The Economy

"

Zakaluka wrote:

1 simple reason why it's hard to trade:
...

1 simple reason why it should be hard to trade:
Market overflow and inflation

"

MadPharmacist wrote:

Poeple are like this. They take everything soooooo seriously, when they are just playing a game... and a game in beta, and with an upcoming wipe. Sigh.

It's like that. I found a very good 5 sockets armor yesterday and someone wanted it really badly. I gave it to him because he had nothing of value to trade, and he was really nice talking to. I just gave it to him. It's just a game. Not real life. :)

I wanted to buy a 5 sockets weapon from someone this morning, and the guy wanted 3 gemcutters lol. He was not really nice. I nver was able toconclude the ''transaction''.

In ''real life'', I'm a really ''tough'' business guy. But in a game I'm playing to relax, I often give very valuable items to people that are simply friendly.

I think some people are taking those games way too seriously. :)

I consider in-game economy a key part of the game and I play to make gains within the context of the game. If someone gave me a 5L item before I had even begun to make headway into overall net worth in the game it would have hurdled me over several instances of "HEY COOL WOOT WOOT DROP" and I would have missed out on enjoying the other items I would be using as I built up to earning my 5L.

My favorite parts of the D2 ladders were always the first few days where everyone was poor and each kill could net something worth picking up. Once the bots and dupers got rolling it always tanked the economy within a week and you couldn't even find interest in a decent item because it was not top notch.

I never had troubles with trading.

1) I have a simple rule, if I can't afford it I don't need it.
2) I allways managed to get the equip I needed by just playing a lot. Not allways the perfect ones, but sufficient ones.
3) I bought several tabs and I have to say that it made a HUGE difference in recepies collecting.

4) Because of #2 I give a ton of good stuff for free and sometimes, because people feel bad paying nothing in return, I get something in return.

5) Thanks to #4 I have been given a lot of stuff free.

6) There are always greedy people also. Ofthen those, who has it all, but asks for exalted for stuff they don't find use in, but which could make a great help to someone else.

7) Having a friend list of very nice people and play in party with them a lot, helps in getting very nice equipment easily. And works for everyone in such a group.

I only 'trade' with people on my friends' list, every single one of whom I've met either in-game or here. I give stuff away to random people, because, well, why not? But it is in my opinion rather naive to expect your idea of 'fair' trading in a game where the entire goal is for everyone to try to get better gear.

In such an environment, the only truly fair trades are those that mutually benefit both sides -- and I see it all happen all the time. That's the beauty of PoE's economy (which most definitely does exist): it maintains the concept of direct item trading but with a clever little 'soft currency' that has no concrete values but plenty of utility.

One of my favourite concepts from literature is that in More's Utopia, gold was used to weigh down slaves and was considered useless. Because it sort of is -- like any static unit of currency, gold has only as much value as it is designated; it is a 'representation' of value.

Orbs, on the other hand, have functionality. In any given moment, I might need an alchemy orb MUCH more than a Gemcutter's Prism, and at that time I will trade one for the other, whatever the 'market' might say. I won't feel like I'm being ripped off because I really want that alchemy orb. Simple example but it suffices.

Please do not level your complaints and quibbles regarding 'fair trading' at the economy or trading community at large. No one is ever obliged to respond to ANY of your chat advertisements, and as others have pointed out, a little salesmanship can go a long way. I personally ignore any list of linked named items longer than 3-4, because I just don't feel like sitting there mousing-over that many things. I'm either too busy chit-chatting away or (yes, this actually happens) playing.

I suggest you build a network of people you like trading with and make use of that friends list -- the status update feature is GREAT for both trading and making item requests.

I personally feel that the currency system is forced and discourages players from trying to trade items. Maybe this will be changed with further improvement to the trading system, but I kind of doubt it. I get that orbs are the main feature of this game, but it makes it hard to judge an items worth. Generally, I try to sell an item, someone will whisper asking how much, I tell them to offer, and the conversation ends there. No one can tell an items worth, really. It's more or less "what kind of orb are you looking for?"

I dont really have an answer, I'm just looking to get SOMETHING in exchange for an item and is useless to me, and useful for someone else.

Economy?

/facepalm


You cant have an economy in a roguelike loot based game, whose sole purpose and activity is the acquisition of loot.

Economy is like cheating. Thats why they didnt designed an "Economy".

Their economy is an ANTITHESIS of an economy. All the ways you can describe it... no standards of evaluation, no currency, no auctioning tools.

Its a good ilusion of playing a multiplayer game. The only thing it has is the persistant environment. But look around, there is no design to encourage any sort of economy whatsoever.

If devs could, they would make things not tradeable period, like some old room based browser game where progression is private and no time and effort or value can ever change hands.

Thats why you see "AAA" games designed with dozens of untradeable currencies and dozens of mechanics that somehow prevent trading of items.

There is no economy.


You can only say there is an economy when you can check ten thousand items all players in the server have for sale, objectivelly check the prices and decide wether to acquisition something or not at will in the most non intrusive way possible. But then people would see the game for what it really is, and there is nothing to it besides acquisition of power. Kill stuff, get random loot, equip loot, go kill more stuff.

Economy has no space in this cycle. It completelly usurps the time and effort involved in the main activity.

Thats why it never got designed. It got designed as in "how do we circumvent the problem".

Whatever "economy" you think you have in Path of Exile is just the minimum necessary just so the lack of it wouldnt be such a big negative aspect of it. So they kept it at a minimum just to say that you can "trade stuff".

But their goal since beggining IS NOT FOR PEOPLE'S TIME AND EFFORT TO BE SHARED IN THE OBJECTIVE OF ACQUISITION OF LOOT/POWER. Because this defeats the purpose of their game.

This is not a new subject. Now you guys know.


How many hours do you ECONOMIZE by having an economy?
All the stupid worthless shit? You turn into something of value. Then you go and buy something that you would never drop unless you spent a hundred hours yourself.

If there was an economy, you could play it, AND ACQUIRE POWER/VALUE AT A INSANELLY SUPERIOR PACE and be more effective than actually killing things yourself to get the stuff yourself.

Because in an ECONOMY, all the ten thousand players time and effort are working collectivelly for each and every player. This makes it anyone participating on the ECONOMY bypass the whole point of the game.

The question is.
Once you know the game is purposefully boycotting a standard element of any online game, wich is the ECONOMY, do you still care about playing it "single player" ? i.e. use 99% of the stuff you dropped yourself, and dont get any value out of 99% of the stuff you dropped yourself (by vendoring/crafting). So that the overall pace of progression and acquisition of powerfull gear is just a fraction of what it could be, what is expected to be from any multiplayer game at this time and age.

...Every comment I come up with falls short of how Interesting's post is affecting my head. Well done.