Did they honestly make linking sockets easier?

This is the #1 anti-fun factor for me in this game. I've been playing for years but this time around, I nearly uninstalled after spending 2.3k fuses on my voltaxic. I literally converted all my currency and sold everything for fuses, thinking that I'd get it withing those 2.3k. I was left dead broke with no 6l. Worse part about it? It could take another 5000 for all I know.

There NEEDS to be some kind of progressive system where each failed attempt increases your next attempt by however so little. Many games do that, as a reward for the player not getting what he needs. It's like "oh you didn't win but you gained something in return". After spending 2.3k, I should atleast rewarded with the relief that the 6l is coming soon but nope, since there's no such progressive system, it could take another 10k fuses for all I fucking know.

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woodyfly wrote:

This is the #1 anti-fun factor for me in this game. I've been playing for years but this time around, I nearly uninstalled after spending 2.3k fuses on my voltaxic. I literally converted all my currency and sold everything for fuses, thinking that I'd get it withing those 2.3k. I was left dead broke with no 6l. Worse part about it? It could take another 5000 for all I know.

There NEEDS to be some kind of progressive system where each failed attempt increases your next attempt by however so little. Many games do that, as a reward for the player not getting what he needs. It's like "oh you didn't win but you gained something in return". After spending 2.3k, I should atleast rewarded with the relief that the 6l is coming soon but nope, since there's no such progressive system, it could take another 10k fuses for all I fucking know.

GGG really should add a method so that you can just pay a set number of fusings and be guaranteed the number of links of your choice, maybe set it a bit more than the average number you would need to spend to offset lack of gamble.

"

Could be 5 could be 5500 fusings whatever the case is; RNG is a brutal thing.

I 6L'd a shavs in under 100 in addition to 6L'ing a Carcass while friends still struggle on it lol; It's in no way shape or form easier.

 RNG in PoE is too brutal but GGG unfortunately has no alternative ways to make 6Ling a challenge and super exciting if/when you get one. If 6L'ing came too easy (< 100 fusings became the norm) then this would become a bore but when you can burn through 10000 fusings and get nothing for the effort then the brutal nature of high RNG in PoE really hits home.

 I still like (insist) the idea I posted on where the qty. of fusings used on a gear you are attempting to 6L is used in the formula so that as more and more fusings are poured into it the % chance of the next fusing being the magic one that gives a 6L slowly increases. GGG has no search function for our own forum posts and at 2790 (and counting) I'm not manually paging back through them to find it and post a link but in effect it is:

links = (fusing formula) + fuses_used / X
if links > 0.99 then (result = 6L)
if links > 0.90 then (result = 5L)
if links > 0.60 then (result = 4L)
if links > 0.30 then (result = 3L)
if links > 0.10 then (result = 2L)
(result = no links)
// if links <= 4 then loop again to see if other 2, 3, 4, or 5 sockets will link)

fuses_used++

Where:
1. (fusing formula) generates a number <= 1.0
2. fuses used starts at 0 on any new gear drop or buy
3. X = a sufficiently high number like 4500 (triple the 1500 buy out 6L price)
4. the fraction threshold to be > than to be of that link number is just for discussion
    purposes and only GGG knows what the bar is set at in their fusing formula.

So on the first fusing used the added increase is 0 / 4500 or zero. As the number of fuses used on that gear goes up then it adds into the current fusing formula and slowly raises our chances to get a 4L, 5L, or 6L. GGG would need to make the fuses used visible when we press ALT on gear so we can see how many fuses that item has had applied to it and also use that in determining the gear's value in a trade.

 At least with this the quantity of fusings used will directly impact our chance that the next one will get us the 6L (or 5L) we seek and not be the same rng chance whether it's the 1st one or the 10000th used. This RNG crap of 1st fusing has the same chance as the 10000 fusing needs to stop now (should never have been pure random from the beginning of PoE).

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RandallPOE wrote:

GGG really should add a method so that you can just pay a set number of fusings and be guaranteed the number of links of your choice, maybe set it a bit more than the average number you would need to spend to offset lack of gamble.

Vorici already does this for a flat fee of 1500 fusing for a 6L.

