GGG: Is the Orb of Alchemy vendor recipe working as intended?
" I disagree that four tabs is a lot for item matching. You can easily fill up several times that amount - I had to make around 20 characters for keeping rares with the same name before the last wipe, and that was only for chest armors and items with the same name as chest armors. Yes, I actually hit the character limit when I tried this! Imagine someone who did the same for every item type, not just chest armors! The number of combinations is not insurmountably large, but large enough that you need a *lot* more room than any other application of storage space that I can think of. This is because the optimal strategy is keeping up to 2 of each item, so that you will average about 3 sold items per regal orb in the long run. " Up to a point, convenience is convenience. But without tabs, it will take you so long to manage everything that it will be faster to just trade for the chaos/regal orbs instead of trying to save up items for them. This is a super-extreme case of the "time is money" principle - the amount of time you save is literally the difference between the activity being much more or much less profitable than just playing the game normally. With 20 tabs, you'll manage everything easily and get a lot of profit, and with the same amount of inventory space from character slots (50? 60?), there's not really a point in bothering because it will be more than 10x slower! Imagine if there was a cash shop item that let you add a "fast mode" modifier to maps - both you and the monsters would do everything a lot faster (move, attack, cast, etc), so you'd get a lot more currency and items per hour. Would this be pay to win? Because this is almost exactly the same. Last edited by Silty#2454 on Aug 7, 2012, 10:40:52 PM
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IMO this is not a pay to win mechanic. Accounts are free and if you need to stash more items then make another account.
If you want the luxury of not having to hop through accounts then you should be able to. It does not give someone a huge benefit to another just to have extra space to store rares to turn into alch orbs. You should be able to get those few extra orbs if you're willing to have a full stash of rares to link them together. If you don't like the process then don't do it. I see nothing wrong with this process and there is no game breaking benefit to the extra storage space. Working as intended me thinks =) |
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Just to point out; I remember Chris mentioning that players aren't supposed to abuse the free accounts concept (mules) in a thread about mule accounts. Something about having 1 account should be all you need to play the game and no more.
So, like Silty said, extra tabs really cuts down on the time spent. And unlike others, I can't possibly run another PoE window to trade inbetween accounts because 1) it'll overload my RAM usage and 2) my vidcard can't possibly handle it. For Ranger build tips, tactics, and critiques, visit this thread:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/69224 |
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To be completely honest I think it's an awful system and if it's "working as intended" I can't help but wonder why GGG's intentions are to have an obtuse and unnecessary mechanic.
Getting two items of the same name is just a random drop, no different to the orb of alchemy dropping outright by itself. GGG are just rewarding players for mindlessly storing every single non-useful rare they acquire. Absolutely no skill involved, absolutely no real thought required - it's simply a trick that newer players wont be aware of, nor will be too happy about when they find out they've been wasting all their rares by selling them alone. Moreover is GGG now suggesting that for us to have the most fun we have to use 3rd party add-ons? If, according to Chris the players "really enjoy" this aspect of the game then why the heck is GGG not already implementing this recipe solver officially? Furthermore I don't understand where Chris' obsession with the idea of creating additional characters/accounts to use as mules comes from. It's clunky, unenjoyable and rather than luring people with the luxury of extra space you're slyly saying "buy tabs to avoid the pain in the ass of mules and swapping". I really do question whether people even enjoy this. One youtuber put it as "every rare I get is half an alchemy, well, eventually anyway". Is that what GGG want? Because based on Chris' "give us money or waste your time with 4 accounts" stance I'd guess so. TLDR: Either make all rares sell for 10 alchemy shards, scrap the recipe and increase orb drop rates or admit it's a cheap way of pushing players to buy stash tabs because otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time in a monotonous and thoughtless exercise. (This is honestly the most scathing thing I've written against PoE and it feels pretty bad to do it considering everything else they've done right. On this subject however Chris is either being really senseless or trying to sell an effective loot boost (people that waste less time swapping accounts can farm more right?), neither of which I've come to expect from both him and GGG) |
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" So what you're basically saying here is that you're totally okay with GGG selling things like increased loot quality and quantity buffs in the store? Maybe you can buy pre-levelled characters with store credit? That might sound a bit extreme but by putting these hurdles in the way of a completely free player and then offering a shortcut to paying customers GGG are effectively doing exactly the things I said above. It's not "pay2win", I agree, it's paying for boosts in XP and loot. |
