Exalted Orbs are worthless

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

I agree more with most of Feike's responses: especially with restructuring the "Price is a reflection of rarity and usefulness" equation. This is big and key to the argument. Rarity in-and-of itself has zero connection to usefulness. Just because an item is more rare doesn't mean it is automatically "better". And the economic equation is "Supply and Demand", which denotes price. Supply = rarity, demand = usefulness. These aren't interchangeable terms...

There may be a misunderstanding. With 'rarity' I meant the (fixed, known) farming cost (related to PoE "rarity" so I used that term) and not supply. "Price / rarity = usefulness" ~= "Price = Rarity * usefulness" Where is the difference? (Not trying to imply this is the correct formula.)

fixed farming cost is equivalent to rarity. They are both factors in the "supply" part of the equation. It can also be stated that the "fixed farming cost" is quite literally the exact same meaning as "rarity". Example Equation-ish: Fixed Farming Cost = availability (direct) + time (alternate ways to farm). If there are no alternate ways to find an item and its simply "rare", then the Farming Cost is directly equal to the item's rarity. But if there are alternate routes (cards), the "rarity" itself gets diluted, but its still part of the same equation.

As for your doctored equation, it makes no practical sense to divide price by rarity (supply) for the sake of this argument. Sure, by mathematical rules that is correct but the equation doesn't work that way because price isn't physically controlled in the same way rarity and usefulness is. Price HAS to be the outcome. No one is buying items simply to determine whether or not they are useful: people buy useful items.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

fixed farming cost is equivalent to rarity. They are both factors in the "supply" part of the equation. It can also be stated that the "fixed farming cost" is quite literally the exact same meaning as "rarity".

Not sure what you mean. I meant "rarity" := (known) farming cost.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

As for your doctored equation, it makes no practical sense to divide price by rarity (supply) for the sake of this argument. Sure, by mathematical rules that is correct but the equation doesn't work that way because price isn't physically controlled in the same way rarity and usefulness is. Price HAS to be the outcome.

I am interested in the usefulness. How do I get it? By applying math? That gives that equation. I dont understand why you are arguing against it.

I'm not arguing against usefulness. Usefulness is equivalent to demand. If there is a demand for an item, then it is useful. If there is not a demand for an item, it stands to reason that it is less useful.

Regarding rarity, I simply said it all comes back to "supply". You can't say "and NOT supply" when you are talking about rarity in any form. It's all under the umbrella of "supply" when we are talking about "value/price". We weren't actually disagreeing here, I was just adding more clarity into the actual economic equation!

The main reason your equation "If rarity is fixed (which is what I meant: how hard it is to farm etc) then the 2 statements are identical" is NOT correct is because that isn't how trade works. As an outsider looking in with all the data at your fingertips then, yes, this is technically true. But in-game, as I said in my previous post, you aren't the one determining usefulness by instigating trade. Usefulness is what MAKES trade possible, not the other way around.

This is why price reflects usefulness and rarity, but rarity itself does NOT reflect price, nor does usefulness. It's the unique combination of both that creates a trade price. It's sort of more like a chemical reaction than a mathematical equation: it works in one direction only from a practical standpoint.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

No one is buying items simply to determine whether or not they are useful: people buy useful items.

But Im not trying to model an exchange or some such thing. Im trying to calculate usefulness.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

The main reason your equation "If rarity is fixed (which is what I meant: how hard it is to farm etc) then the 2 statements are identical" is NOT correct is because that isn't how trade works. As an outsider looking in with all the data at your fingertips then, yes, this is technically true. But in-game, as I said in my previous post, you aren't the one determining usefulness by instigating trade. Usefulness is what MAKES trade possible, not the other way around.

Im not instigating trades. Im looking at past trades per poe.ninja. Whether there was Usefulness or Speculation in the beginning has no bearing on my looking - I dont care about it.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

This is why price reflects usefulness and rarity, but rarity itself does NOT reflect price, nor does usefulness. It's the unique combination of both that creates a trade price. It's sort of more like a chemical reaction than a mathematical equation: it works in one direction only from a practical standpoint.

