Re-Rethinking Gold as a Currency

EDIT: I wrote this post again in a arranged way.

1 - Downsides of the current currency system

1.1 - Orbs are impractical for trading
Currently we have 20 different currency items. Each of them has a different utility. Therefore one and the same currency item has a different value for each of us. Some may have need for Fusion Orbs others may have need for Gem Quality Upgrades. This makes trading harder than if we had only a single currency.

I want to give an example for this:
Player1 offers an item in the chat. Player2 and Player3 are interested in it.
Player1: Give me your offers!
Player2: 1 Alchemy Orb
Player3: 2 Alchemy Orbs
Player2: 1 Alchemy Orb and 1 Fusion Orb
Player3: What? Is that offer even higher than mine?
Player1: Hum... Ya for me it is better.
Player3: okay, 1 Alchemy Orb and 1 Exalted Orb then
Player2: 1 Alchemy and 2 Exalted Orbs.
Player1: Sorry guys, i do not need Exalted Orbs.

As you can see they have a hard time to trade because they have multiple currencies. Either the seller has to ask for an exact amount and type of orbs or the seller has to explain his value ratio for each of the 20 currency items. This would be far easier if there would be only Alchemy Orbs. Everybody could just say how many Alchemy Orbs he is offering and the bidder offering the most alchemy orbs wins. But of course this is no solution because we don't want to lose all the other orbs.

1.2 - Inflation still exists
As the game progresses we will see inflation. Probably not for every single currency item but at least for some of them. At some point of the game some of the currency items will become nearly worthless. A good example for this are the portal scrolls which are already useless once you get your hands on a portal gem. Other orbs might still be usefull but monsters will drop them more often than a player has need for them. An example for this are the Orbs of Transformation and Transmutation. They drop quite frequently and can enhance white and blue items. At some point of the game you only want at least rares for your quipment except flasks. So you only use them for flasks. But they drop so often that you will get more of them than you can use. Then these orbs are worthless, too.

But lets be fair. There will always be at least one of the currency items which is still usefull. So trading with some currency items will still be possible if the devs manage to set proper drop ratios and keep the usefullness of at least one of the 20 currency items. This is the advantage of our current system compared to traditional single currency approaches of most games (gold). If the gold becomes useless or you get more of it than you need then gold fails as a currency and players have no trading currency at all.


2 - Why most single currency systems fail

In 1.1 i have shown that a single currency is more practical for trading. But at the end of 1.2 i have shown that it is risky to rely on a single currency.

We have often seen gold failing as a single currency in many games. A popular example for this is Diablo 2. Why did gold fail in Diablo 2?

One problem for a gold currency is that a player has no direct use for it. A Player wants his character to be as strong as possible. Unlike items gold does not help directly to improve your character. So why should players use something useless as a trading currency? Because it helps to improve your character indirecly by buying things that help to improve your character in a direct way. This is were gold in Diablo 2 failed. Gold was not usefull to improve your character directly or indirecly.

In D2 you were able to buy magic and nonmagic items with gold. These items were worthless. Everybody wanted rares and uniques for his character. It was even possible to gamble for rare and unique items but gambling took even more time than going into the dungeon and get the items you wanted from monsters. And of course killing monsters was more fun. You also needed gold to buy potions, scolls and to repair your equipment. These are the infamous gold sinks. You had to repair your items to play the game at all. But that was just annoying and took away precious fun-time in the dungeons.

If gold was necessary to play the game why did it fail as a currency? Because you had more of it than you needed.

Gold had to drop more than you needed for the gold sinks (repair etc) becasue these were required to play the game in a proper way. So gold had to fail in D2 because you could not do anything usefull with it and you had more of it than you needed. In other words the supply was always greater than the demand. This lead to inflation and gold failed as a currency.

3 - How can we improve our current system?

3.1 - Making it trade-friendly

So GGG provided a good system. We have no annoying gold sinks like repair costs or potions or scrolls. We have usefull currency items because they improve our gear and we will always want to improve our gear. So the demand for the currency items is there. If GGG does not screw up the drop ratios for the currency items the supply for least one of the currency items will not be higher than the demand in the long run. So we will always have a currency to trade with.

One problem that still exists is that the trading is harder because we have so many currencies. So we want one currency for trading but we also want to keep all our orbs.

Here comes my suggestion for this:

We create a single item that represents all of our current currency items.

-Orbs do not drop any longer.

-Gold (or whatever name you like) drops.

-Vendors are selling orbs for gold in town. Buying orbs from vendors or players is the only way to get orbs.

-I suggest to keep the drop rates very low to ensure picking it up will not be annoying.

-I suggest to set the range of the gold amount dropped at once very large to keep randomness. The highest possible amount of droped gold should be as high as the prize of most expensive orb. So people are as happy when they find a large amount of gold as if they had found a divine orb.


