Did anyone ever realize?

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DirkAustin wrote:

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TheAnuhart wrote:

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DirkAustin wrote:

The 'economy' in POE is a reflection of the real life economy?

Yes.


I don't play aRPGs for more RL. I play them for fantasy escapism.

Thats kind of what i was trying to get across with the thread. If real life is already bad why would i subject myself to the same misery in a game?

No money or little money IRL = few orbs ingame. <- Poor

Lots of money IRL = lots of orbs ingame. <- Rich

Basically, like in real ife, the ones good at trading and farming are the ones reaping the benefits while the rest drags behind. Shouldnt a game be about giving players a form of satisfaction they cannot get in real life?

Interessting point made. But since social interaction is social it´s gonna be social. The chance to bring variety into interactions via a game can never reach a "real fantasy world", if we can call it like that. But it can be some kind of different in some way for sure.

Funny to see all the wanna-be philosophers and economists.

The only thing I agree with here is that POE has a really strong and innovative economy: Which is mainly due to all currency being crafting materials, i.e. "currency sink". And obviously the inherent value through demand and drop-rate of items. I wouldn't compare it to real economy though. In a real economy GGG doesn't show up and creates Legacy Items out of nowhere.

The biggest mistake GGG made was creating Legacy Items in first place. Which enabled some very few to become insanely rich with minimal effort or economic skill. Which in turn gives them more means to keep flipping... and driving high-end prices to absurd levels due to the insane gap between rich and poor.

All without any real economic reason. But with "outside interference" by GGG, basically.

Solution? -> Remove Non-Legacy Items for Everyone in Standard League. i.e. Upgrade all Non-Legacy Items to their Legacy Counter-Parts. Bring back Legacy IIQ as well. This will at least make the economic and farming playing field leveled for everyone. This League shall be called "Legacy League". Which is meant for Fun... and Insane Builds. Even if balance is not given. (It's not given with Legacy items anyway: At least balance would be provided amongst people inside the League itself)

Then Create a new permanent League called "Pure League". All changes will be effective for everyone. Legacy doesn't exist. Therefore having true Balance since all Changes become effective for everyone. This would also become a League which is PVP-viable with possibilities to build on that Area. Also: No Items from other Leagues will be dumped into Pure League.

I understand this would mean two different builds having to be deved and mantained at the same time. But hey: It's GGG who came up with the glorious idea of Legacy Items in first place. Plus removing IIQ, increasing the economic and farming gap between players even further.

I never had any issues in games to earn cash through flipping. I do it here once in a while. And I always have around 15 Stashtabs on sale anyways. Biggest flipping margin was a 6L close to perf. Daressos armor with a Profit of around 15ex in 1 day. (And I don't even focus on flipping at all)
I also worked hard to at least get a slightly acceptable MF char going with the lousy legacy IIQ stuff i could still gather or already had pre-nerf. Was doing fine with 100/400 for lvl 75-78 maps, pure Culler with like 2x 6-7 Attacks per Second Culling. Or 110/520 for Domi in Clown-Gear. Might possibly be able to do 5ex per day if I was lucky and cared enough to play 4hours or more per day.

I just don't have the time to spider Items non-stop or keep up to date for most popular builds + items in order to flip more efficiently. It's also boring as hell to go on farming Domi in 6 man Grps nonstop. Mapping 75+ with 100/400 with my Mf is way inferior to Domi anyway. They should reward High level Grps running Difficult Maps with high Maps. Should be equally rewarding or even more profitable than Fast 6-Man Domi Grps. At least then you could switch around... wouldn't be boring "Domi Runs only" to reach the insane amounts of currency needed for high-end stuff.

Don't get me wrong: I loved POE.. and as a whole I think GGG did an amazing Job with this game. I just believe they made some dire mistakes which they should try and fix. Also they don't seem to care about players who have a life. I'm not a complete scrub either... Managed to get my maybe 300-350ex in account value spread on two chars.

