The economy is messed up. There is not really any place for so many items to go. The AH and RMAH are not the problem however. They just exposed the flaw that was always in every Diablo game. The Diablo series had always been games of trade. Trade this gear for that gear. It was never a self found series. Is it possible self found, yeah but not as easy. Just like in D2, the 3rd party sites have shown up for Hardcore gold and items because of the lack of an RMAH there. Their existence proves removing RMAH won’t solve anything, will only cover the eyes of the naive. Account binding items from their creation is a lazy and undiablo-like fix. Diablo series as always been about in game and 3rd party trading.
Idea #1: Items decay when tranfered from one account to another in 5 stages. In example, player one finds an item and decides to sell it. Player 2 buys and gets that item off one of the auction houses. No decay yet. Player 2 decides sell item. Once he confirms auction, the item’s stats take a small percentage decrease in stats. Player 3 gets the item with decreased stats. Player 3 at some point decides to sell item. Player 4 gets same item as Player 3. Player 4 uses item for while and decides to sell it on an Auction House. Once player 4 confirms auction on one of the AH’s, item decays some more. Once Player 5 buys and receives the item, he receives an account bound item. Of course, items will be labeled so people know what stage they are buying. Labels could be bland Stage 1-5 but I suspect stuff like “pristine” to “thrift shop merchandise” would be more interesting. This will do a few things. For the self findies, they can find each other easier and more reliably because they can look at each others gear to see if the person is really self found. It will remove items from the bloated inventory on the auction houses. The person who farmed the item is the ONLY person who gets to sell it as a pristine stage 1 item. It decays from there. Item flippers and bots won’t be able to sell the best and/or most desired gear on the auction houses, because they will be selling decayed gear. For clarification reasons, bots normally don’t keep their farmed gear on their botting account, too risky.
The item decay should be implanted in all item transfers, including trade window.
Idea#2: We need more elite gear. Gear that is not useable as soon as you hit 60. Gear that needs to be a reward for a grind. What kind of gear? PvP gear, PvP gear that rewards players for playing PvP. Gear that is usable at paragon 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. The paragon level gear is self explanatory. PvP gear should be a reward not just for the amount of PvP, but how many wins you have at it. So it should cost 2 things to get PvP gear. PvP tokens will be what players receive for every PvP interaction, win, lose, or draw. My old favorite, the ear, makes an appearance as the reward for victory in an PvP interactions. A player will buy PvP gear with PvP based stats with tokens and ears. The simplest PvP gear may only require tokens, but the best PvP gear will require tokens and ears.
Idea#3: We all want more character building to be more individual and less like the others players. I do love how I am not penalized for switching builds ever so often. However, it doesn’t really seem like all I worked for means much when someone can copy my build in a matter of seconds. For a little more individualism, I suggest being able to tune gear for certian purposes. Maybe we can tune our weapon to a certain rune regardless of skill (only 5 runes so this maybe too powerfull?) Maybe we can tune our weapons to a particular skill like the wizard skill blizzard. In blizzard’s case, an increase in damage, higher slow %, freeze procs more, and a life leech feature. As you can see, we could have a lot of fun tuning weapons for skills/runes. Some skills could increase crit chance or crit damage. Some could increase attack speed, others movement speed. It would also be sweet if every class had the chance to tune a skill that increased gf/mf for a short time.
Of course, I think tuning gear should require a quest and hunt like the hellfire ring. I also think some crafting mats already in use should be required. Untuning an item should only require a gold fee. It would be cool if the blacksmith, jeweler and the mystic were all required for the tuning, each giving you a quest to do. As of now, I see tuning weapon and off hand items as a fix. Maybe later on add a little something to rings and ammys. The rest of the armor, not really sure but I guess the blacksmith could “reinforce.” Like reinforce against demons, undead, poison, fire, humans, or crowd control.
On a side note, I don’t like paragon levels being account wide unless paragon is increased 200. I see many problems with this, like when would paragon take effect? Create a new char and have a level 1 with paragon 100? Character hits 60 and suddenly is infused with a bunch of stats? Again, I think account wide is bad idea. I wouldn’t mind an additional 5 point of stats (in addition to the automatic stats we already get) for each paragon level to choose where we want to allocate them. Really though, main stat or vit, so who really gives a crap? Some people do though.
The game needs a better drop structure. The game needs better items. The game needs more items. What the game doesn't need is obtuse policing of trade habits that some players may or may not engage in.
With plentiful, good items, we'll see a far healthier economy.
I do not support the idea of item decay. It's a short-cut to thinking that stands only to penalize people for the behavior of others and such practices won't do diddly-squat to "fix" the economy.