By doing this gold is directly linked to our current currencies. Gold will always be scarce and valueable because orbs are valueable.

Trading can be done in a single universal currency. People who prefer to trade in orbs can still do that.

We achieved a trade friendly currency and kept all the pros of multiple pseudo currencies (our current system).


3.2 - Positive side effects of this suggestion

Currently the devs have to manage the drop rates for 20 currency items. The devs have to anticipate the demand for each of these items to set a proper drop ratio. It is even hard for them to make adjustments because it is hard to guess how the demand for each item was in the past.

With the addition of the new trading currency there is only one droprate and it is nearly irrelevant. What now matters is the prize of each of the 20 current currency items. But setting proper exchange rates is far easier than setting drop rates. The devs can keep track of how much gold was used by the player population to buy each orb. If nearly no gold was used to buy Orbs of Transmution and nearly all gold was used to buy Orbs of Fusion they can lower the prize for Orbs of Transmution and raise the prize for Orbs of Fusion. If the devs would set the prizes for the orbs equivalent to their current drop rates (an orb that has a 0.1% dropchance costs 10 times as much as an orb that has a 1% dropchance) they would quickly see the flaws in the current drop ratios. We would probably see players spending all their gold for alchemy and fusion orbs because the demand/supply ratio for these is currently the highest. They could react quickly and raise the prize for Alchemy and Fusion Orbs. But this is fine because if we had no gold and the game would go on for year we would probably see players trading only in Fusing and Alchemy Orbs and every player would have more stacks of Transmution Orbs in his stash than he needs.


The devs can also see very quickly if one of the orbs is not usefull enough (or too usefull) and needs to be buffed (or nerfed) or replaced by a completly new orb. If transmutation orbs can be bought for a very low prize from a vendor and people still do not buy it might be an indicator that this item has become useless. The item itself and prize might still be fine because it only usefull for a small portion of the players (low lvl for example) and no adjustments are required. It also works in the opposite direction: If all the players only use their gold to buy Orbs fo Awesomeness despite the insanly high price this is an indicator that either the prize is still not high enough or it is just too powerfull.


Another minor effect is that gold requires no (or 1?) slots in your inventory or stash. Less inventory handling.

Having a single trading currency is also by far better if we want to have a marketplace/AH.

4 - Downsides of this suggestion

Like every adjustment it requires ressources to implement this. These ressources could instead be used for more urgent things.


EDIT: OLD POST FROM HERE ON-------------------------------------------

i have already talked about this in my feedback thread but i feel this needs a seperate thread.

Lets Say we have 10 different currency items at the moments.

The rarities are

1 - 10%
2 - 10%
3 - 10%
4 - 10%
5 - 5%
6 - 5%
7 - 5%
8 - 1%
9 - 1%
10 - 1%

Now instead of currency items the monsters would drop gold.

every time a currency item 1-5 we would get 1 gold instead.
Currency Items 5-8 -> 2 Gold
Currency Items 8-10 -> 10 Gold

This gold can be used to buy currency items from vendors in town. The supply of currency items is unlimited and the prizes are equivalent to their rarity.

By doing this gold is exactly as valuable as the current currency items. We have a real trading currency and not 10 different orbs with different subjective value for each player. An auction house could also be realized (this would be impossible with orbs).

I see no disadvantages in doing this. Why currency item drops?

The currency in the game is not gold, but orbs. Why introduce another currency (gold) to purchase currency (orbs)?

Because its hard to trade with a currency that consists of 20 orbs. Is an alchemy orb as valuable as a regal orb? How many scrolls of portal have the same value a gem quality upgrade?

Few days ago 2 players were bidding on an item and it went on for a few minutes. Many times it wasn't clear if one or the other bid was higher. It was dependend on the sellers subjective point of view.

I also mentioned an auction house. How do you want to realize that with the current currency?

The selling of items is coming with the next patch. It would be as good with gold but easier.

Buying items is also much easier with Gold. i have this divine orb but i cant buy the blue amulet because i have no orb of augmention. Can anyone give me 20 orbs of augmentation for my divine orb?

Another plus is that you dont have to hoard 20 different types of currency items in your inventory. You can buy ID Scrolls and Portal scrolls when you need them.

In short: a currency consisting of 20 items (and more to come) is impractical. There is a reason why we use euros and cents as currency in europe and not tables, dogs, cats and t-shirts.

Its a barter system, so things are worth how the person trading values them.


The store is based off of formulas, akin to the Horadric Cube in a certain sense.

There hasn't been anything from the dev's on an AH so I don't see the point in discussing it.

PoE doesn't need another currency system on top of what it has.

