How the Economy Actually Works

Nice fairy tale bro. The economy actually works like this: No lifers RMT currency from Chinese botters, No lifers buy/roll every best thing on server. No lifers rip through 75's all day with top gear making tons of dough on drops they get. Chinese botters inflate the price of exalts to 4x what they once were. See, unlike you fat pimpled kids in the basement, Chinese farmers aren't stupid. They do this shit so they can have 2 meals a day, it's not something for them to play between political science or communication classes. In order for them to make the maximum amount of RMT on each exalt, they need to artificially inflate the economy. So they buy EVERY EXALT they can for 55 chaos. That way: 1. People actually believe an exalt is worth an astronomical amount of money. 2. People will find its easier to buy an exalt for 5 bucks and get 55 chaos than it is to farm for a month and maybe get 4 exalts. (I make 95 bucks an hour. That's 1045 chaos an hour.)
Honest people who just want a game to play (like me) get fucked from both sides. Not only is good gear/maps only sold for pure exalteds, but exalteds are now inflated to a absurd rate.

All this nonsense could of been avoided by: 1. Banning every chinese/russian I.P. 2. Having an exalt recipe.

dumbasses

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emtwo wrote:

The problems of the PoE economy are actually very similar to the problems of the US economy. Without getting into too much detail, essentially those that are ahead of the economic curve increase their lead exponentially while those behind the curve fall further and further back through no lack of effort or playtime. Fixing this would require A) allowing equal access to resources (making all orb types purchasable from vendors) so that the top economic tier cannot simply control the "means of production," and B) limiting the concentration of wealth into few hands (best achieved through some form of taxation) so that those at the top can't abuse the market advantage and cause hyper-inflation.

Of course, neither of these changes will ever be made for the same reasons that keep us from accomplishing them in real life. The richest amongst us tend to have the most interest in currency and make the most noise, and the rest of us are too dense to grasp that what is in everyone else's best interest is in our own best interest as well.

Bring on the socialism name-calling!

It's not entirely similar. In the real world, central banks print money. POE doesn't have anyone printing currency. You actually have to work to generate value in POE unless you're botting or cheating.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

@emtwo

There already is a form of taxation for the highest-level players; it's called high-level maps. Given how hard it is to chain them, it's borderline ridiculous for you to advocate taxing them further.

If there is a vendor recipe for a bottom player, there is a vendor recipe for a top player. For some reason you're imagining only low-level players exploiting this formula as a means to catch up, when the real result would likely be the top players exploiting the same formula even harder to further solidify their lead.

Even if we accept your communist socialist goals, your solutions are either already in effect or would utterly fail to accomplish their objective.

Your argument is based on the premise that wealth is acquired primarily by farming or grinding, which is simply untrue. The easiest and most efficient method of acquiring wealth is trading, and only those at the top have enough capital to reliably profit from this method on a regular basis. A good trader could gain 10 exalts a day without leaving town, and this is what I mean when I say that the access to drop-only orbs isn't equitable. No matter how much time a poor player may invest, they have no reliable method of acquiring drop-onlies aside from RNG.

Those at the bottom end can grind away and increase their wealth in terms of the number of orbs in their stash, but the value of those orbs will decrease because grinding won't give you returns fast enough to keep up with the rate of inflation caused by trading and hoarding wealth.

@emtwo:

Oh, you meant a tax on trading, not farming. Unfortunately, that wouldn't really work either. What that would do is set the minimum selling price to vendor + tax, then the average price would be about halfway between that minimum price and the maximum of making it yourself. I guess if you taxed high enough, trading simply wouldn't occur, but if you're going to be that drastic you could just be more honest and disable trading entirely. This mostly discourages trading, which is a little different than hurting top players; you're assuming they're trading as much or more than anyone else, when I clearly demonstrated that they have more desire to actually consume their orbs than anyone.

To be honest, the trading system benefits bottom players far more than the top ones anyway. Remember that the bottom is always getting items for significantly less than it takes to make it naturally, while the top is essentially in self-found mode and thus paying full price. There already is a natural tax for getting to the very top of the food chain.

The trading system in this game is kind of like Walmart. Actually using your orbs is kind of like local small business: relatively overpriced but much more personal. Given your objectives, I don't know how much you want to be attacking this Walmart; perhaps low prices for the average Joe is more important for helping the little guy. I personally don't like the trading system, but that's because I couldn't care less about the little guy; I care about making the experience personal.

You didn't really mention the vendor formula idea though.

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WinWalter wrote:

It's not entirely similar. In the real world, central banks print money. POE doesn't have anyone printing currency. You actually have to work to generate value in POE unless you're botting or cheating.

Every time you kill a monster, and an Exalt drops, that is printing currency; new currency has just entered the system where there was none before.

Pretty much agree with the OP on this. The main problems with the game's economy such as it is are that 1) crafting is only viable for those who already have the best gear, and even then only out of desperation, and those with the worst gear where transmuting a white will provide an upgrade and 2) no good gear ever leaves the economy. I think Scrotie was the one who posted the thread about item decay and perma-destruction, though I could be remembering wrong.

