most simple way to turn gambling into crafting

1) Alts and Chaos are fine
2) Jeweller's and Fusings: I agree, this could be an improvement
3) All are fine, but Regal could use a better vendor recipe
4) Blessed and Divine are fine
5) Augmentations are fine and Exalt could use a vendor recipe or a better one if it actually has one.

I actually like your idea a lot, Tinghshi. but those shards need to come with the appropriate vendor recipes just like Alchemy shards do - and those recipes need to be reasonable enough.
for example, you likely will not vendor an item which the recipe says is worth 5 Chaos Shards (out of 20), when you can easily sell it for at least one full Orb Of Chaos via trade.

in fact, I am for any kind of way to "guarantee" currency. to bind effort and skill with reward, instead of some crazy randomization which Daxora and Chris claim is fine - but I see as one which allows an unbounded amount of consecutive failures.
and since my knowledge in Probability is rather basic, I'll need to ask Courageous if there even is such a thing as "unbounded failure" randomization.
to the best of my knowledge, the Law Of Large Numbers says there isn't - so it's either a bug, bad implementation, or just me missing something.
unfortunately, I'm not talking about just currency. I have many screen-shots to prove my hopeless misfortune: an army of champion monsters in Merciless Act 3 and maps, leaving nothing but white 1-socket junk. as well as Vaal, Piety and other bosses and strong unique mobs.

this was my key point all along: you either make crafting non-wipe-out, or you give ample possibility to recover from a wipe-out using raw skill and dedication. make RNG play a secondary role in how you obtain the materials to craft with. preferably no role at all.

also, I understand the need to have a balanced economy, but that balance does not need to be a "1 rich for 1 poor" kind of thing, but rather a form of "mini-socialism", where everybody in a certain level/playtime range is roughly at the same level of wealth, and a very small "elite" can be more rich than others.
I believe any other form will just lead to people buying orbs with real money by the thousands, which both breaks the economy, AND is far, far worse than just breaking the economy.

and as a side note, if I ever need to choose between a fun game and a well-balanced economic simulator which is anything but fun - you can probably guess which one I'll pick.

Dude.

Humour me and do 100 x Brutus runs in Merciless with 200+ IIQ and if you get nothing but shit at the end of it then I'll support you.

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johnKeys wrote:

short version: make orb-usage incremental.[/spoiler]

My main question: How do you plan to make this system produce these results:

Players can only craft a set of godly gear after months (no lifers) or years (normal players).

Those are the objectives of any orbing system that would be implemented. If you do disagree with those intended results, you're going to fight a very uphill battle vs GGGs vision.

"

johnKeys wrote:

also, I understand the need to have a balanced economy, but that balance does not need to be a "1 rich for 1 poor" kind of thing, but rather a form of "mini-socialism", where everybody in a certain level/playtime range is roughly at the same level of wealth, and a very small "elite" can be more rich than others.

Oh dear. If wealth were just based on pure time played, the rich/poor disparity would remain just as wide, except you'd just remove any and all chance of mobility from poor to rich.

Right now, if I'm poor, tomorrow I could fuse a 6link in 2 fusings or chaos a godly rare. I have hope, even if I have a job and family or school that prevents me from no-lifing this game.

In your suggestion, if I am poor, my only recourse is to go no-life mode and play the game 24/7. If I have work/school/family, I have no hope of ever being rich. Why should I keep playing?

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aimlessgun wrote:

Oh dear. If wealth were just based on pure time played, the rich/poor disparity would remain just as wide, except you'd just remove any and all chance of mobility from poor to rich.

Right now, if I'm poor, tomorrow I could fuse a 6link in 2 fusings or chaos a godly rare. I have hope, even if I have a job and family or school that prevents me from no-lifing this game.

In your suggestion, if I am poor, my only recourse is to go no-life mode and play the game 24/7. If I have work/school/family, I have no hope of ever being rich. Why should I keep playing?

Except that is completely fair. Someone who plays no life deserves to be in the upper elite, and inversely for someone who doesn't play at all. Right now, a new player can find a mirror on twilight strand and be richer than 90% of the playerbase, and a nolife player can have bad luck and end up with less than nothing.

By his system, progress is determined more by effort instead of luck, which is how it should be.

"

tinghshi wrote:

"

aimlessgun wrote:

Oh dear. If wealth were just based on pure time played, the rich/poor disparity would remain just as wide, except you'd just remove any and all chance of mobility from poor to rich.

Right now, if I'm poor, tomorrow I could fuse a 6link in 2 fusings or chaos a godly rare. I have hope, even if I have a job and family or school that prevents me from no-lifing this game.

In your suggestion, if I am poor, my only recourse is to go no-life mode and play the game 24/7. If I have work/school/family, I have no hope of ever being rich. Why should I keep playing?

Except that is completely fair. Someone who plays no life deserves to be in the upper elite, and inversely for someone who does play at all. Right now, a new player can find a mirror on twilight strand and be richer than 90% of the playerbase, and a nolife player can have bad luck and end up with less than nothing.

By his system, progress is determined more by effort instead of luck, which is how it should be.

+1 to tingshi

Stop rewarding luck so much. No need to take RNG out completely, just limit it and safety net it, and also never, ever let low levels get significant stuff. You want the good stuff? Level up. Want more? Level up more... Low level rewards, for low level players...

BTW, aimless, you don't need to neglect low levels at all. Give them GOOD STUFF - for their level. If I were the designer, there would be no 5Ls below 70, and no 6Ls below 80.

Also, it would be just fine for a low level to find a Mirror - quite cool huh?
But he should not be able to sell it to get amazingly rich. He should keep it, and use it when he can wear a 6L...

