Statement by previous GGG employee

"

See, the real argument is that in an efficient (perfect) market the value of a good converges to its production cost once supply exeeds demand. Since in PoE the producation cost is close to zero the value of almost all items that you will ever find will also be close to nothing. The result will be that you feel that you never find an upgrade through regular gameplay and that you will not be able to work your way up to top-tier items by selling lower tier items. Moreover this is completely independent of item progression in game. If you have a reasonable chance of dropping an item in game, in an efficient market, that item will be worth almost nothing. Since most "I want a better trade system" players fail to follow this somewhat abstract way of thinking, it is way easier to point to D3 and state that this is an example what would happen if trading were efficient in PoE. And no, it has NOTHING at all to do with the RMAH.

This isnt a argument, this is a description of the current state of Poe XDDD

The funny part is how so many people seem to have this belief that adding a proper market to the game will make all the items worthless and crash the game economy.

All trash items are already sold for less than nothing (except for scammer cases)!

All expensive items that people want to sell and not keep they will set up a shop and sell it cause it's too profitable not to sell.

What does this means? The trash items price will not devalue any more, it's already devalorised, you can't further crash a market that has already crashed.

On the other hand, all players that have valuable items that they want to sell are already being sold. Every single one of them! Adding a market will not increase the number of them being sold. Now two things may happen here. Either they will lower a little bit due to there being competition for the sales (not enough to make it cheap but it will lower a little bit) or prices will rise with market manipulation where players with higher currency buy all of them at a certain price and sell them after at much higher prices for profit.

The economy at low level will not be impacted at all other than more people will be using the market to buy and sell. At high levels the economy will be impacted iun both ways. Some items, the extremely rare ones and extremely limited in number will be subject to market manipulation and go up while the rare ones but which are available in higher numbers will probably go down in price a little bit.

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Elhazzared wrote:

The funny part is how so many people seem to have this belief that adding a proper market to the game will make all the items worthless and crash the game economy.

All trash items are already sold for less than nothing (except for scammer cases)!

All expensive items that people want to sell and not keep they will set up a shop and sell it cause it's too profitable not to sell.

What does this means? The trash items price will not devalue any more, it's already devalorised, you can't further crash a market that has already crashed.

On the other hand, all players that have valuable items that they want to sell are already being sold. Every single one of them! Adding a market will not increase the number of them being sold. Now two things may happen here. Either they will lower a little bit due to there being competition for the sales (not enough to make it cheap but it will lower a little bit) or prices will rise with market manipulation where players with higher currency buy all of them at a certain price and sell them after at much higher prices for profit.

The economy at low level will not be impacted at all other than more people will be using the market to buy and sell. At high levels the economy will be impacted iun both ways. Some items, the extremely rare ones and extremely limited in number will be subject to market manipulation and go up while the rare ones but which are available in higher numbers will probably go down in price a little bit.

Sorry but you fail to grasp how an efficient market works. The only way to avoid a race to the bottom for the value of almost all items would be to introduce a massive item sink. Otherwhise it will be D3 AH all over again.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Remember when this thread was even vaguely related to the OP?

Yeah, good times.

Have fun with this shitshow, Support.

It isn't all that unrelated. There are obviously groups of people who interpret listening to feedback to mean GGG caters or coddles some priority group instead of listening to the "correct" opinions for making the game better. However, there is a false assumption many people are operating under in this topic, which is that feedback is necessarily or even likely constructive. The reality is that people might be good at recognizing when something is good, bad, fun, frustrating, etc..., but they are often particularly poor at extrapolating accurate information about why. Trade is just one of the more common subjects hence the tangent.

A wise company doesn't use feedback to ask uninformed people how to make its product better. A wise company uses feedback to look for signals and then does its own extrapolation as to what is causing them.

I know I'm beating the sticks that beat the pulp that was once an already beaten dead horse that is D3, but that game is an excellent example of what happens when a company tries to satisfy the most people by following the most common feedback requests. For example, when players aren't satisfied with the reward schedule in a game the most universal request is to increase drop rates. The problem is that while this is effective in the short term it has the opposite effect long term because increasing abundance reduces scarcity, which reduces the value and reward, just like if gold was as abundant as water then it would be cheaper like water.

+1 for the Faendris guy

"

CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Bugger that.

OP asks, does GGG give massive bias to feedback by supporters? Because this totally random dude claiming to have moved from GGG to Blizzard said do.

Answer: no.

It's a matter of time until a dev or Support address this but they're probably a little wary of how to go about it.

The rest is just fucking soapboxing.

I still don't think we've answered the follow up questions, though?

SHOULD GGG put more of a focus on utilising the support base as a feedback system? By which I mean, should the Alpha group be put back into a action with perhaps a more stringent selection bias? Should there be Supporter only forums, events, and leagues?

