Master Crafting Metamods

Okay, no, on second thought I will say it.

You seem to think you can run a laissez-faire free market economy built around hidden information. A lot of which is gated behind having a base of wealth to utilise in the first place. This is incredibly harsh on those of us who get scalped over time to further concentrate the wealth behind people who have the knowledge and means to use it, and leads to this sort of spillover once the information becomes public knowledge. You've also got a mismatch between the utility and the rarity of your currency items, which your tinkering keeps making worse - the chaos-exalt one is just the most obvious.

For Christ's sake, guys. You need to get an economist on staff. You don't have to spend a fortune - how many academic economists are there in Auckland who would love to get their hands on an in-game economy for research purposes? Valve had Yanis Varoufakis working for them, so there's definitely interest. Either way, you guys are demonstrating that you're out of your depth in this case. Get outside help.

"

Teplokot wrote:

Then this happens.

And this specific "this" actually happens in various games. The scenario is always the same. A bunch of devs decides to put some easter-egg-class hidden exploit so that several "chosen" friends/cousins/roommates/etc. might rush-abuse it for some cute profit. Then, during some next content release or patch, they either remove the exploit-vulnerable mechanics or announce it as a BRAND NEW NEXT GEN HURR DURR CONCEPT so that anyone might roll with it - after the "chosen" ones ate all the sweetest pieces of course. Typical case.
Unfortunately for GGG, this time someone spilled the beans regarding this exploit way too early... and thus shit hit the fan.

Dear GGG,

I am disappointed in you. I expected more from you than this. You apparently are not the company that I thought you to be.

Your philosophy of allowing players to discover facets of this game is well-established and something that I can appreciate, even when I may find it annoying. And allowing the players who discover those secrets to benefit from them is a natural consequence, an inherent reward for experimentation (as long as that knowledge comes from their own discovery, and not from some inside source). But when someone who's in on the secret spreads misinformation, and you're aware of it, I would expect GGG to do the right thing and correct it, rather than simply stating, "Please note that there is incentive for people to mislead others if they find a secret recipe or crafting trick."

Carl did the (morally, ethically, whatever you want to call it) right thing when he made his first post. Everything that happened after that was a step backwards. The information was already revealed. By deleting Carl's post, whoever made that call chose to place the so-called "natural progression of how players work out crafting tricks" over the truth and the good of this community. By endorsing the "incentive for people to mislead others," you have intentionally created a toxic community of players. There is currently a justified witch hunt (perhaps that is an oxymoron) on Reddit, as previously well-esteemed members of the PoE community have been revealed to have been misleading the PoE community for about a year now. Essentially, GGG can catch players lying to make vast amounts of currency for themselves in game and be ok with that--choosing to not only allow the 'misinformation' to be perpetuated, but aiding the lies by removing any corrections that were made from a GGG source. Apparently, we shouldn't trust anyone, because they have a incentive to mislead others. You have revealed that your company's seemingly close interaction with the community was an illusion (exile), a PR stunt to make yourselves look good, not to actually help your players.

For me, the best part of playing PoE is not dealing with the trolls, but meeting other nice people. Sharing masters via 820, or warbands via 710, is a great example of the cooperative spirit of the community. You apparently agreed at some point, because Warbands and Tempest naturally reward the sharing of information and cooperation between players. But the reality of what occurred here, and your defense of what occurred as set out in this Manifesto, shows that your vision for PoE is squarely at odds with what I want and enjoy. Your acceptance and endorsement of players misleading other players leads to a Hobbesian, laisse-faire system. I might want to kill monsters in such a fantasy world, but I do not want to interact or trade with other people in one.

As for the impact on the economy, well, at least now it is clear why things are the way they are in Warbands. I can't say that I like it. Chris, you say that players call the economy broken when it's different from what they're used to. Well, worse is one way it can be different. Higher exchange rates for exalts, not just with chaos, but with alterations and chromatics, the three easiest currencies for new players to trade for exalts, making acquiring wealth for new players even more difficult. While you may trust that the invisible hand of the market will adjust item prices eventually, trading is going to suck until this all gets sorted out. And if the new equilibrium involves trading twenty stacks of currency for an item, it's still going to suck. Coupled with the increased rarity of magic-finding uniques, this is probably the worst time in PoE history for a new player to start the game, in terms of being able to acquire wealth.

