Crafting orbs or currency? A serious discussion of the game's direction

Path of Exile is a unique game amongst it's peers for many reasons: the enormous passive tree, the concept of skill gems/items links as well as it's decision to forego traditional ARPG currency without much implicit value (like gold) and use a system where the "currency" is instead a series of orbs that can be used to modify aspects of an item, giving these orbs implicit value - they can be used for crafting or trading.

I'm sure you all know this by now if you're sitting on the forums reading this, but over the course of a couple of weeks of playing this game and reading the forums, a worrying trend appeared before me. These fantastic orbs which everyone had told me to save and scrounge and hoard until later on in the game were dropping at an alarmingly low rate. As a gamer coming into the PoE world, I had assumed these orbs would be dropping in a plentiful amount and that crafting would be encouraged throughout the levelling experience. Instead, what I had discovered over the course of a few characters was that I had very little "good" currency (chaos, fusings, exalts, divines etc) to speak of, and that some of these orbs that I had read about and looked forward to using should NEVER BE USED (a direct quote from general chat). This matched up very neatly with accounts of people playing the game with multiple level 70+ characters and not finding an exalt/chaos/other valuable orbs in several hundred hours of gametime.

That's not a problem, per se, but it may be indicative of a design choice that warrants discussing. If these orbs continue to have infinitesimal drop rates (and objects like Mirrors etc I am perfectly happy with being incredibly rare), then what is happening is that these orbs are designed to exist within the game as almost a hard currency. Their value correlates with their rarity in disproportionate manner - I mean, you could use an exalt on a level 30 item, but the system in place is set in such a way that it is ridiculous to use one at all unless them item you're using it on is already fantastic beyond belief (6linked or fantastic attributes etc). These orbs (unless you are very lucky or very rich) have more value as items to be traded to other people than they do as items for you to use.

So what's the alternative? I can almost hear it now - "PoE isn't a kiddy game you scrubcore noob casual carebear" or whatever the flavor of the month term is for people who can't play a game for more than a few hours a day. The alternative is obvious - increase the orb drop rate.

If the guys at GGG had a dollar for every time they heard that, right? Bear with me for a second.

By increasing the orb drop rates, you drop their value as a unit of currency. A perfect Andvarius ring goes from being worth 5 exalt to being worth 40 or 50, since they're no longer dropping once every 7 years (and only on a full moon, and only if you've performed the proper ritual and offered the proper sacrifices). However, because of the way the orbs are set up with their implicit values (that is, their ability to turn items into good items/great items/godly items), you can't possibly end up with a system like Diablo 2 where people have trillions of gold and all currency is worth nothing. No, what happens is that prices for items inflate (which is good) and people who have no good items to trade suddenly have the means to maybe try and make them instead of trading for them, which is, to me, a far more satisfying experience. I enjoy trading and all, but who among you prefers trading for a fantastic item instead of finding or making it for yourself?

The guy who only plays a few hours every day or so suddenly has a means to make his character better without dumping half of a day on farming. The guy who spends 8 hours + on farming now has a veritable wealth of options when it comes to farming, crafting AND trading - and just like that, the game becomes far more interesting.

Path of Exile is a fantastic game and is probably the most well made ARPG ever to hit the scene (aside from some textural/graphical issues which I'm sure will be fixed in the future). The game will still be incredibly fun to play, even if nothing ever comes of this discussion, and I'm thankful that a game company out there has zoned in on the wants of their audience - an ARPG that is about the items and not about the currency.

Wow, that's a wall of text - thanks for reading it if you've made it this far! In any case, this is a serious topic that merits a serious discussion. Feel free to post your own thoughts below - please keep it civil, everyone is entitled to an opinion. I'd appreciate it if GGG weighed in on the issue and maybe commented on their vision of the game - did they envision orbs as more of a currency item or as tools for crafting? Where is the game heading from here? Any and all constructive input is appreciated.

Edit: Fixed minor formatting errors.

Crafting outside of spending a dozen alchs on whites is no longer profitable for the vast majority of players. While it was a brilliant idea to have currency items be self consuming and have intrinsic worth, the game has progressed to a point where decent gear can be bought for almost nothing.

the gap in the market means only the best 1% of rares will fetch a return on crafting investment while everything else is fodder.

