You guys know rampant RMT abuse comes from a shit economy, right?

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chillmaster wrote:

http://steamcharts.com/app/238960#All

That is meaningless, though, as that happens with pretty much every single game on Steam, except Valve's own stuff (Dota, chiefly).

PoE is F2P, so a lot of people download it, try it, don't like the genre, uninstall. I've done that with countless F2Ps on Steam, and heck, most of my 700 games on Steam were never even installed, or played once or twice.

The attention span of the typical Steam user is also extremely short, simply because you get bombarded with new releases and sales constantly.

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Deux wrote:

Honestly with the drop rates & the horrid map scenario..

Playing this game without RMt or absurb luck is just dumb.

And yes im hinting at something here.

OP hit it nail on the head. Hope GG is reading this.

Once you are a high enough level you will realize that you need to RMT just to gain meaningful XP.

thats not true, at all, in fact thats never been completely true. The map scenario is fine atm, you dont need to rmt anything for maps, just alch them and go if you dont have chaos or chisels, enough shit drops to trade for the chaos and chisels needed though, you might have to do a days mfing here or there to keep the orbs flowing.

Yes maps just used to be an rmt nightmare, but theyve buffed the shit out of them. The amount of times myself and friends and streamers I watch have gone from 60s maps to 77s in a single day, youre really never that far away from them. Anuhart manages xp, hes got about 1000 exalts worth of gear and yet the bloke doesnt have 2 orbs to rub together because hes completely solo self found, hes in Shipyards more often than I am, seems like every other day hes run out of high maps completely and then 2 hours later hes running a Crematorium again.

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deteego wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

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Probably because there is empirical evidence to support this, as has been stated earlier. Its not necessarily drop rates, but more to do with progression, and the two do go hand in hand in a lot of ways when regarding aRPGS

No one is rmting so they can safely clear A3 merciless.

their rmting 500 exalts at a time so they can get bis items.

your progression theory does not apply to endgame bis gear unless you feel they should be made even easier to craft than they already ever.

I must ask if you have ever seen what an actual rmt'er looks like, does, and buys?

No, they use RMT to purchase exalts and use that to purchase items because a single item hasn't dropped which they find useful in weeks, if not months

I think hes right. You dont need to rmt just to get gear that can take on maps, you can buy every slot for 2 chaos each and start grinding maps. I could run Lunaris cruel with mf for a day and then equip a map character just by vendoring the alts I get from selling yellows into fusing and buying cheap as shit gear. I could equip a map viable character from gear I vendor while grinding Lunaris merciless for a day.

So why vendor it? Because its shit gear, you only need shit gear to get into maps and grind, my existing gear is soooo far beyond shit, so far beyond 'ok' that its extremely hard to find an upgrade. Luckily this means I dont need an upgrade, if you are in the same position you dont need an upgrade. You may want one, I want one, I want one so much I trade for gear or craft and get upgrades that way. People may rmt to get those upgrades, but they are not out of need, they are things people want for the sake of wanting and are usually bis gear thats far beyond what anyone could expect to drop. You cant buff drops so that everyone finds bis maxed out gear every time they farm, no one can argue with that.





I really think finding maps and gear in the game right now works, yeah its not always been a good situation but I just dont see any problems atm. Yes you usually have to trade, ok some people dont like that, but with a game with this amount of build and item diversity you have to expect your particular little niche build is only going to be able to use 5% of the good gear you find, this is a consequence of the game not being shit. If you understand what good gear is because you understand many builds and the stats they need you will find good items and be able to trade them for a lot of orbs regularly. If you dont have any gear, if you are coming from a clean start you should be making builds that are as unspecialised as possible, thats part of understanding the game and the builds too.

I cant help but feel if you never find anything good and cant grind maps with the gear you have its 100% a game knowledge problem and not a problem with the game, youre doing it wrong, Ive done it wrong too, Ive been there, most of us have.

@Mivo and Antnee

Why would steam players be any different to the rest of the players? They are gamers like everyone else. I believe they represent an accurate portrayal of how the entire global community

Steam users dont magically have ADHD and hate PoE. Even if they did that would not explain why other Steam games are breaking even or increasing their population.

Yes, they only make up a small % but they still represent a fair SAMPLE population. If 25% of steams population you can extrapolate fairly and say ~25% was lost from non-steam members too.

Also, Mivo, every game will have players uninstalling. This is no excuse for PoE, because the real aim for the devs is to have more people installing than uninstalling.

PoE losing players is a real concern.

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t_t wrote:

Does anyone have ANY evidence that RMT is that rampant in Poe?

