Dr. McB explains the economy in Path of Exile

[Removed by support] Why does the c:e inflate when the c:f stays the same? I studied economy too, I believe you also did; but let me point out that this is not a proper system. PoE economy doesn't obeys to the standard rules.

from my personnal experience (last season gone lvl91 in warband less than 3 weeks after league start and I stopped but could have gone way higher, at least lvl93-94 with my current gear). I was mfing a bit also. So I played a lot and gone to higher maps pretty early with good clearspeed and consistancy.

You don't get much items that are worthwhile to trade. Some you just want to keep, got whispering ice pretty early, no way I'd sell that, if someday I want to play it I'll have it. Tho I should have sold it, it was worth way more than now. :) Long story short I made maybe 3-5 exalts from trading. The reasonning is that trading is time consuming, developping a shop for "low tier" players isn't worth it. It is not worth it to double TP for a 2-3c trade. Not factoring the management behind it. Trading in PoE, if you want to trade a lot for few c items, requires a dual screen. So last season I looted more "straight" exalts than I made with my shop selling items, also I made shit tons of side currencies, never made as much regals and chaos. Left with dozens of regals/chaos stacks, 12-13 exalts, and despite making 150-200 fusing/night wasn't able to self 6L a chest (got dozens of 5L tho). As far as I'm concerned, despite a tremendous lack of fairness with crafting and map drops, there was nothing wrong with currencies(so everybody could have anything with proper playtime reliably) BUT now that some high price items drop more frequently, Div have more impact on player wealth(was almost non factor) and map drops are better, it seems to me that everything is fine, as far loot is concerned.

Also I want to point out that there are bots and there is rmt isn't as impactfull as op says. When somebody plays 8 accounts at same time for pesos/dinero/euros/petrodollars yes it has impact on the game economy obviously! And it's pretty huge.

I really don't like your analysis because it doesn't match my experience in the game at all and it doesn't really reflect the reality either. A very strong budget spec that scales like flame totem would reach that point where it doesn't need anything while a tornado shot player would need way more for instance.(i.e. a linked coil) Builds have different prices too. It would be way easier to be top tier wealth playing a dual totem of any kind than some sort of melee evasion character :).

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galuf wrote:

Why does the c:e inflate when the c:f stays the same?

Or, why does a high-tier item gain value relative to mid-tier items, while the value of that mid-tier item relative to another mid-tier item stays the same?

As with gear, so with intercurrency exchange rates (c:e always lowest in first days of league). Already explained well enough with concepts of opening post.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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galuf wrote:

Why does the c:e inflate when the c:f stays the same?

Or, why does a high-tier item gain value relative to mid-tier items, while the value of that mid-tier item relative to another mid-tier item stays the same?

As with gear, so with intercurrency exchange rates (c:e always lowest in first days of league). Already explained well enough with concepts of opening post.

I'm not satisfied with the answer. Imho your whole vision of the game is extremly optimistic, or even flawed. This balance you have here between c and f is mainly due to rmt/botting. Those 2 currencies are farmed the same way(killing mobs > turning recipe/buying fuses) but their use isn't the same at all. While chaos can be used for most part as trading tool for gear upgrades or raw ex, fuses are needed to 6L. And the need for 6L is huge, and it isn't something that dries out like that. 1c:2f was ok at a point, but I don't see a reason why ex got more expensive in chaos but stayed the same in fuses, if there was not an inflated presence of fusings around.

left wing people are so annoying, even in the game they are the ones coming here with the "rich get richer because of this and that"

-doublepost-

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galuf wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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galuf wrote:

Why does the c:e inflate when the c:f stays the same?

Or, why does a high-tier item gain value relative to mid-tier items, while the value of that mid-tier item relative to another mid-tier item stays the same?

As with gear, so with intercurrency exchange rates (c:e always lowest in first days of league). Already explained well enough with concepts of opening post.

I'm not satisfied with the answer. Imho your whole vision of the game is extremly optimistic, or even flawed. This balance you have here between c and f is mainly due to rmt/botting. Those 2 currencies are farmed the same way(killing mobs > turning recipe/buying fuses) but their use isn't the same at all. While chaos can be used for most part as trading tool for gear upgrades or raw ex, fuses are needed to 6L. And the need for 6L is huge, and it isn't something that dries out like that. 1c:2f was ok at a point, but I don't see a reason why ex got more expensive in chaos but stayed the same in fuses, if there was not an inflated presence of fusings around.

If you too economics I don't know why your missing the obvious connection here.

Ex got more expensive in chaos but obviously didn't stay the same in "fusings" because you trade fusings for chaos. Thus it takes more fusings to make an exalt.