The reason for the delay in the decay is for the original player who farmed the gear to have a clear advantage over the future owners of the gear. Being I want this to be implanted in all gear transactions, whether it be sold on an AH, aquired through trade window, or even one player drops it and other player picks it up, I think the decay shouldn't happen right away.
For example, If I was running with a barb friend and a piece of gear was good for him, I would want to be able to give it to him without it decaying. As the farmer of that piece of gear, I should have the right to do what I want with it without that gear decaying. The second, player does not obtain that right in my eyes.
The game needs a better drop structure. The game needs better items. The game needs more items. What the game doesn't need is obtuse policing of trade habits that some players may or may not engage in.
With plentiful, good items, we'll see a far healthier economy.
I do not support the idea of item decay. It's a short-cut to thinking that stands only to penalize people for the behavior of others and such practices won't do diddly-squat to "fix" the economy.
The game is full of good items now. They have a cost, but there are tons of them. Economy is going to keep inflating because more gold keeps entering the system. We'll reach the point where all good items will sell for max price on gah at some point in the future. Only way to get lower prices, is to take gold from the bots. Item decay essentially does that by not allowing bots to have the best items.
The game is full of good items now. They have a cost, but there are tons of them. Economy is going to keep inflating because more gold keeps entering the system. We'll reach the point where all good items will sell for max price on gah at some point in the future. Only way to get lower prices, is to take gold from the bots. Item decay essentially does that by not allowing bots to have the best items.
I'm sorry, I'm not seeing it. There are millions of items spawned by millions of players. I don't see this having any affect on stabilizing the economy. I cannot fathom how this will affect bots?
All I see this doing is hurting honest players whom may want to sell out from gear that they've outgrown. This would help with flipping, nominally at best, but I don't care what other people do. I don't care if people flip. It doesn't affect me or the economy.
Ruksak, I find your statement pointless. It has been the first thing to say for many clueless people. Even if you have way more ''good items'', the problem would be the same. The least good items will soon become the crap items as everyone will get access to them. So items by itself is another issue that needs specific approach.
The item decay idea is brilliant. By having no decay mark on an awesome item you found yourself you can brag about it anywhere you want, on top of knowing that no1 can get it in any way but finding one similar or better himself, or buying a better one but decayed version. And if a friend wants it, you can be sure it is to use since if he sells on ah it will be decayed.
An idea I consider a must have would be some ladder like measure of awesomeness of characters. Every game has in some way implemented a system like that which motivates players to play and become better and do better. Now, I don't know which thing would be the measuer of awesomeness, but that's simple. Get better items, slay more zombies, and in a infinite progressive dificulty area prove yourself worth somewhat like an ENFO's wc3 map. after that your highest score is saved in a list everyone sees, similarly to Challenger Division in LoL ranked system.
All I mean is to make playing the game have some personal goal to look for, a rating to allways improve and brag with etc, instead of just get better and better items just to kill more and more zombies and nothing else to put a bit of sense in that process.
First thanks for liking my idea. Second, I too would like to see something more. Another idea I have been kicking around is ladders that last 1hr, 3hrs, 8hrs, 24hrs, 3days, 1 week, 2 week, 1 month, 3 month, and 6 months. These ladders would not be having everyone create new chars because unlike d2, we have limited slots for chars. These ladders would be races for stuff like Inferno elite kills, Inferno mp 5 treasure goblin kills, pvp kills, Gold picked up, experience earned. People would pay a small gold fee to enter ladder tournment. There would be rewards for winners and everyone would receive a reward if they beat a certain mark.
The game is full of good items now. They have a cost, but there are tons of them. Economy is going to keep inflating because more gold keeps entering the system. We'll reach the point where all good items will sell for max price on gah at some point in the future. Only way to get lower prices, is to take gold from the bots. Item decay essentially does that by not allowing bots to have the best items.
I'm sorry, I'm not seeing it. There are millions of items spawned by millions of players. I don't see this having any affect on stabilizing the economy. I cannot fathom how this will affect bots?
All I see this doing is hurting honest players whom may want to sell out from gear that they've outgrown. This would help with flipping, nominally at best, but I don't care what other people do. I don't care if people flip. It doesn't affect me or the economy.
I explained how it effects bots. It affects bots in many many many ways. First way. The way bots operate is to have one account botting. Other accounts for item storage. This protects those items when bot is busted. Bots often use yet another account for an extra measure of security to place items on auction or to sell items via trade window. This would cause the best item a bot could trade to be a 4 generation decayed item by the time a buyer has it. Decayed items will be worse stats and worse value. Many of the auction house flippers are bots as well. Flippers will never have the best item available now either. In contrast, the people who want to sell gear they outgrown, if they farmed their gear, they will be in position to have the most valuable gear on the market. All this will be turning the game's economy back over to those who play the game, not those who cheat the system.
