The inconsistency and arbitrary value of different reward layers

Greetings!

In PoE, the players ability to customize and specifically target certain types of rewards is leaps and bounds ahead of its arpg competitors, and personally, is one of my favorite aspects of the game.

The system is far from perfect however, and the understanding of how to fully utilize some of the different reward layers to their fullest is a massive entry barrier for new players.

Allow me to elaborate on what i mean by reward layers and inconsistency. Although it can be argued that map modifiers (including special implicits and corruption modifiers) can by themselves be considered reward layers, this post centers specifically around 2 major reward layers:

Delirium Orbs
Incubators

(Scarabs can undoubtedly be considered another major layer, and while my focus here is on the other two, my argument can easily be extrapolated to include scarabs as well.)

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So, this league I am exclusively running 80% delirium cemetery/crimson temple/defiled cathedral with 4 x gilded scarabs and a close to 100% uptime on incubators, and have come to realize how seemingly random and arbitrary to path to maximize your divs per hour really is, specially in certain areas.

For example, Ornate Incubator is easily the most rewarding incubator (only tied with divinators incubator), with a divine orb dropping roughly every 2-3 full 'rotations'. On the other hand, when applied as a delirium orb (now called 'fine' instead of ornate) it has an absurdly low drop rate of anything rarer than an annul/ancient orb, in stark contrast its incubator 'cousin'.

Diviners delrium orbs is equally top tier as delirium orbs as they are incubators, but is actually tied with skittering delirium orb (scarabs), which in turn is a rather mediocre incubator.

These are just a few glaring examples. Though I have no problem with a certain amount of imbalance, it becomes difficult to learn the overall value-paradigm in PoE when it internally breaks its own logic like that across the different reward layers. Moreover, imbalances also exist within the respective reward layers themselves. For example, it would take damn near trippling the amount of oils or catalysts gotten from blighted/morphing incubators respectively in order for me to consider using them over ornate/diviners. And nothing can justify the absurd 10.5k kills required for foreboding incubator, even after the addition of fracturing shards.

I feel like GGG needs to make balance pass on incubators and delirium orbs, (both internally and in relation to one another) and ask themselves whether the current values actually makes sense.

What?

Incubators and Delirium orbs have nothing to do with each other. Why would you assume they'd be in any way similar or comparable?

You're saying the game is breaking it's own logic here, but it sounds to me like it's only breaking some nonsense logic you made up inside of your own head.

I'll admit that my point got a bit lost up there.

That being said, I'm well aware that incubators and delirium orbs have nothing to do with each other per se, but despite being mechanically different, they both at their core, represent self-imposed and targeted objectives that the player can choose to complete in order to receive a desired reward of their choosing (x enemies slain vs harder enemies slain).

My point was that some types of rewards are only attractive as one category but not the other. As in abysmal. If for example, you specifically want scarabs, using delirium orbs to achieve this is a very good idea, whilst incubators are very subpar (it takes very long compared to how few gilded/winged you actually get).

Meanwhile, if you are looking for currency, its actually the opposite. Ornate incubators are significantly stronger than their delirium orb counterparts (when considering other available options!), but both incubators and delirium orbs are both excellent for divination cards (in the form of stacked decks).
Why is this? Which internal logic governs that reasoning? I'm struggling to decipher the logic behind that, hence why i called it arbitrary.

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cavemandiary2 wrote:

Why is this? Which internal logic governs that reasoning? I'm struggling to decipher the logic behind that, hence why i called it arbitrary.

They behave very different by default. You'll get more delirium rewards per map than completed incubators but that's not all. Delirium adds monsters and exp, enables the unique bosses to spawn including their rewards, adds additional quantity to the map and has a different reward pool (e.g. currency rewards from delirium can drop other items with other weightings than incubators).

Or in other words: the logic behind it is that those two mechanics share nothing and simply cannot be compared. They fill different purposes and have 0 overlap.

