Solving "Gold has no value" in POE2

Settlers was an amazing experiment. where gold sink was really good. but i have criticisms AGAINST settlers.

1. Heavily encourages MF. More MF = more gold. Since MF is very desirable, players can feel a strong sense of FOMO and would feel forced to go meta/use a hyper efficient build.

2. Mobile like gold sinks. It is ADDICTIVE which can be a double sided blade. On one hand i like how much i am rewarded for my efforts. on another i feel a strong sense of FOMO for WASTING TIME not earning gold.

3. Gold as time based maintenance fees. Get rid of it. We already struggle to keep the lights on IRL, i dont want to feel depressed seeing my town go dark. i play games for escapism, not the harsh reality of employment.

4. Losing hirelings is just a total feelsbad moment. In fact remove the concept of micromanaging hirelings altogether. the cost of sending a shipment/ maprunning should allow players to simply pay a flat sum and not worry about having to get high level hirelings and ensure they remain in the squad. having to worry about loss is an extra level of tedium.

But on the flip side there are lessons to be learnt

1. Gold being used for automated trade as a deterrent for market manipulation. Bots cannot sell stuff if they dont have gold. players who want to manipulate the market have to at the very least need gold as an extra barrier to do so. it is a GOOD thing

2. Gold needs to be "untradable". Gold works very well as a trade tax BECAUSE you cant give players gold easily. if you want to bot, you still need to get gold on your bot account. that's not the case in POE2 where selling off a few waystones can boost up your gold somewhat.

3. Players want to spend gold if its rewarding. personally speaking i spent a lot of time farming gold so that my farmers can make goods for shipments which gave me juicy loot in return. being able to use gold to "run maps" is fun too. but in my entire playthru not once did i "want" to gamble using gold due to how famished i was spending the gold. Goldsink need to be so good that players are encouraged to SPEND more rather than hoard.

- This is the easiest way to spend gold. we already have automated currency trade. we just need this extra feature enabled.
- Items need to have their value listed. All ID'd items will have their gold value listed for vendoring. this value must be determined by GGG factoring the item level, base type, number of affixes, corruptions, affix tiers as well as affix roll (high or low etc) and other factors.
- This brings A LOT of value to all players. For starters, newer players now will have a gauge to value if an item is worth something or not without relying on other players. This also extends to the use of awakened poe. I personally detest using awakened poe tho i know how valuable it is as a trading tool. Also for poorer players, it can help them easily identify valuable loot to vendor if they are in need of gold.
- The gold cost of trading such items could be set 10-1000 times the npc vendor gold value or whatever GGG deems fit. in fact i think the gold fees for currency trading is too low and could be made more expensive.

- If theres ever the best time to spend gold, cadibro is your dude. he was replaced with the expedition folks and the nameless seer but its about time he made a comeback.
- GGG mentioned about how they want to give players surprises. having him randomly appear is a good way for players to feel excited while mapping. What has he got this time? Does he want to sell things cheap or stupidly overpriced? its all up to RNG!
- Also he should get an upgrade where he offers an inventory full of items (similar to ritual altars) rather than just 1 item.
- To prevent frustration players could pay a fee to lock valuable items so they can buy from him later. the total amount of item locks is determined by GGG. and they could differentiate it from ritual altars by making the "locking fee" a set price and not DECREASE the price of the item. so if the item is sold at 100k gold, and if the locking price is 1k, even if the player kept locking it 100 times, the item will still be sold at 100K.

- Sometimes i say stuff like "GGG should learn from LE", sometimes i forget how symbiotic diablolikes are nowadays. The concept of CoF in LE (SSF friendly mechanic) actually borrows a concept that GGG originally introduced, which was prophecies. In LE players could buy prophecies which are more of "buy your own side missions" where they choose a mission and they get to see the rewards BEFORE even accepting the mission. Its actually an iteration of Navali's prophecy.
- Instead of using silver coins use gold instead.
- Also give her something of an Ultimatum treatment. Don't just give us 1 random prophecy. Give us a choice of prophecies that CLEARLY lists the task and reward before accepting. choosing a prophecy requires gold.
- Also give us the ability to reroll the choice available maybe up to 3 times but each reroll costs increasing amounts of gold.
- Players can "keep" 3-5 prophecies concurrently or however many GGG decides to give. Removing prophecies can be free or require gold too.

