Let Us Break Alch Orbs Into Shards?

I just read the old dev diary again about the economy. This was part of what drew me to the game.

It seems like someone at GGG gets economics, but I feel like the concept of "divisibility" is missing. This is sort of supposed to be handled by being able to trade, even at vendors, low tier currency up to alchs. It doesn't really work though. I would stop before trading jewelers into fusing unless I was really desperate because I can make out better in the long run trading these.

Real gold is (for all practical purposes) infinitely divisible. I personally save all my alch shards in stacks of 19 but I am just now coming up on my second stack. When people want an alch for something I think is worth less, I'd like to be able to offer them shards, but I will run out pretty quickly as things are now.

I think it would be a negative to allow every type of orb to be split up, but what would the downside to this be? Alch shards are already in the game, so I don't see one. I would like to see this be possible without any loss or huge penalty like most vendor recipes. In a worst case scenario, we would get back only 19/20 shards.

There is no need to consider some other low level "gold" currency, we have it already. This wouldn't cause any sort of inflation problem like with typical gold, just allow for a better trading system than pure barter.

I just want to bump this because I dont think its a bad idea.

Say someone was trading an item for 1 alch. You like the item but dont think its worth a whole alch. You offer him 10 alch shards, he has 10 alch shards. It might be a good idea for him and you get to keep some of yours.

I don't think it would be too terrible an idea to implement this. It's currently like the lowest USD amount is only a dollar. By breaking that dollar up we now have change. Bad analogy but whatever.

But of course I would say make the others breakable as well, trans, alt, scrolls. Maybe break them up into two piles of 10?

Obviously no urgency. Just building on the idea.

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ThorOtheBIG wrote:

I just want to bump this because I dont think its a bad idea.

Say someone was trading an item for 1 alch. You like the item but dont think its worth a whole alch. You offer him 10 alch shards, he has 10 alch shards. It might be a good idea for him and you get to keep some of yours.

I don't think it would be too terrible an idea to implement this. It's currently like the lowest USD amount is only a dollar. By breaking that dollar up we now have change. Bad analogy but whatever.

But of course I would say make the others breakable as well, trans, alt, scrolls. Maybe break them up into two piles of 10?

Obviously no urgency. Just building on the idea.

Breaking dollars up into change is the same concept, sort of. For most of history we didn't use paper money. We used coins made in various metals. The term "dollar" comes from the Spanish coins which were most commonly used in the early US. Also called "pieces of eight", they were often broken up to "make change".

When paper money was introduced in various places, people revolted against it. I would argue that paper money isn't "real money" because because it fails a couple criteria which GGG have recognized (scarcity and utility).

Without divisibility, we are stuck in a barter system. We owe our modern standard of living today in part to the technology of money over barter systems. The problem with gold in online games isn't that it is used as money, per se. The problem is usually scarcity of this game gold, as well as that it has no utility itself like our orbs.

I don't see what the drawback of letting us break alchs up would be, I just hope that any vendor fee is small (1/20 tops). I don't want to see everything be able to be broken up. Plenty of things with utility aren't suitable to be used as money. All we need is something.

The vendor rates on the low end, 4 alt to jeweler, isn't that bad, so I don't see why we need a lower money like silver is to gold. Chaos shards sounds good, but it is too close in value. The 2 alch to 1 chaos standard exchange rate is a problem right now because it is less than 2 to 1.

Being able to break GCP up into pieces of 3 might work and fits with the typical ratio of 3:1 with chaos. The fee or penalty for using these could be that a prism shard is either red, blue or green and only one of each will combine into a real GCP with utility.

I think there might be a problem with doing this with GCP though if you consider what the consequences of allowing those or alchs to be broken up into pieces. I think this would cause the price of alchs to rise even more. Not only are they already very useful orbs, but they would then have more utility as a means of exchange.

Is there some story in the lore about what the faces on the Regal/Blessed/Exalted are? Broken masks don't seem like great items in the game, but GG could figure something out. I think that regal and blessed are better candidates if we go beyond alchs because they are somewhat lacking in utility for their scarcity right now.

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ThorOtheBIG wrote:

I just want to bump this because I dont think its a bad idea.

Say someone was trading an item for 1 alch. You like the item but dont think its worth a whole alch. You offer him 10 alch shards, he has 10 alch shards. It might be a good idea for him and you get to keep some of yours.

I don't think it would be too terrible an idea to implement this. It's currently like the lowest USD amount is only a dollar. By breaking that dollar up we now have change. Bad analogy but whatever.

But of course I would say make the others breakable as well, trans, alt, scrolls. Maybe break them up into two piles of 10?

Obviously no urgency. Just building on the idea.

That's called bartering.

If he didn't have 10 alch shards he would have his price cut in half.
If you try to give a retort let me say this clearly, you're giving him half an alch. There are no exceptions to this

I like the idea. +1 from me.

