A realization about Path Of Exile economy, from watching Streamers

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Mortyx wrote:

And here comes food for thought, you made 1150c in 2 simulacrums maps, but you will need probably to do more than a hundred trades to exchange those items for those chaos. 1 trade takes on average 20 seconds, so 2000 seconds of only trading (33 minutes). So you probably did 2 simulacrums in 20 minutes and now will take 33 minutes to convert that loot in currency and then even more time to convert that currency in something you want.

The ratio of Playing the game Vs Playing the market in this game is awful. And if you want to "get rich" you have to play the market, that's the only way, since no matter how fast/efficient you are you still need to sell/buy things and that takes time from actually playing the game (which is one of OP points since he doesn't like to play the market).

All of that stuff is easy to trade. Its fossils, scarabs, essences, etc. No deviation. If you dont like trading, save them up and sell them in bulk.

You wanna know how I trade? I take an entire dump page of trash, which I dont even know what it is, and I put it on a page and I price that page at 2ex. If someone instantly messages me for something on that page, its probably worth more than 2ex. If they don't, I just mark it down every few hours, or day, or whatever your time period is. I mark it all the way down till I vendor it, then I load it up again.

Takes zero effort and low time investment to play that way. I only price stuff when I'm in the mood for it or if its like a unique; something easily priced. Otherwise it gets thrown on the easter egg page and I'm as happy to see what people are buying as they are.

And as far as buying, STOP BEING CHEAP. People will waste 30 minutes to an hour trying to save 2-3c on an item. Sort by time listed, and pay more. Just pay more, and go back to playing. Stop fighting people for a 2c discount.

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Archon___ wrote:

ye sure you can target farm specific things to get rich quick but even playing the "normal way" is not that hard.

Sorry you can't get rich playing "the normal way".
You get rich by buying curreny from bot farms and flip currency.
You get rich by buying beasts from bot farms and make mirror tier items.
You get rich by doing services/rotations for people while stealing loot.
You get rich by having people giving you stuff/services for free.
You get rich by market control and price gouging of rare items.

If you do a combination of those you will be rich, but none of them are playing the normal way. And no 100 or 1000 ex isn't rich, that is week 1-2 for rich guys.

@MrWonderful99, that sounds like the Stock Market... are we even playing the same game?

Normal players do this?
No. Trade tycoons do. This is how I imagine getting "rich" works.

And again, I have no problem with you getting "rich".

I have a problem when the rich - being rich and ultra-geared - demolish content, get even more rich, and then GGG balance the next content based on how it was demolished previously, and how the "economy" was dominated previously.
Meaning they fuck me over, for not being rich. Make bosses increasingly less possible for me to reach and beat. Make things more RNG-layered. Make the game less fun and a fuckton more grindly to play - in the name of "balance".

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johnKeys wrote:

Hard challenge, for who?

For me yeah I need to do all the mechanics because bad DPS, and my gear is bad so I can't face-tank much. One hit and I fall over.
Also I've got just one attempt at it because I farmed up just one set.
And ultimately if I'm successful there will be loot. A one-time drop of boss-exclusive goodies. Better be something to be proud of.

For you? Nah you're rich.
Mechanics? Ha! Melt the boss in 5 seconds. Face tank even if he manages to do something while melting.
Attempts? You've got 100 sets ready to go, and will buy 200 more to chain them. All done in the time it takes me to do one fight.
Loot? Anything good will sell, making your ultra-rich currency tab even richer.

What the fuck kind of "knowledge" and "challenge" are you talking about, Phrazz?

And the next League boss will have 10x the HP, do 100x the damage, and have more unavoidable attacks - because Chris looks at your ultra-geared meta char for balance and not my crappy weird build.
So for you taking down the new big bad won't be a problem. 15 seconds instead of 5.
But for me well... tough luck get rekt git gud grow another set of fingers to be quicker, scrub.

I wanted to revisit this.

I ended up buying a bunch of t15 beachheads to level to 96 since it's relatively safe for what I'm running. B9 98% I had run out again and hoped to ding before dying in simulacrum. (Both dinged and died)

Running those beachheads may have been safe, but also painfully dull. But since we don't "de-level" I was able to motivate myself to finish it out. More importantly, it solidified my belief that I just don't have the endurance to chain maps extensively. That enjoyment I had as a new player learning different aspects continuously is long gone.

So simulacrum spawned in act 10 and until the ding I was anxious that something random would kill me. Then I went and finished Baran surprisingly safely before moving onto Sirus. I'm definitely thinking there's some desync issue because the entire thing felt off. Finished (a8) but not nearly as clean as the last one, might have been latency though.

