post-OB leagues, currency values

I split this off from a different thread, because my reply goes way off-topic. This is a topic in its own right.

edit: I'm trying to address a few things here. One: the fusing and chaos should be our ultimate end-game currencies, because those are the bottomless pit currencies. Alchs lose value quickly after a few weeks in any new league. Two: farming fusings is a losing proposition. Players that farm alchs earn many times more total wealth than players who farm fusings. It doesn't have to be all about stash space; modifying supply on either side of the equation could narrow the gap.

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Sl4yer wrote:

Regals and alchs have decreased in value. And I expect the same for chaos since the recipe is so easy.

Pretty sure chance/fuse/chaos/exalt will be the "baseline" currencies in longer leagues post OB. These are the only ones that hold their value (everything else loses value as time goes on)

Slayer has a point about the chaos recipe being easy, but it's still bottlenecked by rings. The older a league is, the higher chaos demand becomes. More players trying to roll 64+ items. Not exactly easy to farm up copies of Glorious Plate to alch - you need alch/scour or chaos. Chaos become more efficient for rolling high level items.

You'll see people alching for godly rings, failing that they'll use those garbage rings to complete chaos recipes. Failed alch = 100th try on that void scepter.

Maybe the current practice of trading in terms of alch will continue, just because it's common practice now. But the four orbs I mentioned are the only ones that either retain their value or gain value as more people reach the end game. I'll predict that as the game gets older we see people trading in terms of chaos or even fusings.

Fusings: not immediately useful in small quantities, only in very large quantities. But their base components (alter shards) are SCARCE because of the alch recipe, which in turn keeps a downward pressure on the value of alchs and an upward pressure on the value of alters. The floor for the value of an alch comes from: 1 alch gets you a shot at a godly ring and if that fails, you get a chaos. Ceiling for the value of an alter or fuse comes from? This one I don't have an easy way to express. Demand for fusings should be a bottomless pit come OB, so perhaps there is no "ceiling". Whatever people are willing to consider equivalent to a pile of 300 fusings?

Right now there's a pretty huge imbalance. 2 rares = 10 alter shards. 2 rares = 1 alch. 10 alter shards is worth about 1 alch shard. There's too large a difference between them! I saw one good suggestion to address this: double the alteration shard payout from vendors, change alch recipe to 3 items with same name. Trim down the name pool to what it used to be (many fewer names) so matches are about as common as they are now. The above ratio turns into: 3 rares = 1 alch. 2 rares = 20 alter shards. If the alch has lost a third of its value and alters have become much more plentiful, the two paths come much closer together. Alch farming is quicker but alchs lose value over time. Fuse farming is still less rewarding initially but fuses gain value over time.

Choosing part of an alch later (stash stockpiling) vs 1 alter now (sell directly to vendor) is a much more meaningful choice. Since alters become more plentiful and alchs stay about the same, after market pressures we'd still see something like 1 alch === 8-10 alters.

Increasing alteration circulation potentially reduces fusing value. There is a vendor conversion.

I'm aware of that, it's kind of a conundrum. How do you add value to the process of farming fusings? It's kind of difficult. I proposed making alchs scarcer (without affecting startup time or stash space required for alch farming) and fusings more plentiful at the same time. Those two changes amplify each other a bit, and you could wind up either a 1:2 or 1:1 alch:fusing trade value; underneath, how many items you have to vendor to get each changes. Alchs cost more items, fusings cost fewer. Farm time for alchs went up on average, farm time for fusings went down.

Question is: does the value of each orb reflect its function, or supply? Will a change in supply drag the value of a fusing down? It's hard to predict.

I'd ultimately like to see the choice between farming alchs and farming fusings become more meaningful. The solution I presented is flawed, and anubite nailed the problem straight away. So let's hear what other people think.

Maybe the actual function of the fusing needs to be strengthened? That's a can of worms.

Right now it's clear cut. Farming for fusings is almost always a loss of wealth. It's always more profitable to farm for alchs, as long as you're capable of doing so (ie have a large enough stash). Even if you're just going to burn those alchs on jewelry to get more chaos turn-ins.

Can someone sum this post up because I dont understand it and I read it 2 times.

Where is the problem again? Alch value to low? Chaos value to low? Is that what I'm reading?

Well, if I confused DDT, this thread is already dead. And I mean that.

Two ideas I'm presenting here.

One: trade is based on alchs, and alchs don't hold value. I'm predicting we'll move to chaos as the "baseline" trade currency in long leagues. That is, after the community is much larger (OB), and after large scale trade is possible through the website. Chaos orbs will probably hold value.

Two: cashing in for alters/fusings is a horrible idea, and anyone who does so is burning wealth. With Alch:Fuse being nearly 1:1 it literally makes no sense to farm fusings. Farming alchs is always more profitable. Better to buy someone else's lucky 5L drop than to try building one.

