On the subject of Gold.

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Fluffy wrote:

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Mr_Cee wrote:

If the only purpose of a gold currency is to serve for trading, it will quickly raise inflation problems;

Gold has no more to do with inflation than snot has to do with the common cold.

Not compelling with a general inflation, but:

if you can turn "everything" into gold, and have nothing (worthful) to spend it on, you'll end up with more and more gold, so it will loose on worth by time - monetary inflation.

And even if it would not be possible at a vendor, trades based on cash currency will make turning everything into gold (everything another player want to have).

And - for being just a value (no item) I suspect to be much? more vulnerable to manipulations...

Count me in as one who would prefer gold to the dozens of currency items in the game now.

I see a lot of arguments about how the the currency items is better since they have an intrinsic value, i.e. can be used by the player. This is fine, and true, but gold can do precisely the same thing by simply making vendors charge gold for the things that the orbs currently do.

Orbs of regret are rare, sure. And with gold, a respec can simply cost a ton of cash. No real difference.

Two other thoughts.

Firstly, gold can become inflated, yes. But its also super easy to fix, by adding another top tier service for the players that costs a ton of money, or bumping up the price of lower tier services. Balancing founts vs sinks to ensure that the currency is not inflating or deflating too much is not very difficult so long as they devs implemented decent tools to track the flow of money. Remember, they aren't a government that has to answer to pesky laws.. they get to set the rules.

Any game you've seen with a worthless currency, one of two things happened.. They did not bother balancing sinks vs founts, or someone discovered a dupe mechanism and it wasn't fixed fast enough.

Second, not all of the currency orbs need to go. They could keep a few top tier super duper rare ones so they can directly control the rarity.


At any rate, a single universal currency would be about 1000x easier to figure out than the current system. Probably won't play the game if it stays. Ah well.

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CutterJohn wrote:

Orbs of regret are rare, sure. And with gold, a respec can simply cost a ton of cash. No real difference.

The difference is easy to explain: you can get as many money as you want, simply by constantly selling things, limited only by invested time.
The amount of available regret orbs (or any other) is limited by drop luck (and/or trades), time invest, and stash space...

There is no real way to make things (or services) rare, if you can "buy" them.

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CutterJohn wrote:

Firstly, gold can become inflated, yes. But its also super easy to fix, by adding another top tier service for the players that costs a ton of money, or bumping up the price of lower tier services.

1) the services should not replace the orb "crafting" system.

so the function to sink money in have to offer a different use; and this use(s) have to be

2) expensive (to be a proper sink)

3) worthful (to force people to sink money in)

but also

4) not so much necessary as to give an undesired advantage compared to poorer players.

Easy to balance? to fix? I dont think so.

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CutterJohn wrote:

Second, not all of the currency orbs need to go. They could keep a few top tier super duper rare ones so they can directly control the rarity.

not all? the orbs are one of the key features of the game! It would be like to imagine removing runes and runewords from LoD...

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CutterJohn wrote:

At any rate, a single universal currency would be about 1000x easier to figure out than the current system.

How the hell has everything to be such dead easy?!

I am always amazed at the comments about how the orbs are somehow hard to understand.. or use. They say exactly what they do.

You don't need to know the value of an orb, you need to know the value it has to you. If someone offers you X for Y all you need to know is if Y grants you more utility than X does. If it does, make the trade, if it doesn't... don't. If you don't know, then don't try trading items right off the bat.

It would be the same thing in any other game btw... new to the game, find item X offer to trade it, someone offers 30gold... how do you know if it's worth 30 gold? You don't. You make a judgement call. OR you ask a friend/guildmate/general chat.

This system works great, and is much better than having gold. The only problem is that it's not noob friendly, se when I was a noob, i realy didnt like it. But now that I understand it, i really like it.

Maybe there should be a thread (or on site) where there is listed all the currency, and how much is what worth. And because the system changes (depending from demand and supply), thread should be updated weekly, or somthing like that.

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Ragnar119 wrote:

Maybe there should be a thread (or on site) where there is listed all the currency, and how much is what worth.

The currencies are already listed in the items section of the website; and there is a general hint on their value given by their rarity and by their different stack sizes.
The "real" value floats/changes by time, depending on availability and demand, and also depends on personal use - if I have a lot of luck finding "my" base items with the right sockets, a chromatic or even a jewelers may have much less worth to me than to other people...

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Wittgenstein wrote:

It would be the same thing in any other game btw... new to the game, find item X offer to trade it, someone offers 30gold... how do you know if it's worth 30 gold? You don't. You make a judgement call. OR you ask a friend/guildmate/general chat.

I don't agree that this is the case unless the game in question has no auction house. It's very easy for a new player to visit an auction house to see what's being offered for a particular item... in addition, some auction houses I've seen have historical statistics on item type sales.

Such a system MAY be possible if they implement a robust auction house for POE. Many people will probably list single or stacks of orbs, and you should be able to see what has been offered for them.

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Ragnar119 wrote:

This system works great, and is much better than having gold. The only problem is that it's not noob friendly, se when I was a noob, i realy didnt like it. But now that I understand it, i really like it.

Maybe there should be a thread (or on site) where there is listed all the currency, and how much is what worth. And because the system changes (depending from demand and supply), thread should be updated weekly, or somthing like that.

am on your side with that thats why i created this thread:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/21603 =)

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Wittgenstein wrote:

You don't need to know the value of an orb, you need to know the value it has to you. If someone offers you X for Y all you need to know is if Y grants you more utility than X does.

Yes we know how bartering works. Some of us know why every civilisation in the last 3000 years opted to use a currency system instead.

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Fluffy wrote:

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Wittgenstein wrote:

You don't need to know the value of an orb, you need to know the value it has to you. If someone offers you X for Y all you need to know is if Y grants you more utility than X does.

Yes we know how bartering works. Some of us know why every civilisation in the last 3000 years opted to use a currency system instead.

If that argument is brought up again, it's pertinent to mention (again) that Wraeclast doesn't have a governing agency to dictate a fiat currency. People trade with items that are useful by their very nature, not items that are used as vouchers or credit.