1:2 ratio for chaos to fusings mean if it was 30 chaos to 1 exalt it would 60 fusings to 1 exalt. If it was 60 chaos to 1 exalt it would be 120 fusings to 1 exalt.

If I used exalts to buy a fusings I would get more fusings then before.

6-links are cheaper because you would trade a 6-link over making one yourself, only sometimes someone makes a 6-link with masters or random RNG fuse one. You trade in exalts mostly which is mostly worth how much chaos it is made up.

Incredible post and a wonderful read, thank you very much! I would have never expected something as beautiful and eloquent as this. What a day-and-night-difference if you just checked the subreddit before.. ;)

Someone in here mentioned the idea of making the cost to craft dependent on the ilvl. What about that?
Whenever I introduce a friend to the game and he asks me what to do with those orbs, my answer is: "Just pick everything up for now, we'll see about that later".

Isn't this sad? We have this wonderful crafting mechanic but using it prior to endgame is a huge noob trap.
What might happen to the economy if something like exalteds were 10 times more common and let's say every 10 ilvl require an additional exalted orb for the current functionality? (ilvl9 = 1 ex, ilvl79 = 7 ex)




P.S.: I like how you poke each other in a subtle way, it looks like you have been knowing each other for a very long time. :)

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widardd wrote:

Someone in here mentioned the idea of making the cost to craft dependent on the ilvl. What about that?

It wouldn't get around the Thrift Shop Rule, because sellers would still need to undercut the craft price. I am still for it, however, because while using currency on lower ilvl items would still be value loss relative to trading, the amount of loss would decrease in most instances (essentially, going from "you idiot, you wasted an Exalt" to "you idiot, you wasted half an Exalt"). Making the error less punishing would be a huge improvement, and take a lot of sting out of the "ah ha" moment when players learn enough economy to properly regret past decisions, thus improving retention.

Tl;dr: Good idea, but not a magic cure-all.

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RagnarokChu wrote:

6-links are cheaper because you would trade a 6-link over making one yourself, only sometimes someone makes a 6-link with masters or random RNG fuse one. You trade in exalts mostly which is mostly worth how much chaos it is made up.

So it is how you intellectualise that shitty state. First of all it's fucked up in a pure gameplay sense, right? Secondly, it's also fucked up moneraty wise. The fact that fuses are purely related to chaos and hasn't changed for instance, is a massive pile of bs because it doesn't reflect the actual game flow, the things you do in the game. It is cute to intellectualise wtf things in order to keep playing and supporting a game tho.

From my perpective, and I believe it is plain universal logic here(that why I'm so pissed of at this thread ^^), there is something rotten in the kingdom of denmark. And like I stated earlier it's not a droprate issue imho, it's gameplay flaws.(aka crafting sux, mechanics, rmt made shitty economy that screwed currencies). Who cares about trading anyway, except douches, it's nothing more than a tool.

Also I laughed about Pareto. The is no pareto optimum in PoE. Your well-beeing is your gear. By giving your whole currency stash to someone would never hurt your performances in game hence you would clear as fast, generating as much currency and xp average. BUT the people with your currencies would be able to trade or yolo his gear and clear faster. The way some players flip currencies or gear for example is at their level a way of degrading the whole playerbase experience. I flipped currencies onces in PoE and had remorses, I bought chisels when it was clearly under-evaluated by the community at extremly cheap price because I knew deeply it was worth and was about to worth way more than it had. I got GREAT deals but also screwed few players in the process, destroying a part of the community's experience.

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galuf wrote:

From my perpective, and I believe it is plain universal logic here(that why I'm so pissed of at this thread ^^), there is something rotten in the kingdom of denmark. And like I stated earlier it's not a droprate issue imho, it's gameplay flaws.(aka crafting sux, mechanics, rmt made shitty economy that screwed currencies). Who cares about trading anyway, except douches, it's nothing more than a tool.

It's kind of the opposite of logic, really. More of an intuition. Or perhaps more precisely, the logical conclusion that one does not have all the pieces of the puzzle.

And there was something off: some players, who care a lot about trading but whom I wouldn't consider douches, found some Master crafting techniques no one else knew about, profited massively off then, as then made them public to force a massive re-evaluation of Exalt value... a re-evaluation which will probably continue until the next temp league starts.

There will be odd little things like that. I would be shocked if there wasn't at least one "undiscovered" vendor recipe being used currently. But having a clear, unsuperstitious view of how things should be working helps one understand where to suspect to find such discoveries.

I mean, at the very least, if c:e is going crazy and c:f is stable, obviously there is some market force vacuuming in large numbers of Exalts. Which begs the question: why?