Why do the devs still insist on using this convoluted currency system?

Literally. What?

/Thread

Actually, PoE has its own "gold" - it's Exalted Orbs/Chaos orbs. In most trades, those 2 currencies are used. Others "currencies" are usualy used for crafting only, not for performing transactions between players. It's GGG who called all those items "currency", but in fact, on;y chaos/exalted are REAL currency now.

As it was said many times, PoE has currency sinks. But all multiplayer games try doing the same! PoE has quite a success in that, though. But this success can be done with "classic" gold too.

"

MortalKombat3 wrote:

Actually, PoE has its own "gold" - it's Exalted Orbs/Chaos orbs. In most trades, those 2 currencies are used. Others "currencies" are usualy used for crafting only, not for performing transactions between players. It's GGG who called all those items "currency", but in fact, on;y chaos/exalted are REAL currency now.

As it was said many times, PoE has currency sinks. But all multiplayer games try doing the same! PoE has quite a success in that, though. But this success can be done with "classic" gold too.

What ARPG game has ever used gold successfully, especially in an online echo system?

"

What ARPG game has ever used gold successfully, especially in an online echo system?

Well you can make an easy assumption to compare gold to currency.

Gold could drop just as currencies do. You could even give out extra gold for selling specific item combos. You also could make crafting possible by paying specific gold amounts for it so there actually is only difference:

Gold is pretty much fixed. Currency is not. Gold would have set values and the Alchemy effect would always cost a set price maybe 1/3 of the chaos effect. With currency items the exchange rate of Alchemy and Chaos Orbs can vary (sometimes within the boundary set by ingame exchange rates). And this makes the system a lot better. Yes storing orbs is more annoying but that does not outweight the advantages of that flexible system.

"

PleiadesBlackstar wrote:

"

Rafein wrote:

Not really what would be a better system

A gold/credit based economy would have runaway inflation, as there is nothing for it other than buying items. It woulds be like removing the uses of "currency" alterations would just be "coins" with no use, they would lose value quickly over time.

With it in it's current form, there are constant sinks, they keep inflation in check. Rerolling rares/maps, crafting, uptrading of currency through masters, these are all sinks that keep the economy from being inflated.

A gold/credit economy would be more problematic than the current PoE economy.

To be fair, it isn't enough. It is good enough for temp leagues sure but as somebody who cares about standard as well, standard specifically needs some massive item and currency sinks on top of what is already present. However, if PoE followed the gold standard to this point in its lifespan, standard prices would be an absolute nightmare.

1. A permanent league needs gear sinks to maintain economic viability long-term. I've advocated, and continue to advocate, the abolishment of an XP-based death penalty for non-HC, to be replaced with a "lose durability on gear" penalty. The catch would be that durability cannot be repaired. The trick would be tuning the penalty to be neither too harsh nor too lenient by adjusting max durability on items.

Chances of that happening? Virtually zero. It'd be too late now, anyway. Best saved for another game.

2. As far as currency sinks go, Standard breaks its own sinks with Mirrors. Mirrors should confer the Mirrored status to BOTH duplicate and original (or, if previous suggestion implemented, cause durability loss). I think Mirrors should exist to give some motivation to actually use currency orbs on items, but the current effect is overly monopolistic/powerful.

Chances of this happening? Low, but within the realm of the feasible.

i once had a nice idea about how to solve the inflation problem:

- make all orbs to have a chance to apply their effect
- chance starts at 100 when being looted and gets lower over time in steps of 20 until 60% or 40% (or let them degrade to zero and disappear)

results:
- higher drop rates possible
- more focus on items and crafting
- no long term item price inflation
- most effective currency sink ever
- the real long term value would be in crafted gear

and, yeah, people hated that idea for obvious reasons.

I have 0 idea why people think they can "solve" inflation in an open market system.

You can't, countless people have tried in reality and the best you can do is reduce inflation to a crawl in the most optimal system. But there will still be inflation.

Also they have a "convoluted" currency system because it's more interesting then just straight up gold dropping. I would say it's a plus they tried a little bit harder than a random meaningless numerical number with a arbitrary value.

You can dislike it's more complicated but saying it's worst because gold is more simple, that's like saying why do they have a complicated skill tree instead of giving your character stats automatically.

"

RagnarokChu wrote:

I have 0 idea why people think they can "solve" inflation in an open market system.

You can't, countless people have tried in reality and the best you can do is reduce inflation to a crawl in the most optimal system. But there will still be inflation.

Also they have a "convoluted" currency system because it's more interesting then just straight up gold dropping. I would say it's a plus they tried a little bit harder than a random meaningless numerical number with a arbitrary value.

You can dislike it's more complicated but saying it's worst because gold is more simple, that's like saying why do they have a complicated skill tree instead of giving your character stats automatically.

We aren't trying to solve it, we mostly would just like to see an attempt to slow down even slightly. If GGG did so we wouldn't feel like they give 0 shits about their standard players who are a decent chunk of the player base. Instead, standard has been nothing but a dumping ground for all these years which encourages more and more orbs to equal higher value orbs and/or more orbs in general to afford stuff. What was an average 1c item you are now looking at like 4-5c per item because the minimum value of an item that is worth keeping to sell goes up.

"

vio wrote:

- chance starts at 100 when being looted and gets lower over time in steps of 20 until 60% or 40% (or let them degrade to zero and disappear)

That sounds like a programmer's nightmare, since each individual currency unit would need to store all this extra information in its state. Not to mention that its gonna make trading super complicated, since you're essentially sub-categorizing each currency type into 4-5 subtypes. Also, how would they stack in stash because now they are different types of the same currency?

Edit: What you're suggesting is something like the durability system of D2, which did not work very well imo

"

stalkingjackal wrote:

"

vio wrote:

- chance starts at 100 when being looted and gets lower over time in steps of 20 until 60% or 40% (or let them degrade to zero and disappear)

That sounds like a programmer's nightmare, since each individual currency unit would need to store all this extra information in its state. Not to mention that its gonna make trading super complicated, since you're essentially sub-categorizing each currency type into 4-5 subtypes. Also, how would they stack in stash because now they are different types of the same currency?

Edit: What you're suggesting is something like the durability system of D2, which did not work very well imo

i know, it's crap. and who wants to play complicated games anyway ...