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noob1 wrote:

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ThorOtheBIG wrote:

I just want to bump this because I dont think its a bad idea.

Say someone was trading an item for 1 alch. You like the item but dont think its worth a whole alch. You offer him 10 alch shards, he has 10 alch shards. It might be a good idea for him and you get to keep some of yours.

I don't think it would be too terrible an idea to implement this. It's currently like the lowest USD amount is only a dollar. By breaking that dollar up we now have change. Bad analogy but whatever.

But of course I would say make the others breakable as well, trans, alt, scrolls. Maybe break them up into two piles of 10?

Obviously no urgency. Just building on the idea.

That's called bartering.

If he didn't have 10 alch shards he would have his price cut in half.
If you try to give a retort let me say this clearly, you're giving him half an alch. There are no exceptions to this

Yeah, thanks, I know what bartering is..

But on the internet sometimes you have to make things very clear for people to understand or they quickly reply with great ignorance.

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ThorOtheBIG wrote:

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noob1 wrote:

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ThorOtheBIG wrote:

I just want to bump this because I dont think its a bad idea.

Say someone was trading an item for 1 alch. You like the item but dont think its worth a whole alch. You offer him 10 alch shards, he has 10 alch shards. It might be a good idea for him and you get to keep some of yours.

I don't think it would be too terrible an idea to implement this. It's currently like the lowest USD amount is only a dollar. By breaking that dollar up we now have change. Bad analogy but whatever.

But of course I would say make the others breakable as well, trans, alt, scrolls. Maybe break them up into two piles of 10?

Obviously no urgency. Just building on the idea.

That's called bartering.

If he didn't have 10 alch shards he would have his price cut in half.
If you try to give a retort let me say this clearly, you're giving him half an alch. There are no exceptions to this

Yeah, thanks, I know what bartering is..

But on the internet sometimes you have to make things very clear for people to understand or they quickly reply with great ignorance.

Of course, some people need an in-depth explanation but unfortunately, here is where you guys are trying to barter.
Sure that guy may have 10 alch shards but to his mind, "Do I take 20 alch shards or 10 alch shards?" 20, being an entire orb which his price is at.

So noob1 are you for or against this idea? Its hard for me to tell.

Plus what if no one is buying his item? Its just the same as if someone wanting 2 alchs for something and no one is contacting him then someone says 1 alch. Its that or nothing.

You can 'upgrade' (most of the) orbs at some vendors, just similar to the rune thing with the magic cube in D2... so there already is a definded value stepping; I see no need to trade in shards additional. The only needed thing is to be able to choose the amount of the item you want to buy (and to make stacked items sell for the correct value too). And also on top the possibility to use the consumables up to their maximal effort: throw a stack of Armour Scraps on a piece of gear and get it upgraded to 20% (while leaving the remaining Scraps in your hand) or until the stack is empty.

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ThorOtheBIG wrote:

So noob1 are you for or against this idea? Its hard for me to tell.

Plus what if no one is buying his item? Its just the same as if someone wanting 2 alchs for something and no one is contacting him then someone says 1 alch. Its that or nothing.

I think the point being missed is that negotiation (with money or in general) is different than "dumb barter". You're right, people are trying to use money, but since there is no divisibility they resort to a rigid structure of 2 alch to 1 chaos, 3 chaos to a GCP.

Keep the alch:chaos:GCP thing in mind and read this part where I think GGG can improve

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Trade Parity: The relative value of currency items fluctuates constantly as new and interesting applications are found for them. It’s also subjective for each player – they all have own current item goals and each currency item may help them achieve that goal in a different way. Players can accept these barter trades because they either meet an immediate need for a currency item to use or because the items are of roughly equal value and can be later traded to someone else.

All of this is true but people started using money because it is more effective in helping us reach our goals than primitive barter.

If I grow apples (alchs) and I want shoes (GCP), but the shoemaker only wants bread (chaos), then I have to try to get the baker to take my apples for bread and then take that bread to the shoemaker. If I can just get some money for my apples from whomever is wanting apples, I can just use the money to get my shoes and it is more convenient.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

You can 'upgrade' (most of the) orbs at some vendors, just similar to the rune thing with the magic cube in D2... so there already is a definded value stepping; I see no need to trade in shards additional.

You're totally missing the point and the "price fixing" of vendors is bad. I might trade 4 jeweler for a fusing if I was really desperate for some reason, but it is a stupid move in the long run when I can make better trades.

This has nothing to do with "value stepping" like that and there is no recipe to step down.

Maybe you don't see the need, but do you have any argument for why it would cause problems? Alch shards are already in the game. They seem to be supposed to be a small reward as a part of a bigger one, but we don't really get to use them that way because we can't break alchs up.

People are not just trading for these things because they make something. They trade for them because they are a store of value to get other things they want. This wouldn't let people store more in less space and really I know that I have played a lot since OB and my orbs aren't taking up half a page. This just lets us make better exchanges with something already being used as a currency.