POE aka "Capitalism Simulator"?

So first of why I make this post: There are many people complaining about the POE economy for several reasons. I think the biggest part is, that when it comes to maps, the game has definitive an item-check which is hard to approve by just playing the game. You need to trade at least at the end of merciless and you get in contact with the “broken” economy.

Is the economy rly broken? I don’t think so. When you take a look at the wealth distribution in several country’s you see what you expect from pretty much every unregulated economy. I am pretty sure the same thing happened with the POE economy, where about 60-80% of the current wealth are owned by players with a summarized game time of 10% of the total game time of all players. In shot: There are few rich players and a lot of poor players. The reason I make this call is, because I think in game currency (orbs, expensive items) behave in many ways like real life currency. The reasons in my opinion are:

1. Getting richer offers you much better trades in form of the absolute amount of currency you make. Lets say you are on of the “working poor” POE players who is happy to get a GMP-Gem for 2 Chaos instead of 3 Chaos. The trade took you several minutes and your value was 1 Chaos (if you are lucky). So assuming you only make a slight average advantage by trading makes it pretty much pointless for you, if you are poor. If you are rich and get a Kaom’s Heard for lets say 30 Exalteds and sell it for 35 Exalteds (note relatively spoken this is a worse trade, then the poor mens trade). You get a total benefit of 5 Exalteds or around 150 Chaos. So trading with top-tier items is far (!) more beneficial then trading with low-tier items.

2. As working don’t get you rich, playing the game don’t get you rich. Shure you can get a great job and climb career ladder but in the end, as well as find the one lucky (mirror) drop, but in the end, that’s not how the average gets rich. Lets face it: In POE you get rich by getting access to very beneficial trades or making bot-slaves work for you.


So that I think is the main point Path of Exile feels at a certain level more like the real world capitalism then like a game. Well of course it’s an ARPG game, which kind of has the goal to make us believe in its version of the American dream. “When I grind long and hard (efficient) enough, one day, I get rich.” And sure there are people who make it this way. But lets face it: You need very much luck on your side to do so and for the average Joe, that’s no possibly. As I am not happy with the way the “game” is right now, meaning you need access to very expensive items to get to endgame (high lvl maps) if you don’t want to rely on a few several non-item dependent builds, here are some of my suggestions how GGG can fix this issue:

1. Making endgame (high lvl maps) playable with average items. So basically this means: removing all gear checks. I personally don’t like this option, cuz that makes “getting rich” in this game pretty much pointless.

2. If you want the let yourself inspire by the real world economy, taxes are an option. That’s sounds silly sure, but you need to transfer incoming taxes in the game economy. There are two resources in the game: time and wealth. So if you want to make trading less beneficial you can create a “time tax”. (Well the crap trading system is of course kind of a “time-tax” in itself.) For example: Allow on your players account only 5 trades a weak. Most of the players won’t notice much, but if you are a rich trader, that will hurt you pretty much.

3. This is my favorite option by far. Make us believe in the American dream! Let the average Joe get rich, if he plays hard enough. Meaning: 1. Let everyone(= no IIR or IIQ crap, which favors certain builds) get guaranteed (= you want to get a certain amount of wealth when I play the game for sure. Make bosses drops unique or something like that.) wealth by playing the game (=increase loot significantly). The only core rule has to be: the harder the content goes, the more wealth he can earn per minute! And shure the wealth/minute should still be some kind of a gambling (imho), but atm its totaly random which it shouldnt be.


Don’t get me wrong I still think trading should be an option to get rich, but atm it’s kind of the only option which is by no means fair and results in a strange gap in wealth earning between the player base. Making “playing the fking game” more beneficial even that gap out. And yes I am speaking about an inflation of the “ecosystem” but guess what: How do you can make current wealth distribution less meaningful for the future of the game? INFLATION!, since there is no currency other then the ingame currency (I rly hope GGG don’t look at all the real money traders!), there is nothing to worry about!

So I am interested to see what you think about my comparison. Sry for my bad english btw.

Option 3 wouldn't do anything but shift what players consider "good". Good stuff will adjust to be just as rare as it is now, and traders would trade and become richer still.

There's nothing wrong with what's happening with trade, and changing the game isn't going to change that. It's the players. You'll see this once Diablo 3 comes out with it's "Loot 2.0". It wont help.

The game developers need to focus on fun and quit worrying about people who break their game for the fun of it. Spending 90% of your development time to make 10% of your population happy is a bad choice.

Good read and all but what if GGG were happy with *you*(+99% of the players) being poor? And 1% of the player base being richer than everyone else?

Perception.. expectations.. confusion.

There is ONE thing I just can't understand, what so ever!

The player base is quite split: traders and non-traders. So why... WHY can't GGG make different leagues (permanent) that appeals to both groups?

"We do not want to further split the player base", they say. But the player base is already split, coz non-traders do not trade.

I just... Wow...

the solution is easy, remove trading/all item account bound/only self found. tadaaaaaaaaaa!!

I don't complain about the economy, but about looting & crafting begin so unviable compared to economy.

Also, with Diablo 3 AH & RMAH etc. it was very obvious in what direction the game would go, even before it was released, so people like me managed to avoid the trap. But PoE doesn't explain how much the economy & trading is superior to everything else, therefore if you pick the other options as your preferred way to play, you will always loose, compared even to casual shoppers.

And this is a really twisted design. At least Greezard made obvious what their intentions were with D3 (cashing in on RMAH transactions)

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phrazz wrote:

There is ONE thing I just can't understand, what so ever!

The player base is quite split: traders and non-traders. So why... WHY can't GGG make different leagues (permanent) that appeals to both groups?

"We do not want to further split the player base", they say. But the player base is already split, coz non-traders do not trade.

I just... Wow...

It's staring them right in the face, and they continue to avoid it like the plague when it could potentially alleviate a large concern amongst the player base.

Hilariously, though, if they did that, then most in the Trade-Leage (TL) would rage and froth at the mouth, because they would be left in a league that has nobody to profit from, since almost everyone there would be the type to sit in the forums or trade chat for hours playing the stock market. The few left who actually think that casual trading is profitable, would be ripped off so massively they would hate TL in a matter of months.

iTS A ARPG, IF YOU NO LIKE, YOU NO PLAY?

Games partially exist to fufill a fantasy, a world where the shit parts of real life don't exist.

PoE does an excellent job taking everything bad about real life and stuffing it into something people are supposed to use to relive the stress of irl.