You are implying modeling. Im not modeling. Im mathing. So repeating my question: I want the usefulness - how do I get it? And if you just dont like my "reflect" wording - I dont really want to argue wordings.

"

Zrevnur wrote:

And its still zero examples. And I dont mean "affix protection" but something which will remain on the final item or do you mean you can sometimes score a lucky hit with "affix protection"?

At this point you are just being blockheaded and immovable in your ignorance, i mentioned asilin 4, that is a rather generic step used for many crafts, if you want examples, just google any craft involving asilin or harvest annul-and-replace, talking about "affix protection" like its unrelated to final affixes is just straight up moronic, by your logic metamods dont even should make sense as they are obviously not "final"

"

Zrevnur wrote:

If you consider that change and its consequences as "no shockwaves" then your statement "Also just tampering with exalts drops would send shockwaves on the whole economy because craft costs would decrease a LOT, as lowering both slaming and metamoding costs would change craft costs dramatically." makes no sense? Tampering with drop rates to achieve certain crafting costs obviously has less "shockwaves" than exchanging Divines and Exalts to achieve certain crafting costs.

IDK what to even say... Its not hard to see that both quotes talk around how the swap was less significant than a drop rate tampering...

"

Zrevnur wrote:

I have no idea what you are trying to say: Tampering with drop rates impacts craft costs at most as much as the tampering which can be "significant" or not. Why would it matter if its "noticeable" or not?

If the drop rate is not noticeable, it would be too small to have impact, isnt it obvious?
You pulled from your hat this idea that the swap changed costs dramatically, but it already happened and the value of almost anything converted in chaos is virtually the same as before the swap

"

Zrevnur wrote:

What is your actual argument here? Mine was that Divines can easily be made valuable by reducing drop rates (and removing the recipe). And if they also want them to be useful in a spammy way they could have split the metamods into Divine and Exalt ones. There was no need to devalue the Exalted orb to achieve the goal "Make Divines valuable".

Mine is that yours is flawed. Divines werent shit because they were rare, they were shit because they had basically no use, just making them rarer woudnt fix that. That would just delegate them closer to sacred spot, a slot that almost might as well not even exist

"

Zrevnur wrote:

If rarity is fixed (which is what I meant: how hard it is to farm etc) then the 2 statements are identical.

The notion of fixed rarity defeats your point that they should have altered drop rates, you kno...
Also, removing rarity variation from your sentence basically turns into "price is reflective of usefullness", witch is also not the whole truth(on top of removing at least half of the meaning on it)

"

Zrevnur wrote:

All your talk about "noticeable" "breaking point" "restricted" etc suggests that maybe you dont understand min-maxing or math? Math doesnt care if you can "notice" it and it doesnt need to be "meaningful". DPS (etc) is ruled by math and not by whether you can "notice" it.

You are doing it wrong by spending currency aiming for damage difference that isnt noticeable. If you seriously cant grasp how and why a few thousands dps is irrelevant when the global picture have it on 6+ digits, youre clearly in no position to talk about not understanding math

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

However, I also agree with Zrevnur that I completely disagree with the "usefulness" of exalts in current PoE. Slamming outside of jewelcraft is NEVER a good decision, unless you are ready to sink thousands of exalts into the process. Most players are NOT sinking thousands of exalts on slams...A single exalt is essentially worthless to the average player, as there are so many other methods to fill out mods that work BETTER. If you have a 4-mod item, it is ALWAYS BETTER to benchcraft a single mod and LEAVE the item at 5 mods than to fill it out with exalt slams. Both from a trade value standpoint, but also a usefulness standpoint. Especially if you have an open prefix and suffix slot. The odds of getting total crap from the slam are incredibly high, but the ability to switch bench crafts at will between a prefix and a suffix depending on what you need is invaluable.