"

Wittgenstein wrote:

Its a barter system, so things are worth how the person trading values them.

Can't you see how easy the bidding would have been if the 2 players had bidden in gold and the seller could just buy the orbs he wants with the gold?

"

Baki wrote:

Few days ago 2 players were bidding on an item and it went on for a few minutes. Many times it wasn't clear if one or the other bid was higher. It was dependend on the sellers subjective point of view.

That's the whole point. It's up to the traders to decide on a price they both agree with.

"

Baki wrote:

I also mentioned an auction house. How do you want to realize that with the current currency?

It's never been said that we will get an auction house, so we shouldn't assume there will be one.

"

Baki wrote:

Buying items is also much easier with Gold. i have this divine orb but i cant buy the blue amulet because i have no orb of augmention. Can anyone give me 20 orbs of augmentation for my divine orb?

This is another core aspect of the currency system. You can try to find what you need so you can buy that amulet, but there's a chance no one will make the trade you want. You may have to alter your offer to get the Orb of Augmentation you need. This is an incentive for players to interact with each other instead of just using NPC's to get everything they need, as you would do with gold.

"

Baki wrote:

In short: a currency consisting of 20 items (and more to come) is impractical. There is a reason why we use euros and cents as currency in europe and not tables, dogs, cats and t-shirts.

There are also reasons not to use a fiat currency in this game. Having such a system brings more undesirable aspects with it (massive inflation, gold sinks to curb inflation, extremely easy farming, etc.).

"

WhiteBoy88 wrote:

That's the whole point. It's up to the traders to decide on a price they both agree with.

But it is easier to a agree on a price if you use gold. which is the whole point.

"

WhiteBoy88 wrote:

There are also reasons not to use a fiat currency in this game. Having such a system brings more undesirable aspects with it (massive inflation, gold sinks to curb inflation, extremely easy farming, etc.).

No. There are no undesireable aspects if you do it the way i described it. There will be even less inflation with gold as currency!

When the amount of gold dropped is equivalent to the amount of orbs currently dropped we will not see more inflation. Its just a more practical currency. The reason for inflation is supply > demand. You can have it with orbs as currency and with gold as currency. Since the orbs have a practial use and are not unlimited exchangeable you will see more inflation for parts of the of orb currency. You can see that in Scrolls of Portal becoming worthless because of the Portal Skill gem.

With Gold as currency you can even balance the amount of the different kinds of orbs far better. Instead of adjusting the drop rates you can just keep track of the amount of gold which has been used to buy each orb. If the player population used 20,000 Gold to buy orb1 and only 1,000 Gold to buy orb2 and both orbs would have the same drop rates you can increase the price for orb1 till it balances. If you have to adjust the drop rate for each orb you have a hard time to balance it. Who can say in advance if the players consider orb1 or orb2 more valueable? Currently there seems to be a higher demand for alchemy and fusing orbs than supply. For armor shards the supply is higher than the demand.

btw: sorry for the bad english. i find it difficult to argue properly in english. im not a native english speaker as you probably already know if you read this :)

I agree with Whiteboy about the farming. What is there to stop people farming the ledge on normal with 150% quantity at level 24 getting thousands of cheap orbs and buying something rare (exalted, divine, mirror) This would lead to hyper-inflation and those rare orbs would no longer be rare.

I can see the advantages of a gold system though, having a standard measure of costing an item but it wouldn't work in the economy of the game.

If the devs choose to go for an AH system the seller can simply post the minimum they would accept for the item and have that as a reserve. People can then bid the reserve then whatever they want over the reserve/other bidders.

In the end it all comes down to what the seller thinks the currency orbs are worth, which may not be the best system for an AH.

"

Covert wrote:

I agree with Whiteboy about the farming. What is there to stop people farming the ledge on normal with 150% quantity at level 24 getting thousands of cheap orbs and buying something rare (exalted, divine, mirror) This would lead to hyper-inflation and those rare orbs would no longer be rare.

You can already farm that way now. I found more exalted orbs with low lvl chars than with high lvl chars.

With gold you just have to set the price for each orb properly. As i already said before, you can balance the exchange rates for gold -> orbx much easier than droprates for each orb directly becasue you can keep track of the demand.

You have an interesting idea, but I like the way it is, personally, because of the randomness of it. You are never guaranteed to get any particular currency. I am curious to try the new upcoming selling to vendors feature. From the bits they've said it will still require you to find certain random drops to get certain items, and at the same time offer a comparison that would facilitate general market values.(Like if you can get such and such from the vendor for what you have, then you'd want a bit more from a person to person trade.)

If an auction house were ever to be implemented I don't see why they couldn't make it work with the currency items as they currently are. Just post an item, and put checks by the types of currency you want, and type in the amount next to each one.