bit of pushback against comments chris made recently regarding the ex/div switch

Rant, or no rant, most of us should remember that "glorified scape goat" = "the economy" used by the Devs to justify their view regarding trading and thei inability of simply implementing their promised "asynchronous trading", not to mention an "auction house".

When Devs treat their "precious economy" like that, and don't fully grasp the total impact of their change, you need to ask yourself which system will be targeted next to be brought inline with "the Vision"?

And current Div/Ex swap should have made all players aware that everything IS CHANGEABLE - heck, even deletable in worst case - so ALL PROGRESSION since the game "got out of Beta" is now at risk based on "the Vision"...

It's either a matter of time until the Devs manage to "improve" it, or it's already "working as intended"...

And expecting Devs to "own it", while normal, is not the case at all when we all have seen Chris and the Devs stances of "we know best" even when that was not the case...

Alas, PoE still might get better, and I am still an optimistic idealistic "schumuck" for sticking with it for so long, but PoE's future could have been a lot brighter and might still be... It's simply up to the Devs to make their own minds and "own their decisions"...

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jsuslak313 wrote:

The CRAFTING BENCH (100% deterministic crafting) which only costs a few augs or alts or things that are WAY cheaper that every single player has access to is 99.9999% better than an exalt slam (except with min/max jewels).

The crafting bench can only add ONE mod...

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Yes, multi-mod is expensive BUT removing even the possibility of it in the future is arguably more expensive as you might need a totally new item. Also ruins trade value of the item.

Multi-mod is not expensive. It is completely out of reach...

Your mind-pattern is that of a rich player... The players for who crafing is an open thing, with lots of options costing (for you) a small amount of currency. That is not the reality for most players. For those, being now able to use Exalts as they're supposed to be used is a good thing.

Who cares that a (very) few ultra-rich people in Standard got affected... I'll tell you who... Those rich players, and not a soul otherwise...

I like the change and it makes loads of sense simply because exalt-slamming have more potential than divine-slamming

Previously nobody ever used exalts to slam outside metacraft simply because the exalt itself was worth too much and thus, you needed to get extremely lucky to make profit from a slam, exalts being cheaper lower that bad significantly and it dont feel stupid to slam a 4/5-affix item that i dont plan to metacraft to perfection, nor it feels particularly bad in the (likely) event that the new mod is crap. I actually got quite a few lucky results from slams that i would never consider before the swap. Also, metacrafting also became cheaper: since the harvest keep-prefix/suffix craft is gone, exalting is now central in making half of the item, slam-spam is painful as it is with metacraft mods demanding divines, having part of the process not involve currency costing 130c apiece is a small breath of fresh air

And as for the money comparison... its kinda funny because real money and poe currency both works in similar ways, but not in the way most understand: They are BOTH one moronic step away from becoming worthless! One dollar is always worth 100 cents, true, but what one cent or a dollar actually mean depends on inflation, and inflation is something that can change dramatically if someone in a high place do something stupid, or just not antecipated. At the end of the day, what gives money any meaning is trust: We trust the higher-ups are not gonna do anything (too) moronic, and by that trust, the stock market goes up or down, as reflection of how much the people with cash are trusting the guys in charge to not suck at their jobs. PoE currency is no different, we trust GGG to not nuke the market, hence we entertain our little fictional market, in the following days after the swap, the market went bananas as reflection of the loss of trust, but seeing the market seems stable for the time being, seems the average player is trusting GGG will not do another flip for the forseeable future

And yes, it sucks for us standard players, but lets be real: even if you had thousands of exalts, that just meant "dead" money. Like the real world equivalent of money pointlessly hoarded under the bed. Its smart to have some of it, but if you had a whole treasure, then its a strong sign you actually didnt needed it(or you would have traded it for gear...) and wasnt doing anything with it. Yeah, its loss of wealth and that sucks, no arguing that, but its ultimetly wealth that you wasnt using anyway. The pratical usage of exalts hasnt changed, just having tons of slams to metacraft already puts you far ahead most players

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Cyzax wrote:

The crafting bench can only add ONE mod...

Multi-mod is not expensive. It is completely out of reach...

Your mind-pattern is that of a rich player... The players for who crafing is an open thing, with lots of options costing (for you) a small amount of currency. That is not the reality for most players. For those, being now able to use Exalts as they're supposed to be used is a good thing.

I said I was done but...

That is absurd...

yes the crafting bench can only add 1 mod (see my examples). That is all I was talking about. The exalt can also only add ONE mod. I am talking about what that ONE mod being added can mean for an item.

