The fact it's a non-zero percent chance of losing all of your currency to get what you want makes it gambling.
Don't you think you're being needlessly pedantic right now? That's like saying that every single football match is gambling because the teams don't know in advance who is going to win.
Depends. Did I put money on betting who wins? If I did, that's gambling.
I'm putting money on betting if I'll get the item I want when I "craft", thus I'm gambling. I would much rather pay a convenience fee via trading for the item, because unlike "crafting", I'm at no risk of losing my currency.
And therein lies the crux of my issues with "crafting" in this game: I worked hard to get my currency. I invest tons of time and resources optimizing my atlas tree to ensure I get a steady influx of currency, even if it risks dangerous fights with overjuiced mobs. I refuse to risk wasting that hard-earned currency on acquiring gear.
I will likely never get a mirror's worth of wealth within a league, because of a combination of ADHD fucking up my ability to maintain focus alongside the content I farm simply not pumping out big ticket items by design, but I would still pay that much if it meant avoiding gambling.
PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build!
The others found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on juice. I am not so foolish.
Last edited by Pizzarugi#6258 on Apr 30, 2026, 7:27:56 AM
Don't you think you're being needlessly pedantic right now? That's like saying that every single football match is gambling because the teams don't know in advance who is going to win.
Depends. Did I put money on betting who wins? If I did, that's gambling.
I'm putting money on betting if I'll get the item I want when I "craft", thus I'm gambling. I would much rather pay a convenience fee via trading for the item, because unlike "crafting", I'm at no risk of losing my currency.
And therein lies the crux of my issues with "crafting" in this game: I worked hard to get my currency. I invest tons of time and resources optimizing my atlas tree to ensure I get a steady influx of currency, even if it risks dangerous fights with overjuiced mobs. I refuse to risk wasting that hard-earned currency on acquiring gear.
I will likely never get a mirror's worth of wealth within a league, because of a combination of ADHD fucking up my ability to maintain focus alongside the content I farm simply not pumping out big ticket items by design, but I would still pay that much if it meant avoiding gambling.
I think your own example here proves why crafting ISN'T "just gambling" in this game: it's gambling if you're placing bets on the outcome of someone else's crafting. It's NOT gambling if you are doing the crafting, because you can greatly influence the outcome towards a desired win through preparation, knowledge, and skill.
Don't you think you're being needlessly pedantic right now? That's like saying that every single football match is gambling because the teams don't know in advance who is going to win.
Depends. Did I put money on betting who wins? If I did, that's gambling.
I'm putting money on betting if I'll get the item I want when I "craft", thus I'm gambling. I would much rather pay a convenience fee via trading for the item, because unlike "crafting", I'm at no risk of losing my currency.
And therein lies the crux of my issues with "crafting" in this game: I worked hard to get my currency. I invest tons of time and resources optimizing my atlas tree to ensure I get a steady influx of currency, even if it risks dangerous fights with overjuiced mobs. I refuse to risk wasting that hard-earned currency on acquiring gear.
I will likely never get a mirror's worth of wealth within a league, because of a combination of ADHD fucking up my ability to maintain focus alongside the content I farm simply not pumping out big ticket items by design, but I would still pay that much if it meant avoiding gambling.
I think your own example here proves why crafting ISN'T "just gambling" in this game: it's gambling if you're placing bets on the outcome of someone else's crafting. It's NOT gambling if you are doing the crafting, because you can greatly influence the outcome towards a desired win through preparation, knowledge, and skill.
Incorrect. It is gambling if you go to a casino to hit the slot machine. It is also gambling if that same slot machine can potentially pump out a powerful weapon, armor, or jewelry.
And again, I'll reiterate: No amount of skill, preparation, and knowledge will guarantee a zero percent chance of not "crafting" the item you want. Thus, it is gambling.
I refuse to gamble away my hard-earned currency. And because GGG will not implement mechanics that guarantee outcomes even if it comes at a high price, I will "craft" via trading and pay extra for the convenience.
PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build!
The others found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on juice. I am not so foolish.
