Secrets secrets secrets and more secrets

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Legatus1982 wrote:

How many man-hours of farming do you think occurs in those 60 hours of gameplay though? The average player is just getting into maps after 60 real hours, if they're working at a fast pace and don't have much else going on in their spare time. For the average player they won't have ANY exalts after 60 hours, and probably haven't even done much real farming yet. For streamers and super hardcore veterans, yeah they are probably mapping, but they are the minority, not the casual masses. For botters/rmters... well, we only have speculation. But even they have to level, and even they have to have actual exalts for sale somewhere in the economy at 60 hours if they're going to purchase them to re-trade them out - and almost none of those came from normal players. So where did they come from?

Only two of those exalts of mine came from maps. And two or three I found in Normal. As I said, the relative rarity of exalts to other items does not change from Normal to maps (except because of drop rate penalties), so no need to farm maps !

No need to farm maps, but we've already got the data - 1.6ex per hour farming at 100iiq. That's 0.8ex per hour without the IIQ, for the math challenged. That's a lot more solid than your personal experiences and memory TBH, and the maps are providing the only remaining modifiers which give more currency drops. They are certainly providing the highest value per hour given trading. So according to conventional wisdom you'd need to farm maps to maximize your currency drops AFAIK. Someone is free to correct me on that last point, but the other points are facts.

EDIT: oh, if you're assuming everyone is trading those exalts they find leveling, then sure, but we'd need to know the actual man hours put into the game total at 60 hours to have something to go off of, and we'd need to know how many of those players are trading their exalts. Basically we'd need a lot more info to assume that happens. I'm more inclined to believe they came from farming before being traded off. A good amount of players don't even trade that much.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

No need to farm maps, but we've already got the data - 1.6ex per hour farming at 100iiq. That's 0.8ex per hour without the IIQ, for the math challenged. That's a lot more solid than your personal experiences and memory TBH, and the maps are providing the only remaining modifiers which give more currency drops. They are certainly providing the highest value per hour given trading. So according to conventional wisdom you'd need to farm maps to maximize your currency drops AFAIK. Someone is free to correct me on that last point, but the other points are facts.

Almost correct: you forgot the diminishing returns on IIQ. The only actual lie from GGG: 100% IIQ does not give twice as many items, but only about 1.4 times more (and I got that value from endless tallying on Dom runs, for a quantity which doesn't fluctuate: the number of items from a boss is fixed plus or minus one).
But of course, you are right, to maximise it you need maps, and you need IIQ. My point is precisely that you don't need to maximise it, you just need to have enough slaves grinding for you. And I think that is more or less how RMT works, in bulk. Again, I'm speculating.

If you got your tallying from boss runs that alone could corrupt the data. It would only be valid for people doing boss runs. Given boss runs have semi-fixed drop rates it could change how IIQ interacts. The guy doing his exalts per hour runs was doing it on maps.

We are really getting into some pretty hazy speculation now though so I'm probably not going to babble on much longer about this. I'm pretty convinced there are more exalts in the economy than were actually dropped from people playing the game based on what I've experienced and seen. If you feel differently, idk. Nobody can prove anything :P If you have the time to try it out though I'd really be interested in seeing you tally up IIQ rates on regular maps compared to without any IIQ modifiers. I suspect the outcome would be different.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

If you got your tallying from boss runs that alone could corrupt the data. It would only be valid for people doing boss runs. Given boss runs have semi-fixed drop rates it could change how IIQ interacts.

We are really getting into some pretty hazy speculation now though so I'm probably not going to babble on much longer about this. I'm pretty convinced there are more exalts in the economy than were actually dropped from people playing the game based on what I've experienced and seen. If you feel differently, idk. Nobody can prove anything :P

Fair enough ! I think RMT and slave-grinding is enough to account for it, and I want to give GGG the benefit of doubt.
And now it's time to go to bed ! It was fun discussing with you in a civil manner. Cheers !

Just one more post to answer to before I go.

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eXecut1on wrote:

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LazarusQ wrote:

They are not mutually exclusive, you're welcome to do both.
Do you really think I am being unreasonable ? People here are basically accusing GGG of at least intentionally lying to us, possibly scamming us. Should we not base something like this on a little more than a few unlucky map runs and a "corporations are evil" caricature ?

Perhaps I am taking this too seriously.

Those "few" map runs were around 500 maps total (before and after nerf).

