This is more of a mental exercise than anything else..

I was trying to figure out a way to fix Infinity orbs so that they are to
the benefit of all and not to one or two particular players. Best idea
i could come up with was having a 3-tier system.

The different levels would correspond with east, moderate and hard. With
increasing difficulty, you'd get more orbs appearing. So out of 100 orbs
appearing in an average week, 20 orbs would appear in the easy category,
30 in the moderate and 50 in the hard. (numbers are just an example, ratio
to be determined).

Lowest tier (easy) has a cap of 1 orb per 2 days ? and generally it's built
around the lower end players so i'd imagine mobs and locations with that in
mind. Middle tier is 1 orb per day with mobs and locations geared towards
midbies and finally high end or hard level has unlimited cap on orbs.

Orb announcements will only be sent to players who have opted for that
particular level. Unlisted orbs would still be open to all players and
not count towards the limits..

It's probably still possible to manipulate the system in some way but..
like I said.. I was just playing around with ideas and it probably involves
much more coding than the problem deserves.

How about just making orb spawns personal, aka everyone has their own orb
list. Then the few people with lookup triggers etc cannot get every orb, just
the ones that spawn for them.

I'm sure the system could handle keeping track of a list of orbs for all
players participating.. Though i initially thought it might be unnecessarily
taxing.

I think you'd also have to ramp up the desting time of orbs so that you don't
have a list of 20+ orbs that you can't or don't want to do... This would
also eliminate the sense of urgency in that you can go and pick them up
when you damn well please..

It'd also encourage partying for the orbs that you obviously can't do solo.
and eliminate entirely the resale market of personalized inf orbs by either
preserving a corpse or keeping ld party members when you find them.

Seems like a simpler solution. nice.