RMT Wins. Fatality!

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johnKeys wrote:

and the impact on the game is pretty clear, despite some people saying "well it's not Ultima".
when PoE becomes Ultima, it will be far, far too late.

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johnKeys wrote:

@VaultzInex (Inexium? stop making alts :)), I'm not much of an economist - but I see it as a "producer/consumer" thing: people scam and flip for hundreds of exalts, but those exalts have to come from somewhere, right?

just like in inflation the prices sky-rocket, but someone is printing the money.

assuming in Open Beta we (theoretically) had one guy per league with 200+ exalts/equivalent, and 10 more guys with 100+ exalts, and a Kaom's Heart cost 50 - and now we have 10 guys with 1000+ exalts, 50 more with 500+, and a Kaom's Heart costs 300.

well the drop rates are just like in Open Beta. maybe slightly less random because GGG did actually introduce semi-risk/reward elements to the game (boxes, invaders).
but you don't suddenly drop a stack of 10 Chaos where you usually dropped one in OB, nor does the chaos recipe suddenly give you a ton of orbs every time, instead of 1-2.

so where does this "virtual money" come from?
the answer, is pretty obvious.
even if these uber-rich flippers/scammers don't RMT personally (and I'm sure at least some of them do) - their orbs certainly come from RMT, after changing a few hands.
and then prices jump accordingly, while the RNG-layered design stays the same - so it's a cycle that feeds itself.

and the impact on the game is pretty clear, despite some people saying "well it's not Ultima".
when PoE becomes Ultima, it will be far, far too late.

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LostForm wrote:

I havnt searched PoE accounts on ebay, but I am guessing most of the RMT is using less mainstream sites than ebay

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b15h09 wrote:

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LostForm wrote:

I havnt searched PoE accounts on ebay, but I am guessing most of the RMT is using less mainstream sites than ebay

While true, most of the RMT is likely not using such a public place as ebay, there's still plenty of orbs for sale there, too.

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LostForm wrote:

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b15h09 wrote:

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LostForm wrote:

I havnt searched PoE accounts on ebay, but I am guessing most of the RMT is using less mainstream sites than ebay

While true, most of the RMT is likely not using such a public place as ebay, there's still plenty of orbs for sale there, too.

far less than i was expecting. I had one page of results for 'path of exile exalt', which includes the hits for the ingame code from nvidia and several posts by one seller for orbs other than exalted. All on one page of results.

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b15h09 wrote:

Agree, the number is fairly low, but ARPGs have well established underground communities and long running D2 item sites which rather invalidate the need for ebay.

EDIT: searching 'exalted' gets better results than 'exalt' it seems

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LostForm wrote:

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b15h09 wrote:

Agree, the number is fairly low, but ARPGs have well established underground communities and long running D2 item sites which rather invalidate the need for ebay.

EDIT: searching 'exalted' gets better results than 'exalt' it seems

agreed, the more obscure sites still do service a lot of people, but it is nowhere as easy to access or mainstream as RMT from UO, and never will be.

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b15h09 wrote:

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LostForm wrote:

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b15h09 wrote:

Agree, the number is fairly low, but ARPGs have well established underground communities and long running D2 item sites which rather invalidate the need for ebay.

EDIT: searching 'exalted' gets better results than 'exalt' it seems

agreed, the more obscure sites still do service a lot of people, but it is nowhere as easy to access or mainstream as RMT from UO, and never will be.

I believe you could attribute a big part of that to timing. Ebay was really starting to come into it's own, and fucking EVERYTHING from EVERYONE was showing up on it. I don't think game devs had even begun to respond to the RMT phenomena.