Path to a leaner economy and a healthier game

Good ideas but you're not addressing the core problem which is the fact that the game is a trade to win concept because crafting and drops are too random

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Uvne wrote:

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Gobla wrote:

1. Dropping down to 66s because you can't sustain maps isn't difficulty. It's tedium. For a sufficiently high leveled character there's no difficulty in 66s. In a challenging game a player should always have access to content more difficult than he can handle unless he's already at the highest difficulty the game can offer.

2. I want them to move up in tiers. I want players to constantly be stretching their characters and running maps just above what they can realistically handle. And yes, rolls are how PoE allows the choice of difficulty which is exactly why I suggested either a minimum rarity on dropped maps or an implicit extra roll to strengthen this system and provide constant access to more difficult content. The goal isn't to maintain the current mapping system of constantly dropping down to less challenging content. The goal is for a new mapping system where you're constantly moving up tiers, sometimes even before you're ready.

3. Your method of acquiring low maps involves trade. I want to remove map-trading entirely. It's more spam in the economy driving the need for indexers and potentially an auction house. I don't want to move in that direction. I want to keep to the original idea of a haggling-based economy, this requires a smaller economy with less things being traded. Map management should be in selecting just the right map for your character's power, not in working against the odds to keep doing content appropriate for your character's power.

Who is dropping down to 66s, realistically? After the massive buffs to map size, it's all too easy to sprint straight to 74+ and stay there. I was able to do exactly this in Nemesis, and while my interest/playtime isn't as high for Invasion, my map pool has stayed ahead of my character level/power by a decent margin. If you aren't sustaining maps well above 70, then you probably aren't rolling them with enough quantity. This is what "sustaining" is supposed to achieve--it puts pressure on you to do harder content via better rolls, because if you don't you risk slipping down. Again, the system you're advocating alleviates that pressure because further buffs to map drop rates would make the already easy sustain possible with blue maps. That makes the game easier, not harder.

As for the haggling-based economy, perhaps that might have been the goal in the distant past, but it's completely out the window now with the existence of indexers.

There's no shortage of players dropping back down to farming Lunaris, a 66 zone, to farm Piety both for the chaos recipe and for map drops. That isn't difficulty, that's just tedium.

Constantly having to roll maps is a problem, it drives this MMO economy we're seeing now where everything needs to be traded to keep on rolling maps. It's put us on this near inevitable path towards an Auction House. Where months ago the consensus was that the AH was everything that was wrong with D3 and should never be in PoE it's now starting to shift because it's obvious that the tools we have are glaringly insufficient for the size of the economy present.

Going the MMO route and adding in an Auction House, even without instant buyouts, is one way of going forward. But I'd personally much prefer an alternative, where instead of adding in MMO tools into what's still an aRPG we bring the economy back to an aRPG size.

A size where there's much fewer trades needed to be made just to play the game, instead only trades needed to be made for BiS gear. This means that having to roll or sustain maps has to stop, because it's directly contributing to the MMO economy we're seeing. The entire point is to make sustaining maps easy and put the difficulty back where it belongs, in the content itself instead of accessing that content.

Lastly I'm not suggesting a blanket buff to map drop rates. I'm suggesting a buff to map drop rates on the condition that either implicit mods are added to high level maps, ensuring they retain some difficulty even if you run them blue or white. Or by making higher-level maps drop only at higher rarities, meaning you're forced to scour them if you wish to make them easier.

Either way the focus is on both ensuring that this game's difficulty lies in the content itself and not in accessing that content as well as in removing a massive factor in the economy, maps, to bring it back down to aRPG levels instead of having it remain at MMO levels where it requires MMO tools. I don't want anyone, regardless of luck, to ever have to trade for either maps or the currency needed to roll/sustain maps.

Really good ideas here, both in the OP and the replies.

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Gobla wrote:

There's no shortage of players dropping back down to farming Lunaris, a 66 zone, to farm Piety both for the chaos recipe and for map drops. That isn't difficulty, that's just tedium.

Constantly having to roll maps is a problem, it drives this MMO economy we're seeing now where everything needs to be traded to keep on rolling maps. It's put us on this near inevitable path towards an Auction House. Where months ago the consensus was that the AH was everything that was wrong with D3 and should never be in PoE it's now starting to shift because it's obvious that the tools we have are glaringly insufficient for the size of the economy present.

