Debunking the idea that Orbs are in any way superior to Gold

Read this dev diary about "Rethinking Gold as a Currency". The claims in this are bull****.

This isn't about which currency is better, but to dispel the notion that trading with orbs is somehow economically superior. It isn't-- but I still think it is a good system for PoE.

"

Gold has several consequences in an action RPG setting:

Gold Sinks: Games that use gold incur high inflation unless they have sufficient gold sinks in the form of mandatory expenses such as item repairs, paying to revive characters or continuously buying potions. These sinks are generally an unnecessary obligation and can be frustrating if a player is low on gold.

Inflation is just a function of supply and demand, when there is an oversupply of currency. The idea that games having constant gold sinks because gold itself is problematic is ludicrous. Every game currency needs a way to curb inflation through money sinks.

Since all orb currency is PoE are consumables, they function as the biggest sink of all. Consider using fusings to form a 5 link item. That is currency that is permanently removed from the game. PoE's inflation is curbed from the harshness of the random crafting system.

"

Gold Farmers: Online RPGs often get infested by gold farmers who play the game to accumulate large quantities of gold that are then sold to other players. If gold is the main currency, it’s very simple to perform gold-accumulating tasks to supply the secondary market.

There is literally zero difference between farming gold and farming orbs. When this game goes live, you will be able to buy orbs on RMT websites just as you can buy gold for any MMO. d2jsp has already has 85 pages of PoE trades. It has been said that because of the fluctuating values of orbs, that this will curb RMT trading. There is no indication of this. All it takes is a bunch of farmers grinding, with one person running a website keeping price ratios current for RMT conversion.

"

Wealth Determinism: Earning a steady quantity of gold from monsters killed helps to re-enforce the treadmill feeling that many online RPGs suffer. People’s net worth in gold is directly proportional to the amount of time they have invested playing. This highly linear wealth gain can cause a sense of disillusionment when trying to save up a large amount of gold for a purchase – it’s apparent to the player how long it’s going to take to grind for it.

Again, literally no difference between gold and orbs. Once the player understands the values of the orbs, it's a long path of grinding to obtain enough currency for high level purchases. Although gold accumulates in a very steady manner, and orbs are more random, and this the player's net worth might spike in the short term scale, over a greater time period the wealth growth is linear, exactly the same as with gold.
Also, for every player that "gets lucky" there is another player who did not. A lack of a consistent currency really didn't help them, did it?

"

Trade Parity: With a common gold currency, it’s easy for players to know and demand the current market value for an item. If the trade occurs at a value that differs from the current perceived market value, then one of the players feels that they got ripped off.

This is perhaps the most ridiculous claim of all. What it's basically claiming is that it's a bad thing to have a uniform currency so that players are more informed about pricing. It's implying that it's better to have players left in the dark when it comes to trade ratios, so they don't even know if they have been ripped off.

This happens every single day. Most low level uniques and rares can be sold for an Exalted orb easily in normal difficulty simply because of players not understanding the value of orbs. I personally have done this and know many other players that have as well. However if the currency was Gold instead of orbs, these unbelievable trades would not occur.

Good post, well said. I kinda got used to the system and it does fit the game world. But its needlessly obtuse and actually doesn't add anything to the game imho. Id have prefered some clever gold sinks to be added like they have done with D3 were gold actually feels worthwhile now.

In POE once I hit MOC and got a portal gem I was swimming in low level orbs that literally held zero value anymore. I just used to swap them for wisdom scrolls sometimes. Once you get a handle on the system you quickly realise 40% are worthless, 40% are ok but you rarely run out of them, and the last 20% are as rare as rocking horse shit and just require pure luck to find. In 70 levels for example my ranger never once found a GCP (she made some by vendoring skill gems but never found one)

1) Sinks: Really the proper analysis of this issue is that gold and orbs are the same thing, but gold is fluid between all sink types, whereas orbs are not. The sink is really the same.

2) Farming: Farming is effectively the same, yes.

3) wealth determinism: A linear reinforcement is psychologically inferior to random interval by a large margin. That's just a fact.

4) trade parity: This is indeed suggesting that subjective valuation of orbs makes it difficult to know exact value, and that allows traders to come to a mutual agreement with 'less' of a chance for one of the two parties to later feel ripped off. That is not a trivial thing, despite wanting it to be... ignorance really is bliss.

"

tzaro wrote:

...

Hahahahahahah,

You're completely right, most MMOs struggle to keep gold inflation down by adding various gold sinks, but without attaching power directly to a currency (and infinite scaling power at that) the currency eventually inflates as you can't add a required expense into any game without players yelling "unfair unfair, he's buying an advantage"


The orbs only work because they are consumables, the supply/demand will change in proportion with the playerbase, but eventually inflation will catch up with them as players find less and less reasons to use them as they slowly stop changing gear every hour or two.

I actually have a suggestion to fix this, generally adding more orbs to the game and a fair vendor somewhere that you can exchange orbs for one another at FAIR values, would fix this.

AKA, alchemy orbs become useless, trade them in for improved blacksmith's orbs, to increase your armor quality to 50%, and so on and so forth. But at any time you can trade in that blacksmithing orb for a few alchemy, or 10 transmutation or such.

