PSA: Alt:Alch Ratio is 8:1!

Also understand that people WILL pay above market rates depending on the current needs.

Example: a 600ES chest normally sells for probably 2-3 exalt historically. If I really want a 600ES piece RIGHT NOW and I have the means to pay for it, nothing stops me to pay 4 or even 5 exalt. Am I being ripped off?

Example 2: I have 6 sockets and I absolutely WANT to link them all up TODAY. I need a tonne of fusings, so I can:
1) wait for enough people to trade me fusings at 4fusing:3alchemy ratio
2) immediately get more fusings using a 1fusing:1alchemy ratio
Anyone impatient and have the means to do so, will choose 2). Are they being ripped off?

This is an open market and rightfully being so - which means values FLUCTUATE depending on needs and situations. If you don't need Alchemies, then don't trade your Alterations. Simple as that.

I already addressed both your wall-of-text commentaries. This isn't a criticism on sellers. It's a PSA to buyers. It needs to be public information that the standard exchange rate is 8:1; how people decide to use that information is up to them.

@0nin : Your first post contradicts your statement. "Traders with integrity". Meh.

Personally:

Would I rather pay 20 alchs for 200 alterations and then buy 100 jewellers one by one and then buy 25 fusings, or...
Would I rather pay 20 alchs for 20 fusings and save myself about 4 minutes, assuming each orb takes 2 seconds to buy from the vendor?

Honestly, I'd rather save time. Getting those extra 40 alterations or 5 fusings or whatever doesn't take that long. If you have the time then go for it, but enjoy buying those fusings from the vendor oh so slowly. Not to mention you're probably doing this to 5 link something, so after about 100+, unless you're lucky, you're going to have spent a lot of time at the vendor.
You do have the advantage of doing fusings 1 by 1 and then possibly having alterations left over, too, but fusings are high in demand and people are going to buy them pretty fast.

This is also using the assumption that fusing is 1-1 with alch. It could be that 5 fusing = 4 alch, in which case alt:alch would be 10:1 without taking time into account.

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0nin wrote:

It's in the nature of humans to try to rip anyone off if you can get away with it. I'm not trying to guilt you into using proper exchange rates or anything. I'm just spreading the knowledge so people don't let themselves get ripped off.

The worst that could happen is that enough people actually take the 1:15 exchange rate for granted that it actually becomes the real exchange rate. That'd screw over jeweler, chromatic and fusing values, and might even backlash onto higher orbs as well.

I mean, just look at what happened to Exalts. From when I got into PoE until the end of CB the exchange was a solid 1:6, even during the last CB wipe. Now it's suddenly 1:5. How did that happen?

Exalts are easy to explain. 6:1 ratio was held in CLOSED beta, where people were pro-players with high-level characters, so they had "end-game" gear which was actually worth using exalt on. In CB, players are more casual, and GCPs are more useful to them (gems level up and stay with you through the game).

Ratios are a subject to change. But that does not mean I have to like people screaming their offers in chat. It gets between the actually valuable messages. I won't have anything against it if such "orb traders" had their own chat or something to post their offers.

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0nin wrote:

The worst that could happen is that enough people actually take the 1:15 exchange rate for granted that it actually becomes the real exchange rate.

How do you think the 1:1 fuse:alch ratio was made in the first place? Dev stated that this is the case, or perhaps people valued them roughly the same?

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I mean, just look at what happened to Exalts. From when I got into PoE until the end of CB the exchange was a solid 1:6, even during the last CB wipe. Now it's suddenly 1:5. How did that happen?

It happened because exalts are "useless" in early stages of this economy. People had no incentive to use them because gear worth exalting was almost non-existent.
So, exalts had less demand and more supply.

I personally believe exalts will rise in value, when people start crafting more (the demand of exalts will rise). This also just as well might not happen, because the ratio of end-game crafter vs. global play hours ( =exalt drops) is different in OB than it was in CB.
What i´m trying to say here is, that the economy is much less black and white than "exalt=6gcp"



Alch:fuse = 1:1 is a decent quideline, and that´s what your trying to pass on. That´s good, and i appreciate you trying to help new players by telling them that. It seems like a ripoff attempt when people post alch:alts 1:12 in trade chat. Because it´s that much more than the usual market value (wich i´d say is 1:7-10. 10 being a good price and 7 being cheap)

However those values will continue to change, as the game evolves. At some point we´ll probably see totally different rates in default and shorter term leagues. And this is just one of the aspects of this game that makes it very interesting.