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" Maybe I just haven't been playing long enough, but the only thing I don't understand is the fact that you and others feel like you HAVE to hoard your yellows just to get alch orbs and that you're inferior if you don't I feel that the alchemy orb system is a bonus in itself and should be rare, you have the ability to take a common item, which is like 20 times more likely to drop and with the gems you want on it, then turn it into a potentially good rare item. You can still find a good rare upgrade by killing mobs and you can still find alchemy orbs from killing mobs. This recipe is to reward people who want to and enjoy hoarding a bunch of rares for the small chance that they can get an extra one. I'm sure GGG didn't expect people to hoard hundreds of rares just to get some extra ones, it's just a mechanic. With your reasoning of every rare grabbing you 10 alch shards we would be swimming in alchemy orbs and they would lose value dramatically. I mean, i haven't personally found it impossibly hard to find alchemy orbs and I don't see why GGG needs to hand them out because people are lazy and don't want to do extra steps because they don't want to fork out a couple bucks to donate to the game, for a system that they can entirely bypass if they don't enjoy it. But hey, just my 2cents, don't hurt me =P |
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" When PoE is branded as appealing to a more hardcore demographic if GGG offer something like this that is simply a "min/max" thing then they should expect people to use it to the maximise the alchemy orbs they can get. What you're effectively saying is "take the route that doesn't give you the maximum number of orbs". To me that just seems silly! It's a completely pointless mechanic that I don't enjoy using (in a sea of other great ideas that redeem it) but I feel I ought to because otherwise I'm simply at a disadvantage to others. I will willingly buy more bank space, GGG don't need to slap me around with this obtuse recipe to force me into it out of a feeling that I'll be worse off if I don't! Last edited by Piggy#5547 on Aug 7, 2012, 11:10:10 PM
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[/quote]
So what you're basically saying here is that you're totally okay with GGG selling things like increased loot quality and quantity buffs in the store? Maybe you can buy pre-levelled characters with store credit? That might sound a bit extreme but by putting these hurdles in the way of a completely free player and then offering a shortcut to paying customers GGG are effectively doing exactly the things I said above. It's not "pay2win", I agree, it's paying for boosts in XP and loot.[/quote] Sorry for double posting, but I don't understand your logic . I do not support them selling things such as increased magic find and prepaid characters, I see how allowing extra storage space is even remotely close to that. I do understand your point though, you're saving time fusing these items by buying extra tabs, thus increasing productivity, thus putting you ahead of say someone who doesn't have these extra slots and giving you an advantage. Yes I understand, it is unfair. But again,I feel this mechanic is something completely optional and NOT what GGG intended with the extra storage space. It was more convenience to store more stuff if you wanted to donate money to the game. Say something like "increased experience" is something directly related to gameplay. This would be a P2W mechanic and you would be vastly more powerful then someone who didn't pay for the service. I feel gaining a few extra alch orbs is hardly an advantage compared to say gaining 10 extra levels from an experience buff, which again somone can get the alch orbs if they wanted to. I don't know, it's just my opinion. It's up to GGG to decide what they want to do, just wanted to chime in and I'm kinda done now. Curious to see how this turns out =) |
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" You don't get it. The game does not require you to have 40 stash tabs on one account or via multiple accounts. It is something completely optional that isn't needed for any aspect of gameplay, including end game. I have one account, 4 stash tabs, and have NEVER traded in multiple rares for an alch or regal. And guess what, i have MORE currency than i will ever know what to do with (read: 100+ gcp worth). If you think paying $3 for a stash tab isn't worth it, don't buy it. If you think managing 10+ accounts is too much hassle, don't create multiple accounts. It is simply there to allow people extra ways to get currency that doesn't involve farming mobs. " You obviously didn't read his post in this very thread then. And either way, 1 account IS all you would ever need to play the game. He was merely saying that if you didn't want to buy stash tabs there was a free way to do it. |
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This system doesn't really bother me and even I thought about buying more stash page once open beta come even if I don't think it would make a huge difference, but I can see that system could be a problem. Being able to sell a rare for only 1 alchemy shards could be alright with me or maybe even 2 alchemy shards for 2 rare that have only 1 part of their names the same.
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