This does not have to be some sort either or scenario, this should happen with itemization in my opinion.
It was never a self found series. Is it possible self found, yeah but not as easy.
I laugh at that. The amount of people that used bnet in D2 was minuscule when compared to the total amount of people that played that game. Blizzard themselves said so.
Plus, why only consider the two ends of the spectrum: zero trade and mass trade? Why not include the, to me, more reasonable trading habits of "occasional trade with friends"?
The reality is that mass traders in D2 were such a tiny, tiny number of players. The people that never traded anything were far greater, as evidenced by the disparaging numbers in total players vs. bnet users. There was an entire world of users that played outside of bnet, be it single player or over LAN's/VPN's like Hamachi. To say that the series has always been about trade is incredibly self-centered and short-sighted, and probably coming from someone who doesn't really know what he's talking about.
Item decay? Doesn't really affect me, as I only trade person-to-person, with people I know, but....no thanks.
I don't even know how to respond to your reply. You are going off on this tangent about if Diablo was a game of trades or not. It was created that way. It can be self found, but that was never the intent. You could play with 4 people in the original, and you could loot the corpses of the other players when ever you decided to kill them. I also played offline for years. My D2 years were on bnet from 2000-2004, then offline mode from 2007 until I made D3 beta. I did go back to bnet briefly until ladder ended summer 2011. Baal runs by tele bots were all that was left of a once great game on bnet. THat enigma patch ruined D2. I self found most of my gear offline except I used a trainer to export, import so i could switch gears from one char to the next. I found offline kind of boring compared to the early days of online, but not as boring as baal runs by bots. I found some walking baals but there wasnt enough of them.
And it seems more self centered to think of Diablo as self found vs it being a game of trades. "Item trading was an integral component of Diablo II, allowing players to securely exchange multiple goods by placing them into an inventory-like screen before verifying the trade."http://www.diablowiki.net/Trade
I explained how it effects bots. It affects bots in many many many ways. First way. The way bots operate is to have one account botting. Another accounts for item storage. This protects those items when bot is busted. Bots often use yet another account for an extra measure of security to place items on auction or to sell items via trade window. This would cause the best item a bot could trade to be a 4 generation decayed item by the time a buyer has it. Decayed items will be worse stats and worse value. Many of the auction house flippers are bots as well. Flippers will never have the best item available now either. In contrast, the people who want to sell gear they outgrown, if they farmed their gear, they will be in position to have the most valuable gear on the market. All this will be turning the game's economy back over to those who play the game, not those who cheat the system.
This does not have to be some sort either or scenario, this should happen with itemization in my opinion.
Has it occurred to you that botters would simply change their practices?
I'll reflect Maka's comments. I don't like measures that punish the honest players in an attempt to throttle cheaters.
The key issue here is, cheaters/botters will always have more gold, more items, more everything. Always.
I understand you're trying to be proactive and brainstorm ideas that mitigate such egregious practices. However, there are many of us that aren't necessarily concerned with what others do.
Diablo 2 had a stable economy despite being wracked with cheats and an unreal amount of duping. By "stable" I mean prices remained even for long stretches of time considering the immense influence of botters and dupers. Everything had a price and that price didn't witness much fluctuation.
As well, I like being able to loan items to my friends and vice-versa. Your idea kills that in an attempt to level the playing field with botters. As if that's not problem enough, botters will just change their methodology and adapt. Leaving the honest players holding the bag.
These ideas only serve to be punitive toward honest players.
It reminds me of Guild Wars 1 way back in the day. Their idea serves as a great precedent for what I'm referring to.
They had an issue with bots collecting huge amounts of gold. SO....they cut gold drops dramatically. All this did was hurt the honest player. The bots still collected more than the honest player. Albeit, less than they did before, but still more than the honest players.
It's time these companies adapt in terms of proactive software. We're seeing many innovative leaps in online gaming economies i.e. auction houses etc. But we're not seeing them spend the money on development of better mitigation and monitoring software.
They have such wondrous technology, yet their ability to develop server side software to police such practices isn't on-par with other advancements in online gaming.
For me a decay item system would be horrible, as it is right now I buy x item taken me xxx hours to save for it then use it for say a month now it's time to upgrade again and look my item is work 20 / 40 / 100 mill less than last month add in some decay as well ......no thanks. Already find 90 % of replaced items are not worh selling and go to alts, up to a point that's fine but not if I want sell and upgrade my main.