I'm also not a regular casual. In peak times, even with a full-time Job I would play play up to 8 hours a day. My biggest mistake was not being wealthy.. and not being around after my initial Beta playtimes... to participate in the huge Kaom's + Shav Legacy Changes and Flips.

I'm not even gonna mention Botters and Real-Money Trading Communities. Who knows how much they add ontop of this problem.

So what is there to do now for people who actually have a Life, a Job... a lovely Girl... or maybe a small, wonderful Family?

Level a Char from 91 to 100? Farm Domi 4+ hours per day?

"Woooohoooo."

Oh Yeah. I could as well pursue my Goal of Buying my first mirrored Dagger. Only 100 more pure EX to go... for a Mirror.

I don't think so. I prefer to go and learn playing some Piano, Play around with my upcoming Roland MV 8800 and KingKorg Synthesizer. Spend some time with my Girl.. or spend time working earning some serious Cash.

Call me when there is a fixed, levelled and fair economy. Which makes it possible to achieve or do something exciting in this game. Despite having a life, and still spending a lot of time on games. Something other than: Grind to Lvl 100. Farm Domi. Or face the challenge of painstakingly saving up for a mirror - Or Uber-Atziri capable Gear.

Yawn Yawn Yawn..... *Sigh*. Such a shame. Really. Not compatible with RL Life. Not enough ENDGAME. No fixes to fix the "Casual-Player" problem or Economic Balance. But even implementing stuff which makes it worse. (I really don't envy players who started post IIQ nerf... at all.)

Thank you for the hundreds of hours of Quality time in GGG: It is an amazing game nevertheless. Just wish there was more focus in the right areas for my taste and perception as a life-long gamer.

Good luck to everyone.

Bye

Oh, I forgot to mention: With the Aura Snapshotting Nerf it will be even more expensive/annoying to have a high level-map-capable Mfer going. So... the choice is even further reduced to Domi for anyone who is focussing on MF or farming.

Have fun.

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DirkAustin wrote:

The only thing missing here is the sales. I dont see people in the game do sales to get more people to buy from them quite the opposite.

First of all, there are occasionally people who do "sales", usually clearance sales to empty out their stash.

Secondly, the reason you don't see more sales in the game is that there are some factors in real life that this game can't replicate.

Two specific reasons why a real life business would have sales are:

Loss leaders: Businesses will sell one item at a loss in order to get people into their store in the hopes that while they're there anyway, those people will buy enough other stuff to make an overall profit. In PoE, people will usually only buy one item at a time, so this doesn't work.

Brand Loyalty/Recognition: Sell the product cheap for a short time so people become familiar with it, in hopes that they will stay with that same brand later when it's at regular price. In real life, products are differentiated by more than just the price. There are other factors like quality to consider as well. In PoE, my Alpha's Howl is basically the same as anyone else's. There ARE minor variations in some of the stats, but you can see those and account for them BEFORE purchasing the item. IRL, you can't always see the difference in quality beforehand, so you'll go to a brand you trust. Also in PoE, the quality of the item has nothing to do with the seller. Odds are, the next time you want to buy a similar item, that same person won't even be selling anything similar. There's no reason to want to go back to them because they'll be selling completely different products by then.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

This is also true of Path of Exile's economy. The challenge is in valuation, and yes, the players will always be trying to conquer these challenges in valuation so as to establish a stable system of value exchange. The developer's job is to thwart this stability — not with lame tricks like a clunky trading UI or requiring knowledge of third-party tools in order to proceed, but by making the actual valuing difficult.

This is a daunting development challenge. They are not facing off against individual players, but a mass collective, using a form of "cloud problem-solving" communicated through price data. This collective also uses third-party tools to gather and distribute its data among participants. It's a small team in New Zealand versus the Borg.

However, the Borg want to be challenged. They don't want an easy economy which they can easily solve. They want a Borg-sized challenge. If they don't get it, they'll just complain about how boring things are. (Which might not usually matter, except for the whole "hopefully paying customers" part.)