Last edited by Pizzarugi#6258 on Apr 30, 2026, 7:47:00 AM
Incorrect. It is gambling if you go to a casino to hit the slot machine. It is also gambling if that same slot machine can potentially pump out a powerful weapon, armor, or jewelry.
And again, I'll reiterate: No amount of skill, preparation, and knowledge will guarantee a zero percent chance of not "crafting" the item you want. Thus, it is gambling.
And I refuse to gamble away my hard-earned currency.
You're trying to make the claim that ANYTHING without an absolutely certain outcome = gambling, which is not at all the definition most people would use. Under your definition, playing in a football match would count as gambling because an individual player is not in absolute control of the outcome, and I do not accept that definition.
Incorrect. It is gambling if you go to a casino to hit the slot machine. It is also gambling if that same slot machine can potentially pump out a powerful weapon, armor, or jewelry.
And again, I'll reiterate: No amount of skill, preparation, and knowledge will guarantee a zero percent chance of not "crafting" the item you want. Thus, it is gambling.
And I refuse to gamble away my hard-earned currency.
You're trying to make the claim that ANYTHING without an absolutely certain outcome = gambling, which is not at all the definition most people would use. Under your definition, playing in a football match would count as gambling because an individual player is not in absolute control of the outcome, and I do not accept that definition.
I've been very clear since the beginning what I consider to be gambling: If you put money into something, and there's a chance you don't get the desired outcome, you are gambling.
Again if we're going with the football analogy: It is gambling if you're putting money on betting which team wins.
A more proper analogy would be getting paid after working a minimum wage job and then going to a casino hoping you strike it rich.
"Crafting" is the casino, your currency are the chips.
PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build!
The others found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on juice. I am not so foolish.
Last edited by Pizzarugi#6258 on Apr 30, 2026, 8:00:04 AM
I've been very clear since the beginning what I consider to be gambling: If you put money into something, and there's a chance you don't get the desired outcome, you are gambling.
Again if we're going with the football analogy: It is gambling if you're putting money on betting which team wins.
A more proper analogy would be getting paid after working a minimum wage job and then going to a casino hoping you strike it rich.
"Crafting" is the casino, your currency are the chips.
Your definition still fails, because you ARE NOT putting money into PoE crafting: PoE currency has no actual value. Nobody is going to buy a house or fail to make bill payments based on the outcome of an attempt to create a specific simplex amulet.
Unless of course you want to make the argument "well anything I've spent time on has value to me" in which case playing in a football match still applies because all of the time and effort a player would spend training certainly has value to them, as does winning versus losing.
Your logic simply does not follow. You are also continuing to straw man the other position by insisting that a player in this game has NO control over the outcome, which is demonstrably untrue. Not having ABSOLUTE control is not the same as having ZERO control. Someone in a casino has literally zero control over which space the ball lands on in a game of Roulette. Someone who knows what they are doing has tremendous control over the outcome when it comes to PoE crafting, just like an athlete who has prepared for a match has the ability to significantly impact the outcome.
"The harder I work, the luckier I get." Damn right, Samuel Goldwyn.
Your definition still fails, because you ARE NOT putting money into PoE crafting: PoE currency has no actual value. Nobody is going to buy a house or fail to make bill payments based on the outcome of an attempt to create a specific simplex amulet.
Unless of course you want to make the argument "well anything I've spent time on has value to me" in which case playing in a football match still applies because all of the time and effort a player would spend training certainly has value to them, as does winning versus losing.
Your logic simply does not follow. You are also continuing to straw man the other position by insisting that a player in this game has NO control over the outcome, which is demonstrably untrue. Not having ABSOLUTE control is not the same as having ZERO control. Someone in a casino has literally zero control over which space the ball lands on in a game of Roulette. Someone who knows what they are doing has tremendous control over the outcome when it comes to PoE crafting, just like an athlete who has prepared for a match has the ability to significantly impact the outcome.
"The harder I work, the luckier I get." Damn right, Samuel Goldwyn.
