Crafting is officially garbage in POE

1. When overall gear drop rate is reduced, it becomes more difficult to find an upgrade directly by farming. Therefore, the first is reduced.

2. When it comes to orb drop rate, I'm assuming its effect is in the hands of the players. If there isn't "enough" crafting, they'll craft; if there is "enough," they won't. "Enough" in this case depends on how well the other factors of the economy provide players with a sufficiently steady stream of upgrades.

4. When a player upgrades their gear, the old gear becomes a hand-me-down, which is an upgrade for that player's gear, and then that player's old gear becomes a hand-me-down. The hand-me-down effect thus has a feedback loop with itself, and the only thing preventing it from going infinite is that not every hand-me-down is successfully sold.

5. Players can feed the hand-me-down effect by crafting; crafting a new upgrade means a new hand-me-down. When describing #2, I said that players will decide when there is "enough" crafting; this is what I mean. When the hand-me-down effect dries up, crafting can stimulate it, and this is very effective because, as described in #4, the hand-me-down effect stimulates itself. Thus actually using orbs becomes the engine which powers the ability to hoard them, creating a macroeconomic incentive.

6. Changes we make to running the economy will not instantly change the economy, whatever damage has been done has already been done. The Standard economy isn't going to go back in time and undergo some kind of reversal due to this suggestion; the trade vs craft balance will still be bad in that league, but it will get worse slower instead of faster.

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mazul escribió:

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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

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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. (...)
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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.

You don't need much math knowledge to do any of the computations you might want to do. CS background knowledge should be enough.

Does anyone know where the probability of each mod is posted? I don't think it would be unreasonable for GGG to say you have a 1/1000 chance of rolling tyrannical, or 1/50, 000 or whatever it is.

I actually think one of the best backgrounds for balance is network security (which was Chris Wilson's occupation prior to making Path of Exile).

In network security, you have this system which has a certain function, such as sending emails, and you take a good hard look at the system and determine all the ways you can use it. You then make it so that only one path, the Path of Intended Use, is viable; your job, in essence, is to isolate all other paths of utilizing the system, and apply a heavy dose of nerf bat to them, reducing their viability to as near zero as possible.

Balancing a game is essentially the same process, but with the core concept completely inverted. You still have all these paths to utilize a system, but your intent is instead to make them equally viable. If something is starting to look like the Path of Intended Use, that's what we call OP in game design, and we apply the nerf bat to that — precisely the opposite of the previous behavior. You might still choose to use the system for sending emails, or you might use it to do something completely different (and previously forbidden), but care is taken to make the benefits of each option roughly equal. A well-designed game is very much like a computer system where all pathways of use have been made equally "exploitative" and also equally nerfed, creating a wide variety of thematically different methods of solving problems, and thus creating meaningful choice.

When trading and crafting both feel equally "EZ mode" or "cheaty," that's when we've gotten the balance pretty darn close to perfect.

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Saffell escribió:

Orbs are always worth more to someone else than they are to you. This is the pain of crafting.

That is true... either spend 10 exalts worth on an item to get something you need, or buy a perfect one for 5.

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Saffell escribió:

Orbs are always worth more to someone else than they are to you. This is the pain of crafting.

Unless you are The Someone Else.

And yes, The Someone Else exists. There's actually a few of them, because the highest of The Someone Elses can't be online all of the time, and he can't trade with everyone.

Being The Someone Else is difficult, especially after a league has been established for a long period of time. But it's not impossible, and with good theorycrafting, serious grinding, and absolutely no life outside of the game, you too could achieve the title.

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ScrotieMcB escribió:

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Saffell escribió:

Orbs are always worth more to someone else than they are to you. This is the pain of crafting.

Unless you are The Someone Else.

And yes, The Someone Else exists. There's actually a few of them, because the highest of The Someone Elses can't be online all of the time, and he can't trade with everyone.

Being The Someone Else is difficult, especially after a league has been established for a long period of time. But it's not impossible, and with good theorycrafting, serious grinding, and absolutely no life outside of the game, you too could achieve the title.

So what you're saying is that in order to craft towards end game, you have to either have the luckiest RNG possible or have absolutely no life? Yeah, great game design there.

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allbusiness escribió:

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ScrotieMcB escribió:

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Saffell escribió:

Orbs are always worth more to someone else than they are to you. This is the pain of crafting.

Unless you are The Someone Else.

And yes, The Someone Else exists. There's actually a few of them, because the highest of The Someone Elses can't be online all of the time, and he can't trade with everyone.

Being The Someone Else is difficult, especially after a league has been established for a long period of time. But it's not impossible, and with good theorycrafting, serious grinding, and absolutely no life outside of the game, you too could achieve the title.

So what you're saying is that in order to craft towards end game, you have to either have the luckiest RNG possible or have absolutely no life? Yeah, great game design there.

Pretty much sums up the current system. If you can get other player's hand-me-downs, why are you crafting instead of trading? There is a group, however, which doesn't get hand-me-downs from anyone...

That's why I'm trying to curb the power of hand-me-downs in trading. Maybe we can stretch that top 2% into a top 5% or even 10%, which would still help a lot.

The fact that the vast majority will feed off the hand-me-downs of the power gamers... can't stop that. It is trading, after all.

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allbusiness escribió:

So what you're saying is that in order to craft towards end game, you have to either have the luckiest RNG possible or have absolutely no life? Yeah, great game design there.

Can you do better?

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CliveHowlitzer escribió:

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trav_dawg escribió:

It's nice to know someone else feels this way. I am seriously sick of right clicking and then left clicking on my sword. Candy crush is way more f*****ing fun than that. I want to kill shit not click 3600 times. And a gamble is one thing, but at SOME POINT is has to actually work... RIGHT!?

Sure! All you have to do is lower your expectations to the point that they are already met!

This exactly! People compare the "horrid crafting" in here to other games where crafting is guaranteed. It is actually really sad since this game is, as you said, basically a slots machine with orbs being the quarters you put in.