I have no Idea about standard since I don't play that, but I seriously doubt anyone playing nemesis that wasn't the son of a millionaire could spend the money needed for some of the numbers thrown around here about people buying 500 exalted orbs....

naming and shaming is not allowed but I can privately refer you to several examples where I have seen (either directly or through someone else) level 70-80 something unknowns with no trade history and less than 4 months of play purchase items for well over 200 exalts, sometimes 300 exalts at a time.

the general masses has no visibility of this because obviously you are not offering mirror services or selling items worth over 300 exalts.

The frequency of these kinds of purchases have been increasing over time as GGG is doing little or nothing to stop these people. It has come to a point where the end game is only accessibly to rabid RMT'ers, profiteering crooks who profit off the greed and stupidity rmt'ers ad hold several thousand exalts worth of assets, and the few remaining people who through a combination of determined play and item flipping were able to amass enough wealth to barely compete with the above 2 groups. this is a sick and twisted game state.

PoE will die when only rmt'ers and rmt feeders are able to compete.

If you think making it marginally easier to 6l an item, coloring your sockets, boosting drop rates, or boosting progression through a3 merciless will stop this sort of rmt then you are dead wrong.

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No, they use RMT to purchase exalts and use that to purchase items because a single item hasn't dropped which they find useful in weeks, if not months

I really do not think you have ever witnessed someone rmt to make that kind of assumption.

and if you somehow have, it would be irrelevant, these small fry rmt'ers buying A3 merciless gear do not warp the game like the above.

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Deadpeng wrote:

As of now the game is still playable without RMT. However, think about one year down the road. We will reach the stage whereby a new player joins a game and asks how much is a 6L armor.

'1000 exalts please, thank you very much!' We need to control this economy, introduce socialism, introduce level playing field. Stop the evil!

New leagues are the answer to this.

I do agree that it would be nice if there were some viable way to control inflation in standard, but this doesn't seem to be a concern of GGG.

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Antnee wrote:

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Deadpeng wrote:

As of now the game is still playable without RMT. However, think about one year down the road. We will reach the stage whereby a new player joins a game and asks how much is a 6L armor.

'1000 exalts please, thank you very much!' We need to control this economy, introduce socialism, introduce level playing field. Stop the evil!

New leagues are the answer to this.

I do agree that it would be nice if there were some viable way to control inflation in standard, but this doesn't seem to be a concern of GGG.

rmt and d2*** are likely even more prevalent there.

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Nephalim wrote:

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Antnee wrote:

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Deadpeng wrote:

As of now the game is still playable without RMT. However, think about one year down the road. We will reach the stage whereby a new player joins a game and asks how much is a 6L armor.

'1000 exalts please, thank you very much!' We need to control this economy, introduce socialism, introduce level playing field. Stop the evil!

New leagues are the answer to this.

I do agree that it would be nice if there were some viable way to control inflation in standard, but this doesn't seem to be a concern of GGG.

rmt and d2*** are likely even more prevalent there.

I'm not sure if that is the case or not, but at least they have to work a bit harder to make their efforts pay off.

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sodium777 wrote:

Why would steam players be any different to the rest of the players? They are gamers like everyone else. I believe they represent an accurate portrayal of how the entire global community

It's just my observation. I have a few hundred people on my Steam friends list, and I'd say 95% of them flip through games at a rather higher frequency. I do that, as well, unless I manage to get into something that completely grabs me, like PoE did, and WoW, D2, NWN and Ultima Online, and BL2.

The thing is, the design issues that people blame on allegedly dropping numbers don't really surface until the late game. I'm willing to bet a large sum that the vast majority of people who try out the game never make it out of normal, or even above level 20 (I'd still bet a lot that they don't make it to level 10, either). RMT, drop rates, crafting, etc. just don't matter at these stages.

Blizzard, some years ago, mentioned that a huge number of people who created a free WoW account never made it out of the starting zones. As a result, they improved the beginning quests and made them more engaging. But nevertheless, many players claimed that the stagnation or decrease in numbers were sure signs that the end game was too inaccessible.

I feel it's the same here. People see connections where there are none.

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Antnee wrote:

New leagues are the answer to this.

I do agree that it would be nice if there were some viable way to control inflation in standard, but this doesn't seem to be a concern of GGG.

New leagues still dont help against RMT, because of abysmal drop rates of top tier orbs & gear. You have 4 months of time to "win", but the drop rates are really bad, what do you do?

Nobody gives a shyt about standard economy - not even GGG - so I dont see the problem of giving players faster / easier progression. Everything gets washed in std. anyway.

What is feeding RMT is the design choices GGG made: huge amounts of grind to get good gear, awfully low drop rate of top tier orbs, really bad crafting system that can waste you a month of grinding in a blink of an eye... This game is a dream come true for RMT business.