Yeah, I am going to make that argument. If I put in the time and effort to farm a ton of currency, risking my ass getting kicked that entire time, I absolutely will put value in what I manage to pull out of my maps. And because I value the time and effort I put into obtaining my wealth, I expect to get something out of my investment.
We can argue back and forth about controlling outcomes all you want, but at the end of the day you will not, and will never, guarantee the result of "crafting" having the desired outcome. At its core, at its very foundation, "crafting" is built upon gambling. No amount of skill, knowledge, and preparation will ever stop making it gambling.
You would have an argument if there was nothing to lose by participating in "crafting", but you do not. You can lose your time and effort that you spent on hard-earned currency that is necessary in order to participate in "crafting".
All you're talking about is moving up from a slot machine to blackjack or poker. But you will never escape the casino.
PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build!
The others found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on juice. I am not so foolish.
Last edited by Pizzarugi#6258 on Apr 30, 2026, 9:10:36 AM
I refuse to gamble away my hard-earned currency. And because GGG will not implement mechanics that guarantee outcomes even if it comes at a high price, I will "craft" via trading and pay extra for the convenience.
Exactly this.
Even when I "craft" a simple +2 amulet I have to spam alterations. Sometimes I've gotten the +1 all skills prefix in 200, sometimes it takes me 2000+ alts. It quite literally is gambling, the only reason I make that amulet myself is because the only RNG steps are at the start and after that with some divs+harvest+meta crafts I can guarantee that the amulet will have the stats I want(along with buying one with a fractured suffix of my choice).
And I don't care what my veiled exalt hits, if I actually cared about the veiled suffix then I'd be spending many more divines constantly re-rolling it, gambling my currency away. Then I'd be better off buying the amulet with the mods I want on trade. Getting decent items is ok in this game sure, but getting items you want is insanely RNG-dependent.
This is the amount of hoops I have to jump through just to make a decent amulet, it costs me like 10-15 divines usually to make it. And I don't "craft" anything else in a league because its just throwing your currency away when you can just buy the ready item on trade.
And I don't even want to look at the recombinator. I think its a dumb mechanic and I refuse to fill stash tabs full of bases then alt spam them all, then try to mix them using some convoluted methods you can only find online of putting certain bench mods on them to make your chances better. The game explains none of this, and its all too annoying and random for the average player to ever approach "crafting", on top of that you're very likely to waste your divines that you spent time farming lmao
Lifelong NEET, loud and proud about it.
Found a way to hide any comment on the forums, my experience with using them is instantly 1000x better lemao
Your definition still fails, because you ARE NOT putting money into PoE crafting: PoE currency has no actual value. Nobody is going to buy a house or fail to make bill payments based on the outcome of an attempt to create a specific simplex amulet.
Unless of course you want to make the argument "well anything I've spent time on has value to me" in which case playing in a football match still applies because all of the time and effort a player would spend training certainly has value to them, as does winning versus losing.
Your logic simply does not follow. You are also continuing to straw man the other position by insisting that a player in this game has NO control over the outcome, which is demonstrably untrue. Not having ABSOLUTE control is not the same as having ZERO control. Someone in a casino has literally zero control over which space the ball lands on in a game of Roulette. Someone who knows what they are doing has tremendous control over the outcome when it comes to PoE crafting, just like an athlete who has prepared for a match has the ability to significantly impact the outcome.
"The harder I work, the luckier I get." Damn right, Samuel Goldwyn.
Yeah, I am going to make that argument. If I put in the time and effort to farm a ton of currency, risking my ass getting kicked that entire time, I absolutely will put value in what I manage to pull out of my maps. And because I value the time and effort I put into obtaining my wealth, I expect to get something out of my investment.
We can argue back and forth about controlling outcomes all you want, but at the end of the day you will not, and will never, guarantee the result of "crafting" having the desired outcome. At its core, at its very foundation, "crafting" is built upon gambling. No amount of skill, knowledge, and preparation will ever stop making it gambling.
You would have an argument if there was nothing to lose by participating in "crafting", but you do not. You can lose your time and effort that you spent on hard-earned currency that is necessary in order to participate in "crafting".
