Economy mess and pay to win

When I compare version 0.4 with version 0.3, what strikes me the most is how messed up the economy is and how crafting became an impossibility. I understand that my post comes late, with so many people having stopped playing already, but really my feedback was already true a month ago.

Let's maybe first start with the Abyss, my favorite part of the game. I have done a lot of abysses, but I notice that I am not really getting anything out of them... so what's the point for me now ? With version 0.3 I did not find much more either actually, but at least you could buy the crafting items at the currency exchange. I want to desecrate waystones for example... good luck with that, I have not seen a single Preserved Vertebrae and there is none for sale in the currency exchange. Hasn't been in at least a month. As far as crafting materials are concerned, I personally found 3 omens of abyssal echoes in total and if you want to buy one it costs roughly 1 div. That's a total joke, you need dozens of these things so obviously I don't really try to desecrate anything. Should I mention the omen of light: for the wonderful price of 30 divs a piece obviously crafting using abyss/desecration is just not an option for me.

Without going into too many details, my main observations on crafting at this point:

- Omen of homogenizing Exaltation: have not found any, and none is (nor has been) available for purchase at the currency exchange.
- Omen of Recombination - have not found any, costs almost half a div. I guess that could be ok as it is less blocking, but really for me it isn't really and here we are barely talking about a starting step before crafting for real.
- Omen of whittling: have not found any, costs 33 divs.
- Omen of Sinistral Annulment: have not found any, costs 49 divs. I have done a lot of rituals, on occasion I see one for 15.000 - 17.000 tributes. I typically I make around 3000 - 3500, so all I can do is defer until the one time I am unlucky and I don't even have enough tribute to defer, and so in the end I never got one. Rarely I have been able to make 4000 - 5000 tribute, but it doesn't really change anything and I will point out that it is quite difficult to stay close to the Azmeri spirit when your headhunter belt constantly teleports you elsewhere. Hint hint.
- Omen of Dextral Annulment: have not found any, costs 35 divs. Same remarks as for the sinistral one.
- Fracturing Orb: have found 1, costs 16 divs.

So putting all these things in perspective and considering you need way more than 1 omen or orb to get anywhere with crafting, crafting is just out of reach. I wonder why it is even in the game at this point. If you are going to spend divs, it is way more cost and time effective to just buy the item from someone else for 1 to 50 divs in most cases. But then, are we still playing an RPG that is loot and crafting centered ? I would argue that this is plain pay to win. And let's be honest, we all know where the divs come from. But that's another discussion. I think my main take here is: first, crafting is in the game but you can't actually use it unless you are a professional gamer or unemployed and ready to play 8 - 16 hours per day; second, the prices for complete items do not reflect the reality of crafting material prices, something is just very odd here.

What's even more messed up is the prices for uncut gems:

- Skill gem level 20: 3.6 divs
- Spirit gem level 20: 63 divs

Now that is really amazing, these prices equally do not reflect reality. Not even closely. Now you can't find one anymore, but a while ago I bought a bunch of corrupted level 21 / 23% quality gems with 5 sockets for way less than that. In effect, at the time, it was way cheaper to buy the perfect level 21 compared to trying to make it yourself. Now I guess the market has caught up, nobody is trying anymore and so you can't buy them anymore either.

And while I am whining about how frustrating things are LOL, I might as well mention the T16 maps that I never play because, well, you need to be playing many many hours per day to have enough waystones to trash with corruption, with an upgrade success rate from T15 to T16 of about what, 1 on 10 waystones ?

So to summarize it all up as I understand it: crafting and good loot is apparently reserved to professional gamers and unemployed people, and the game is pay to win: use real dollars to buy divs to buy gear to be able to play the content, while never finding anyway all the good stuff that you don't need anymore anyway. Looks like the currency business model is way more profitable than the cosmetics business model. And that could be fine, if at least we had the actual possibility to do some crafting just for the fun of trying and doing things.

I wonder what the target audience is exactly for this game. Probably not people like me who will be able to play 1-2 hours per day during the week and a little more in the weekend.

By the way, I wonder what the point of the "Notify Me" checkbox is when you post a thread, I never get any notification when someone replies.

Crafting needs a huge overhaul. They need to decide what is considered the base crafting system and it needs way more crafting options since its the base system. This idea of we will just add it later when we design a league around it is kinda ridiculous in my opinion. There needs to be more options when crafting bc as it sits theres only a few good ways to craft and ppl price them high bc of it. Also since they want ppl crafting but have low drop rates on good currencey the system contradicts itself. Since there is no deterministic crafting you need lots of crafting materials in order to have a chance to get what you want but the game will drop you 1 maybe 2 if your lucky in a extended farming run. So just off that alone makes crafting inaccessible to playera cant craft if we cant get what we need to craft period

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AtenK#3898 wrote:

Looks like the currency business model is way more profitable than the cosmetics business model.

Interesting ;-)

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AtenK#3898 wrote:

- Omen of homogenizing Exaltation: have not found any, and none is (nor has been) available for purchase at the currency exchange.

Since 0.4.0 thoose dont drop anymore. There are prob some left in standard but that's it:

"Omen of Homogenising Exaltation and the Omen of Homogenising Coronation
have been disabled from dropping. Existing items are still functional."

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AtenK#3898 wrote:

the T16 maps that I never play because, well, you need to be playing many many hours per day to have enough waystones to trash with corruption, with an upgrade success rate from T15 to T16 of about what, 1 on 10 waystones ?

Spec into the Atlas node that gives 10% for waystones to drop corrupted. Run a bunch of T15s.

Hunt the Immured Fury to get Fracturing Orbs.

Kite Amanamu rares so they chase you, to get Omen of Abyssal Echoes.

Overall, you're thinking about this too simply -- which is reasonable feedback for GGG. I think a lot of players will approach farming the same way you have. But there are better ways to farm than what you describe in your OP.

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I have not seen a single Preserved Vertebrae and there is none for sale in the currency exchange. Hasn't been in at least a month

if you would have read patch notes you can't craft waystones any more

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- Omen of homogenizing Exaltation: have not found any, and none is (nor has been) available for purchase at the currency exchange.

also read patch notes these have been disabled

try read more and rage less most of the things you complained about is in all games top tier items are for top tier players is it crappy that things cost so much yes, but that is how market works

THIS!

Just saw a video of Jazzarus saying basically the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiQ-HbY15e4

I had a lot of fun crafting in 0.3, nothing too OP but good enough to enable me to try the difficult endgame content.

In 0.4 I was still able to craft some nice things before people started doing the temple snakes, now it's just out of reach.

OP: I feel the same, and it is even worse in SSF. Why do we have items and mechanics in the game if we never see them? For all practical purposes, they do not exist. Thus, sometimes the best thing one can do is not playing the game. I am fatigues and the novelty of PoE2 has worn out.

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Since 0.4.0 thoose dont drop anymore. There are prob some left in standard but that's it:

"Omen of Homogenising Exaltation and the Omen of Homogenising Coronation
have been disabled from dropping. Existing items are still functional."

Thank you for pointing that out BlastYa#4875 !

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if you would have read patch notes you can't craft waystones any more

...

also read patch notes these have been disabled

try read more and rage less most of the things you complained about is in all games top tier items are for top tier players is it crappy that things cost so much yes, but that is how market works

Thank you for pointing that out Savage_Tha_Clown#1530 , I am indeed guilty of not having read the patch notes and didn't realize this ;-)