Problem is people likes to "progressively" develop their character especially on temporary league to have a sense of achievement and progressing their character.

To guarantee a 6L safely currently requires you to powerlevel vorici... then save up 1500 fusings... or farm/pray for lucky drops and trade your ass off, wait till the lucky kids get bored with their 6L then you buy it via trading. (Or run the risk to get scammed by handing someone your 6S and 1500 fusings).

Using my progressive model with 4000 fusing cap for example. It takes 4k fusings to guarantee a 6L while 4K fusings is almost enough for vorici to 6L 3 items it's not the point at all.

This means that anytime I can use my fusings on the item of my choice and NONE of the fusing orbs will ever go wasted, that I know for a fact that worst case I will get my 6L after I accumulated 4k fusings OVERTIME, but at any point I could still get lucky and hit that 6L which is something that Vorici can never offer you to do. Vorici is 1500 fusing lump sum or gtfo and go play D3 or something.

So after a night of playing I made 22 fusing orbs cool stuff, I can burn them on my 6S... no 6L oh well, better luck tomorrow but eventually I will be guaranteed to have that 6L I want without having to save up 1500 fusing orbs and spend them all at once. Even if this progressive system might still required more than 1500 fusings on average OVERTIME, you will have way less complains than this pure luck system we have rightnow.

A good thing that this isn't a Korean MMO, if it was we'd have a chance to break our item instead of 6 linking it, and we'd be able to fix it only with Jewel of Repair™ from the cash shop.

"

Pewzor wrote:

"

RandallPOE wrote:

GGG really should add a method so that you can just pay a set number of fusings and be guaranteed the number of links of your choice, maybe set it a bit more than the average number you would need to spend to offset lack of gamble.

Vorici already does this for a flat fee of 1500 fusing for a 6L.

Problem is people likes to "progressively" develop their character especially on temporary league to have a sense of achievement and progressing their character.

Spoiler

To guarantee a 6L safely currently requires you to powerlevel vorici... then save up 1500 fusings... or farm/pray for lucky drops and trade your ass off, wait till the lucky kids get bored with their 6L then you buy it via trading. (Or run the risk to get scammed by handing someone your 6S and 1500 fusings).

Using my progressive model with 4000 fusing cap for example. It takes 4k fusings to guarantee a 6L while 4K fusings is almost enough for vorici to 6L 3 items it's not the point at all.

This means that anytime I can use my fusings on the item of my choice and NONE of the fusing orbs will ever go wasted, that I know for a fact that worst case I will get my 6L after I accumulated 4k fusings OVERTIME, but at any point I could still get lucky and hit that 6L which is something that Vorici can never offer you to do. Vorici is 1500 fusing lump sum or gtfo and go play D3 or something.

So after a night of playing I made 22 fusing orbs cool stuff, I can burn them on my 6S... no 6L oh well, better luck tomorrow but eventually I will be guaranteed to have that 6L I want without having to save up 1500 fusing orbs and spend them all at once. Even if this progressive system might still required more than 1500 fusings on average OVERTIME, you will have way less complains than this pure luck system we have rightnow.

 View my post here for best way for GGG to handle the chore of trying to 6L a weapon/chest. My method would set a 4500 fusing ceiling but because the way it would work the odds of getting a 6L increase by 1/3rd by 1500 and 2/3rds by 3000 fusings used so it would be highly unlikely that the rng would be that bad that it would require 4500 fuses to get a 6L.

"

vio wrote:

to prevent inflation, like the monetary souvereign government which is spending first and collecting the money they spent back by taxing people, ggg has to collect back the orbs it let's the game spread among the player base.

the issue is a working "orb sink". having some deterministic outcome when linking sockets, the drop rate of fusings would have to be drastically reduced and ingame trader recipes adjusted.

No where in my posts I said that 6L should be easy or cheap or that it shouldn't act as currency sink. Currency is spent regardless if you do it with Vorici (current eterministic system) or just by spamming them into the item. The average cases don't matter, GGG can set up the average whatever they want and balance around it, but there must be a point where you get the 6L.

If you remove the tail cases the impact would be close to zero (because we are talking about the tail cases), and if some adjustment must be done in drop rates, so be it.