All you're talking about is moving up from a slot machine to blackjack or poker. But you will never escape the casino.
You're still trying to change the definition of gambling and then say "see, by my definition PoE crafting is gambling."
Let's do a thought experiment here, taking PoE completely out of it. I invite you and 3 other people over to my house, and we sit down around my dinner table for a friendly poker game. Nobody puts in any money, I just give everybody an equal amount of cheap plastic chips to start. After a few hours, you have all of the chips and the game is over because you won.
Were we gambling?
According to your definition, yes we were. We invested time into a game where the outcome was uncertain, determined by a combination of luck and skill, with a possibility of both desirable and undesirable outcomes.
But like I said many posts ago, that is a definition I refuse to accept because it does NOT fit what the majority of people would understand to be gambling. So if you do not agree that this fits your definition of gambling, I need you to clarify why that is because you are not being logically consistent.
Your definition still fails, because you ARE NOT putting money into PoE crafting: PoE currency has no actual value. Nobody is going to buy a house or fail to make bill payments based on the outcome of an attempt to create a specific simplex amulet.
Unless of course you want to make the argument "well anything I've spent time on has value to me" in which case playing in a football match still applies because all of the time and effort a player would spend training certainly has value to them, as does winning versus losing.
Your logic simply does not follow. You are also continuing to straw man the other position by insisting that a player in this game has NO control over the outcome, which is demonstrably untrue. Not having ABSOLUTE control is not the same as having ZERO control. Someone in a casino has literally zero control over which space the ball lands on in a game of Roulette. Someone who knows what they are doing has tremendous control over the outcome when it comes to PoE crafting, just like an athlete who has prepared for a match has the ability to significantly impact the outcome.
"The harder I work, the luckier I get." Damn right, Samuel Goldwyn.
Yeah, I am going to make that argument. If I put in the time and effort to farm a ton of currency, risking my ass getting kicked that entire time, I absolutely will put value in what I manage to pull out of my maps. And because I value the time and effort I put into obtaining my wealth, I expect to get something out of my investment.
We can argue back and forth about controlling outcomes all you want, but at the end of the day you will not, and will never, guarantee the result of "crafting" having the desired outcome. At its core, at its very foundation, "crafting" is built upon gambling. No amount of skill, knowledge, and preparation will ever stop making it gambling.
You would have an argument if there was nothing to lose by participating in "crafting", but you do not. You can lose your time and effort that you spent on hard-earned currency that is necessary in order to participate in "crafting".
All you're talking about is moving up from a slot machine to blackjack or poker. But you will never escape the casino.
You're still trying to change the definition of gambling and then say "see, by my definition PoE crafting is gambling."
Let's do a thought experiment here, taking PoE completely out of it. I invite you and 3 other people over to my house, and we sit down around my dinner table for a friendly poker game. Nobody puts in any money, I just give everybody an equal amount of cheap plastic chips to start. After a few hours, you have all of the chips and the game is over because you won.
Were we gambling?
According to your definition, yes we were. We invested time into a game where the outcome was uncertain, determined by a combination of luck and skill, with a possibility of both desirable and undesirable outcomes.
But like I said many posts ago, that is a definition I refuse to accept because it does NOT fit what the majority of people would understand to be gambling. So if you do not agree that this fits your definition of gambling, I need you to clarify why that is because you are not being logically consistent.
This isn't a proper thought experiment. You're comparing a fun game among friends to pooling resources you worked for into a mechanic, hoping you get what you want even if you risk losing it all.
Again, I've made my argument clear: If you put in currency that you worked to obtain, and you're not guaranteed to get the desired outcome, you are gambling. I've been consistent on this claim since I first posted in this thread.
You run maps to farm currency. You pool your currency into "crafting". You're not guaranteed to get the item you want from "crafting", and failure results in loss of currency. Thus you aren't crafting, you are gambling.
PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build!
The others found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on juice. I am not so foolish.
Last edited by Pizzarugi#6258 on Apr 30, 2026, 10:07:08 AM
