I think no one will disagree with you that "the economy is messed up". Item decay, however, doesn't appear to be the fix to it. Especially the item decay as proposed in the first post punishes AH flippers (AH flipping maybe frowned upon, but it's not illegal) and people re-selling their gear after getting upgrades (and upgrading your character is the core essential of every (A)RPG). Who is not affected by item decay? Botters, because they get their items from the source.
Besides, if you punish AH trading you need to punish any outside-AH trading as well, or even more. The AH was introduced to get around 3rd party scam websites and open up trading for everyone, not only these that are fine spending lots of time on websites like D2JSP looking for good trades.
In my opinion, the #1 reason why the economy is messed up is because there is no item sink. Diablo 2 was not messed up because there were ladder seasons. Diablo 3 hardcore is not as messed up because items exit the system upon a character's death. In other RPGs items can get destroyed (in an attempt to upgrade, or just failing/missing the right point to repair). Or take the Stone of Jordan example in D2.
I really hope they introduce an item sink. Not sure if a ladder would help; the economy messed up pretty quickly, keep in mind that even if we had a ladder reset in D3, it wouldn't be necessarily due by now (though I have to admit that it would have been a fairly long season). If they introduce a ladder, I wouldn't mind. But I also wouldn't mind crafting recipes or other things that force high-level players to sacrifice really good items. There are people buying weapons for 40 billion gold, I'm sure if someone would tell them you can socket a weapon by salvaging a weapon worth 1 billion they wouldn't hesitate to do so. There just needs to be an incentive to take some items out of the system, be it crafting, repairing, enchanting, decay, a ladder reset, or a (real) uber event.
All a system like item decay will do is move more trade to the black economy with people using 3rd party sites for P2P trading making higher tier items less available for most players.
The one thing that really bothers me greatly about this idea is that it would mean no more swapping items with friends on loan. Whether it's to help them out with temporarily filling a slot or just testing.
It's seems restrictive and me no like restrictions.
I think no one will disagree with you that "the economy is messed up". Item decay, however, doesn't appear to be the fix to it. Especially the item decay as proposed in the first post punishes AH flippers (AH flipping maybe frowned upon, but it's not illegal) and people re-selling their gear after getting upgrades (and upgrading your character is the core essential of every (A)RPG). Who is not affected by item decay? Botters, because they get their items from the source.
Besides, if you punish AH trading you need to punish any outside-AH trading as well, or even more. The AH was introduced to get around 3rd party scam websites and open up trading for everyone, not only these that are fine spending lots of time on websites like D2JSP looking for good trades.
In my opinion, the #1 reason why the economy is messed up is because there is no item sink. Diablo 2 was not messed up because there were ladder seasons. Diablo 3 hardcore is not as messed up because items exit the system upon a character's death. In other RPGs items can get destroyed (in an attempt to upgrade, or just failing/missing the right point to repair). Or take the Stone of Jordan example in D2.
I really hope they introduce an item sink. Not sure if a ladder would help; the economy messed up pretty quickly, keep in mind that even if we had a ladder reset in D3, it wouldn't be necessarily due by now (though I have to admit that it would have been a fairly long season). If they introduce a ladder, I wouldn't mind. But I also wouldn't mind crafting recipes or other things that force high-level players to sacrifice really good items. There are people buying weapons for 40 billion gold, I'm sure if someone would tell them you can socket a weapon by salvaging a weapon worth 1 billion they wouldn't hesitate to do so. There just needs to be an incentive to take some items out of the system, be it crafting, repairing, enchanting, decay, a ladder reset, or a (real) uber event.
Unless they have taken it out recently the ToS stated, item flipping was bannable as late as last summer. And I explained how it hurts the bots. Bots don't store items on same account they bot on. Ladders actually insure bot driven economy. Because bots get gear the fastest, they can set prices and control the economy. If we were starting over every 6 months, bots would lose all the competition from those rare finds people get over time. THe real money value of the D2 items got smaller and smaller over time. Only the naive would say it was stable. If you traded in game item for item, you didn't notice because they all systmatically lost value.. Gold had no value. And I can't tell you how quickly or what, because I was not there the whole time. But in 2004 a windforce was $300ish, in 2011 it was less than $2. THat is not stable.
