "General Discussion". This is a discussion; I'm not giving feedback on a skill. I'm literally discussing the reason why players don't stick around.

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BlackMarshes212 wrote:

Now grab that image of player retention and place it on top of a price-over-time graph. That's not how it works, but it sure drives the point home.

The difference between correlation and causality should not be foreign to you. At least you don't pretend like you aren't playing make-believe, so that's progress

I am sure you can make a good point without having to make things up. It really hurts your credibility

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ArtCrusade wrote:

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BlackMarshes212 wrote:

Now grab that image of player retention and place it on top of a price-over-time graph. That's not how it works, but it sure drives the point home.

The difference between correlation and causality should not be foreign to you. At least you don't pretend like you aren't playing make-believe, so that's progress

I am sure you can make a good point without having to make things up. It really hurts your credibility

Did he have any in the first place?



I earned these quite well mind you OP.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

Spoiler

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BlackMarshes212 wrote:

Now grab that image of player retention and place it on top of a price-over-time graph. That's not how it works, but it sure drives the point home.

The difference between correlation and causality should not be foreign to you. At least you don't pretend like you aren't playing make-believe, so that's progress

I am sure you can make a good point without having to make things up. It really hurts your credibility

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

Spoiler

get rid of all the pretty graphics and unnecessary high-brow name dropping and metaphor and this post offers.....nothing.

Not once is any correlation between "user retention" and mirrors actually presented in a meaningful way, nor are any suggestions offered. OP wants OTHER people to discuss the very thing he has no idea how to discuss.

Always love seeing graphs that oversimplify the ENTIRE economy to a basic 1-to-1 relationship that doesn't even exist. Supply of and demand for the mirror is a false metric to extrapolate any player data from. It is natural that the supply of mirrors increase. It is also true that the supply of mirror-able items increases. It is ALSO true that the USAGE of mirrors to actually dupe items increases. It is ALSO ALSO true that more players over time want and have the ability to purchase mirrors and mirror-tier items over time. It is ALSO ALSO ALSO true that active players offering mirror items and mirrors decrease as the league continues.

1) Offerings increase, then decrease
2) Buyers increase
3) Sellers decrease
4) Supply and Demand for the "mirror" is being affected by like 7 different directions all at once.

Your whole soldier / knight metaphor falls apart in the first sentence because you are comparing two players that.....have no interaction with each other. The knight isn't walking the same battlefield as the soldier, he may as well be in his own isolated parallel world with other knights.

And then you pivot to social structure for ...some reason only known to you...


Just....smh, you work so hard to put together something that literally says NOTHING. incredible.

if it were me....i'd come up with an actual position, and actual facts rather than hyperbole and unnecessary metaphor and philosophy, and see if you can present it in two sentences. If you can't....you have no position.

We are in agreement then. The only individual in the entire world who would possess the best possible data to provide an exact answer regarding the issue of causation versus correlation in these graphs is an actual economist with years of experience in market analysis. That's why I'm addressing GGG and streamers. GGG, for the aforementioned reason, and streamers because they often dismiss it as "drama" and oversimplify the matter or remain silent.

So, if your critique is that I am not an actual economist collaborating with GGG's data and possessing years of experience in market analysis, you are indeed correct; I am not. Alternatively, you may also be alluding to the same notion I've been suggesting, which is the necessity of such a discussion.

Either way, I appreciate you both for highlighting what was implicitly and explicitly stated and connecting the dots. I'm not perfect and it takes time for me to make up these elaborate analogies and walk through eggshells so we can even remotely touch the issue. Again, that's why I'm reaching out to GGG and streamers. Perhaps then we can move away from oversimplifying it as mere "drama" or "_ _ _" or whoever else fills the power vacuum if GGG never addresses the core of the problem.



Again... This is not a "GOTCHA" moment, I've been quite clear from the get-go that's the discussion we need to have at least once. That's also why I think this post never belonged in the "feedback" section. It belongs in the general section because it addresses GGG's and streamers main issue: player retention.

Now, we can choose to disregard actual players saying (paraphrasing):

"HEY! WE RMT'ed with X please ban us all because the game needs to change" "(...) also remove these items from the market place they are tainted with RMT"

"YO! _ _ _ just banned me and I'm one of their largest competitors in the market"


"HEY! I own a bot network and I make thousands if not tens of thousands a month. The entire game is rigged to my favor and the only thing that could change my earnings is if the servers go offline"

Ignoring all of that and all the rest of the things that have come to light is not healthy.