Multi-mod is expensive, it is NOT completely out of reach. 2 divines is not completely out of reach for any player. I am not talking about metacrafting, which includes annuling and other shenanigans that require you to do multiple multimods. Just a single multimod allowing for 2 benchcrafts. A mirror is completely out of reach. Building a 10, 50, 100 divine build may be completely out of reach. Multi-mod is not, it is just expensive. And if you happen to find a nice item with 2 or even 3 useful t2/t1 rolls, it is the BETTER CHOICE for all players to simply benchcraft a mod for now, and if you happen to get lucky, multi-mod later. Rather than brick the whole thing for a tiny minuscule chance at something good.

Crafting IS AN OPEN THING. There are VERY few mods on the crafting bench that cost an exalt or higher. And the rolls you can get from the bench are pretty darn good. You are telling me using an exalt is CHEAPER than doing a craft that costs 4 alts or 3c or whatever? That is just incorrect. I am absolutely not looking at this from a rich perspective, I am looking at it from the exact opposite perspective: trying to get the MOST bang for your buck. Exalting an item is almost never the MOST cost-effective way to improve an item. It MIGHT be fun and rewarding, like Feike describes, but it is NOT cost effective for a player with little more than a handful of chaos and an exalt or two to their name. And it hinders progress later, requiring in most cases an entirely new replacement item without retaining any value of the previous item to at least recoup some losses.

There is a reason why it has been called a YOLO slam (or even a slam in general) since the freaking beta. It is NOT a good decision, and it almost never has been. Its what you do when you want to play the lottery.

Exalt function needs a total rework for it to be worth using, provided you are playing optimally and trying not to gamble. Either that or frankly they should be less rare than chaos orbs and drop throughout all the acts so players can fill ALL their rares without a care in the world. As it stands, they are still way too rare and are terrible to use so better to just sell them to the uber crafters who deal in 1000s of exalts and annuls.

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feike wrote:

Previously nobody ever used exalts to slam outside metacraft simply because the exalt itself was worth too much and thus, you needed to get extremely lucky to make profit from a slam, exalts being cheaper lower that bad significantly and it dont feel stupid to slam a 4/5-affix item that i dont plan to metacraft to perfection, nor it feels particularly bad in the (likely) event that the new mod is crap.

Yes it feels better, BUT this is an incredible over-simplification: The only reason exalts hold ANY value at all at this moment is because there are still some benchcrafts that use exalts, plus they are rare. Rarity does give a bit of intrinsic value to the item, even if the item itself has no use. the current value of an exalt in league is somewhere between 13-15c, and in standard its a bit more. In order for a slam to be worthwhile EVER it would need to have an average value of somewhere around 13-15c of increased value to the item over the course of many many many slams. This simply isn't the case.

Also, it didn't have much to do with rarity as to why people didn't slam items. They didn't do it because logically you get nothing for doing it. If GGG removed all bench crafts that use exalts, I can guarantee that the value of an exalt would be less than or MAYBE equal to 1c only because they hold rarity value, and still not because they hold slamming value. Slamming, even now that exalts are cheaper, is STILL not worth doing. It is the single riskiest, worst odds the game has to offer in all of its lottery systems (except perhaps mirror/t0 unique drop rates).

YES. Let's talk about this.

GGG i spent months (and seasons) to farm exalts and you decide one day that all my time spent on your product will be vanished with blink of an eye.

My question is GGG do you know what you are doing ? How long are you in gaming industries ?

It was a dick move, I didn't like it at all, so what does that mean now ? I'll spend another 12 months on your game and you will decide to cancel all my effort just because on day a dude wakes up and says "oh well let's change one of the most valuable currency in game!".

Guys guys.... What are you thinking about ? Do you even know what are you doing ? No you don't have a clue it seems.

Bad move GGG, it's not ethical, we spent there our most valuable currency on you, TIME.

Think about this.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

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feike wrote:

Previously nobody ever used exalts to slam outside metacraft simply because the exalt itself was worth too much and thus, you needed to get extremely lucky to make profit from a slam, exalts being cheaper lower that bad significantly and it dont feel stupid to slam a 4/5-affix item that i dont plan to metacraft to perfection, nor it feels particularly bad in the (likely) event that the new mod is crap.

Yes it feels better, BUT this is an incredible over-simplification: The only reason exalts hold ANY value at all at this moment is because there are still some benchcrafts that use exalts, plus they are rare. Rarity does give a bit of intrinsic value to the item, even if the item itself has no use. the current value of an exalt in league is somewhere between 13-15c, and in standard its a bit more. In order for a slam to be worthwhile EVER it would need to have an average value of somewhere around 13-15c of increased value to the item over the course of many many many slams. This simply isn't the case.