I gotta run and do other things, will check back later and see what you all have to say. Thanks for the opinions. Especially ruksak. Good back and forth.
The one thing that really bothers me greatly about this idea is that it would mean no more swapping items with friends on loan. Whether it's to help them out with temporarily filling a slot or just testing.
It's seems restrictive and me no like restrictions.
HAHA... Me no likey either.
Especially BOA items. I hate trying to give something to a friend and notice something is BOA. Why in the hell can't I give this to him, BOA my ass.
Alls im saying is Blizzard is already doing this wrong enough that they don't need to keep moving backwards. T
All a system like item decay will do is move more trade to the black economy with people using 3rd party sites for P2P trading making higher tier items less available for most players.
Well this one last thing, why would a 3rd party site make a difference? The decay happens when item is goes from account to account or when posted on AH. My idea would include dropping item on ground and letting someone else pick it up. The trigger is not in the trade window, but the possession of the item by a new account. 3rd party sites won't be able hide from decay.
The one thing that really bothers me greatly about this idea is that it would mean no more swapping items with friends on loan. Whether it's to help them out with temporarily filling a slot or just testing.
It's seems restrictive and me no like restrictions.
Well the decay happens once the 3rd account touches it. So assume(its my idea, screw it, not assume, it will happen this way) this one would mean, if you let your friend have it and he give it back, only 2 accounts have possessed it. Item has yet to decay. Wouldn't decay until one of you tried to sell it or let someone else have it.
Players A, B, C and Jeff run together and share drops they have no use for, Player A find a legendary but has no use for it, so chucks it on the ground in town, player B picks up and also has no use for it either, repeat with player C, Jeff now picks it up and thinks this would be awesome, but the stats are a bit crap, why did they all tell me I would want this
Hidden mechanics are almost universally a bad thing, especially when the penalise legitimate players.
The one thing that really bothers me greatly about this idea is that it would mean no more swapping items with friends on loan. Whether it's to help them out with temporarily filling a slot or just testing.
It's seems restrictive and me no like restrictions.
HAHA... Me no likey either.
Especially BOA items. I hate trying to give something to a friend and notice something is BOA. Why in the hell can't I give this to him, BOA my ass.
Alls im saying is Blizzard is already doing this wrong enough that they don't need to keep moving backwards.
For once I agree BOA is nasty, crafting something epic and not being able to sell it is just as annoying as finding something rubbish and not being able to sell it. Or in some cases now for example i found some Very nice int gloves does anyone want them nope .....
As suggested I would rather items were removed by systems like enchants / upgrades / imbules than slowly getting rubbish each trade. Ladder does have some benefits but it still does not fix non ladder....
I wasted to much gold on crafting, I finally ended up crafting something worth keeping and stashed it away. Now it just sits there. One day I noticed my friend could use it and forgot it was crafted. So, it just sits there still.
As far as the economy goes and item inflation/item saturation and pricing, I honestly feel people tend to overthink in-game economies.
No matter how much saturation occurs, if an item is in demand and it's of high quality, it always commands a high price. Prices always bottom out in ever game I've played, no matter the saturation. If you want the best of the best, you're going to have to pay a great deal.
I played Guild Wars 1 (on and off) for 7 years. There wasn't an item sink, per say. Yet, even after seven years, high-demand items had a hard floor, the price was high and remained stable for the duration.
People will quit, items will sit stagnant on disused accounts etc. These sorts of ancillary affects play a huge part in stabilizing in-game economies.
Epic items should stay epic no matter how many hands they cross. Such a thing will never be a part of Diablo 3.
