Orb of Fusing and general currency problems

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Never_nou wrote:

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I learned everything by reading the descriptions of orbs in the game.

And how far into the game were you before you knew exactly what 'everything' does?

And you knew 'instantly' from the description of the Orb of Chance 'exactly' what an Orb of Chance does?

And the first time you used an Orb of Fusing you were 'delighted' at the result?

You make some fascinating claims...

Description of chance orb, upgrades item to random rarity. Yes, by reading the description I knew exactly what it does.

Am I supposed to be delighted at every orbs outcome? This is the claim you make in regard to fusings. Was I delighted? Don't remember, I do know that I kept using them until I got what I wanted and kept playing.

Heres some knowledge. Currently the estimated average of achieving a 5L is around 100 fusings, while 6L is 300. Would I have known this by trial and error myself? No. Would I have asked someone why it's so hard? Yes. Would I have at least figured it out after said trial and error that it's not easy to achieve? Yes

LOL

I love it when someone uses the term 'all you have to do' and then goes on to illiterate the need for Orbs of Alchemy and Chaos Orbs.

The whole point of this thread particularly is that the availability of these orbs is not in the slightest 'all you have to do is...'

All you have to do is grind your way to 100+ Orbs of Fusing and you 'might' get one nice item which helps a bit.

LOL, there are quite clearly different playing objectives here - those that are playing the game and those that are 'enjoying' every aspect of the game's minutiae regardless of what game is going on in the background.

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Description of chance orb, upgrades item to random rarity. Yes, by reading the description I knew exactly what it does.

Really, I thought an Orb of Alchemy upgrades an item to a random rarity, I thought an Orb of Chance upgraded a white item to either a Magical, Rare or Unique item.

Your powers of reading something that isn't there are phenomenal...

Ok..... Just going by what you said.

How about chaos orbs? You used an item on a "damn fine piece of equipment" that randomly rolls the rare.

Do you not understand the word random? It doesn't mean, will make something better because the orb is rarer.

Because Exalted, Blessed, Regal and Chaos are all so rare, having only one of each the entire game and USING them I used it thinking it was an Exalted Orb by mistake. You know, excitement...

And there are no Orbs of Orb Regret...

You make mistakes.

You learn to play the game.

Sometimes, it doesn't go well.

Sometimes, it does.

That's what makes this game fun. It stands out.

Path of Exile is probably the hardest commercial game to be released in 2012. You'd be hard pressed to name another. If you find this game not easy to pick up, that's SUPPOSED to be its charm. Some things should be a little arcane, it's what makes exploring mystery fun.

Can orbs be explained more clearly? I guess, maybe, but they seem fairly straight forward. Way back, I did wonder if Chance orbs COULD roll Uniques, which is a fair question for a nub, but the funcionality of the orb is pretty easy to figure out on your own, or through general chat.

Although I'm not saying there is no room for improvement, I don't have any particular suggestions regarding orbs, besides... adding more of them! We need mooooore!

As for fusings... could we make them MORE available? Maybe, but I think people are able to get 6Ls fairly easily, even if I've never gotten one.

TF2 has a 'partner with a noob program'. Something like that should be planned for PoE, in the long term.

What you seem to be mostly missing is the fact that the game is built around a player based economy, rather than a vendor based economy. The vendor's aren't really there to help you play the game/improve your character in a significant way, they are there to stabilize the player based economy.

Player's are going to trade currency items in large numbers in a real world like economy.

To prevent inflation on all currency items, all items need a way to be useful, but only to a subset of these players at any given time (if a currency item were useful to all players all the time then it would become too valuable and cause massive inflation in other currency items.)

One way that items can be useful to players, when they aren't useful to other players in large numbers AND aren't useful to that player, is to offer the vendor as an alternative. This is just a currency sink - If you are never going to transmute hundreds of items because you are using a different crafting approach, then you can sink them in at the vendors and get them out of the economy, in exchange for something useful.

Now, the complexity of the vendor recipe's is absolutely needed, because it has to be balanced against the player economy which is hugely variable, which means that in future - they may have to adjust ratio's based on demand to stabilize the economy. Without complexity of interaction it's very hard to fine tune those adjustments.

What is currently missing, is the convenience factor. It's like walking up to a bank with a hundred 1 dollar bills, and only being able to get them changed into 20 5s, then having to go out and come back in and get 5 20's, then go out and get back in get 1 100. That's inconvenient and needs to be fixed at some point - but this is closed beta and it can have a lower priority than finishing the content for open beta, but still probably needs to be implemented before open beta.

Some currency items though aren't like 1 dollar bills, aren't like 100 dollar bills, they are more like stocks (exalted orbs). An exalted orb's largest value is to a player who wants to achieve something specific, just like a stock in a company is at it's largest value when it's the amount of stock required to transfer ownership of a company. The value of a stock can not be determined by a bank, it can only be determined by a market - so is the same for an exalted orb and this is why it should not be looked upon as a currency item that a vendor should offer - if they had a set value then it would destroy the free player based economy.

If you choose not to interact with the player based economy the vendor economy will seem arbitrary and pointlessly confusing. This is unfortunate, but logical, because it's designed with the player based economy in mind - it's not designed to help the single player game in a significant way at all.

The player based economy will always be dominated by players who spend more time gaming and trading than people who just want to play through once to see the content - (the real world comparison might be tourists versus permanent residents). A player just there for the content isn't going to understand the oddities in the economy, just like a tourist is often confused by other places currencies.

Your approach is a bit like a tourist complaining

"Everything is so complicated here, you won't attract many tourists with such a complicated currency system that I don't understand!"

and then saying this is nuts, you'll get no tourists this way.

Which would be true, if there weren't other attractions to visiting Wraeclast - but there are (it's fun!)

The real thing is as a Free To Play game Wraeclast doesn't need to cater to tourists - they need committed long term players, the sort that will take the time to keep playing the game and appreciate that the market complexities are there to provide long term stability and be satisfied that there characters aren't going to become worthless in a few months so they are happy to also invest real world money in to them.

They need NOT to inconvenience the long term players AND the tourists too much, certainly - so better vendoring interface is definitely needed.

But they need to cater to the long term player economy, not the tourist economy, which means short term tourists will occasionally be confused, disappointed, and feel a little ripped off by the in game economy (much like real life.) - Mitigating this feeling is important, but it's NOT as important as attracting long term players because of the games free to play model.

You are calling for structural changes to make the system simple for tourists, people who will only play through the content once - long term players are telling you that they don't want that. You are saying that there appreciation of the system is their own bias...

Guess what, you are right, it IS their bias, because they are the players the developer has built the game to attract.

If the game wasn't free to play, and there was money to be made through players who are likely to only go through the content once and then recommend friends do the same - your concerns would be more valid - but that's not how the game will make money, so you might just have to accept that the currency and vendor interactions will remain complicated and alien to those players as a necessary evil - but the dev's SHOULD focus on making it not inconvenient at least, because that is an unnecessary evil that effects all players.

Play diablo 3.

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Powster wrote:

Play diablo 3.

Never that! never never never that....

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Caliban wrote:

{Well composed and thorough post addressing the thread subject}

I wish there was a +like or star or some other sort of thread/post ranking system to that one's like yours could stand out from the rest of the noise.

Good, insightful post.