Blizz said they don't want para lvl to be maditory that's why so far they have been against items with p level req and such things but all it does it reduce the endgame as you need something to aim for.
Para levels being account wide could work but only if the % xp they get is way less than if you are paying the caracter itself. So as I pay my main the rest of the account gets 1% of the xp he/she gets. Not big but enough that in time playing as p100 does not feel so pointless. Somthing on those lines would work but not a flat all my chars are now p100 because I level'd one....
I see your point with not wanting to lose item worth, but the fact is most items lose value over time because more items in their general stat range are available. Only the top items, which is the goal of us all to obtain, have risen in value. Once we get these items, we normal don't sell them anyway. Also, I think with itemization, better overall items will drop, so the need to use the AH will go down. We will still use it in a lesser extent, but I am hoping and believing they gonna get the items, and the droprate right. My idea would go along with that.
As far as paragon levels being manditory, I think it will happen eventually. They have to do something with the gridlock at player level 60 gear. Your idea for shared paragon with main char who earned it gets his full paragon and he shares a percentage bonus of it with other chars seem like a good idea. I could see that working. Would take some math but could work.
For me a decay item system would be horrible, as it is right now I buy x item taken me xxx hours to save for it then use it for say a month now it's time to upgrade again and look my item is work 20 / 40 / 100 mill less than last month add in some decay as well ......no thanks. Already find 90 % of replaced items are not worh selling and go to alts, up to a point that's fine but not if I want sell and upgrade my main.
Blizz said they don't want para lvl to be maditory that's why so far they have been against items with p level req and such things but all it does it reduce the endgame as you need something to aim for.
Para levels being account wide could work but only if the % xp they get is way less than if you are paying the caracter itself. So as I pay my main the rest of the account gets 1% of the xp he/she gets. Not big but enough that in time playing as p100 does not feel so pointless. Somthing on those lines would work but not a flat all my chars are now p100 because I level'd one....
I see your point with not wanting to lose item worth, but the fact is most items lose value over time
The problem is, what you're suggesting isn't just causing the item to lose monetary/gold value. The item is losing effectiveness. The item itself loses quality, not just trade value.
These ideas only serve to be punitive toward honest players.
It reminds me of Guild Wars 1 way back in the day. Their idea serves as a great precedent for what I'm referring to.
They had an issue with bots collecting huge amounts of gold. SO....they cut gold drops dramatically. All this did was hurt the honest player. The bots still collected more than the honest player. Albeit, less than they did before, but still more than the honest players.
It's time these companies adapt in terms of proactive software. We're seeing many innovative leaps in online gaming economies i.e. auction houses etc. But we're not seeing them spend the money on development of better mitigation and monitoring software.
They have such wondrous technology, yet their ability to develop server side software to police such practices isn't on-par with other advancements in online gaming.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree. I feel this will help the honest player. All this does is increase the honest players gear value while simultaneously decreasing the bots gears value. It does not address bots gold farming in the traditional sense, but really the only people responsible for gold botters are impatient players. Gold botters will be a constant in any game with an economy and players willing to pay to win. Once the the itemization and droprate fixes go through, and something like this would go through, the games economy would balance out. Why? Because items devalue over ownership transfers and the focus will be finding your own gear vs buying it for gold, reducing golds value. Right now the honest player is getting bent over and spanked with a bus going 60 miles an hour.
Good items are nothing but perspective and the line vs good items vs average changes constantly. Everyone wants to be ahead of the curve, but that is not possible in a capitalist enviroment. There will always be winners and losers.
These ideas only serve to be punitive toward honest players.
It reminds me of Guild Wars 1 way back in the day. Their idea serves as a great precedent for what I'm referring to.
They had an issue with bots collecting huge amounts of gold. SO....they cut gold drops dramatically. All this did was hurt the honest player. The bots still collected more than the honest player. Albeit, less than they did before, but still more than the honest players.
It's time these companies adapt in terms of proactive software. We're seeing many innovative leaps in online gaming economies i.e. auction houses etc. But we're not seeing them spend the money on development of better mitigation and monitoring software.
They have such wondrous technology, yet their ability to develop server side software to police such practices isn't on-par with other advancements in online gaming.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree. I feel this will help the honest player. All this does is increase the honest players gear value while simultaneously decreasing the bots gears value. It does not address bots gold farming in the traditional sense, but really the only people responsible for gold botters and impatient players. Gold botters will be a constant in any game with an economy and players willing to pay to win. Once the the itemization and droprate fixes go through, and something like this would go through, the games economy would balance out. Why? Because items devalue of ownership transfers and the focus will be finding your own gear vs buying it for gold, reducing golds value. Right now the honest player is getting bent over and spanked with a bus going 60 miles an hour.