I played Guild Wars 1 (on and off) for 7 years. There wasn't an item sink, per say. Yet, even after seven years, high-demand items had a hard floor, the price was high and remained stable for the duration.
Epic items should stay epic no matter how many hands they cross. Such a thing will never be a part of Diablo 3.
So, an item you acquired in year 1 would be worth about the same 6 years later (given that it was really good by the time you found it)? That's hard to believe in a "healthy" game where players search for updates on a daily basis.
Epic items should stay epic, but in any RPG you also want progression, and at some point every item loses its value. By making items really really rare and epic you can prolong this effect (for example, Thunderfury in WoW was a truely epic legendary item), but eventually everything will flat out. For example, ask yourself if D3's progress is too fast or too slow. Self-found players will probably say too slow, but people who use the AH basically have no progression either because it's too fast (leveling a char to 60: 2 hours, buying equip to reach 200k DPS: 10 minutes, time to next self-found upgrade: about a year or so).
So in the end, both parties (self-found and AH users) are bored and feel that there's no character progression. Now, as Blizzard already said and we also determined in a survey, you can't take away the AH anymore. And most people in this thread also don't want to "penalize" trading by introducing some sort of item decay. That leaves us only with the option of creating an item sink.
I have no idea about Guild Wars, but I'm pretty sure there was something else to the game. I really don't believe that any RPG-like game with a healthy community will manage to keep players engaged using the same items for years.
So, an item you acquired in year 1 would be worth about the same 6 years later (given that it was really good by the time you found it)?
Yes.
In theory, not regarding x-pacs and content patches...yes, items always find a floor. Epic OMFGodly items always have a high floor, and nothing makes that floor drop aside from new content.
Crafting an item gives you a certain feeling of accomplishment. Like "YEAH I MADE THIS!". If crafted items weren't BoA, some rich guys would just craft like hell and flood the market (remember INVIS crazy 13k crafts?).
However, it was a band-aid to the AH problem. There's no way to argue against that. A quick band-aid until itemization is "fixed" and drops (hopefully) become useful again.
But I remain skeptical - whatever you can do to improve your character, e.g., running VoA 10 times to find an upgrade, some high-end guy can do 10x faster and 100x times more often. I really have no idea how Blizzard is gonna solve that issue. They already said they don't want to kill trading by making everything BoA, so don't be worried about that. On the other hand, none of their itemization plans so far have hinted on how they want to overcame the "perfect item distribution through the AH".
Crafting an item gives you a certain feeling of accomplishment. Like "YEAH I MADE THIS!". If crafted items weren't BoA, some rich guys would just craft like hell and flood the market (remember INVIS crazy 13k crafts?).
However, it was a band-aid to the AH problem. There's no way to argue against that. A quick band-aid until itemization is "fixed" and drops (hopefully) become useful again.
But I remain skeptical - whatever you can do to improve your character, e.g., running VoA 10 times to find an upgrade, some high-end guy can do 10x faster and 100x times more often. I really have no idea how Blizzard is gonna solve that issue. They already said they don't want to kill trading by making everything BoA, so don't be worried about that. On the other hand, none of their itemization plans so far have hinted on how they want to overcame the "perfect item distribution through the AH".
I gave ya a +1 for that. I just want to add, again, for emphasis; No-lifers, botters and hardcore players will always get ahead in the rat race. It's just another manifestation of the haves and the have-nots.
I appreciate any efforts to control such practices from tilting the game askew, but I do not appreciate efforts that interfere with the 'common mans' ability to trade, lend items etc.
So in the end, both parties (self-found and AH users) are bored and feel that there's no character progression. Now, as Blizzard already said and we also determined in a survey, you can't take away the AH anymore. And most people in this thread also don't want to "penalize" trading by introducing some sort of item decay. That leaves us only with the option of creating an item sink.
Just a question: how will introducing item sinks help people who like to find their own gear instead of shopping for it?
