A Way to Bridge the Luck Gap

Imagine a group of miners. There are a few thousand of them and they all work at the same coal mine doing the same work. Each month every miner is given a paycheck for 1000000 dollars. But: only one of those paychecks checks out and so only one miner will get the money. The others get nothing.

Now imagine exalt and eternal orbs.

Here is the problem: If you have a rare event that occurs on average, say, once every 100 hours of grinding, the chance of getting nothing for those 100h is quite high. And since this chance does not in any way take into account the fact that you have been unlucky, those 100h you tried to get that rare event are then effectively wasted. This can be demoralizing and feels unfair, because people naturally feel that they should be rewarded for their efforts.

There is no middle ground and it all comes down to luck. The difference between the lucky one and the unlucky one is huge and leads to unneccessary segregation to rich and poor players.

On many accounts, PoE handles similar cases gloriously by having a good orb and item system. Pretty much every drop gives you something and you can gradually build up your "luck". (Get small paychecks.) So you time is never really wasted, it's just more or less efficent. There are, however, some glaring omission from this system. Namely: very rare orbs.

There is currently no system for gradually building your way to an exalt or to an eternal orb. You have to trade or just get lucky. This makes the exalts so valuable: you can't work luck.

You can craft items and rare uniques are, well, unique. But exalts are, because of the luck-barrier, ideal currency, so an exalt drop is like getting cash. And a lot of it.

I don't see why this has to be so. Why not, instead like this:
- Have masters have a chance to sell exalt orbs for, say, 30 chaos each.
- Eternals could be for 100 chaos and divines for 20 chaos each?
- The chancefor a master to sell an exalt/divine/eternal could be 1/10 and they would only sell one at a time just like skill gems.

So, you would not get exalts cheaper than on the market, but you could get them gradually and build up your luck. You could also use this as a way to fix pricing somewhat.(I believe the price of exalts would drop with these improvements, but you could then just adjust the prices.)

Why not?

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Cipp wrote:

Why not?

Because if eople got an exalt/divine/eternal once every 10 days, you'd flood the market and make them all worthless? I don't know how many people play, but imagine 50,000 players in Rampage would add 50,000 * 9 = 450,000 higher currency orbs during the course of the 3 month league. Your "solution" didn't help unlucky people get richer. They have the same relative wealth they had before. Just like rising water doesn't change how high above the water the boat is.

Remember that the currency items have uses, too. More available would equal lesser value, yes, but not proportionately so. A lot of players will stockpile rather than sell them, if not just use them outright.

I'm not certain this is THE solution, but a solution is definitely needed and this would take steps to address it.

"

mark1030 wrote:

"

Cipp wrote:

Why not?

Because if eople got an exalt/divine/eternal once every 10 days, you'd flood the market and make them all worthless? I don't know how many people play, but imagine 50,000 players in Rampage would add 50,000 * 9 = 450,000 higher currency orbs during the course of the 3 month league. Your "solution" didn't help unlucky people get richer. They have the same relative wealth they had before. Just like rising water doesn't change how high above the water the boat is.

Thanks for the reply.

I think, however, that you forgot one detail: the orbs have a price. 450,000 higher orbs would require the players to farm several million chaos orbs. But, if the price is set correctly, farming that many chaos would yield roughly the 450,000 higher level orbs anyway.

On average, it would still be just as hard to get those higher level orbs, but the luck factor would be mitigated. It's not about rising the water, but rather about calming the waves.

Furthermore, the higher level orbs could be easily be restricted to level 7-8 masters.

I do agree that these would lovwe tha value of those orbs, but I don't see a problem with their value being closer to their drop-rate.

I think just being able to get the higher orbs by vendoring lower ones would solve the problem as well. And the rates could be adjusted over time to allow GGG to control the economy. So, for example, if they create a new sink for Exalts, then they could raise the vendor price from 30 Chaos to 40. Or whatever. This would help all of us people who don't enjoy trading tremendously but need not affect the price of orbs (for those who do trade) at all.

You seem to really be talking about accessibility of higher level currencies more so than just RNG...

I'd be ok with Exalts and other currencies being available. I'd like each vendor to have say 2-3 types available at any given time. But I want more RNG. I want the quantity they are selling to vary from none up to 3x current. And I want the prices to vary more too. Say from 10% better than current to 50% more expensive.