Good items are nothing but perspective and the line vs good items vs average changes constantly. Everyone wants to be ahead of the curve, but that is not possible in a capitalist enviroment. There will always be winners and losers.
Hey, I'm not gonna fault you for proposing ideas. I just feel there are other, more creative ways to address such things. Imbuing processes (i.e. Horadric Cube type systems) that could address the players being able to create items on chance.
Crafting was a great implementation, though more of a temporary salve. It's the right idea, it just needs to be greatly expanded upon, giving the general idea a more dynamic feel.
For me a decay item system would be horrible, as it is right now I buy x item taken me xxx hours to save for it then use it for say a month now it's time to upgrade again and look my item is work 20 / 40 / 100 mill less than last month add in some decay as well ......no thanks. Already find 90 % of replaced items are not worh selling and go to alts, up to a point that's fine but not if I want sell and upgrade my main.
Blizz said they don't want para lvl to be maditory that's why so far they have been against items with p level req and such things but all it does it reduce the endgame as you need something to aim for.
Para levels being account wide could work but only if the % xp they get is way less than if you are paying the caracter itself. So as I pay my main the rest of the account gets 1% of the xp he/she gets. Not big but enough that in time playing as p100 does not feel so pointless. Somthing on those lines would work but not a flat all my chars are now p100 because I level'd one....
I see your point with not wanting to lose item worth, but the fact is most items lose value over time
The problem is, what you're suggesting isn't just causing the item to lose monetary/gold value. The item is losing effectiveness. The item itself loses quality, not just trade value.
That is not the problem, that is the design and the beauty of the system. To him, when he doesn't need it anymore, he does not care about the effectiveness, only its value. THe design is for those who play the game and farm the loot, to have the most valuable gear. The Auction house should be used as a last resort, not the main channel for gear.
These ideas only serve to be punitive toward honest players.
It reminds me of Guild Wars 1 way back in the day. Their idea serves as a great precedent for what I'm referring to.
They had an issue with bots collecting huge amounts of gold. SO....they cut gold drops dramatically. All this did was hurt the honest player. The bots still collected more than the honest player. Albeit, less than they did before, but still more than the honest players.
It's time these companies adapt in terms of proactive software. We're seeing many innovative leaps in online gaming economies i.e. auction houses etc. But we're not seeing them spend the money on development of better mitigation and monitoring software.
They have such wondrous technology, yet their ability to develop server side software to police such practices isn't on-par with other advancements in online gaming.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree. I feel this will help the honest player. All this does is increase the honest players gear value while simultaneously decreasing the bots gears value. It does not address bots gold farming in the traditional sense, but really the only people responsible for gold botters and impatient players. Gold botters will be a constant in any game with an economy and players willing to pay to win. Once the the itemization and droprate fixes go through, and something like this would go through, the games economy would balance out. Why? Because items devalue of ownership transfers and the focus will be finding your own gear vs buying it for gold, reducing golds value. Right now the honest player is getting bent over and spanked with a bus going 60 miles an hour.
Good items are nothing but perspective and the line vs good items vs average changes constantly. Everyone wants to be ahead of the curve, but that is not possible in a capitalist enviroment. There will always be winners and losers.
Hey, I'm not gonna fault you for proposing ideas. I just feel there are other, more creative ways to address such things. Imbuing processes (i.e. Horadric Cube type systems) that could address the players being able to create items on chance.
Crafting was a great implementation, though more of a temporary salve. It's the right idea, it just needs to be greatly expanded upon, giving the general idea a more dynamic feel.
I don't disagree with more crafting. Item decay, in the long run is going to cause more crafting mats, we will need more things to make with those mats.
The game needs a better drop structure. The game needs better items. The game needs more items. What the game doesn't need is obtuse policing of trade habits that some players may or may not engage in.
With plentiful, good items, we'll see a far healthier economy.
I do not support the idea of item decay. It's a short-cut to thinking that stands only to penalize people for the behavior of others and such practices won't do diddly-squat to "fix" the economy.
Agreed. If people care about the economy so much they should be advocating a D3 ladder.
The game needs a better drop structure. The game needs better items. The game needs more items. What the game doesn't need is obtuse policing of trade habits that some players may or may not engage in.
With plentiful, good items, we'll see a far healthier economy.