The concept of Free to Play is a wonderful thing, and carried out in a very ethical manner (objectively but also comparatively) - but the potential for tapping a base of players who are both strongly invested, and at times strongly critical in their approach to the game, is a valuable one that could offer a number of benefits.

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Temper wrote:

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nait2k4 wrote:

I guess this prompts an extra question - Should GGG prioritise feedback from supporters/paying users over those who don't purchase anything? Or should GGG take further steps to open up feedback forums to specific levels of support?

Charan raised an interesting point in another thread, that the quality versus quantity of feedback was impacted negatively by the switch from CB to OB / Awakening Beta opening. I steadfastly kept out of the Awakening beta (and the feedback forum for the most part) so I didn't see it, but I've had similar experiences with seeking feedback in large workplaces/education institutes.

If we're going to question the ethics, lets get really nitty gritty :)

Just my opinion but,they shouldn't be prioritizing feedback from any type of paying or potential customer in relation to non QOL issues.I'd prefer they go back to the old tradition of in house testing with a selected crew of testers chosen from a list of names that could provide references to previous experience in alphas/betas.

It worked well in the past and as players we all benefited from the exclusion by having a better game presented to us.

just an opinion though.

Can anyone point to some of the some of the influences the Alpha team had on the game, outside of the leaking of information of course :)

A CB/OB game is one that relies heavily on early adopters to get information and feedback on how the game feels to a wide and varied audience - but that isn't to say that after release (in a game structured like POE where consistent update/change is the norm) the game cannot still benefit from it.

We can see a lot of instances where things that have had significant impact on the balance and feel of the game could have been picked up with a wider testing base.

"

nait2k4 wrote:

Can anyone point to some of the some of the influences the Alpha team had on the game, outside of the leaking of information of course :)

I can point with dubious pride to one, small contribution I made in Alpha to an early iteration of the skill tree (the "racetrack" version, with the big oval on the Marauder side): There was an great, 2H mace node, I think it was, which sat behind one or two nodes which granted either accuracy or crit (I dun remember which). I pointed out that 2H RT users would be wasting nodes to reach the juicy damage node, and it was changed!

So, yeah, there were definitely instances in which Alphas provided input which was addressed, and even heeded. Of course, as time wore on, things may have changed, but I was purged outta Alpha with the rest because of a coupla bad actors, so I can't comment on the later iterations. ='[.]'=

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Raycheetah wrote:

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nait2k4 wrote:

Can anyone point to some of the some of the influences the Alpha team had on the game, outside of the leaking of information of course :)

I can point with dubious pride to one, small contribution I made in Alpha to an early iteration of the skill tree (the "racetrack" version, with the big oval on the Marauder side): There was an great, 2H mace node, I think it was, which sat behind one or two nodes which granted either accuracy or crit (I dun remember which). I pointed out that 2H RT users would be wasting nodes to reach the juicy damage node, and it was changed!

So, yeah, there were definitely instances in which Alphas provided input which was addressed, and even heeded. Of course, as time wore on, things may have changed, but I was purged outta Alpha with the rest because of a coupla bad actors, so I can't comment on the later iterations. ='[.]'=

Nice :)

I've only played one mace character, but it was 2H RT - so cheers for the cheap DPS.

Would you participate again if the Alpha Team invitiation and briefing was opened again? Would you participate in a supporter only league if it was available?

Did you find a noticeable difference in the quality of feedback in the Awakening Closed Beta versus the more open beta that gradually got introduced?

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nait2k4 wrote:

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Raycheetah wrote:

"

nait2k4 wrote:

Can anyone point to some of the some of the influences the Alpha team had on the game, outside of the leaking of information of course :)

I can point with dubious pride to one, small contribution I made in Alpha to an early iteration of the skill tree (the "racetrack" version, with the big oval on the Marauder side): There was an great, 2H mace node, I think it was, which sat behind one or two nodes which granted either accuracy or crit (I dun remember which). I pointed out that 2H RT users would be wasting nodes to reach the juicy damage node, and it was changed!

So, yeah, there were definitely instances in which Alphas provided input which was addressed, and even heeded. Of course, as time wore on, things may have changed, but I was purged outta Alpha with the rest because of a coupla bad actors, so I can't comment on the later iterations. ='[.]'=

Nice :)

I've only played one mace character, but it was 2H RT - so cheers for the cheap DPS.

Would you participate again if the Alpha Team invitiation and briefing was opened again? Would you participate in a supporter only league if it was available?

Did you find a noticeable difference in the quality of feedback in the Awakening Closed Beta versus the more open beta that gradually got introduced?

Sure I'd Alpha, again, if I was invited. As for a Supporter Only League, well, I suspect there would be much weeping and wailing and beating of breasts from non-Supporters. In any event, I don't favor splitting the player base.

I can't say as I took much notice of the overall feedback between Awakening CB and the general OB (if that's what you're asking). Since the Awakening CB was more focused solely on the changes in 2.0 and A4, I would imagine it was more effective, but I can't say for sure. ='[.]'=