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Scarletsword wrote:

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cavemandiary2 wrote:

Why is this? Which internal logic governs that reasoning? I'm struggling to decipher the logic behind that, hence why i called it arbitrary.

They behave very different by default. You'll get more delirium rewards per map than completed incubators but that's not all. Delirium adds monsters and exp, enables the unique bosses to spawn including their rewards, adds additional quantity to the map and has a different reward pool (e.g. currency rewards from delirium can drop other items with other weightings than incubators).

Or in other words: the logic behind it is that those two mechanics share nothing and simply cannot be compared. They fill different purposes and have 0 overlap.

While your argument started out promising, the binary conclusion at the end was pretty rushed and unimaginative.

Like i already mentioned, their core functionality are similar: they give a guaranteed monetary outcome if the player invests the required ressource (time is money, so to speak).

Minor differences aside, this is so blatantly obvious that i consider it pointless to debate otherwise, despite your claim of the opposite. At the risk of going off topic, lungs and gills also behave differently, even if their ultimate purpose is identical (oxygenating the blood =/= providing a targeted revenue stream). And while the minutia of their surface level differences are fascinating discussion, if you're a fish that just wants to breathe, is also unhelpful.

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cavemandiary2 wrote:

Like i already mentioned, their core functionality are similar: they give a guaranteed monetary outcome if the player invests the required ressource (time is money, so to speak).

This only applies to incubators. Delirium orbs however, contain access to bosses and directly interact with your maps. Also delirium orbs are scaleable and influenced by RNG (monster spawns) while incubators are consistant.

I do not disagree with that, but at the end of the day, I dont feel like this invalidates my point even the slightest.

In any case, i've repeated myself enough times already. Let this topic move forward rather than in circles, or simply let it die.

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cavemandiary2 wrote:

I do not disagree with that, but at the end of the day, I dont feel like this invalidates my point even the slightest.

In any case, i've repeated myself enough times already. Let this topic move forward rather than in circles, or simply let it die.

Could you maybe reiterate your point at this juncture? I noticed you said earlier it might be getting lost and I agree with that.

As best I can tell I agree with you that end game reward balance matters - in that sense incubators and deli orbs DO have something to do with each other as many of the things you jam into and onto your maps comes at an opportunity cost. I don't necessarily think that these things need to be perfectly balanced, just reasonably balanced. Part of the skill expression of this game is doing what you've done here - playing maps and deciding for yourself what you think is better. Maybe you did it by meticulously putting data into a spreadsheet, or maybe you went by feel. But either way that is a good feeling that this game gives - discovery, knowledge, improvement.

To go all the way back to the OP I did want to throw some water on this line:

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cavemandiary2 wrote:

the understanding of how to fully utilize some of the different reward layers to their fullest is a massive entry barrier for new players.

I'm not sure I can think of anything less impactful to new players then whether their atlas strat is giving them 3 divines per hour or 6. It takes so long to get to the point where that matters...like...if you're thinking in terms of the div/hr of your 80% deli map strat you're not a newbie anymore.

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innervation wrote:

...end game reward balance matters - in that sense incubators and deli orbs DO have something to do with each other as many of the things you jam into and onto your maps comes at an opportunity cost. I don't necessarily think that these things need to be perfectly balanced, just reasonably balanced.

Thanks, that was refreshingly constructive, and very much mirrors the exact point that i was trying to make.

As of right now, I do feel like the balance is really out of whack.

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innervation wrote:

I'm not sure I can think of anything less impactful to new players then whether their atlas strat is giving them 3 divines per hour or 6. It takes so long to get to the point where that matters...like...if you're thinking in terms of the div/hr of your 80% deli map strat you're not a newbie anymore.

You're right, and phrased that poorly. What I meant to say was that this imbalanced reward system isnt very intuitive or easily understood for players of intermediate level trying to reach expert levels. Hope that clears it up.