Eternal Orbs

I think this is a pretty good change overall, though I would've removed mirrors first. That said, mirrors should probably still be removed or nerfed - for example, only allowing one copy to be made of an item.

Late to the party since I haven't kept up for a few months, and someone probably already proposed, but why not just make it so Eternals continue to drop but can only be used on itemlevel 78 or lower items?
There's probably still so many Eternals around on the market that it could be very possible to craft a nearly perfect weapon right off the bat.
Refund any one who has already crafted new gear/affixes.

I like the change as it should mean the gap between the rich and poor should close a bit. Also no guilt yolo exalts and chaos spam are back.

I for one think this was a bad change. Being able to craft the perfect item no matter how long it takes is an interest for some. Mirrors on the other hand allowed people to craft and duplicate perfect items. Mirrors are what should have been disabled, or changed.

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FlyingBurger wrote:

OMG, really?

GGG, the introduction of eternal was a mistake, but you can't just remove eternals from the drop pool because the top 1% already got their insane gears. What you are doing right now is effectively remove the possibility for newer players to catch up because now they can never craft things that the rich had crafted.

I believe there is a solution but it can only be implemented when you guys completely stop making legacy items. Make a new standard and a new hardcore league, and let temp leagues items go to that one, the current standard/hardcore will be renamed. They won't be voided so people can play there if they still want, so we can have a standard/hardcore league without plagued economy, legacy items, insanely well crafted rares.

+1


Great idea actually. They should completely remake standard and hardcore and keep the old ones as legacy leagues, most people would migrate to the new leagues. and eventually the old leagues would only exist of people like "Scrooge McDuck" swimming in their wealth alone.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

... this is an item game built around chasing ever more powerful items. ... it doesnt matter how the items in 1 environment compare to another environment, it matters where those items sit in the realms of possibility and what that means for progression. ...

If perfect items are practically impossible then you still have 'the best item on the entire server' 'the best dagger' 'the best wand' etc, but theres potential there for better, theres no end of the road, any day, any craft might turn over that item that is significantly better and without a complete miracle this will go on forever basically, the end of the road for item progression is 100 years down the line in a game that might last 15 years. That is a good thing, this is something people should want, if you want an end of the road, to be 'finished', to have nowhere else to go then you can uninstall any time you want, while you are still here its far better that theres always that little bit more, forever, for as long as you want to stick with it. You can still have "the best dagger on the server" but if its not the best dagger that can possibly be made, if in fact its significantly far off the best dagger that can possibly exist then theres still something to be in the game for.

There are some good points you make here Snorkle_uk. But I think there are some points regarding human behaviour that you are possibly overlooking. When I was at Uni I majored in psychology, and so what I have to say here is to be understood in terms of the psychological laws of behaviour. It might be useful for you to read about reinforcement here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement

I don't want to be too specific about exactly what is reinforcing what, or exactly what kind of schedule any of the particular reinforcers are on, because that would get super complicated really quickly, and because it is not really needed for the overall point I want to make.

Having said that, the first point I want to make is that it is possible to think of path of exile as some kind of compound reinforcement schedule. We don't really need to say too much about exactly how it reinforces behaviour here, but probably there is some story to be told which will link up with the idea of progression along the way. Given that, I would argue that both obtaining better items and higher levels, and therefore the events that those reinforcers can be broken down into, will figure prominently in whatever story gets told about the kind of reinforcement schedule that Path of Exile is.

Since those things will figure prominently, so too will drops of all kinds, including what we refer to as currency. Thus, the removal of the eternal orb is a change to the schedule of reinforcement that path of exile operates on. Because of the complexity of Path of Exile's schedule, it is not always easy to see exactly what the effects will be on human behaviour. However, there are a couple of very general points that can be made about reinforcement schedules which might be illuminating for the long term effects of this change.

These points are that:

1. For any given reinforcement schedule, the rate of reinforcement from all sources ultimately determines the rate of behaviour. To a point, higher rates of reinforcement generate higher rates of behaviour.

2. For any given reinforcement schedule, when the rate of reinforcement for some particular behaviour, or set of behaviours, becomes sufficiently low, that behaviour, or set of behaviours, will extinguish.