Players without a large enough stash to farm alchs are actually limited to about 1/10th the rate of income as others. It doesn't have to be all about stash space, though. That difference can be narrowed by adjusting exchange rates. It's too big a difference. This is the main thing my thread is about.

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Zakaluka wrote:

Well, if I confused DDT, this thread is already dead. And I mean that.

Two ideas I'm presenting here.

One: trade is based on alchs, and alchs don't hold value. I'm predicting we'll move to chaos as the "baseline" trade currency. That is, after the community is much larger (OB), and after large scale trade is possible through the website.

Two: cashing in for alters/fusings is a horrible idea, and anyone who does so is burning wealth. With Alch:Fuse being nearly 1:1 it literally makes no sense to farm fusings. Farming alchs is literally always more profitable. Better to buy someone else's lucky 5L drop than to try building one.

ok ok, I think I understand now.

First, I wouldnt say alch = fusing. IMO fusing is slightly less and will be even less once they make it so you can buy stacks of items (200 jewelers takes time to trade into fusings, many people have 100s of jewelers but dont want to take the time to trade them into fusings 1 at a time).

I would suspect that Fusings will be 4:3 alchs in a short amount of time. Oddly enough Scourings are the slightly less than Alchs also (about the same as a fusing). But I think overtime people will understand they are worth 1/2 a chaos.

Alts to Fusing, Alts to Alchs. Now this is where its really tricky like you said with the recipe 2 rares = 1 alch (assuming you have a huge stash)
Yet on avg 2 rares = about 16 alt shards
8 alts = 1 fusing (per vendor recipe).

Clearly there is mismatch here. Ive talked about this before in global, and with you Zak. If 8 alts = 1 fusing, and fusings are worth about 4:3 alchs, 10alts +12shards = 1 alch.
Yet 10alts +12 shards takes on avg about 13.25 rares. Clearly a HUGE mismatch here.

Also 8 rares = 1 chaos. So this is worth at 2:1 alchs:chaos = 4 rares = 1 alch like this.


So like Zak said before, I believe the recipe for Alchs needs to be changed. I believe to even open up to more people without 60+ stash tabs would be to make it take 3 rares = 1 alch, or even 4 rares = 1 alch. Doing this cut the names of items down greatly (75% less names) to allow more matches. Also allowing common people with less tabs to trade names of rares easier. If there is 3000 rare names very few people will look for a name to trade with someone else when they have 3 of one name. However if there was 750 rare names. Much more common to have people sort that.

Another factor is 6inventory space items vs 1-4 inventory space items. 6 inventory space items should have even less names.

Anyways requiring more rares for the alch makes it harder by the same amount so I dont see why this would be a problem. Clearly Alchs is the root of the problems here due to the recipe being so far out of balance.

The fundamental problem here is the alch recipe and changing the other currency around to justify its existence could have many unintended consequences.

I believe needing 3 rare names would solve the problem, but this might be going too far in the other direction, so it becomes time prohibitive to even attempt doing it. I'd be interested to see if people have more eloquent ideas in how to deal with this problem.

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MrDDT wrote:

Clearly there is mismatch here. Ive talked about this before in global, and with you Zak. If 8 alts = 1 fusing, and fusings are worth about 4:3 alchs, 10alts +12shards = 1 alch.
Yet 10alts +12 shards takes on avg about 13.25 rares. Clearly a HUGE mismatch here.

DDT expresses this very well. I find myself with poor communication skills sometimes, and lots of people have told me I need to work on making my point more clearly. Working on it. Anyway, DDT explains here exactly what my gripe is. It itches. Am I OCD?

Just seems broken. Trim this somehow. The two farming approaches should be more similar. If the recipe were changed to make 3 rares = 1 alch, then on the other end alters must be modified such that 7 or fewer rares = 1 fusing. The player with stash for alch farming still earns wealth much faster, but things are a bit fairer.

But then, what happens to player<->player trade values? I think DDT is on the money, 4:3 fusing:alch, and this ratio comes from the FUNCTION of the orbs rather than the effort that goes into farming them. That part is quite clear to me, or fusings would be worth much more in the game economy than they are now.

How time efficient is the name matching process? You mention needing dozens of stash tabs to do it, that has to take a nonzero amount of time to pull alchs out of (while selling for alteration and alchemy shards takes essentially zero time). Like really counting out the time to put the item into the stash, make the name match, then find it again and pull it out along with the match.

On the devaluation of alchs, there's a limit to that since an alch and a scouring will always be worth a chaos. However since our ability to acquire scourings* is fairly limited, I suppose its possible that eventually scouring will make up the bulk of that, maybe two thirds or even three fourths of the chaos.

*Only way to get scouring is via 4x chance orb, and the only way to farm for THOSE is to trade in junk uniques with a nontrivial recipe to get 5 chances. 1.25 scourings per junk unique injects very few scourings into the economy compared to the alch recipe. When I say the chance recipe is nontrivial, I mean it takes some logistical effort to locate and/or store the matching item types (since it has to be the exact same item type. Suggestion: make it the same item SLOT).