Unbalanced Gold Cost (Settlers), does GGG expect no lifers only??

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

"For No-Lifers Only?" Yeah, Not Quite.
Let’s just stop pretending.

Yea, lets stop pretending. Author is exaggerated about 18h per day, but you also exaggerated in other side by saying like after few maps we are "swimming in gold for days".

My current setup costs 16.5k gold/h. Most of workers t3, t4, only 20% - t5.
I hired only most cost efficient ones, specially write math function for this. I do not run mappers! And still it requires 400k gold per day.

Also i run 8 mod corrupted maps, with no special gold setup wich gives me 15k on average for 7min. If i add some things like blight/magic kalguur scarab/alva champions i can get another 10-15k on top, but lets skip it. So i need 26 maps to get 400k gold => 3 hours of gameplay.

Personally i think it's quite ok. But pls stop saying that average player are swimming in gold with no efforts.

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Orbaal#0435 wrote:

...there is no point in hiring more than 1 miner and 1 smelter total. This alone reduces your payroll significantly and makes the town far more manageable

This is not true. Miners and smelters are cheapest ones. In my example above 5 miners and 6 smelters costs only 2k out of 16.5k

Still pretty much agree with Jedi on all accounts.


I think that trying to interpret the developer actions while ignoring their stated reasons for it is just a bit disingenuous. Gold cost at Faustus is friction just like the effort involved in using the trade site is friction. They explicitly said multiple times that friction is an attempt to keep inflation from ballooning too fast and they've never, to my knowledge, said you shouldn't be allowed to flip or craft as a primary way of inactive with the game. To their point, we have already seen how Faustus, even with the gold friction, absolutely does accelerate inflation (watch div prices in both games, prices change over hoursinstead of days now. So they have a valid concern that they've explicitly addressed, but never said crafting shouldn't be a viable way to advance in the economy.

For the record I'm not using Kingsmarch literally at all. My gold costs to craft are too high, and going to the trade site instead of Faustus often cuts into my profit margins enough to make various crafts less viable. It's genuinely not hard for me to spend a couple million gold in a day of crafting.

Like I said, I can still pretty much do that and run some maps every now and then and it's not a big deal. I'm a little concerned that won't be true in the future, but that remains to be seen. In the immediate I'm more concerned that this extra friction actual hurts the average players more, and bot/RMT farms significantly less. Since they can coordinate and orchestrate multiple people they can swap into gold rotations with significantly less friction than I can as an individual. So your average player doing average or somewhat juiced maps, is gonna spend time running something like 20 maps to get the same amount of gold as the bot army gets running one map with those gold frogs. Of course I can also join a gold rota, but that does involve more friction for me still than the farm. Overall I'm concerned the more friction they add, the more it actually benefits the bot farms over the average player. Though I recognize and agree with their concern of frictionless trading meaning everything except the very best gear becomes basically worthless. Which is a pattern we all are already familiar with if you pay attention to the price of 6L day 1 vs week 2 or triple res rings etc.



I also think it's funny Jedi was harassed for solutions when the devs themselves have repeatedly said they basically don't care about player solutions. Players are good at identifying problems, it's their job to come up with solutions. They say some variant of that pretty frequently.

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

I also think it's funny Jedi was harassed for solutions when the devs themselves have repeatedly said they basically don't care about player solutions. Players are good at identifying problems, it's their job to come up with solutions. They say some variant of that pretty frequently.

QFE. Makes one wonder what is the point of having most of these sub-forums if GGG will just refuse to address many of the inherent problems with the game.

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shardklaw#0080 wrote:

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

I also think it's funny Jedi was harassed for solutions when the devs themselves have repeatedly said they basically don't care about player solutions. Players are good at identifying problems, it's their job to come up with solutions. They say some variant of that pretty frequently.

QFE. Makes one wonder what is the point of having most of these sub-forums if GGG will just refuse to address many of the inherent problems with the game.

That's not what I said, nor true at all. They listen to the problems that people raise here and on Reddit and other social media all they time - though they have stated many times that they prefer very concise feedback over lengthy manifestos. They have a team that explicitly gathers that data for them. Then they look at it through the lens of all the other data available to them to do their best to identify what the actual problem is and how to fix it.

They just come up with the solutions themselves; they do actively want people to provide feedback when something feels wrong. For all my annoyances at the company lately, they do listen to feedback and try to provide solutions - even if some of us don't agree that they're the best solutions. We just gotta remember that people of the forums and Reddit are usually just a very vocal minority.

I think everyone in this thread is sort of missing the plot here.

The Kalgur mechanic allows players to conjure enormous amounts of currency from thin air, for as long as it is fueled with gold.

Would any of you actually want to play a version of PoE where this infinite inflation engine could operate continuously for 30 minutes of work per day? Because I'm pretty sure at that point the optimal way to play the game is to have ten different accounts that you rotate between, and anyone not doing that is getting priced out of the entire economy.

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felix0808#2550 wrote:

Personally i think it's quite ok. But pls stop saying that average player are swimming in gold with no efforts.

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This is not true. Miners and smelters are cheapest ones. In my example above 5 miners and 6 smelters costs only 2k out of 16.5k

No one is saying the average players are swimming in gold. They are saying you have ENOUGH gold. 3 hours of gameplay to run Kalguur for an entire day.....is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And if you actually focused on gold? You could get 50-70k per map easy, cutting that 3 hours down to 1 or even less.


As for Orbaal's statement, he is 100% right. You don't need ore or bars for kalguur beyond the early to mid game. Why would you waste "precious" gold fees on more? Yes they are cheap workers, but the difference between running 1 lvl 1 of each and 5-6 higher level (or even all lvl 1) of each is like 10-20x more gold. You need to think about waste. And payoff. That's the point of kalguur. Maximizing your gold usage vs. expected returns.