There is zero connection with system being deterministic or random and the balance between currency faucets and sinks. Both ways can be balanced independently based on the averages. The difference between one or other, is that one guarantees absolutely disgusting user experience for a part of the player base, and the other doesn't.

And I'm not even arguing for a completely deterministic system, more something with entropy (like evasion). So you can still be lucky or unlucky, but you can never be too unlucky (because at certain point you are guaranteed to get the result).

"

the worst case scenario is some players not having enough currency to buy a 6 link on poe.trade of spending those 1500 fuses.

1) The closer you get to the average or past the average, the less sense it makes for you individually to save up for guaranteed 6L with 1500 fuses (because is more likely you are going to get it)
2) When you start the process of linking it makes no sense, rationally, to go for Vorici (as the chance you will get one with substantially less orbs, is considerable).

Hence worst case scenario is that you are extremely unlucky, and end up broke after spending 3000+ fuses trying to link the item. Because never in that part of the process it makes sense to 'stop and save up for Vorici', never. The game just needs an anchor where at some point you are almost guaranteed to get the 6L. Something like what Pewzor or Arrowneous above are saying.

The problem is a lot of people don't really understand how statistics work... and think the current state is good design, and it's not, it's absolutely stupid and makes people stop playing.

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knac84 wrote:

If you remove the tail cases the impact would be close to zero (because we are talking about the tail cases), and if some adjustment must be done in drop rates, so be it.

No need for that, if the item had a fuse counter it would be trivial to tweak the chance to whatever you want. If the average was 1000 fuses, we could have, say, ten times lower 6L chance at 1 fuse, normal chance at 1000 spent and ten times better chance on 2000 fuses. At that point your chance to get a 6L would be 1 in 100 so getting it would be almost as easy as a 5L.

It doesn't really have to spit out a guaranteed 6L at 2k fuses if devs don't like it but the system from the previous example would heavily skew the results to median value, making 4k fuse streaks a statistical impossiblity. Hell, it could even be exponential, that would give more spread to mid-way cases and make edge cases even less likely.

What I notice in this thread is something I warned them about a few years ago, it's the 'buttered side' effect, you tend to remember bad streaks much longer and take good ones in stride as something you rightfully earned. That's what makes 6-linking experiences prevalently unfavorable, shifting results more towards average would have zero impact on economy but significantly improve the user experience.

Now, the problem would be adding one more stat to the item table, no idea what their database looks like so it's anyone's guess how much of a problem that would be.

I think your discussion is pointless as there's no way GGG would do something like that. First, they love their RNG, second, there's already a brute force solution for people who don't want to gamble. Yes, it's more expensive than the expected average but that's a nobrainer. If you want zero risk, you pay up. I think it's fair and square.

Not to mention there are various other ways to get a six-link: divination cards, tabula, buying whatever you want from another player.

IMO the six-link situation as a whole is in a good spot right now. It's still difficult and expensive but nowhere near what it was 2 years ago.

Perandus league was my first time playing PoE and tbh I'm having a blast so far. I"m really enjoying trying to complete the 36 challenges.. I've got a few more to go tho!

Then I ran into trying to 6L a chest armor.. well here is where all my fun has stopped.

I'm currently at 847 fusings trying to link this thing and I'm very very discouraged at this point in time for a couple reasons. (I did 5 link it 3 times for anybody curious)

As stated in this post already, the 1st fusing has the same chance as the 10114th fusing to do the job. Meaning that I may never link this thing before the league is over.

Second and most annoyingly I just decided to look on poe.trade and I could have simply bought an already 6L version of this armor for 808 fusings by trading the fusings for exalted orbs.

Thirdly as again already stated, starting to save 1500 fusings for Vorici is absolute stupidity considering the second complaint and that the league is coming to a close in a few weeks.

Had I stopped to think I would have went with poe.trade and been done with it, which I'm certain I will in any future league I participate in.. which makes Vorici totally obsolete and GGG should simply do something else with him.

Also It would seem that even attempting to 6L an item outside of "just for giggles" moments is simply not worth the effort.. Sure you could 6L it on your first try, but it just seems more logical to me to simply trade for it.