Why is the market flooded with good items? Because thanks to the AH, the player base has managed to achieve a "perfect distribution of items". Whatever item is not needed by the rich guys on top of the food chain goes back into the economy and is acquired by the "second level". This goes down to every single player who touches the AH - like a pyramid.
Or think of it as a volcano, the high-end players sit on top and new items (i.e., lava) comes out of the volcano. In a game without any trading, every player would sit on its own volcano and all mountains would rise on a level directly proportional to everyone's playtime (more or less). But since the item distribution is streamlined due to AH distribution, there is only one volcano. The high-end players sit on top, consume the best items that emerge, but throw all the rest down and the next level of players picks it up - and so on. The base is growing and growing, but the players at the bottom barely feel like they're moving forward; they're just spreading out making the base larger. If Blizzard doesn't do anything about it, the volcano would grow infinitely until the top players end up in space. This is exactly why Blizzard reduced item drop rates already.
So, one solution is to cut down on trading. The item decay idea by OP is such a thing: when items get traded (i.e., lava falls down), they get worse (i.e., lose density/weight). Eventually, once the lava hits the ground, it's gone, stopping infinite growth. However, we discussed the drawbacks of item decays in this thread... extensively.
Another solution is an item sink. If the top players decide to use their "second best items" instead of giving it to the people below them, the volcano stops growing. It doesn't matter how this is achieved (upgrade perfect item by enchanting it with materials from a salvaged, "almost perfect item"; selling 1000 Echoing Furies to the volcano gods; whatever you can think of) - the only thing that matters is that not every piece that appears to be "waste" for the high-end players enters the economy.
How will this affect self-found players?
Once the current, infinite volcano growth is stopped, Blizzard can turn up drop rates again. They already said that they tweaked drop rates down in order to slow inflation. They said they won't remove the AH, and it's also unlikely that they'll introduce something that penalizes for trading. So their needs to be a positive incentive for the community to stop this ridiculous distribution of items, and I believe an item sink (through crafting, most likely) is the best shot we got.
I wasted to much gold on crafting, I finally ended up crafting something worth keeping and stashed it away. Now it just sits there. One day I noticed my friend could use it and forgot it was crafted. So, it just sits there still.
I don't understand why anything needs to be BOA.
Uhm....because the BoA recipes have the potential to be better than anything you can ever loot from monsters? Seems pretty obvious to me.
Pretty obvious to you maybe. But its far from obvious to me.
Potential to be better does not mean will be better. Like I said have some decent gear crafted, but most of its been garbage. And what I have left over I don't use, I can't even give it away to friends.
I don't like being told what I can and can't do with MY stuff.
That's the price we have to pay for uber-powerful recipes. There's no way we'd have these recipes if the product could be sold. They're just too powerful.
But its diablo. Nothing should be account bound. Maybe its just me but it shouldn't matter how you get the gear and you should not be punished for crafting it yourself.
Thing is I have yet to craft anything uber-powerful with those recipes. The best gear I have got was found of purchased of the AH.
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Besides, if you punish AH trading you need to punish any outside-AH trading as well, or even more. The AH was introduced to get around 3rd party scam websites and open up trading for everyone, not only these that are fine spending lots of time on websites like D2JSP looking for good trades.
In my opinion, the #1 reason why the economy is messed up is because there is no item sink. Diablo 2 was not messed up because there were ladder seasons. Diablo 3 hardcore is not as messed up because items exit the system upon a character's death. In other RPGs items can get destroyed (in an attempt to upgrade, or just failing/missing the right point to repair). Or take the Stone of Jordan example in D2.
I really hope they introduce an item sink. Not sure if a ladder would help; the economy messed up pretty quickly, keep in mind that even if we had a ladder reset in D3, it wouldn't be necessarily due by now (though I have to admit that it would have been a fairly long season). If they introduce a ladder, I wouldn't mind. But I also wouldn't mind crafting recipes or other things that force high-level players to sacrifice really good items. There are people buying weapons for 40 billion gold, I'm sure if someone would tell them you can socket a weapon by salvaging a weapon worth 1 billion they wouldn't hesitate to do so. There just needs to be an incentive to take some items out of the system, be it crafting, repairing, enchanting, decay, a ladder reset, or a (real) uber event.