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tinghshi wrote:

"

aimlessgun wrote:

Oh dear. If wealth were just based on pure time played, the rich/poor disparity would remain just as wide, except you'd just remove any and all chance of mobility from poor to rich.

Right now, if I'm poor, tomorrow I could fuse a 6link in 2 fusings or chaos a godly rare. I have hope, even if I have a job and family or school that prevents me from no-lifing this game.

In your suggestion, if I am poor, my only recourse is to go no-life mode and play the game 24/7. If I have work/school/family, I have no hope of ever being rich. Why should I keep playing?

Except that is completely fair. Someone who plays no life deserves to be in the upper elite, and inversely for someone who doesn't play at all. Right now, a new player can find a mirror on twilight strand and be richer than 90% of the playerbase, and a nolife player can have bad luck and end up with less than nothing.

By his system, progress is determined more by effort instead of luck, which is how it should be.

I have to disagree

I think the current system being primarily RNG rewards the nolifers and conversely hurts the casual players. The more you play, the more you get in terms of both XP and drops.

Sure RNG can make a difference for that small portion of players who are lucky enough to find a mirror but generally speaking, the way to create ingame wealth is through a healthy mix of effort, (time spent), and strategy, (a build that can take of advantage of increased IIR/IIQ), combined with active trading.

The problem with this though is that the current trading platforms aren't evolved enough to allow everyone to benefit without significant effort, ie spamming trade channels, which is a giant pain in the ass.

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BazzV5 wrote:

Dude.

Humour me and do 100 x Brutus runs in Merciless with 200+ IIQ and if you get nothing but shit at the end of it then I'll support you.

frankly, I don't need your support, nor do I intend to "humour you". passive-aggressive is just a more clever form of trolling.

I did a lot more than 100 x Brutus runs on Merciless: I farmed every possible boss on almost every difficulty (except Normal) hundreds of times, plus Fellshrine and Church, plus Ledge, plus Docks...
did it until the very last drop of fun was sucked right out of me.
and yet the results speak for themselves.
consider my situation to be the antithesis to all you thought you knew about the drop system, and how you are naive enough to think RNG is fair over time.

also, my IIQ is almost non-existent - and that's another key point I wanted to get across:
IIQ/IIR should allow you to be more rich than "usual", but never a "get it or you're screwed" kind of thing.

as a melee, I simply cannot stack IIQ/IIR like crazy, even if I had items which give such bonuses to begin with. I need the resistance modifiers, the HP and regen bonuses, the attack speed and the "stopping power". need it to survive the kind of content I'm running.

now, according to my and Tinghshi's approach, that would make me quite poor among the level 70-80 players - while you and your monstrous IIQ, and Tinghshi's friends who play 24/7 will be among the rich at this level range. well "poor level 70" should still be a lot better than "rich level 50" except several extreme cases - so it's not a bad place to be in, actually.
right now, I'm somewhere close to the "rich level 20" (if there is such a thing).
look at my currency. look at the quality of what's in my stash.
I could link it to you, but like I said - I have no intention to "humour you".

EDIT: I actually disagree with Undone about low level players getting zero-chance to drop high orbs and mirrors, but I do think their chance should be lower - or rather the chance at higher levels needs to be higher, depending on level (character and area) and/or total time played per account.
and as for the good old "casual vs. no-lifer" debate - what "no-lifers" do in a month, "casuals" will do in several months. more days playing PoE = more money for GGG. and it evens out in terms of total hours played.

EDIT 2: highlighted key claims for BazzV5

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tinghshi wrote:

Except that is completely fair. Someone who plays no life deserves to be in the upper elite, and inversely for someone who doesn't play at all. Right now, a new player can find a mirror on twilight strand and be richer than 90% of the playerbase, and a nolife player can have bad luck and end up with less than nothing.

By his system, progress is determined more by effort instead of luck, which is how it should be.

This is definitely one of those "moderation in all things" situations.

You have a point that being the lucky recipient of a Mirror drop gives you a lot of wealth instantly. I don't know if it's too much, but those lucky few do get a huge benefit that other players have difficulty matching.

However, the flip side to this is that if economic progress becomes too consistent, those who are far ahead of other economically -- the no-lifers, so to speak -- are more and more stable in their position. This opens the door to unfair trading practices such as market cornering/monopolization, which can quickly put those with less wealth in a situation where they could never possibly catch the no-lifers who are controlling the economy, even if they started going no-lifer even harder than them from that moment on. In situations like those, random casuals who don't play much having Mirrors fall in their laps is the ideal solution. Long-term economic manipulations are far less likely to be pursued when there is a risk of failure.

It's a balancing act. Make the curve too choppy and the game frustrates you; make the curve too smooth and other players will.

There should be a recipe for unique vendoring, better than selling those minor uniques forever. Some of them don't even yeld an alchemy shard. Make them yeld regal shards at least, the lvl 60+ exalted shards perhaps. This way uniques will balance their price and will never be worthless. It was a major problem in Diablo 3 and PoE is going the same way.

Regal should be buffed so it gives a random number of stats after making an item rare.

Fusings should not break the item it's only making the game annoying because you have to have two items instead of one. Balance won't change if you can try to improve the item you wear and not ruin it with fusings.

Chaos orbs are good and don't need improvement. You either find a good item and slot it or find an item with slots and chaos it. Since you need 1000 fusings for a six link roughly you will need 500 chaos. Odds are you will get something great a lot often.

Currently it's better to craft on an item with 6l then the other way around because it can take forever to get a 5-6l. With chaos there is no one great outcome. You don't need tipple resists on every piece of gear ie to have a good set, but you need at least a 5l on your armor/weapon.