Having gotten the psychological stuff out of the way, I want to talk about the relationship between progression and the total time investment any given player is likely to be able to make over the lifetime of Path of Exile. In particular, what is important here is that the rate of reinforcement should always be sufficiently high, such that the behaviour of playing path of exile does not extinguish before some particular player has reached their total time investment. Now I want to discuss the relationship between total time investment, progression, and perfect gear.

I would suggest that for the majority of PoE players, even with eternal orbs in the game, obtaining a full set of perfect items (and thus reaching the point at which the toon with the perfect set is impossible to progress further) is already a practical impossibility. As long as that is the case then the ability to obtain a single perfect item, or even two perfect items, doesn't matter. This is because there will still be several other items to perfect. But let's actually look at some numbers, lets think about how the rate of reinforcement stacks up when it comes to getting perfect items.

Perhaps, if you are extremely lucky with your drops, and fairly efficient with your trading, after 1000 hours of playing you might have accrued enough currency to get one mirrored perfect item. But that quantity of perfect items, relative to the total number that would be required in order for most players to consider themselves 'finished' as you say, is very small. Speaking for myself, I have 7 different toons, one of each class, and each toon has 9 - 10 item slots. So in order to be finished I would need to have a minimum of 61 perfect items.

You postulated a 15 year lifespan for path of exile. I've been playing for two years and in that time accrued around 1600 hours of play time. So that's about 800 hours per year. If I played for 15 years at that rate, that would work out to about 12,000 hours. But 12,000 hours is nowhere near the length of time that would be required in order to get my hands on the 61 perfect items that would be required for me to be in a position in which it was impossible for me to progress any further. And actually, even with my 1600 hours of play time, I still have yet to get even my first perfect item, let alone a complete set of them. On top of this, I would expect that the reality for the vast majority of players is that, due to life, they don't have anywhere near the quantity of time to invest in PoE that I have used as the basis for my speculation. In fact, I'd be surprised If I end up with 12,000 hours to play Path of Exile. The only reason I've managed as much as I have so far is because I've been unemployed for the last two years.

The upshot of this is that, even with eternal orbs in the game, although it is technically possible for the average player to get perfect items, the rarity and expense of perfect items in combination with most people's time constraints around playing PoE means that it is also practically impossible. Thus, I don't think that the existence of the perfect items that are out there is anywhere near as harmful as you make it out to be. Even if you get one perfect item, you still have up to 9 other items that you can progress with on that toon. Now, to tie this back to reinforcement rate.

The removal of eternal orbs from the game constitutes a huge reduction in the ability to progress towards better items beyond a certain level of perfection. Since it constitutes such a reduction, it also constitutes a serious drop in the rate of reinforcement. The rate of progression, and thus the reinforcement associated with it, is not uniform in path of exile. As you obtain better items and achieve higher levels the rate of progress slows. This rate of progress slowing can also be thought of as a reduction in the rate of reinforcement. The worry I have around the removal of eternals is that it will lower the rate of reinforcement (or progress, if you like) beyond a certain point so much that it will extinguish the behaviour of attempting to progress.

TL;DR: To put this more simply, the existence of the possibility of progression, due to the well-nigh impossibility of getting perfect items, means nothing if the reality of the rate of reinforcement, as indicated by the rate of progression, is so low that behavioural attempts to progress extinguish. Speaking for myself, the removal of eternal orbs is the final nail in the coffin that puts me into the category of people who will not try to progress any further.

kek

I have never found an eternal orb, since the last two years.

It's very strange how many luck a player need, to find an eternal.

So PoE isn't only a Pay2Win Game, of course it's an ultra Luck2Win game too.


And the Mirros of Kalandra, I think only one of 500.000 Player ever find these currency.

The momentary value is equal to around 250-280 Exalted Orbs with fast increasing tendency.

This fact is a singnificant effect in the game, only the player who ever find a Mirror will get access to the big deals on the Path of Exile traid market world.

And only thess players has a chance to equipt himself so strong to reach near lev 100 in a time lesser than 500 Years.

I think eternal orbs should be replaced with some kind of orb like "remove one random stat from item", and after u put that 1 stat on item (ex or master), item should become corrupted.
So no divine, no mirror, just luck and 1 try to make item better!

well to me eternal orbs were made for the REALLY hi end crafting anyway where ppl used hundreds of exalts trying to make single item, not for ppl using them willy nilly, i say get em back :D