It's seems restrictive and me no like restrictions.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Unless they have taken it out recently the ToS stated, item flipping was bannable as late as last summer. And I explained how it hurts the bots. Bots don't store items on same account they bot on. Ladders actually insure bot driven economy. Because bots get gear the fastest, they can set prices and control the economy. If we were starting over every 6 months, bots would lose all the competition from those rare finds people get over time. THe real money value of the D2 items got smaller and smaller over time. Only the naive would say it was stable. If you traded in game item for item, you didn't notice because they all systmatically lost value.. Gold had no value. And I can't tell you how quickly or what, because I was not there the whole time. But in 2004 a windforce was $300ish, in 2011 it was less than $2. THat is not stable.
I gotta run and do other things, will check back later and see what you all have to say. Thanks for the opinions. Especially ruksak. Good back and forth.
HAHA... Me no likey either.
Especially BOA items. I hate trying to give something to a friend and notice something is BOA. Why in the hell can't I give this to him, BOA my ass.
Alls im saying is Blizzard is already doing this wrong enough that they don't need to keep moving backwards. T
Well this one last thing, why would a 3rd party site make a difference? The decay happens when item is goes from account to account or when posted on AH. My idea would include dropping item on ground and letting someone else pick it up. The trigger is not in the trade window, but the possession of the item by a new account. 3rd party sites won't be able hide from decay.
Fantastic! (y)
Well the decay happens once the 3rd account touches it. So assume(its my idea, screw it, not assume, it will happen this way) this one would mean, if you let your friend have it and he give it back, only 2 accounts have possessed it. Item has yet to decay. Wouldn't decay until one of you tried to sell it or let someone else have it.
Nah, nothing hidden here. It would have to be in your face so you know what level of decay the item on the ah is.
now i gotta runna, seeya.
Hidden mechanics are almost universally a bad thing, especially when the penalise legitimate players.
I wasted to much gold on crafting, I finally ended up crafting something worth keeping and stashed it away. Now it just sits there. One day I noticed my friend could use it and forgot it was crafted. So, it just sits there still.
I don't understand why anything needs to be BOA.
No matter how much saturation occurs, if an item is in demand and it's of high quality, it always commands a high price. Prices always bottom out in ever game I've played, no matter the saturation. If you want the best of the best, you're going to have to pay a great deal.
I played Guild Wars 1 (on and off) for 7 years. There wasn't an item sink, per say. Yet, even after seven years, high-demand items had a hard floor, the price was high and remained stable for the duration.
People will quit, items will sit stagnant on disused accounts etc. These sorts of ancillary affects play a huge part in stabilizing in-game economies.
Epic items should stay epic no matter how many hands they cross. Such a thing will never be a part of Diablo 3.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
So, an item you acquired in year 1 would be worth about the same 6 years later (given that it was really good by the time you found it)? That's hard to believe in a "healthy" game where players search for updates on a daily basis.
Epic items should stay epic, but in any RPG you also want progression, and at some point every item loses its value. By making items really really rare and epic you can prolong this effect (for example, Thunderfury in WoW was a truely epic legendary item), but eventually everything will flat out. For example, ask yourself if D3's progress is too fast or too slow. Self-found players will probably say too slow, but people who use the AH basically have no progression either because it's too fast (leveling a char to 60: 2 hours, buying equip to reach 200k DPS: 10 minutes, time to next self-found upgrade: about a year or so).
So in the end, both parties (self-found and AH users) are bored and feel that there's no character progression. Now, as Blizzard already said and we also determined in a survey, you can't take away the AH anymore. And most people in this thread also don't want to "penalize" trading by introducing some sort of item decay. That leaves us only with the option of creating an item sink.