And finally to Uber Elder. Haven't done it since the change in metamorph, but was relatively confident that I was fine. But spending those frags had me nervous, as that's a lot to waste if server drops the instance.

Could never quite get a rhythm. Wasn't completely hectic, but never found that sweet spot, felt like I was moving too fast or too slow. Finished it on second to last portal for a mark of the elder, which values at around 5c. The elder items that dropped were hardly impressive so it was like spending about 430ish chaos worth of fragments for something probably not worth listing.

So I get how it feels that the game is becoming less accessible. I failed to kill uber elder an embarrassing number of times before I finally did. I just don't enjoy the game enough to actually earn enough that I would be willing to burn to actually practice that fight now.

BUT, I really want to emphasize one needs to learn their limits and set their expectations accordingly. I know I get bored waaay to fast to commit to a build bound for nerftown down by the league's end. If I can't continue working on it in standard it's not for me. I'm not bothered at all by the current meta powerhouse other than it being the dominating force in the market. When I bought my garukhan's they were 3.5ex or so, now I see them under 60c.

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johnKeys wrote:

@MrWonderful99, that sounds like the Stock Market... are we even playing the same game?

Normal players do this?
No. Trade tycoons do. This is how I imagine getting "rich" works.

And again, I have no problem with you getting "rich".

I have a problem when the rich - being rich and ultra-geared - demolish content, get even more rich, and then GGG balance the next content based on how it was demolished previously, and how the "economy" was dominated previously.
Meaning they fuck me over, for not being rich. Make bosses increasingly less possible for me to reach and beat. Make things more RNG-layered. Make the game less fun and a fuckton more grindly to play - in the name of "balance".

Trading in poe is the closest simulation to the real stock market out of the games I've played so far so they are similar.

Ask a random ass guy on the street what market depth is.. they will have no clue. Ask a poe player what it is and they will know even if they dont know the term itself. This game trains people on basic stock market knowledge.

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johnKeys wrote:

@MrWonderful99, that sounds like the Stock Market... are we even playing the same game?

Normal players do this?
No. Trade tycoons do. This is how I imagine getting "rich" works.

And again, I have no problem with you getting "rich".

I have a problem when the rich - being rich and ultra-geared - demolish content, get even more rich, and then GGG balance the next content based on how it was demolished previously, and how the "economy" was dominated previously.
Meaning they fuck me over, for not being rich. Make bosses increasingly less possible for me to reach and beat. Make things more RNG-layered. Make the game less fun and a fuckton more grindly to play - in the name of "balance".

Did you play before Blight league? Back then, end game content was a lot easier, there were many 20 chaos builds that could do all content.

Page no.9 so I doubt people will see this. But the secret to getting rich is to go super tryhard from league start, literally from the second go.

You gotta hit maps day 1. Get to Awakened lvl 8 Atlas by like...Day 3? Sooner is better.

Sell maps, sell influence item bases, sell sell sell.

Shitty rings with 100 ele res sell for an exalt, shitty boss uniques sell for multiple exalts.

Knowledge of the game and mechanics is the true wealth here. Getting exalts is easy when you are in the right place at the right time.

I used to find making 10 ex for a build to be an impossible task in 3.3.

3.4 - got lucky with Uber Elder drops and made ~200 ex.

3.5 - capped at 40 ex

3.6 - capped at 50 ex

3.7 - tried to play hard but life got in the way, capped at ~100 ex

3.8 - everything went well, made like 200 ex

3.9 - took my learnings from 3.8, worked on efficiency, made ~350 ex

3.10 - went absolutely balls to the wall (thanks Corona virus), currently got ~600 ex and another 100 ex in items waiting for selling

Moral of the story - Play a LOT at league start, invest your capital smartly, make big $$

You can make profit without playing in first week, if you know what to sell. For example a 780%+ Facebreaker is 30+ chaos, if uncorrupted. That's because top end farmers are not even bothering to pick up / identify those, as most rolls are less then 1 chaos.

Also, there are items which get more expensive as the league progresses, like chayula's pure breach stones, items with rare combinations of mods good for specific builds, uber elder fragments, etc. You can make a lot of profit by simply running shaper guardian maps, collecting the fragments, killing shaper, then selling the resulted uber-elder fragments. There's no RNG involved if using this method - fragments are guaranteed to drop.

Devs succeeded in replicating some of worse aspects of real life without even trying:

Strong get stronger, rich get richer (as OP mentioned)
Smart preying on dumb (rampant scamming)
Strong preying on weak (carry "services")

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!”
— Kurt Vonnegut


The game is fun without having a ton of currency to spend. Sure, you can't start a new expensive character on a whim every day, but you don't have to do that to enjoy it. I've never had more than 20ex in a temporary league and look, I'm still playing the game 8 leagues later.