I do not support the idea of item decay. It's a short-cut to thinking that stands only to penalize people for the behavior of others and such practices won't do diddly-squat to "fix" the economy.
Agreed. If people care about the economy so much they should be advocating a D3 ladder.
I've always said I'm fine with a ladder system so long as it isn't implemented with the same exclusivity as it was in D2. Meaning, the best items were often ladder-only.
If people want to play ladder, that's fine. But they should do so for reasons other than access to ladder-only items.
The game needs a better drop structure. The game needs better items. The game needs more items. What the game doesn't need is obtuse policing of trade habits that some players may or may not engage in.
With plentiful, good items, we'll see a far healthier economy.
I do not support the idea of item decay. It's a short-cut to thinking that stands only to penalize people for the behavior of others and such practices won't do diddly-squat to "fix" the economy.
Agreed. If people care about the economy so much they should be advocating a D3 ladder.
The ladder worked in D2, because with one purchase of diablo 2 you had unlimited account creation access, or unlimited chars. In D3, we have 1 account and 10 characters. In D2 ladders, our ladder chars could transfer to non-ladder. Even if they made the characters transferable, we only have 10 spots and i already have 10 chars. D3 was not designed for ladders and when they implement it eventually, I guessing it will be designed around contests and races like I suggested in an earlier post in this topic.
THe bots completely controlled the ladder economy because it was cleared out every 6 months. Who got the gear first in a new ladder? THe bots. THe ladder system actually helped the bots. Botter probably made most of their money in the first few weeks of each ladder season. THe ladder prolonged D2's life but it helped the bots hang around until D3 too.
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Idea #1: Items decay when tranfered from one account to another in 5 stages. In example, player one finds an item and decides to sell it. Player 2 buys and gets that item off one of the auction houses. No decay yet. Player 2 decides sell item. Once he confirms auction, the item’s stats take a small percentage decrease in stats. Player 3 gets the item with decreased stats. Player 3 at some point decides to sell item. Player 4 gets same item as Player 3. Player 4 uses item for while and decides to sell it on an Auction House. Once player 4 confirms auction on one of the AH’s, item decays some more. Once Player 5 buys and receives the item, he receives an account bound item. Of course, items will be labeled so people know what stage they are buying. Labels could be bland Stage 1-5 but I suspect stuff like “pristine” to “thrift shop merchandise” would be more interesting. This will do a few things. For the self findies, they can find each other easier and more reliably because they can look at each others gear to see if the person is really self found. It will remove items from the bloated inventory on the auction houses. The person who farmed the item is the ONLY person who gets to sell it as a pristine stage 1 item. It decays from there. Item flippers and bots won’t be able to sell the best and/or most desired gear on the auction houses, because they will be selling decayed gear. For clarification reasons, bots normally don’t keep their farmed gear on their botting account, too risky.
The item decay should be implanted in all item transfers, including trade window.
Idea#2: We need more elite gear. Gear that is not useable as soon as you hit 60. Gear that needs to be a reward for a grind. What kind of gear? PvP gear, PvP gear that rewards players for playing PvP. Gear that is usable at paragon 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. The paragon level gear is self explanatory. PvP gear should be a reward not just for the amount of PvP, but how many wins you have at it. So it should cost 2 things to get PvP gear. PvP tokens will be what players receive for every PvP interaction, win, lose, or draw. My old favorite, the ear, makes an appearance as the reward for victory in an PvP interactions. A player will buy PvP gear with PvP based stats with tokens and ears. The simplest PvP gear may only require tokens, but the best PvP gear will require tokens and ears.
Idea#3: We all want more character building to be more individual and less like the others players. I do love how I am not penalized for switching builds ever so often. However, it doesn’t really seem like all I worked for means much when someone can copy my build in a matter of seconds. For a little more individualism, I suggest being able to tune gear for certian purposes. Maybe we can tune our weapon to a certain rune regardless of skill (only 5 runes so this maybe too powerfull?) Maybe we can tune our weapons to a particular skill like the wizard skill blizzard. In blizzard’s case, an increase in damage, higher slow %, freeze procs more, and a life leech feature. As you can see, we could have a lot of fun tuning weapons for skills/runes. Some skills could increase crit chance or crit damage. Some could increase attack speed, others movement speed. It would also be sweet if every class had the chance to tune a skill that increased gf/mf for a short time.