With that said changing the drop rates creates more problems than it fixes. Even if you only have a few gcps - they are still enough to buy gear capable of clearing high level content and such gear is dropping constantly with no real sink where as orbs are rarely being consumed.

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Nephalim wrote:

With that said changing the drop rates creates more problems than it fixes.

Hey! Thanks for the reply, but would you care to elaborate on the problems that it would cause? An increase in orb drops means that I can craft gear that is better for me, even if it means it's not good enough to enter the market - or I can hoard the orbs and use them to trade. In the increased orb drop situation, there's an actual choice to be made when an exalt or chaos drops, as opposed to an almost false choice that we face now. 9.9 times out of 10, you've got to save your chaos/exalt when it drops in the current game.

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VTT wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

With that said changing the drop rates creates more problems than it fixes.

Hey! Thanks for the reply, but would you care to elaborate on the problems that it would cause? An increase in orb drops means that I can craft gear that is better for me, even if it means it's not good enough to enter the market - or I can hoard the orbs and use them to trade. In the increased orb drop situation, there's an actual choice to be made when an exalt or chaos drops, as opposed to an almost false choice that we face now. 9.9 times out of 10, you've got to save your chaos/exalt when it drops in the current game.

Increasing the drop rate of orbs just increases the prices of items. Even if you increased orb drop rates by a magnitude of 2, crafting is still not viable. When i say crafting i mean alt-regal-exa-exa-exa, or burning several hundreds chaos then exalting.

For low stakes crafting you do not really need that much of a currency base though you will likely bust after a few items before being able to recoup losses.

The solution has to involve changing the odds of rolling a good item and creating additional mechanics or currencies to aid crafting (eternal and whetstones were a good first step). Right now it does not matter if i burn 10 or 20 chaos on ring, its still likely not going to make a return.

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VTT wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

With that said changing the drop rates creates more problems than it fixes.

Hey! Thanks for the reply, but would you care to elaborate on the problems that it would cause? An increase in orb drops means that I can craft gear that is better for me, even if it means it's not good enough to enter the market - or I can hoard the orbs and use them to trade. In the increased orb drop situation, there's an actual choice to be made when an exalt or chaos drops, as opposed to an almost false choice that we face now. 9.9 times out of 10, you've got to save your chaos/exalt when it drops in the current game.

Try looking at the system, rather than the individual components.

More drops for you means more for multiboxers RMT's and whatever other exploits douchebag [Removed] like to use these days.

[edit] Self found league (no trade) with increased drops, sure.

I understand what you're trying to say, but you can't just balance the mechanics of a game based on "exploiters" or botters or what have you. Traditionally, games are balanced for the players and then measures are put in place to otherwise punish/thwart exploiters.

The idea of a league for self-found items only is intriguing, I'll give you that, but if such a thing were to be put in place, it'd be better if you could trade items only instead of orbs. There's no reason to completely push out trading.

set your own loot rules and don't engage in trade

I don't see how that fixes anything that was addressed.

I think an increase in overall orb drop rates would be a good idea. At this point it's just not fun to spend 5+ hours farming for orbs. I can get maybe 1 valuable orb in that time period. This game is amazing, I love most aspects about it, but the crafting area is just awful. I am eagerly waiting any news on this, I hope GGG knows how bad this is.

One thing to consider here is that self found players actually have a use for these currencies outside of trading. IF you're only playing self found, you're likely to use almost all of your orbs on crafting.

Having said that though, opinions vary greatly, and I'd never say to never use any of the orbs. Even exalts have really good uses, but really everything below an exalt is easy to find/trade for.

IIQ effects how much currency you will get, and you'll also find currency more frequently with lower level characters (combine these and try a few lvl 1-24 runs with 50-100% IIQ sometime and you'll see what I mean.) I myself have found 6-7 exalts in just the 2 months I've been playing, and find a good number of chaos/gcp/etc. Another huge factor is grouping, which greatly increases currency drops. Playing solo tends to make it less likely to see these orbs drop and enter the economy, granted it might not be for you, but it does enter.

There are many factors around that effect currency, and just a few peoples numbers don't really account for things all that well in the grand scope of things. While I do think currency could be improved on, I don't think the solution itself is to just increase the drop rates of it, since all that will do is shift everything to whatever the multiplier of the currency is in price. Once you do that, the items that you craft that are "better" are worth half as much, and people will still struggle all the same to find the next "better."