What would fix these problems would be making crafting an attractive alternative for everyone, make it actually a tough choice whether you spend or use your orbs. There are a few different ways you could do this, which I won't get into here, but they all really hinge on:

2) Items need to leave the economy. As long as hand-me-downs are readily available, they will always be cheaper and a better idea than crafting yourself, there's really no way around it. Some sort of perma-item breakage would solve this, but I can understand why the idea is so repulsive to people. I wouldn't mind it, but my own suggestion would be to take a page from GW1, and add optional soul binding. Let people "tailor" an item to their character to grant a small boost, say 10% quality to items that quality can affect, stacks with regular item quality, a larger boost to jewellery items since they tend to deal with smaller numbers, and the drawback is that no one else can ever use it. This would put a serious hamper on the used item trade, since most people would probably customize anything they planned on using for a while at high level play.

The point is that there needs to be a serious outlet for good items other than vendoring them for a few shards. Uniques, in particular, will tend to increase in number but never leave an economy.

Being able to trade currency up to exalts through the vendor would certainly help make crafting less onerous, as well. I can understand GGG wanting some currency items to be rare, but I wouldn't complain about that change. Really, though, the whole crafting system needs a serious overhaul before balance tweaks like that are made.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

@emtwo:

Oh, you meant a tax on trading, not farming.

Not just a tax on trading, a tax on everything. There would have to be a time-interval tax on all currency in your stash, say once a week, as well as a tax each time currency changes hands. This way, whether you trade it or hold it you get taxed the same regardless. This creates a literal "use it or lose it" incentive which encourages making quicker trades and discourages hoarding vast sums; the more you have at the end of the week, the more you lose at the end of the week. It would also decrease, though not entirely eliminate, the profit margins from botters and websites that sell for cash.

Well theres a few things that you forget to take into account.

1.) Top Enders who give up playing this game. They feel they have checked off all the boxes and are bored or for whatever reason.. they move on. Their gear may or may not be sold off... most likely its not and their gear is essentially removed from the economy till they come back.

2.) Runner ups... these guys farm with the top enders and either through the acquisition of former top enders gear or from finding their own stuff they become top enders. Otherwise they also quit playing and their gear is removed from the economy.

The point of an ARPG is to be able to kill things and get good gear. When after 4-5 months you have only seen 1-2 exalt drop and "top enders" are selling gear for 20 Exalt something is entirely wrong. Im not saying that the top enders gear isn't worth 20 Exalt if they tried to craft it themselves. What I am saying is that it is virtually impossible to self find or craft the gear that the top enders have and they wouldnt have it without an extensive economy like we have. The top enders got lucky in the beginning and have set themselves above everyone and now we have to hope and pray to get gear half way as good as theirs. Want good gear or any amount of currency? Put on IIQ and IIR gear and go farm for the next week and you might be able to trade for an Exalt. Do this for the next 4 weeks and you might be able to buy one piece of top enders gear.

Whats discouraging is that "good" gear... not end game but just "good" gear is hard to get your hands on. The top enders vendor it because its not worth their time to try and sell. This has created a huge gap between the normal player base and the top enders. There is very little wiggle room.. stuff is either dirt cheap (relatively speaking..) 1 Exalt or GG End Game Top Ender gear at 15-20 Exalt nowadays.


What Im trying to convey is frustration at the current difficulty at getting anywhere near close to playing end game.. out of all my toons the only one who plays maps is because its a summoner. I've built her entirely out of self found gear (well with exception to the poor gloves which were given to me by a friend). I can run any map except "No Mana Regen" or "Blood Magic" with her. I would really love to get some decent gear for my other toons but the crap just isnt dropping. I have practically 0 chance of being able to craft anything because Exalts are so rare that I have only found 2 since I started playing this game. That means I have to try and buy stuff for them which constantly feels like trying to hit a moving target. I managed to get my second exalt drop about a week ago.. the problem is that since the Exalt drop prices have almost doubled on "good" gear. There are no more middle tier gear.. everyone divines uniques to be perfect rolls so there are no cheap end game uniques. Alpha Howl went from 1 Exalt 2-3 weeks ago to 3-4 Exalts this week.

Blahh.. Im just so frustrated that Im probably just rambling now.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Once you get a few tiers down, there is a steady feed of upgrades available to buyers. Because of this constant availability

ROFL WHAT GAME ARE YOU PLAYING SMALL SON

i've been trying for days to get someone to sell me a level 50 claw without being completely chocolate faced about it

oh boy, one of my "favourite" topics again.

but I'm so pissed about my latest trading experience - I'll keep this short and simple instead of my usual "wall of text" routine:

how economy works: people buy stacks of orbs for real money from some shady site GGG didn't take-down yet, then use those orbs to buy stuff for cheap, then sell these for 1000% profit (or more, depending on the "sucker" they find to rip-off), then claim being "legitimately rich" because only 5% of their current wealth is the real-money stack they started with.

you play legitimately, trade fairly, don't have 500% IIR and/or 1000% IIQ, AND don't team up with people who do? - you are practically guaranteed to be poor, never find upgrades, and never afford to buy anything or craft anything.
don't like it? you're not "hardcore" enough then. don't let the door hit you on your way out.