Going the MMO route and adding in an Auction House, even without instant buyouts, is one way of going forward. But I'd personally much prefer an alternative, where instead of adding in MMO tools into what's still an aRPG we bring the economy back to an aRPG size.

A size where there's much fewer trades needed to be made just to play the game, instead only trades needed to be made for BiS gear. This means that having to roll or sustain maps has to stop, because it's directly contributing to the MMO economy we're seeing. The entire point is to make sustaining maps easy and put the difficulty back where it belongs, in the content itself instead of accessing that content.

Lastly I'm not suggesting a blanket buff to map drop rates. I'm suggesting a buff to map drop rates on the condition that either implicit mods are added to high level maps, ensuring they retain some difficulty even if you run them blue or white. Or by making higher-level maps drop only at higher rarities, meaning you're forced to scour them if you wish to make them easier.

Either way the focus is on both ensuring that this game's difficulty lies in the content itself and not in accessing that content as well as in removing a massive factor in the economy, maps, to bring it back down to aRPG levels instead of having it remain at MMO levels where it requires MMO tools. I don't want anyone, regardless of luck, to ever have to trade for either maps or the currency needed to roll/sustain maps.

We can agree that the current state of the game as an econo-RPG is pretty bad. I'm not going to argue against any of that. What makes it possible to sustain maps at the highest level, and we're talking 74+ here, is the fact that you get drops that players who will never make it as high as you need. The shop threads are what make high level mapping possible, because you sure as hell aren't looting the currency necessary to roll the maps from the maps themselves, no matter how hard you roll them. In that sense, the whole endgame is parasitic on lower level players--for you to succeed, there has to be a lot of failure propping you up.

But you should still be sustaining fairly easily in the alch'n'go tiers, somewhere between 70-74. Those don't sink currency nearly as quickly, and often you leave with more than you started with. If you're still dropping down to 66s, it's just a case of mismanagement. In the broader sense, I think using the same currency system for maps as gear was a crippling mistake that has caused a number of problems the game will never recover from, but the fact remains that the current system will at least let you maintain mapping at a reasonable tier, solo, and without a huge amount of trade engagement.

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Uvne wrote:

We can agree that the current state of the game as an econo-RPG is pretty bad. I'm not going to argue against any of that. What makes it possible to sustain maps at the highest level, and we're talking 74+ here, is the fact that you get drops that players who will never make it as high as you need. The shop threads are what make high level mapping possible, because you sure as hell aren't looting the currency necessary to roll the maps from the maps themselves, no matter how hard you roll them. In that sense, the whole endgame is parasitic on lower level players--for you to succeed, there has to be a lot of failure propping you up.

But you should still be sustaining fairly easily in the alch'n'go tiers, somewhere between 70-74. Those don't sink currency nearly as quickly, and often you leave with more than you started with. If you're still dropping down to 66s, it's just a case of mismanagement. In the broader sense, I think using the same currency system for maps as gear was a crippling mistake that has caused a number of problems the game will never recover from, but the fact remains that the current system will at least let you maintain mapping at a reasonable tier, solo, and without a huge amount of trade engagement.

I do agree that you won't be falling back down to 66s, that was more hyperbole apart from the earlier mentioned Lunaris farming that players do still engage in at high levels (and it doesn't even have map quantity bonuses).

The main gist of my suggestion though is that if there's hard content that you can handle then you should have access to it. Not to content a few levels below it. Not just occasionally. You should always, at all times, have access to difficult content.

In fact you should always have access to content more difficult than you can handle. I strongly believe that's the atmosphere that should be present in any truly challenging game. Seeing an open doorway in front of you but not really daring to go in because you know whatever's in there will mess you up.

On the contrary what, to me, defines an easier game is that that doorway is closed until you finish all of the preceding content so that there's little chance you won't be ready for what comes next.

Challenge, to me, means the option to take a leap into the deep end. And PoE's mapping system runs completely contrary to that. You have to constantly prove again and again that you can handle the challenging content by doing easier content.