And at this point, I'm not sure that PoE is a game that I would any longer recommend to my friends. The release of Act 4 could have been, should have been, epic. Instead, this expansion has been a singular low point for me, not because of technical flaws but because of many of GGG's philosophical choices. While I won't be a drama queen and claim that I'm going to quit the game, I'm not going to be supporting GGG monetarily in the future.

I regret that it has come to this.

"this is normal" is an incomplete sentence =D

Changing the rules of currency orbs (i.e. Scourings) and countering their very wording is ludicrous.

No one in their right mind is going to throw multiple eternals or exalts at something that, by all accounts, should result in a complete loss.

There's a difference between experimentation and downright backwards logic. There's also a difference between trying something without a penalty for failure and something with a penalty large enough to set you back many hours of gameplay. Imagine if it took actually selling things to determine vendor recipes instead of looking at what the NPC offers for trade. That's what this is.

I'm very glad that y'all make puzzles and do a good job (Qarl's post aside) of not spoiling information for the playerbase. Scorned was a shining example of letting people figure things out by themselves. I just hope you learn from this and make your future puzzles more intuitive, or at least not punishing to try and figure out.

Can we please quit crying about this and play the game again.

I love master crafting, and I like that this is how it worked and finally got revealed. The meta mods were obviously OP but nobody is going to test that while eternals exist and metamods cost 2 eternals. Master crafting is the only way an average player can get into crafting. For the average Joe there was no reason to even learn what a prefix or a sufix was before master crafting...it was simply a good item to sell, to use, or vendor trash. I like that masters make the game easier for the low tier player - getting those last resists you need, the mid tier player - multi mod crafting a decent end game harbinger bow, and good for the top tier player who want to spend exalts to metamod and get insane top tier items and grow wealth.

Any system with a free economy has the rich get richer...and POE is no exception to the rule. That is how it works in real life too. More demand for exalts isn't hurting anyone. It just means that exalts themselves are worth more because they have more demand; econ 101. Use it to your advantage and sell your exalt drops, then chaos spam a sweet item with the currency. If you are poor just don't play a meta build!!! If you come up with something on your own using unpopular gear types or recycle a build from yesterday that got nerfed by 7% damage so its now "unplayable" you can get great end game gear and 20Q gems on a peasants budget. Sure you won't faceroll uber...but the literal hardest content should be for the top players with amazing gear.

[Removed by Support]

The "top 1%" doesn't actually effect your gameplay unless you are also a top 1% competitive player. For the rest of us, just keep playing and enjoy the game for what it is.

At first, I was beyond pissed, as I felt I was being cheated. After winding down a bit, I came to a conclusion a lot of us must understand- for the majority of players this has changed almost nothing. Exalts are still hard to come by, and I still can't afford the higher tier master crafting, even tho I know more about it now.
Alas, that is not to say that we didn't get screwed over. My, and what I feel like the biggest part of the communities, problem with this is how it was handled. After Quarl spilt, that comment had to stay. In this day and age, for a comment to stay up 10 min is a long time. And this allowed certain few access to information with immense value which they used to amass quite a bit of wealth. Which in due course resulted in exalts starting to cost more and more, driving any casual gamer to frustration.
Now, to all of those who are saying "if you had access to this kind of information, you would try to gain profit from it as well" I say- how? I represent the 99% of casuals. I can't afford to even try to make a profit from that.
Now, I do believe that this situation will resolve itself in time. How long, who knows. But this has some positive aspects to it. As some stated, near GG items will become more accessible to everyday gamer. Gear prices will drop to being in chaoses. An exalt drop will mean quite an increase to your budget.
I could flame more, but what's the use, if the damage has already been done? Now we just have to adapt.

....

Thanks for the supply of delicious tears GGG!

I see no issues here. GG to those that realised how the recipe worked and used it to their advantage.

Looking forward to seeing some amazing crafts from this on /r/pathofexile.

Even though i belief ggg have handled this badly there are pluses, you can get a build capable of up to endgame content much cheaper eg +3bow staff and crafting in general has recieved a boost, a new league should be interesting when it finally rolls round.