A realization about Path Of Exile economy, from watching Streamers

Hey, but what do you even have a problem with? Streamers is a live advertisement of this game. That's what they serve, that's their role. Tencent wants people to watch them and say "wow, how cool this game is, what a cool build, I want it too!". In order for this to happen, the most popular streamers with the most viewers get the best loot and the best drop from GGG. They get it all at the beginning of each league, only for people to watch. Let people watch the game's advertisement. Because if these people were to watch you, your gameplay and your pathetic efforts, they would... not watch them.

Because your loot is at the "ordinary mortal" level and the creators of each league do not give you ready recipes for meta build, including all explicit and hidden nerfs. You are a mob who should do what? Should pay! You should waste whole months of fruitless attempts to catch up with the gods - streamers, because this is the sales model of this game. Because more time a player spends in the game, the more willing to spend money in it. Only GGG is too weak to make a product that you would like to play constantly, because it is so interesting. So artificially wastes the player time, in the meantime showing this player streamers who are playing the game easily, simply and pleasantly and who are flowing into all the "riches" to create the illusion that "ordinary player" can do it as well.

To recapitulate... could you kindly stop whining and start paying instead? These MTX will not buy themselves. Thank you for your support! :)

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johnKeys wrote:

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satanttin wrote:

that's what happen if u gate drops behind certain content like sirus or simulacrum.
nothing really that wrong with it tbh though. just as in real life the rich get richer. because gotta spend money to make money.

Then why not make them Soul-bound?

You beat level 8 Sirus and got a Savior - that's a prize. a trophy. a giant sign that says "I beat max level Awakener".
and it's a heck of a cool weapon.
you can use it to get other boss-exclusive trophies and win fights you couldn't previously. that's character and gear progression.
going from milestone to milestone.

but when you allow to sell that Savior - repeatedly - you're doing 2 things:

1) lock it behind a proverbial pay-wall.

2) allow a few to gain inconceivable amounts of wealth in the economy. I'm talking multiple fucking mirrors worth, in a League, by one person or a small team.
so that team now has access to best-in-slot in every slot, of every build they ever create, and proceed to utterly shit on any and all kinds of efforts by the Devs to introduce challenging content or interesting boss mechanics because they'll just one-shot it all with a trillion Shaper-DPS.

but neither 1 or 2 alone aren't the "kicker". oh no.
the "kicker" is when you allow both 1 and 2, AND balance the game around that.
that's the point when you really crap in the face of a player like me, who never will be remotely near that level of power no matter how hard I try - and lock me out of content that, for me, isn't even hard or challenging - it's stupidly impossible. so stupidly impossible I won't even try it or strive to attempt it, because the outcome is obvious.

soul bound is probably the worst possible change which ggg can do... that was the sole reason i quited D3... i play a trading game for a reason...

in in standard is so easy to make currency all you have to do is pick something you like /// STICK to a build for a few weeks and you are good


you cant ran sirus on a8 ? fine just sell it for 1ex
you arnt a8 yet? then play more till oyu are ar a8
you dont have enough currency? map more and complain less... the more you invest in maps the more you get
run t16 maps + zana and run a 2nd map for free
craft if you know aht you do
run devle for free in ilvl83 zone


its just impossible to loose currency in mapping ( only a few forms of mappin you can loose ) but here again the more you play the more you get


most streamers play 8-12h each day, how many you play in avg 1/2 or3?

Oh you can definitely lose money mapping when you take into account the sale value of fragments,sextants, and unexpected dcs.

Like right now, I could throw over 100c at a map but if a few don't pan out, I'm having to convert exalts, and at that point I'll just end up rebuilding a currency buffer by spending a lot less on faster (and less invested) lower tier maps.

I remember occasionally having the server crash after a single death running Uber and thinking shit, there goes 40 somethin chaos (at the time).

Like right now, an uber run is expensive. Even a successful run is unlikely to drop something worthwhile, at least when you compare it to how much you net for sure if you sell the frags outright.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

Oh you can definitely lose money mapping when you take into account the sale value of fragments,sextants, and unexpected dcs.

On a single run, sure but it's actually quite impossible to lose currency when running multiple maps with the same setup or even when running bosses. However, the game allows you to be ineffcient in a lot of places and to overlook valuable loot.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

Like right now, an uber run is expensive. Even a successful run is unlikely to drop something worthwhile, at least when you compare it to how much you net for sure if you sell the frags outright.

I'll assume that you're talking about uber Elder and not uber Atziri and I'll take this to give an example for the first part.

Uber Elder is actually quite consistent if you aren't just trying it for 2-3 runs.
The reason why uber Elder is always profitable on average is the value of watcher's eyes. For most builds this jewel is absolute best in slot with a potential price of multiple mirrors.
This obviously involves RNG but you have the option of avoiding the RNG of the rolls completely by selling them unidentified.

Some math:
Price of an uber Elder set: 440chaos
Price of an unidentifed ilvl 86 watcher's eye: 13ex or ~2200chaos
Dropchance is somwhere between 20-25%.
In other words: Just selling the unid watcher's eyes will cover your entire investment while every bit of other loot is pure profit and that's quite a bit. You can increase the profit by farming the sets yourself, corrupting the opal rings and a lot of other ways.

This isn't a streamer thing. It's all about knowledge.

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Scarletsword wrote:

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

Oh you can definitely lose money mapping when you take into account the sale value of fragments,sextants, and unexpected dcs.