"

mack1510 wrote:

"

tzaro wrote:

...

Hahahahahahah,

You're completely right, most MMOs struggle to keep gold inflation down by adding various gold sinks, but without attaching power directly to a currency (and infinite scaling power at that) the currency eventually inflates as you can't add a required expense into any game without players yelling "unfair unfair, he's buying an advantage"


The orbs only work because they are consumables, the supply/demand will change in proportion with the playerbase, but eventually inflation will catch up with them as players find less and less reasons to use them as they slowly stop changing gear every hour or two.

I actually have a suggestion to fix this, generally adding more orbs to the game and a fair vendor somewhere that you can exchange orbs for one another at FAIR values, would fix this.

AKA, alchemy orbs become useless, trade them in for improved blacksmith's orbs, to increase your armor quality to 50%, and so on and so forth. But at any time you can trade in that blacksmithing orb for a few alchemy, or 10 transmutation or such.

Any game economy which is based on a system where loot is generated will always inflate and eventually burst. Whether it has orbs, gold or whatever else. The only game I ever played with an actual real working economy was EVE and thats cause 95% of everything in the game is player crafted. Clearly thats not possible or even desirable in an ARPG like this, but just pointing out why its almost fruitless to try and create a working economy in a system where loot generates randomly.

There is another aspect that hasn't been touched on so far.

Gold is a homogeneous currency, it hastens trade.
Orbs are a heterogeneous currency, they slow trade.


- The slower the speed of trade (i.e. the rate it takes for an idle item to find a useful purpose), the more storage space is required by traders.

- As storage space is finite(and increasing it generates revenue for GGG), a slow economy will inevitably increase waste.(i.e. items not being picked up, or being vendored for nominal values).

- Knowing the economy is slow and wasteful GGG can tune the loot system to be more generous than it might otherwise be.

- As people play games like PoE for the loot, a generous loot system increases the apparent fun of the game.

- People play games for fun, game succeeds -> more revenue for GGG.


Quizzically Blizzard completely failed to understand this fundamental of economics.
Instead they went the complete opposite of the spectrum, tied every aspect of the game's mechanics to gold and created an online auction house accessible to all.

In so doing they increased the pace of their game's economy by many many factors and devalued the fundamental aspect of the game: loot.


Trade devalues loot, therefore anything that slows down trade (including the use of orbs) is a 'good thing'.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

You haven't actually provided any reasoning as to why it's a ridiculous claim - you've just stated it is, and then rephrased what it said to paint it in a more negative light.
If both players are happy with a trade, on what basis do you say one was ripped off? Our system allows for people to value things differently, based on their wants and needs, rather than enforcing a set price on everything. If you really need/want an item and are happy to pay a set amount of orbs for it, and the person selling it wants those orbs more than the item, then I don't think either player got "ripped off" - the item was worth more you because of your character's needs, so you paid what you felt it was worth.
In the case where there's an overall market setting fairly strict prices for everything in terms of just a number (of gold) rather than differing quantities of orbs, one player could _feel_ they got ripped off where otherwise they would be perfectly happy - what does that feeling add to the game which is positive?

This is flawed logic. You cannot suggest that trading for an item with gold at different than established values equates to someone feeling "ripped off", but then trading orbs with orb currency at different than established values is fine because one player is "perfectly happy".

Is it not possible to overpay with gold for an item and still be "perfectly happy"? I think it is, and there is no real difference here vs. orbs. It depends how bad the buyer wants said item. He might pay more, but it is justified in his mind. Being "ripped off" is not having full understanding what you are paying or receiving.

Thus what about a player being "perfectly happy"? Is it because he is naive and not aware of the value of the currency he holds relative to what he is purchasing, or because he really needed X item? I say that there is a greater likelihood that the player is naive with orbs than with gold just because the currency system is so much more complex.

A new player in PoE has no concept of the scarcity of orbs. Due to low drop rates of rare orbs it's hard to understand the values without playing for an extended period of time. They can't quantify their efforts very easily like would be possible with gold.

Again, the point I am trying to make with all of this is that gold is not an inferior game currency to the orbs system in any manner. The 'consequences' in the dev diary either exist with both currencies or are flawed points. I enjoy PoE's currency system and have no desire for it to use gold.

"

RodHull wrote:

Any game economy which is based on a system where loot is generated will always inflate and eventually burst. Whether it has orbs, gold or whatever else.

You're missing the beauty of the system though. Assuming you're right and the orb economy drastically inflates and the value of orbs hits rock bottom, players will start using the orbs much more frequently. They would be so cheap and plentiful, why not blow a couple thousand on rolling an ultra item. You see, the economy self regulates that way. If orbs become more valuable as trade currency than consumables, then their use will drop and the economy will inflate.

Despite what some people think, GGG's orb economy is much more similar to a real world financial system than the gold based economy of other games. In the real world, currency has two sinks: saving and investing (liquid vs illiquid capital). Based on the amount of currency in the economy (dictated by US federal interest rates) one option or the other becomes the more attractive currency sink. Obviously, that's a simplification of the real financial system but the fundamental comparison remains valid.