And in the time it takes to get the "required" crops and dust with higher level workers, you don't NEED the ore completed any faster than that. You are simply pissing away gold and time.

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felix0808#2550 wrote:

Yea, lets stop pretending. Author is exaggerated about 18h per day, but you also exaggerated in other side by saying like after few maps we are "swimming in gold for days".

While I agree the “18 hours a day” claim is clearly hyperbolic, let’s not pretend the opposing point, that you can be "swimming in gold for days" after a few maps is some wild exaggeration either.

Gold farming in the current state of the game is extremely efficient. With just 10–12 maps in an hour or two, it’s entirely normal to walk away with over a million gold. That’s not a theoretical ceiling, it’s routine for players who know what they’re doing. Even using a generous consumption rate of 20k gold per hour, you’re looking at a daily burn of 480k, which is already overstated for most players.

More realistically, players will experience downtime, map runners run out of maps, ships return and sit idle on the shore, disenchanters run out of work, yada yada. All of this naturally reduces actual gold consumption. And if you’re one of the rare few who’s dedicated enough to keep every single system running at full capacity 24/7 with no downtime, then you're also likely someone who’s well aware of just how easy it is to sustain, and even exceed, the “bare minimum” 16.5k/hour gold cost without breaking a sweat.

And let’s be clear, the 1 million gold/session example is conservative. There are multiple gold farming strategies out there that blow past that, even with modest builds. You don’t need some multi-Mirror, full-juiced meta setup to farm obscene amounts of gold. Many of the most efficient methods out there are accessible with mid-range investment, and they scale beautifully with just a bit of planning.

So no, it’s not remotely exaggerated to say a few focused map sessions can fund days of gameplay. That’s simply how effective and forgiving the current gold economy is for players who engage with it even moderately well to the point that 2-3h can fund your average 16.5k Kingsmarch for days.

^to add to that: kingsmarch, much like any other strategy, requires a plan. If you want to run 8-mod corrupted maps with a specific kind of juice....you need to actually get that juice somehow right? Same with Kingsmarch: to run it 24/7 you need to get that "juice" somehow. It isn't just going to happen.

I don't understand this whole mentality that we should be "entitled" to maximize gold costs without any sort of specialized strategy. It all boils down to this misunderstanding of the developer's quote of "normal gameplay will yield enough gold". It absolutely does.....NORMAL gold usage. But not maximized gold usage.


If you are running maps with no juice, you can sustain that kind of play with zero effort. Hardly even anything special in your atlas tree. But if you want to implement any kind of juicing strategy and/or specialized play which pushes a mechanic beyond the basic level....then you need to focus on it. Otherwise, you run out of resources faster than you gather them. That is standard gameplay 101.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Gold farming in the current state of the game is extremely efficient. With just 10–12 maps in an hour or two, it’s entirely normal to walk away with over a million gold...

And let’s be clear, the 1 million gold/session example is conservative. There are multiple gold farming strategies out there...

Yes, you can do 100k per map, but it requires buying scarabs on at least 100c/map which scales to multiple divines depending on strat. You can buy gold service, 2kk gold for 10 div. But those numbers are pretty big. Personally i don't want such expenses. Also i don't use 500+ rarity merc, maybe that's my problem. Right now i using budget gold optimized strat, which gives me 30k per map, which is far lower than your "conservative" 100k per map.

Also if i say 3h, it means 3h spending on only running maps, but you also spend some time on trading and other things. So realistically it 4h+. But i am not a 24/7 gamer, and 4h is almost all time, that i can spend.

To sum it up: maybe some players are "swimming in gold", but for me it isn't true.

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felix0808#2550 wrote:

To sum it up: maybe some players are "swimming in gold", but for me it isn't true.

you get out what you put in......higher investment means higher returns. Always. That investment can be time, money, or both.

That doesn't make the entire system imbalanced, it means that you personally need to adjust your expectations based on your own investment and capabilities.

The game is balanced around MANY people, not just 1.


It's natural for us to only consider how things in this game affect OUR gameplay and cry foul. But its imperative to digest the broader picture. Especially if you make the choice to post on a public forum where your ideas WILL be torn down to determine their actual, functional validity in the broader picture.

Unlike what previous folks seem to think regarding the above statement, its not about "you must come up with solutions"......its about formulating a well-crafted feedback argument in the first place. Otherwise, its merely an emotional response with no substance. And when its emotional and shallow from the very beginning, that's when misunderstandings, attacks, and tangents happen.


As an example: think about what details are entirely missing from the OP in this thread. He makes a broad claim that gold is balanced around "no-lifers". But how is HE interacting with Kingsmarch? Is he trying to run a full set of lvl 5 workers all the time, while ALSO recognizing that he is only bringing in 500k gold in 2 weeks of play? Has he even tried using less workers or lower levels at a time? Stopping the mapping workers? Sending smaller shipments, more frequently? All things that YOU can do based on YOUR gold income and still make profits? Or is he trying to match his Kingsmarch to someone else's Kingsmarch: someone else who may be playing 10 hours a day, doing a dedicated gold farm, or other things to fund it? There is a disconnect in knowledge.


In all these threads, you have MORE people telling you that a dedicated gold farm runs kingsmarch 24/7 practically maxed with little to no issues than people complaining the opposite. Because they have decided they WANT that out of kingsmarch and make it happen. You CAN get million+ gold per hour completely on your own. Per hour....that is not a lot of time. I wouldn't even consider that being a "no-lifer"....that is standard PoE. And its rather easy to do. But if YOU decide NOT to invest like that.....don't expect the same returns or uptime. It's as simple as that.