Additionally, with a 5-mod item, the bench provides much more useful and higher rolled choice mods for crafting than a single exalt could ever hope to match for the reasonable player. Sure, in the long run, thousands of exalts and annulling might result in a better end product....but there certainly aren't many players doing that.

The problem is that... well it dont make much sense to consider just the viewpoint from the big playerbase and ignore the crafters because, as much as how crafters are indeed a very tiny pool, if you think about it, they were the ONLY ones that really got affected by the change

If you review the patch notes: Neither exalts nor divines got any changes outside exalts being replaced for metacraft mods prices. That was literally the only change. And that was a change that only affects a mechanic that only that 1% interact with, for the whole remaining 99%, the only change is that now that 1% is paying attention to divines that previously were completely ignored

If you remove trade value from the equation, there was literally no change for that 99%. Heck, even considering trade value, for a large portion of the players, the change was basically nill: Now we deal in another currency, but speaking prices converted in chaos(wich is the coin most players really deal with), the swap barely impacted prices at all. The ones that really got the short end of the stick were players that focused on card-farming, and even then, it was just a matter of running diferent maps as theres many cards worth farming

From where i stand, i would say the whole thing is largely just a matter of perception: Previously we already were losing the coin flip every divine drop, but didnt feel bad becasue we simply werent aware of that. When Chris(unwisely) told us about the coin flip, suddenly exalts feels bad because we are now aware of the lost flip. Ignorance is bliss

"

feike wrote:

"

Zrevnur wrote:

And its still zero examples. And I dont mean "affix protection" but something which will remain on the final item or do you mean you can sometimes score a lucky hit with "affix protection"?

At this point you are just being blockheaded and immovable in your ignorance, i mentioned asilin 4, that is a rather generic step used for many crafts, if you want examples, just google any craft involving asilin or harvest annul-and-replace, talking about "affix protection" like its unrelated to final affixes is just straight up moronic, by your logic metamods dont even should make sense as they are obviously not "final"

If you cant come up with an example or dont want to - why dont you just say so?

"

feike wrote:

"

Zrevnur wrote:

If you consider that change and its consequences as "no shockwaves" then your statement "Also just tampering with exalts drops would send shockwaves on the whole economy because craft costs would decrease a LOT, as lowering both slaming and metamoding costs would change craft costs dramatically." makes no sense? Tampering with drop rates to achieve certain crafting costs obviously has less "shockwaves" than exchanging Divines and Exalts to achieve certain crafting costs.

IDK what to even say... Its not hard to see that both quotes talk around how the swap was less significant than a drop rate tampering...

How could you know the effects of a drop rate tampering resulting in similar crafting costs? What do you imagine those "more significant" effects to be?

"

feike wrote:

You pulled from your hat this idea that the swap changed costs dramatically,

I dont remember anything of the sort. Quote?

"

feike wrote:

"

Zrevnur wrote:

What is your actual argument here? Mine was that Divines can easily be made valuable by reducing drop rates (and removing the recipe). And if they also want them to be useful in a spammy way they could have split the metamods into Divine and Exalt ones. There was no need to devalue the Exalted orb to achieve the goal "Make Divines valuable".

Mine is that yours is flawed. Divines werent shit because they were rare, they were shit because they had basically no use, just making them rarer woudnt fix that. That would just delegate them closer to sacred spot, a slot that almost might as well not even exist

You blatantly ignored the version of making some metamod/s cost Divines and some Exalts. And if you would have been more clear instead of your "Good reason: Divines are not garbage." statement we could have skipped parts of this discussion.

"

feike wrote:

"

Zrevnur wrote:

If rarity is fixed (which is what I meant: how hard it is to farm etc) then the 2 statements are identical.

The notion of fixed rarity defeats your point that they should have altered drop rates, you kno...

I was referring to math with "fixed". That got nothing to do with altering drop rates or not. And Im not saying they "should" be altered anyway.