- The lightless harbour is Rog on steroids. how it works is, its a dungeon that by the end of the dungeon, you are given a crafting table that works like how Rog would modify your items but with exorbant amounts of gold. How much? 100k is just the surface. it can go up crazy amounts as players would be greedy and want to keep crafting.
- One difference between Rog and lightless harbour is Rog only give 2 options. Do you want me to do this or do you want me to stop? The key draw to lightless harbour is you get to choose to SKIP a crafts that you dont want. but doing so costs gold too. It is not uncommon for players to go BROKE just attempting 1 craft. the results of the craft are usually quite powerful tho.

- GGG's implementation of the atlas in POE1 was a godsend. POE2's atlas tree is better in the sense that each mechanic has its own tree and to improve on that particular tree you need to run said content. However, i would say POE2's "base atlas" for regular mapping is TOO restrictive.
- Everyone "wants" more drops, everyone wants more monsters, everyone wants waystones to drop at a higher tier (t15 preferably). It feels like everyone would end up taking similar nodes.
- How does this tie into Wolcen? Its how wolcen gives players an end game "base level upgrade". When players finish the campaign, the player is given a town akin to settlers. towns can be upgraded, buildings can be built. in fact i PREFER wolcen's town building over settlers. so how does this town system work? lets say you build a bank. on completion the bank grants 10% INCREASED GOLD DROPS. globally. essentially its an "atlas buff".
- How different is the implementation against our current atlas tree and settlers town? POE2's current way to obtain atlas passives is imho abit "dull"/jarring. its feels just "an excuse" to give players atlas passives. in Wolcen, in order to build buildings you need not only GOLD, you need "time". unlike settlers which uses REAL time. in wolcen time passes by players doing maps. the same can be implemented in POE2. buildings can take "5 days to build/upgrade". completing a tier1 map could equate to 1 day passing and completing a tier 3 map could equate to 3 days passing.
- This allows weaker players to progress albeit slower and requiring more effort while better players can unlock better upgrades faster.
- Buildings have tiers which can be upgraded so for the bank example, it could go up to level 5 given players 200% gold drops? but could have huge incremental gold costs.
- Wolcen's town also has an intersect with settlers as some buildings can include a something similar to settler's shipping system. in wolcen you can actually build a building (forgot what) to send scouts to look specific loot such as weapons/currency etc. all requiring "time" and gold to finance such efforts. similar to settlers, it can be upgraded to allow for more teams to be sent out, better quality teams which cost more gold to employ, reducing cost of "expeditions", reducing time spent for an "expedition". etc.
- Personally speaking this reduces/eliminates the FOMO i got when playing settlers as time is measured in EFFORT i put into mapping rather than IRL time. I wont feel like i m wasting my time for not earning gold every single moment but instead i feel anticipation for running more maps.
- Theres tons GGG can expand on this town concept as a gold sink and it can exist parallel to the atlas passive tree for additional bonuses.

- This might not be a popular suggestion but salvaging items can incur a service fee which introduces a gold cost. Similarly this can apply to the reforging too.
- Speaking of reforging, Waystones can now be REROLLED using gold. players are free to use the regular crafting materials to roll map mods but if they accidentally get mods that are "too dangerous" a 1-10k gold fee could be a good amount to charge the player to "scour" the map or even act as a Scour + POE1 chance orb the map.
- It could also serve as an alternate on death penalty, where players can re-enter a map to continue where they left off but it costs gold. Map bosses would be reset in such a case to prevent cheesing.

- Gold needs to be "not tradable". If an item is traded between players, the gold value should be retained but should have a mark indicating that if vendorer it would give 0 gold.
- Since its "easy" to earn gold, automated trading needs to be expensive to curb manipulation/botting.