I have no idea about Guild Wars, but I'm pretty sure there was something else to the game. I really don't believe that any RPG-like game with a healthy community will manage to keep players engaged using the same items for years.
Yes.
In theory, not regarding x-pacs and content patches...yes, items always find a floor. Epic OMFGodly items always have a high floor, and nothing makes that floor drop aside from new content.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Crafting an item gives you a certain feeling of accomplishment. Like "YEAH I MADE THIS!". If crafted items weren't BoA, some rich guys would just craft like hell and flood the market (remember INVIS crazy 13k crafts?).
However, it was a band-aid to the AH problem. There's no way to argue against that. A quick band-aid until itemization is "fixed" and drops (hopefully) become useful again.
But I remain skeptical - whatever you can do to improve your character, e.g., running VoA 10 times to find an upgrade, some high-end guy can do 10x faster and 100x times more often. I really have no idea how Blizzard is gonna solve that issue. They already said they don't want to kill trading by making everything BoA, so don't be worried about that. On the other hand, none of their itemization plans so far have hinted on how they want to overcame the "perfect item distribution through the AH".
I gave ya a +1 for that. I just want to add, again, for emphasis; No-lifers, botters and hardcore players will always get ahead in the rat race. It's just another manifestation of the haves and the have-nots.
I appreciate any efforts to control such practices from tilting the game askew, but I do not appreciate efforts that interfere with the 'common mans' ability to trade, lend items etc.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Why is the market flooded with good items? Because thanks to the AH, the player base has managed to achieve a "perfect distribution of items". Whatever item is not needed by the rich guys on top of the food chain goes back into the economy and is acquired by the "second level". This goes down to every single player who touches the AH - like a pyramid.
Or think of it as a volcano, the high-end players sit on top and new items (i.e., lava) comes out of the volcano. In a game without any trading, every player would sit on its own volcano and all mountains would rise on a level directly proportional to everyone's playtime (more or less). But since the item distribution is streamlined due to AH distribution, there is only one volcano. The high-end players sit on top, consume the best items that emerge, but throw all the rest down and the next level of players picks it up - and so on. The base is growing and growing, but the players at the bottom barely feel like they're moving forward; they're just spreading out making the base larger. If Blizzard doesn't do anything about it, the volcano would grow infinitely until the top players end up in space. This is exactly why Blizzard reduced item drop rates already.
So, one solution is to cut down on trading. The item decay idea by OP is such a thing: when items get traded (i.e., lava falls down), they get worse (i.e., lose density/weight). Eventually, once the lava hits the ground, it's gone, stopping infinite growth. However, we discussed the drawbacks of item decays in this thread... extensively.
Another solution is an item sink. If the top players decide to use their "second best items" instead of giving it to the people below them, the volcano stops growing. It doesn't matter how this is achieved (upgrade perfect item by enchanting it with materials from a salvaged, "almost perfect item"; selling 1000 Echoing Furies to the volcano gods; whatever you can think of) - the only thing that matters is that not every piece that appears to be "waste" for the high-end players enters the economy.
How will this affect self-found players?
Once the current, infinite volcano growth is stopped, Blizzard can turn up drop rates again. They already said that they tweaked drop rates down in order to slow inflation. They said they won't remove the AH, and it's also unlikely that they'll introduce something that penalizes for trading. So their needs to be a positive incentive for the community to stop this ridiculous distribution of items, and I believe an item sink (through crafting, most likely) is the best shot we got.
Pretty obvious to you maybe. But its far from obvious to me.
Potential to be better does not mean will be better. Like I said have some decent gear crafted, but most of its been garbage. And what I have left over I don't use, I can't even give it away to friends.
I don't like being told what I can and can't do with MY stuff.
But its diablo. Nothing should be account bound. Maybe its just me but it shouldn't matter how you get the gear and you should not be punished for crafting it yourself.
Thing is I have yet to craft anything uber-powerful with those recipes. The best gear I have got was found of purchased of the AH.