"

feike wrote:

Also, removing rarity variation from your sentence basically turns into "price is reflective of usefullness", witch is also not the whole truth(on top of removing at least half of the meaning on it)

My target was "low price, high rarity" => low usefulness. I need the rarity in there but it doesnt need to be flexible. Which kind of fits the game: Simplified GGG implicitly determines the farming cost per game design, this cant be altered by the market. The price is a result of the market, the usefulness is what I want.

"

feike wrote:

"

Zrevnur wrote:

All your talk about "noticeable" "breaking point" "restricted" etc suggests that maybe you dont understand min-maxing or math? Math doesnt care if you can "notice" it and it doesnt need to be "meaningful". DPS (etc) is ruled by math and not by whether you can "notice" it.

You are doing it wrong by spending currency aiming for damage difference that isnt noticeable. If you seriously cant grasp how and why a few thousands dps is irrelevant when the global picture have it on 6+ digits, youre clearly in no position to talk about not understanding math

So lets pick an example based on a build I planned. It was poison Artillery Ballista. Dont remember the details but I maybe had ~400 added damage not on bow. The rest then the bow: 98..149 .. 183..280 is the range for chaos damage on bow, min 140, max 214. So the difference between min and max rolls is 74 dam, overall DPS scales from 540..614. Lets assume I start at 550 and Divining can net 50% of that difference between min and max then I get 550 -> 587. Thats ~7% more DPS. Lets assume the expected cost is 2 Divines (didnt math). Then lets extrapolate: It takes a cost of ~22 Divines to double the DPS. If I already have expensive gear that is obviously well worth it.

Edit: Fixed math.

"

Zrevnur wrote:

If you cant come up with an example or dont want to - why dont you just say so?

*sigh* cant bother to google to fix own ignorance even pointed out what to look for...

Okay, pick any item that have all prefix/suffix done
To make the other half, for every process that dont allow eldrich orbs the next step is put cheap unrelated table mod and exalt at least once. If you want to aisling or harvest 4th affix, you exalt once and replace trash mod with protect metamod and go for it, old-school metamoding you exalt twice, if no good result, metamodprotect and scour/annul

"

Zrevnur wrote:

So lets pick an example based on a build I planned. It was poison Artillery Ballista. Dont remember the details but I maybe had ~400 added damage not on bow. The rest then the bow: 98..149 .. 183..280 is the range for chaos damage on bow, min 140, max 214. So the difference between min and max rolls is 74 dam, overall DPS scales from 540..614. Lets assume I start at 550 and Divining can net 50% of that difference between min and max then I get 550 -> 587. Thats ~7% more DPS. Lets assume the expected cost is 2 Divines (didnt math). Then lets extrapolate: It takes a cost of ~22 Divines to double the DPS. If I already have expensive gear that is obviously well worth it.

You speak like a 7% increase translated into a 7% increase in map clear

It dosnt, what matters is not exactly how much damage you do, but how many strikes it takes to kill stuff. Even if we take a 14% difference, its hard for such a difference to mean having to strike again to kill the mob, monsters where it would make serious difference are not numerous enough to justify going for that 14%
Basically, if you kill mobs in 1 blow, increasing dps is hardly gonna affect your speed, if you take 2, its still extremely unlikely a 14% increase would enable killing with 1, even if you have the damage treshold where sometines its 1 sometimes its 2, the difference is still hardly there as this situation will condition you to click twice. Yellow mobs in general are too inconsistent in their internal variation to make such a difference show

And theres the matter that gear almost always have more than one usefull affixes, rolling more than 1 affix increases divines usage almost exponentially(and for that matter, poison totem ballista isnt better off using triple elemental prefixes?)

I think they over-delivered on this change. A much subtler change would accomplish the same thing and didn't turn these currencies value upside down.

Simply swap the function of Exalted and Divine orb currency. As in, Exalted rerolls explocit mod values, Divine slams a new mod on a rare item. That's it.

This would preserve ex value and wouldn't require them to remove 6L -> div recipe or have them print divine div card sets.