Videos with timestamps where Chris admits that they change droprates all the time:

https://youtu.be/0e7OKbkXruk?list=PL4aZrsY9M5qA3-seudJZlG4I1NsUHDGxg&t=2202
https://youtu.be/0e7OKbkXruk?list=PL4aZrsY9M5qA3-seudJZlG4I1NsUHDGxg&t=2566

You are like a lawyer trying to defend his client although he already admitted committing the crime.

Eeeh, I thought I'd been over this !

First of all, yeah, 500 is few. Really few.

And then, the Admission of Guilt.
"We're changing drop rates all the time." That's what he says. And then "You know what, people need more chaos orbs, so we'll tune it up."
But if you turn off your super-selective hearing and listen to it all, you'll also hear "you can say, look, we made something rare, and, say, you made it 5% rarer, that basically doesn't affect it, right ? Instead of finding 20, you're finding 19 or something like that, so it's not a big change, but overall in the economy it's nice to do it. And people will hear we made it rarer and completely freak out." That's you right there. And then "we'll probably continue to signal large changes, but it's worth noting we're making small changes, including positive ones, all the time". Large changes signalled. Small changes, not signalled, but you won't even notice them. How many people noticed the rates were changing all the time before he said so ? That's right, a big whopping zero people !

This is a complex game. It needs to be maintained. They maintain it. They change rates. For everybody. He didn't say they injected currency in the economy, which would be completely different. He didn't say they were able to change rates differently for different accounts, which would be a technical nightmare.
They are just doing some real time rebalancing. That is how dedicated they are to their game. Never mind patches, it needs to be balanced all the time !
That is awesome.
They wouldn't want to ruin all that hard work by fuelling RMT.

This is my take on the matter. I have the same information as you. I am not missing anything or disregarding anything. My conclusion is different from yours.
That is all.

Well Im pretty new to POE and until Dark Shrine I had never even seen an exalt drop. But during DS I personaly between 2 characters have had 7 exalts drop and the best item ever dropped during the whole time I played 1000s of maps from low level to tier 13 maps was belly, and a coil. All the rest of my drops were low to mid tier junk most people wouldnt even consider using except maybe during leveling if they didnt have any rares better. I ran for 12 days with 246 IIR, 10 IIQ plus alched all my maps and still never once came close to a single item drop over a coil worth maybe 1 exalt in value.

People forget it's easier to amass currency in the first part of a league than a last part.

First to get high-tier equipment? Sell for Exalts of course! Or other currency that sells for exalts.
Then amass 40ex in the first 3 days of a league. It's the advantage of being first or at the top in a league.

Doesn't prove he didn't RMT, but is a plausible alternative to RMT.

I believe secrets are a good thing in some ways, such as secret maps etc. But when you have secrets that instantly give other players huge advantages over others you might as well call it pay to win. I play solo not exactly by choice Ive asked several times to join guilds given free items to a ton of players even in standard. Shared info and helped people when I could because it made me feel good helping someone even though Ive only been playing 2 months. I read allot of forums and wiki and learned vendor recipes that did help me get some better gear in DS but the fact some people can still do things in a new league everytime such as never dieing almost seeming invincible having the best items I have no hope of ever getting unless someone wants to have sex with me for them:) But the point is the drops are random which makes luck come into play for most of us. But if a small amount of players have great insite or info about the game why arent they making a few really good detailed info guides to help new or eveen experenced players learn all they can. It for one would make the game more fun, would help allot of people and be rewarding in the end with all the respect and love yould get in return. Im Sethbine Im new, I have a ton of uniques or good rares in standard. I play new leagues if you need something dont be scared to ask me. Happy to help people in the holidays just dont be greedy is all I ask.

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LazarusQ wrote:

How many people noticed the rates were changing all the time before he said so ? That's right, a big whopping zero people !

Wrong. At least 1 person realized this (me) and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one. All my friends just said I'm crazy but turns out I wasn't so crazy after all.

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LazarusQ wrote:

He didn't say they injected currency in the economy

me neither

I was just referring to shadow nerfs and buffs. Never said something about RMT.

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LazarusQ wrote:

But if you turn off your super-selective hearing and listen to it all, you'll also hear "you can say, look, we made something rare, and, say, you made it 5% rarer, that basically doesn't affect it, right ?

I heard everything but what would you say in his position? Obviously not the truth if it caused a shitstorm.

They are a company, just like any other company. Since when do companies really care about anything other than profit and longetivity of their product? It's just how things work in a capitalistic society, nothing we can do about it.