On a single run, sure but it's actually quite impossible to lose currency when running multiple maps with the same setup or even when running bosses. However, the game allows you to be ineffcient in a lot of places and to overlook valuable loot.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

Like right now, an uber run is expensive. Even a successful run is unlikely to drop something worthwhile, at least when you compare it to how much you net for sure if you sell the frags outright.

I'll assume that you're talking about uber Elder and not uber Atziri and I'll take this to give an example for the first part.

Uber Elder is actually quite consistent if you aren't just trying it for 2-3 runs.
The reason why uber Elder is always profitable on average is the value of watcher's eyes. For most builds this jewel is absolute best in slot with a potential price of multiple mirrors.
This obviously involves RNG but you have the option of avoiding the RNG of the rolls completely by selling them unidentified.

Some math:
Price of an uber Elder set: 440chaos
Price of an unidentifed ilvl 86 watcher's eye: 13ex or ~2200chaos
Dropchance is somwhere between 20-25%.
In other words: Just selling the unid watcher's eyes will cover your entire investment while every bit of other loot is pure profit and that's quite a bit. You can increase the profit by farming the sets yourself, corrupting the opal rings and a lot of other ways.

This isn't a streamer thing. It's all about knowledge.

Its EXACTLY About knowledge. I was selling all my fragments until i had enough stuff to run Shaper / Elder / SIRIUS by myself. When you know how to make money and what you are doing for your character, nothing is impossible. Also, when you know how and what to craft, you can save a lot. This is how i was able to make my cyclone and my herald characters.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

Oh you can definitely lose money mapping when you take into account the sale value of fragments,sextants, and unexpected dcs.

Like right now, I could throw over 100c at a map but if a few don't pan out, I'm having to convert exalts, and at that point I'll just end up rebuilding a currency buffer by spending a lot less on faster (and less invested) lower tier maps.

I remember occasionally having the server crash after a single death running Uber and thinking shit, there goes 40 somethin chaos (at the time).

Like right now, an uber run is expensive. Even a successful run is unlikely to drop something worthwhile, at least when you compare it to how much you net for sure if you sell the frags outright.

well yeah there are a few cases when you loose currency, but you gain sometthing else like 4x pack sextant + 4x gilded scarab + t16 100+quant map yeah sure on those you loose currency ( or oyu can loose currency if you do it wrong ) but you gain crazy exp


but if you go on every map 4xrusted scarab +4x sextant and well rolled map from my point of view you cant loose any money... and if you hit good sextant go to polish or gilded scarabs




but maybe that its my view since i run with 134 quant and can chain t16 content easy with it

Reminder: PoE streamers, statistically, are a tiny fraction of the top 1% of PoE players. Perception is everything -- you simply are not SEEING (with your own eyes) the level of wealth that comes with experienced, wealth-motivated play. And there are thousands and thousands of people that make the same or more amount of currency than they do.

I get it -- the implication behind this entire thread is that streamers are given favorable RNG seeds. Now, if that were the case, that would actually not be unethical. Most popular streamers are high-achievers, and that happens to be how they're popular most of the time. People will strive to be more like them to improve their own gameplay. And that's sort of *the point*.

All I can say is: up your gameplay, improve your knowledge of the game, and understand that streamers have a SIGNIFICANT, if not "GAME-BREAKING" advantage that comes simply from the possession of name-recognition and rapport. This is the same advantage that the "rich" happen to have in the real world. But it's something they've earned.

Do you think that if a streamer with name-reocgnition posted an item on trade for an exorbinant amount, that nobody would purchase that item? Absolutely that item would be sold, and immediately. Because purchasers of that item recognize the value, both PR-wise and monetarily, that streamers provide a game and thereby the community of that game.

Stand back, and look at the value of streamers from 1,000ft view. A big picture point of view. What you may eventually recognize, is that streamers are statistically a needle in a haystack but a very valuable one for any videogame. Understand that they are also very valuable needles in the haystack -- who show newcomers and veterans alike the POSSIBILITIES within the game. They show that the bounds are not as tight as you might otherwise believe. And more importantly, they help this game grow.

If you're going to target "the bourgeoisie," you're barking up the wrong tree by targeting streamers. Perhaps you could put your energy into fighting botters & real-money currency manipulators -- the real villians when it comes to inequity within PoE (or for that matter ANY MMO game).

It's surprisingly like irl economy. You have to have money to make money.

For many guilds, the first week of league is all about conditioning the market to buy what they're selling.

Not just streamers, but any group of six or more players who work together to pool their resources and talents to get to the juicy meat and gravy of the league gated content.

A team of one is not a team. If you're interested in becoming rich in PoE, work together. You may be surprised at how little you are engaging with the new mechanic and how much time you're spending flipping and arbitraging. I'm not talking scrounging every map for every alteration shard worth of junk rares. If you have 10 people all doing betrayal missions every day and churning out dozens of scarabs and 5-way emblems, you will live better on average than someone who goes it alone and stays blinder-focused on the delirium mechanic.

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Thror2k5 wrote:

stop comparing yourself to someone else.

play to enjoy it. yes, there is a grind to reach the crazy OP point that streamers are at. but you can do endgame without that nonsense.

Yeah, stop comparing yourself to others. Great idea. In no time, you'll be burying your head in the sand.

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Antigegner wrote:

PoE years ago: oh look, a unique item, can't wait to identify it!!


PoE now: Six unique items dropped...oh well, I'll just grab that chaos orb over there.



P.S.:
making real money is: crafting, trading (and I don't mean trading what you found), botting and scamming.

"I'll just farm maps as fast as possible, and wait to hear my custom loot filter sound!"! I'm a winner!