Of course, I think tuning gear should require a quest and hunt like the hellfire ring. I also think some crafting mats already in use should be required. Untuning an item should only require a gold fee. It would be cool if the blacksmith, jeweler and the mystic were all required for the tuning, each giving you a quest to do. As of now, I see tuning weapon and off hand items as a fix. Maybe later on add a little something to rings and ammys. The rest of the armor, not really sure but I guess the blacksmith could “reinforce.” Like reinforce against demons, undead, poison, fire, humans, or crowd control.
On a side note, I don’t like paragon levels being account wide unless paragon is increased 200. I see many problems with this, like when would paragon take effect? Create a new char and have a level 1 with paragon 100? Character hits 60 and suddenly is infused with a bunch of stats? Again, I think account wide is bad idea. I wouldn’t mind an additional 5 point of stats (in addition to the automatic stats we already get) for each paragon level to choose where we want to allocate them. Really though, main stat or vit, so who really gives a crap? Some people do though.
C'mon......come on...man
The game needs a better drop structure. The game needs better items. The game needs more items. What the game doesn't need is obtuse policing of trade habits that some players may or may not engage in.
With plentiful, good items, we'll see a far healthier economy.
I do not support the idea of item decay. It's a short-cut to thinking that stands only to penalize people for the behavior of others and such practices won't do diddly-squat to "fix" the economy.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
For example, If I was running with a barb friend and a piece of gear was good for him, I would want to be able to give it to him without it decaying. As the farmer of that piece of gear, I should have the right to do what I want with it without that gear decaying. The second, player does not obtain that right in my eyes.
The game is full of good items now. They have a cost, but there are tons of them. Economy is going to keep inflating because more gold keeps entering the system. We'll reach the point where all good items will sell for max price on gah at some point in the future. Only way to get lower prices, is to take gold from the bots. Item decay essentially does that by not allowing bots to have the best items.
I'm sorry, I'm not seeing it. There are millions of items spawned by millions of players. I don't see this having any affect on stabilizing the economy. I cannot fathom how this will affect bots?
All I see this doing is hurting honest players whom may want to sell out from gear that they've outgrown. This would help with flipping, nominally at best, but I don't care what other people do. I don't care if people flip. It doesn't affect me or the economy.
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You calling me clueless god dammit?
The guy wanted feedback and opinion. I give it, and as usual, some jerk wants to step on my dick by throwing insults?
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First thanks for liking my idea. Second, I too would like to see something more. Another idea I have been kicking around is ladders that last 1hr, 3hrs, 8hrs, 24hrs, 3days, 1 week, 2 week, 1 month, 3 month, and 6 months. These ladders would not be having everyone create new chars because unlike d2, we have limited slots for chars. These ladders would be races for stuff like Inferno elite kills, Inferno mp 5 treasure goblin kills, pvp kills, Gold picked up, experience earned. People would pay a small gold fee to enter ladder tournment. There would be rewards for winners and everyone would receive a reward if they beat a certain mark.
I explained how it effects bots. It affects bots in many many many ways. First way. The way bots operate is to have one account botting. Other accounts for item storage. This protects those items when bot is busted. Bots often use yet another account for an extra measure of security to place items on auction or to sell items via trade window. This would cause the best item a bot could trade to be a 4 generation decayed item by the time a buyer has it. Decayed items will be worse stats and worse value. Many of the auction house flippers are bots as well. Flippers will never have the best item available now either. In contrast, the people who want to sell gear they outgrown, if they farmed their gear, they will be in position to have the most valuable gear on the market. All this will be turning the game's economy back over to those who play the game, not those who cheat the system.
This does not have to be some sort either or scenario, this should happen with itemization in my opinion.
I don't even know how to respond to your reply. You are going off on this tangent about if Diablo was a game of trades or not. It was created that way. It can be self found, but that was never the intent. You could play with 4 people in the original, and you could loot the corpses of the other players when ever you decided to kill them. I also played offline for years. My D2 years were on bnet from 2000-2004, then offline mode from 2007 until I made D3 beta. I did go back to bnet briefly until ladder ended summer 2011. Baal runs by tele bots were all that was left of a once great game on bnet. THat enigma patch ruined D2. I self found most of my gear offline except I used a trainer to export, import so i could switch gears from one char to the next. I found offline kind of boring compared to the early days of online, but not as boring as baal runs by bots. I found some walking baals but there wasnt enough of them.
And it seems more self centered to think of Diablo as self found vs it being a game of trades. "Item trading was an integral component of Diablo II, allowing players to securely exchange multiple goods by placing them into an inventory-like screen before verifying the trade." http://www.diablowiki.net/Trade
Has it occurred to you that botters would simply change their practices?
I'll reflect Maka's comments. I don't like measures that punish the honest players in an attempt to throttle cheaters.