And, as you rightly point out, the only way you can possibly stay in the deep end is by flooding the market with whatever you find there so you have the currency needed to stay there. And PoE's trading tools simply aren't capable of dealing with that.

So the way I see it we have two options. Either we upgrade the trading tools, leading to an AH or some variant of it. Or we downsize the economy so that we won't need those tools, meaning several systems, like maps, need to be overhauled and essentially removed from the economy.

There has been a lot of feedback and suggestions to the former. In this thread I give feedback on how I envision the latter, which I personally believe is more true to the spirit of PoE.

I agree with the OP, and thought all his/her points were good and very well-articulated.

However, I think there are a few gems which should be excluded from the OP's Lady Dialla (Gemling Queen) vender recommendation:

• Portal Gem
• Increased Item Rarity Gem
• Increased Item Quantity Gem

This actually reminds me of a feature in Torchlight II, where there was a color die vendor who you had to visit (out of town) to purchase color dies. I thought it was a wonderful idea. Speaking of which, I wish PoE had color dies (perhaps as a microtransaction).

Spelling corrections for the OP:

• In the "Maps" section, OP had a bad auto-correct: "cave-eats" instead of "caveats"
• In the "Uniques" section, OP had a typo: "still out of rich for new players". Should be "reach"

I have to agree with much of the OP. For months now I have felt that maps and skill gems should be less of a "scarcity" thing and more of an abundance thing.

I totally agree that Skills and Supports should be far more abundant. There's no reason why I should only have access to one Multistrike, per character, at the extreme end of the main game. And everyone should be offered Reduced Mana as a quest reward.

Your plan to make maps harder and easier to find is something I can totally back up. I personally really dislike the current system. The end-game is the #1 reason my friends and I haven't logged in in weeks. Regardless of the "streakiness" that GGG thinks is great for mapping (it's not,) my problem is how much time I have to spend grinding and playing through incredibly unchallenging, unrewarding, and unfun content to even take a peak at stuff that I should be able to attempt by default. I'm not saying I should play one map of each level and have a pile of Shipyards within a few hours, but Christ, there has to be some middle-ground between going broke running 68-72s and laughing from atop a pile of 78s.

I really think that if the OP's suggestions were implemented, a lot more people would be enjoying the game. Trading should indeed be the go-to place for finding high end, high rolled, and hard to find items. But Gems, maps (other than Uniques or extremely awesome rolled rares), and most Uniques should not be among them.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Allow the general conception to be a misconception, and you allow innovation.

:]

This blew my mind, dude.

I agree, completely.

Humans are, mostly, at any given point in time, either hungry, or emotional... The economy, or this cloud, is filled with humans who are hungry for items (or Real Money) that they don't have but want and would do anything for... They will do anything for it and this creates a machine.... or...

...A robot that can only obtain emotion once food and satisfaction are met. The current economy (in general) doesn't have compassion because they don't have emotion, because they aren't satisfied with what they have, so they will mark their items extremely high, buy extremely low, and laugh at you when you tell them their business...because so many people are doing this that they couldn't take the risk of losing out.

I personally think this is kinda healthy if you want to be fair...but when people are doing nothing but trading and never working or hunting.. then what you have is "a member of the cloud"

Nothing will collectively destroy that cloud but there are ways to create a more enjoyable experience with it.

There are only two real solutions.

1)Serve in Cloud: Become a part of the cloud, never hunt, always buy and sell, until you have the greatest items in the game, then proceed to not enjoy the game because it's very face roll at that point and nothing challenges you...

2)Rule in Hell Yeah!: It takes a village!!! Base your economy locally and turn off trade chat, bring your friends in or make new friends through global or parties, good friends that you can trust, make a lot of them. Make a guild with your friends. When you have a large number of close friends playing this game with you, then you have a tremendously generous and splendid economy, where loaning something is neighborly and not "absolutely forbidden"!!...where people are compassionate of you and will support you, when you in return support them, if you can. This is the only real solution. Remove yourself from the cloud and participate in Local Economy rather than Global. Even if some of your friends betray you and sell those nice items you let them use for a little bit....you have the power to ignore and disassociate yourself and your local economy from that person. Viola~ Enjoyable experience, however rural or tribal, it is very beautiful, and if you can pull this off successfully, it will thrive.