For Exalts, I'd like each vendor to have a chance of seeing either an exalt at chance of 1:14, or an eternal at chance 1:21. I'd like the price of the exalt to vary from 29c to 49c. And the price of the eternal to vary from 2 to 5 exalts.


This means you would be very likely to see an exalt available every 2 weeks, but you may or may not love the price. Further, this helps to put a ceiling on exalt prices.


It's important to me that these mechanism are less reliable than current.

I'd also like to see Spell Echo and Multistrike put on this variable price plan. Say, if the master vendor sold it from 1 regal to 3 regals, or 2c to 6c, you may or may not still buy it every time its available.


I'd like to see similar variable pricing for masters offering up uniques. Nearly every unique would need to be priced from the lowest ever reasonable (and maybe even at further discount) to the highest ever reasonable.

Option 1: GGG bumps up the drops to make the game enjoyable by all players, including that of solo players that spend less than one hour a week on the game. The game's lifespan is drastically cut short, even with new content coming every year. More players play, but play less.

Option 2: GGG keeps drop rates so low that solo playing is impossible, unless the person in question has some of the best luck. The lifespan of the game is drastically increased for those who enjoy dedicating countless hours, but ruins the game for players who feel that the little time they invest is wasted. Fewer players play, but play more. More content each year just prolongs the game's lifespan for those few that stay.

This is the one, biggest choice any company must make. Blizzard opted for option one for Diablo 3, and you can see the effect it had. ARPGs have very limited lifespans.

GGG has opted for option two, and this game is still going strong. I spend most of my time on the forums because I can't invest too much time into this game. No reward whatsoever.

Edit: Dying four or more times on a character at level 74+ means nothing to me. That's how little I care about experience and more about currency.

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Natharias wrote:

Option 1: GGG bumps up the drops ...

Option 2: GGG keeps drop rates so low that ...

... Blizzard opted for option one for Diablo 3, and you can see the effect it had. ARPGs have very limited lifespans. ...

GGG has opted for option two, and this game is still going strong.

I feel like in this league (Beyond) that I have quickly achieved far more than ever previously. With Strong boxes and etc, it seems GGG has pushed more towards the middle...



I didn't get epic drops from my RNG. I have found 0 Exalts so far. I got a bit lucky finding that 6L from a fully linked box, but then again, most of my fully linked boxes have given me 3L's and 4L's.

Sure I've trade a little for some chaos here and there, but also, those alterations from each run (and making chaos sets) slowly just adds up.

I now have two characters past 85, and other alts I'm working on (playing more and more with new systems I've never tried before.) And it's not like I haven't died! I've killed over 6 characters between 57 and 70, and have plenty more to kill yet.

So, I have multiple decently geared characters. I'm far from rich but far from poor, and far from complaining.


Are you poor? Buy a moonsorrow for next to nothing and do a lightning build... or I hear shockwave totem is dirt cheap.

Heck, my next build is trying to feature another dirt cheap item... Maybe I'll pair Bear Traps with EK traps and Shockwave totem, hard to say just yet till I try the options out. (Currently that alt is in the 40s).



At some point I'm probably going to have to finally break down and trying doing Atziri... but I'm just happy to finally be doing 77 maps.

"

Natharias wrote:

Option 1: GGG bumps up the drops to make the game enjoyable by all players, including that of solo players that spend less than one hour a week on the game. The game's lifespan is drastically cut short, even with new content coming every year. More players play, but play less.

Option 2: GGG keeps drop rates so low that solo playing is impossible, unless the person in question has some of the best luck. The lifespan of the game is drastically increased for those who enjoy dedicating countless hours, but ruins the game for players who feel that the little time they invest is wasted. Fewer players play, but play more. More content each year just prolongs the game's lifespan for those few that stay.

This is the one, biggest choice any company must make. Blizzard opted for option one for Diablo 3, and you can see the effect it had. ARPGs have very limited lifespans.

GGG has opted for option two, and this game is still going strong. I spend most of my time on the forums because I can't invest too much time into this game. No reward whatsoever.

Edit: Dying four or more times on a character at level 74+ means nothing to me. That's how little I care about experience and more about currency.

The ideal case would be, if the achievemets remain hard to obtain, but could nevertheless be obtained gradually. I think GGG went with this line on the fusing question.