Crafting is officially garbage in POE

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For example: during Closed Beta, GGG secretly increased the drop rates of orbs, then collected data afterwards. The result was that less crafting occurred. And I don't mean as a percentage; I mean the absolute number of orbs used decreased.

I've been wanting to know the full story behind that for a while now. I wonder if the result (less crafting) might be due (at least in part) to the fact that the increase in drop rate was a secret.

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ScrotieMcB escribió:

Well, I shouldn't have said "no impact," because it probably would have one. But "unpredictable impact" would have been accurate.

For example: during Closed Beta, GGG secretly increased the drop rates of orbs, then collected data afterwards. The result was that less crafting occurred. And I don't mean as a percentage; I mean the absolute number of orbs used decreased.

Hard to wrap your head around, isn't it?

That's why I'd prefer methods which reduce the push to trade, not which try to flood the economy with orbs. The latter method has been tried before, and it didn't work. The hope would be that, by adding the "reduced gear drops" part, that the amount of gear available for trade would go down enough to cause a minor shortage, causing players to make more upgrades instead of trying to trade for them.

What would happen to the trading side of PoE if the probability of what prefixes and suffixes were able to spawn when using orbs to "craft" was narrowed?

Example say when using orbs to "craft" the level range that the prefixes/suffixes pull from were restricted to not being able to pull from the pool of prefixes/suffixes that are lower then 1/3 the itemlvl of the base item used in the "crafting".

I think it would still keep those "godly" items as extremely rare,but would be a good boost in crafting decent mid range items. This would in turn lessen the need for trading during the mid levels of the game(the end of cruel/beginning of merc) where many players run into the gear wall. It would also cause me (if I was into trading) more likely to spend a higher amount to buy the high itemlvl white base items from the high lvl mappers.

I made a similar suggestion in the big RMT causes trade chat, where we should tackle general loot and trading where it takes place. There is no need for there to be an uniform system across the board and in fact it already doesn't exist, because more affixes are unlocked the higher the ilvl.

Locking and a more guided (narrow as you said it) crafting more at certain ilvl's (low to mid range) definitely seems like an option to me. The low to mid will lose value anyways as you need higher defensive stats later on (or offensive). It would even combine nice with Scrotie's suggestion, that removes items with deaths.

Though one result of this probably will be more consistent leveling gear for re-rolls (a good thing), but as a result of that more orbs will find their way to late game, for crafting/ market there. Only a fresh league would cause more people to craft more low-mid levels content, hence the idea would combine well with what Scrotie suggested.

Another such idea could be:

Alternatively a %of life that can currently roll on items could be implicit on the gear. Instead of rolling 10 life, you can only roll 5 life and 5 would already be on the piece (arbitrary number example). Towards level 50 or so this 50% could becomes less and in end game you could remove it. This would have the following impacts I think:

More uniform chances for competitive play such as races.
Less "need" to craft (depends on the % you give implicit to gear). Probably there will be more crafting however, since white pieces would be more valuable (less chance on an useless piece, since it base value is more usable).
Progression at early-mid game would be less RNG and smoother. If less people over level more orbs would drop in the current system (no orb drop penalty as you over level).
More orbs probably flux into the endgame.

An idea to penalize trading could be:

If item get traded a penalty is applied to its affixes (think about losing 1% resistance, losing 4 life from the life roll etc.) This means that great gear is most valuable to the original owner. Crafting for yourself gains in value, the byproduct though is that if you craft something that is good, but not for the char you play with you effectively lose crafting/ trade value (can;t get back your investment). For re-rollers it would not be as much of an issue.

I've wasted 61 Eternal-Exalting to get 1st tier life mod on my item on 5 total mods available to get, having 25% chance to hit life roll.

:P

300 dps claw : 10 ex

Crafting 300 dps claw : 50 ex?

I buy 300 dps claw and keep 40 ex.

Problem?

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Zybeline2 escribió:

300 dps claw : 10 ex

Crafting 300 dps claw : 50 ex?

I buy 300 dps claw and keep 40 ex.

Problem?

No problem here.

Trading should be more interesting than crafting, by a significant amount, otherwise no one would trade ( and that is apparently what developers want for PoE ).
Even though 50 is much ...

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syrioforel escribió:

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trav_dawg escribió:

If I have to play another game, GGG has failed. I don't want that

(...)
Unfortunately, the "crafting" system is what it is, and it is based on a memoryless RNG. At some point, someone at GGG computed which odds Tyrannical (and every other mod, mind you!) should roll at so that the distribution of good gear on the server, over time, is about what they want it to be. (...)
(...)

I very much doubt that. No dev post so far indicates that they use proper mathematical analysis when it comes to balancing. Several dev posts indicate that they do have a large computer science knowledge, but nothing so far shows that they have large such in mathematics.

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ScrotieMcB escribió:

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Novalisk escribió:

If you make rares more specialized(i.e a good chest applies to 20% of players instead of 90%), then GGG could probably make crafting materials drop more often without hurting the economy.

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ScrotieMcB escribió:

So the supply of items available for trade is dictated by the following:

• the rate at which people farm items which they can't use

I love item diversity, but what you're talking about would be a trading buff.

Increasing orb drops isn't a crafting buff; feedback loop, remember?

My suggestion basically breaks down like this:
- Reduce gear drop rate = trading nerf = crafting seems better in comparison
- Increase orb drop rate = no impact on trade/craft balance = nothing but an alternate reward as compensation for gear drop rate reduction

More orbs/Less item drops won't address the hand-me-down problem, though. The way I see it there are two ways to get trade-able gear:

1. Drops your build doesn't need.

2. Gear you outgrew.

Diversifying gear slants towards the first, while reducing drops/increasing orbs slants towards the second. The first also promotes build diversity, while the latter leans towards strengthening the most popular builds.

Maybe they can work together?

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Novalisk escribió:

Spoiler

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ScrotieMcB escribió:

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Novalisk escribió:

If you make rares more specialized(i.e a good chest applies to 20% of players instead of 90%), then GGG could probably make crafting materials drop more often without hurting the economy.

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ScrotieMcB escribió:

So the supply of items available for trade is dictated by the following:

• the rate at which people farm items which they can't use

I love item diversity, but what you're talking about would be a trading buff.

Increasing orb drops isn't a crafting buff; feedback loop, remember?

My suggestion basically breaks down like this:
- Reduce gear drop rate = trading nerf = crafting seems better in comparison
- Increase orb drop rate = no impact on trade/craft balance = nothing but an alternate reward as compensation for gear drop rate reduction

More orbs/Less item drops won't address the hand-me-down problem, though.

Um, no. It does.

Here's what determines the number of hand-me-downs available:

• the rate at which people farm upgrades for their items, converting their old equipment to a hand-me-down
• the rate at which people craft upgrades for their items, converting their old equipment to a hand-me-down
• the rate at which people trade unneeded drops off other players, converting their old equipment to a hand-me-down
• the rate at which people trade hand-me-downs off other players, converting their old equipment to a hand-me-down
• the rate at which people trade crafted items off other players, converting their old equipment to a hand-me-down
• all items above, but using previous rates; this determines the surplus of hand-me-downs present in the economy at the time of the change

The first is reduced, the second is ???, the third is reduced, the fourth is a feedback loop, the fifth is an even weirder feedback loop, and it's too late to do anything about the sixth. The hope would be that players would react to the reductions with a compensating increase to actual crafting, although the crafting-related hand-me-down feedback loop would probably dampen the impact somewhat (unfortunately).

I can only get how the third is reduced, could you elaborate on the rest?