The key issue here is, cheaters/botters will always have more gold, more items, more everything. Always.
I understand you're trying to be proactive and brainstorm ideas that mitigate such egregious practices. However, there are many of us that aren't necessarily concerned with what others do.
Diablo 2 had a stable economy despite being wracked with cheats and an unreal amount of duping. By "stable" I mean prices remained even for long stretches of time considering the immense influence of botters and dupers. Everything had a price and that price didn't witness much fluctuation.
As well, I like being able to loan items to my friends and vice-versa. Your idea kills that in an attempt to level the playing field with botters. As if that's not problem enough, botters will just change their methodology and adapt. Leaving the honest players holding the bag.
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It reminds me of Guild Wars 1 way back in the day. Their idea serves as a great precedent for what I'm referring to.
They had an issue with bots collecting huge amounts of gold. SO....they cut gold drops dramatically. All this did was hurt the honest player. The bots still collected more than the honest player. Albeit, less than they did before, but still more than the honest players.
It's time these companies adapt in terms of proactive software. We're seeing many innovative leaps in online gaming economies i.e. auction houses etc. But we're not seeing them spend the money on development of better mitigation and monitoring software.
They have such wondrous technology, yet their ability to develop server side software to police such practices isn't on-par with other advancements in online gaming.
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I see your point with not wanting to lose item worth, but the fact is most items lose value over time because more items in their general stat range are available. Only the top items, which is the goal of us all to obtain, have risen in value. Once we get these items, we normal don't sell them anyway. Also, I think with itemization, better overall items will drop, so the need to use the AH will go down. We will still use it in a lesser extent, but I am hoping and believing they gonna get the items, and the droprate right. My idea would go along with that.
As far as paragon levels being manditory, I think it will happen eventually. They have to do something with the gridlock at player level 60 gear. Your idea for shared paragon with main char who earned it gets his full paragon and he shares a percentage bonus of it with other chars seem like a good idea. I could see that working. Would take some math but could work.
The problem is, what you're suggesting isn't just causing the item to lose monetary/gold value. The item is losing effectiveness. The item itself loses quality, not just trade value.
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We're just going to have to agree to disagree. I feel this will help the honest player. All this does is increase the honest players gear value while simultaneously decreasing the bots gears value. It does not address bots gold farming in the traditional sense, but really the only people responsible for gold botters are impatient players. Gold botters will be a constant in any game with an economy and players willing to pay to win. Once the the itemization and droprate fixes go through, and something like this would go through, the games economy would balance out. Why? Because items devalue over ownership transfers and the focus will be finding your own gear vs buying it for gold, reducing golds value. Right now the honest player is getting bent over and spanked with a bus going 60 miles an hour.
Good items are nothing but perspective and the line vs good items vs average changes constantly. Everyone wants to be ahead of the curve, but that is not possible in a capitalist enviroment. There will always be winners and losers.
Hey, I'm not gonna fault you for proposing ideas. I just feel there are other, more creative ways to address such things. Imbuing processes (i.e. Horadric Cube type systems) that could address the players being able to create items on chance.
Crafting was a great implementation, though more of a temporary salve. It's the right idea, it just needs to be greatly expanded upon, giving the general idea a more dynamic feel.
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That is not the problem, that is the design and the beauty of the system. To him, when he doesn't need it anymore, he does not care about the effectiveness, only its value. THe design is for those who play the game and farm the loot, to have the most valuable gear. The Auction house should be used as a last resort, not the main channel for gear.
I don't disagree with more crafting. Item decay, in the long run is going to cause more crafting mats, we will need more things to make with those mats.
Agreed. If people care about the economy so much they should be advocating a D3 ladder.
I've always said I'm fine with a ladder system so long as it isn't implemented with the same exclusivity as it was in D2. Meaning, the best items were often ladder-only.
If people want to play ladder, that's fine. But they should do so for reasons other than access to ladder-only items.
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The ladder worked in D2, because with one purchase of diablo 2 you had unlimited account creation access, or unlimited chars. In D3, we have 1 account and 10 characters. In D2 ladders, our ladder chars could transfer to non-ladder. Even if they made the characters transferable, we only have 10 spots and i already have 10 chars. D3 was not designed for ladders and when they implement it eventually, I guessing it will be designed around contests and races like I suggested in an earlier post in this topic.
THe bots completely controlled the ladder economy because it was cleared out every 6 months. Who got the gear first in a new ladder? THe bots. THe ladder system actually helped the bots. Botter probably made most of their money in the first few weeks of each ladder season. THe ladder prolonged D2's life but it helped the bots hang around until D3 too.