Also, it didn't have much to do with rarity as to why people didn't slam items. They didn't do it because logically you get nothing for doing it. If GGG removed all bench crafts that use exalts, I can guarantee that the value of an exalt would be less than or MAYBE equal to 1c only because they hold rarity value, and still not because they hold slamming value. Slamming, even now that exalts are cheaper, is STILL not worth doing. It is the single riskiest, worst odds the game has to offer in all of its lottery systems (except perhaps mirror/t0 unique drop rates).

Spoken like exalts have no use outside being material for a few crafts...
You even ever tried to craft anything? Exalts are currently THE way to craft the second half of a item after you are done with the affixes on one side. Unless you go for a leo slam every time you want to get another affix, even if its just fodder for ashlyn or for harvest remove-and-aug?

this conversation has never been about endgame crafting, nor will I turn it into that. The fact that the game has returned to its roots of ex/annul crafting doesn't really matter in the scope of this conversation. My specific issues were with regard to how the economy functions in PoE, and how exalt intended usage has aged terribly. Endgame crafting is an entirely separate conversation that only deals with the wealthy players.

TBH though, and it is partially my fault, this is no longer related to the topic of this thread. Exalt usage aside, it doesn't really have much connection with the OP which was about GGG playing economic god

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jsuslak313 wrote:

this conversation has never been about endgame crafting, nor will I turn it into that. The fact that the game has returned to its roots of ex/annul crafting doesn't really matter in the scope of this conversation. My specific issues were with regard to how the economy functions in PoE, and how exalt intended usage has aged terribly. Endgame crafting is an entirely separate conversation that only deals with the wealthy players.

TBH though, and it is partially my fault, this is no longer related to the topic of this thread. Exalt usage aside, it doesn't really have much connection with the OP which was about GGG playing economic god

YOU said the reason why exalts lost value was because its no longer used to place metacrafts, you cant talk about metacraft and dont bring high crafting to the table mate

I just pointed out its not true: Exalts are MORE useful now than they were on 3.17, for crafters, its significantly cheaper since the harvest nerf makes exalting non-optional if you dont want to settle with 2 mods from the table. For more casual players, its also better because it can be used to gamble on slams with little concern about losing significant trade chip

And as for slams not being worth on any item, its only not worth on 2 situations: if you have something with affixes on one side that are worth of protecting with a metacraft (that often means a pair of T2 and a T1 good affixes, minimum) or stuff with 3 good mods that can fit "can have multiple crafted", but even them: Itens that are worth spending 2 divines on but also cant be replaced with a 4/5-mod on the market are a rather narrow pool. Chances are, you can find something similar with a 4th mod that is equivalent or better than the table mods if you just fork the extra 2 divines. Stuff with triple good affixes and a fourth so-so are not terribly expensive, its not common to have stuff seriously worth going for triple-crafted
Anything that dont fit those 2 rather restrictive groups and have less than 5 mods is slam fodder

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feike wrote:

Exalts are MORE useful now than they were on 3.17

If that were actually true, they wouldn't be worth a lot less now than they were then.

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feike wrote:

For more casual players, its also better because it can be used to gamble on slams with little concern about losing significant trade chip

Why would a casual player gamble on an exalt slam that costs 10-15c and provides a completely random mod that is almost always going to be garbage? Unless they're in SSF (in which case they're probably not so casual a player), they're going to convert that exalt into chaos and then buy what they actually need, and probably for less than the combined cost of the exalt and the item you imagine they would've used it on.

Meanwhile, that same casual player has far fewer paths to acquiring divines than exalts, meaning they now have less access to divines than they used to have to exalts, making it far more difficult to build up wealth in a league. That in turn makes it far more difficult to acquire the gear they need through trade, meaning they're going to do worse and be farther behind at the same point in the league.

Even if none of the other balance changes since 3.17 had been made, the casual player would still be facing a far tougher time advancing through the game in 3.20; the far fewer and far less deterministic sources of divines compared to exalts means the "casual" player has far less trading value available to them now, which means they have less powerful characters, less ability to farm more lucrative content, and less access to that more lucrative content. In every respect the casual player is harmed by the change.

It's the not-so-casual players who not only already have plenty of other reliable currency-making strategies, but who also play enough to reliably get raw divine drops. Among the not-so-casual players, only those in standard were negatively impacted, due to the loss in value of their existing stash of exalts, but those who just play the temporary leagues not-so-casually are barely affected at all by the change.