Your answer to this situation apparently seems to be to tell GGG to give up. It's not unrealistic advice, to be honest. What is being asked of them is monumentally difficult.

But I want them to try. I want them to try really fucking hard.

"Challenge" doesn't mean completely obscure and unconquerable. It doesn't have to be a mystery for the ages. And people who like accumulating wealth will continue to do so. Just because people work out how to beat Atziri doesn't invalidate the challenge because now there's a "system." And despite what you say, pricing schemes aren't exactly clear and subject to whims of the market.

I know who Mark Rosewater is and actually skimmed that article because his opinion interests me. But if you had read the rest of it, his lamp metaphor only falls under one principle in a list of game design principles.

So yes, I sincerely think you're missing his point, since he also states that you want to give your players a feeling of accomplishment (i.e. success).


Let's go back to why I responded the way that I did to you:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

In terms of challenges, I honestly believe the bulk of making a challenging economy is in making a balanced non-economy. If players do not know what build is best, which uniques are best, which rare affixes are best... then you have challenge in valuation. (Not just economic, either; even staunch self-found types have to make evaluations to determine what to equip. But I digress.) Take away the obvious answers and you can make determining "uber" an actual challenge.

The bolded part is an oxymoron. Right from the get-go what you're saying makes me skeptical. The game needs an economy that isn't an economy? What?

As I continue to read, I see that what you want is impossible because this is an ARPG where there obviously has to be better loot by definition. The game is about a grind for better and better stuff.

If you have a one-hander with 300 pdps, you still want the one-hander with 400 pdps. If you have a 2000 AR 5L with 70 life and 2 resists, you still want the 2000 AR 6L with 100 life and 3 resists.

But even all that said, there is a challenge in valuation already. Because while some items are incontestably better, uniques do have drawbacks and are only valuable because of their enforced scarcity. Some are more valuable because of their role in certain builds or their lack of downsides, but aside from that and pricing schemes for rares can still be rather odd.

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Since the non-economy does the heavy lifting for making the economy challenging, the only thing the economy itself needs to do is avoid interfering with players' own valuations. Priority one is avoiding telling players what the value is and forcing them as much as possible to actually designate a price themselves, avoiding yes/no mechanics and favoring price-designation mechanics (for both buyer and seller). Priority two — not far behind — is to make things as fast, convenient, easy, fun, immediate-impact, and automated as possible.

The bolded is yet another enigmatic statement. We already have that. Both in terms of how we choose to price items, but also by virtue of it being a barter economy, value is being exchanged. I don't value the Bringer of Rain as much as I do the 6 exalts I got for it. The guy with the 6 exalts values my Bringer of Rain more. This difference in priorities exist because he's doing a build that needs BoR. I'm not interested in that build. That is a difference in valuation.

The only price designation mechanics in place are vendor currency rates. But there are no such things in place for any other item.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Players want to be challenged, and they also want to win. These are contradictory motives, because victory implies a lack of future challenges.

I just wanted to snip this little bit, because it best highlights why I clash with how aRPGs are becoming.

The above statement by Scrotie is NOT me. I don't want to win, not ultimately (which is what must be implied for the contradiction to be). I want many victories on my journey, but I don't really want the destination in a hurry.

I am fully aware of the contradiction, I will always prefer slowly 'approaching' a never reachable end, to fast tracking to the end. Reachable but looooooooong time reachable is acceptable, though.

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The above statement by Scrotie is NOT me. I don't want to win, not ultimately (which is what must be implied for the contradiction to be). I want many victories on my journey, but I don't really want the destination in a hurry.

Very nice, i play the same way and the game is very much enjoyable when your never winning.

Peace,

-Boem-

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DeviantLightning wrote:

Everything is also about who you know.
Mapping and trading is infinitely better with the right crowd of contacts.

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