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

^^
it's not like in wow here
Game does not provide any option to exchange (up or down or both) any desired quantity of one currency into another currency item (like copper to silver in wow).

Since pretty much everything has been said the only question is how it's gonna look in the big picture when the game goes live.

Imo
If the game succeeds most of high value trades will be done via 3rd party sites. It's more convenient and allows ppl to buy items for real world currency. There's always some demand for such trades.
Means - devs will be out of control because currency instead of being generated ingame only and traded for items/other currency will be flowing into the system from outside (real money currency).
It's inevitable so as a dev you can only choose whether to make profit of that and try to monopolize real money trades (d3 rmah) or just let it go and pretend that everything is going as intended (while it would obviously not).

What's more important for majority of players, those who are unaware of such ways of trading will be handicapped because trading via ingame currency orb system will be slower less convenient and more prone to being ripped off by those who are using some 3rd party sites (to resell items later via some 3rd party site)

Option b
Game will fail - there won't be any problems with PoE currency system :>

For those who are claiming that ripping off won't happen here because each item has different utility value for different ppl therefore nobody could overprice/be ripped off in trades, you gotta learn about two basic terms.

Use value (utility - value of water for someone stuck in the desert ) and exchange value (value of water for an average consumer).
Price in trades is pretty much always about the latter and the only factor that sets prices is demand and supply.
Both can be estimated on the market = prices are set.
And prices must be expressed in common currency - just for the ease of trading alone.

If there is market where commodities (items) are traded their price will be based on their exchange value. That's a direct consequence, the law. You can't run from that.

Oh good, this thread was bumped again. Just when I thought it had been forgotten.

I had no idea so many POE'ers have a degree in economics

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Bordam wrote:

I had no idea so many POE'ers have a degree in economics

I thought everyone on the interwebs had a degree in economics/game design and were also clairvoyant????

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ness wrote:

Game does not provide any option to exchange (up or down or both) any desired quantity of one currency into another currency item (like copper to silver in wow).

Actually the game DOES provide this option for many orb types. Just check the potion vendor in town.

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ness wrote:

If the game succeeds most of high value trades will be done via 3rd party sites. It's more convenient and allows ppl to buy items for real world currency. There's always some demand for such trades.
Means - devs will be out of control because currency instead of being generated ingame only and traded for items/other currency will be flowing into the system from outside (real money currency).
It's inevitable so as a dev you can only choose whether to make profit of that and try to monopolize real money trades (d3 rmah) or just let it go and pretend that everything is going as intended (while it would obviously not).

I'm sorry but this makes no sense. You are claiming that if someone uses a 3rd party site to buy something for real cash, that in-game currency will be "flowing into the system from outside" If a person paid a 3rd party site $20 for 100 alchemy orbs, do you think those alchemy orbs just get added to the system at the time of purchase?? The orbs would have been farmed in-game, not created out of nowhere and "flowing into the system from outside".

You then claim that the devs only have 2 choices when dealing with 3rd party sites: Either make a RMAH or just ignore the problem. That's like saying: "There will be sites that provide speedhacks, so the devs can either ignore the speedhackers or they should start selling their own speedhacks since 3rd party sites will be doing it anyway."

As for the original purpose of this thread: I'm not convinced that the currency system PoE uses is "exactly like a gold currency". I think it is similar to the runes from Diablo 2 that were used by many players for trading instead of gold. However this system is even better than the rune system because of two main features:

1. Diablo 2 runes did not disappear when used, so they did not provide the built-in "gold-sink" of orbs by being consumable.

2. The orbs in PoE are not just for trading, they are also a randomized "crafting" system that provides millions of possibilities for new items, instead of being limited to a set of rune words and predetermined rune effects.

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Axebane wrote:

Actually the game DOES provide this option for many orb types. Just check the potion vendor in town.

"any desired quantity" not 1 orb per lvl.
Comprehend please...

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I'm sorry but this makes no sense. You are claiming that if someone uses a 3rd party site to buy something for real cash, that in-game currency will be "flowing into the system from outside" If a person paid a 3rd party site $20 for 100 alchemy orbs, do you think those alchemy orbs just get added to the system at the time of purchase?? The orbs would have been farmed in the first place, not created out of nowhere and "flowing into the system from outside".

Nothing will be added, but some things won't get removed because one side won't be using ingame stuff in trade. He will use real world currency instead.
By "flowing in" I mean currency not items, geez.

If you are trading for ingame currency then both sides are using stuff found ingame.
If you are trading for real word currency only one side is using ingame stuff (the other is using RW currency).

Results? Items are removed from the market in both cases - buyers will be using them that's why trades took place after all.
But with trading for real world currency no currency items from the game will be removed from the market,
Means - there will be less items on the market but amount of ingame currency on the market will stay the same.
Means items will get more expensive (supply and demand).
Means item value (expressed in ingame currency) will inflate (at a faster rate).

Of course single transaction won't affect market at all but multiply that by 10000 transactions/week or something like and the outcome is clear.
It could be understood by 10yo kid. Really.

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You then claim that the devs only have 2 choices when dealing with 3rd party sites: Either make a RMAH or just ignore the problem. That's like saying "There will be sites that provide speedhacks, so the devs can either ignore the speedhackers or they should start selling their own speedhacks since 3rd party sites will be doing it anyway"

You can detect speedhacks.
You can't track ppl listing/selling ingame stuff on 3rd party sites.
Using speedhacks takes place in game.
Trading takes place on the 3rd party site.

That's the difference.

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ness wrote:

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Axebane wrote:

Actually the game DOES provide this option for many orb types. Just check the potion vendor in town.

"any desired quantity" not 1 orb per lvl.
Comprehend please...

It's not 1 orb per level. You just have to reopen the "buy items" for each trade, try it in-game yourself.

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ness wrote:

Results? Items are removed from the market in both cases - buyers will be using them that's why trades took place after all.
But with trading for real world currency no currency items from the game will be removed from the market,
Means - there will be less items on the market but amount of ingame currency on the market will stay the same.
Means items will get more expensive (supply and demand).
Means item value (expressed in ingame currency) will inflate (at a faster rate).

But you forget that the PoE currency can be used to craft items. So if what you claim happens: That there are less items in the system, but the same amount of orbs, then the orbs themselves can rebalance things by being used to craft more items again.

Remember, we are not talking about gold systems from other games, the currency itself has in-game use. It has inherent value. It's value is NOT simply a matter of "how much is in the system" as with other games.

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ness wrote:

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Axebane wrote:

You then claim that the devs only have 2 choices when dealing with 3rd party sites: Either make a RMAH or just ignore the problem. That's like saying "There will be sites that provide speedhacks, so the devs can either ignore the speedhackers or they should start selling their own speedhacks since 3rd party sites will be doing it anyway"

You can detect speedhacks.
You can't track ppl listing/selling ingame stuff on 3rd party sites.
Using speedhacks takes place in game.
Trading takes place on the 3rd party site.

That's the difference.

I'm pretty sure I've read on these forums that the devs have a system in place that tracks every single item in the game. They may be able to monitor for strange behavior involving item/orb trades and even purge items that were involved after-the-fact. Just because the real cash changed hands out of game does not mean that nothing happened in-game.