These are just my thought on the current AH. Is it me or does the really money AH make the normal AH prices WAY over priced. People are try'n to make a buck off the game and in turns the casual players are having a hard time finding gear. I have a full time job plus kids and don't have the hours to farm for gear yet when I do check the AH the prices for some items ( rings and amulets ) are crazy overpriced. Now I do understand that some players are wanting to make money off of the AH, but there has to be a point where you step back and go " Yeah that is a little high." I know a lot of hardcore players that spend hours farming and have millions in gold are going to be like, " cont. farming and your get better gear" or " this game is made for hardcore players and casual players should not complain." But all I am asking is this. " do you believe the Real Money is forcing people to set items at a overprice point or do you believe people are just greedy and want as much gold as they can get. Sure I want gold but charging 30 million for 1 item is crazy. Check the poll and leave a comment and let us know.
No, rmah doesnt increase prices on gold items, actually you make profit on most items if you buy with real money and sell for gold, considering cap for real money price is 250euro and cap for gold is abit over 2billion.
Prices on gold AH were high before RMAH launch aswell.
Back when the game was launched, I remember rushing asap to the end, because I was going to travel for 2 weeks and not be able to play. So I wanted to have a headstart compared to my friends. I did pretty fine until Act 2 Inferno, then things became really painful with those Spiders and Writhing Deceivers in Act 2 (even with Force Armor Wiz and tons of regen). I couldn't get past Desolate Sands before leaving
2 weeks (and a half?) later, the RMAH was announced as going live. I don't recall exactly when it went live, but it wasn't much after I came back.
Good weapons in the 1000-1200 range (yeah, people bought those, remember? The blue weapons with attackspeed? :P) were costing 3-5 million when I left. I got a 900ish~ one for about 2 mil.
When the RMAH was launched, these same weapons skyrocketed to 10-15 million. From one day to the other. People who had the gold, and were already farming Act 3 by then (with Force Armor and SS) definitely bought these and made a ton of money in the RMAH, because I checked it and they were selling for anywhere between 30-100 dollars.
I had friends saying "wtf, I can't buy any upgrades, they're all expensive", and I told them "it's the RMAH, what did you expect.. who's going to sell an item for 500k when they can sell it for 5-10 dollars?".
you can find plenty of cheap, great items on the gold AH
if all you're doing is searching for items with perfect selection and stat rolls then of course it's going to be expensive. this would be the exact same without a rmah.
I'm finding that if I post something on the gold auction house for 200k and it doesn't sell after a few listings.. i can go to the rmah and post it for $2 and after a bit it will most likely sell. Then I use that $2 and convert it to 1 million gold and end up with profit.
There's no problem here. The problem is that while a dollar to gold ratio exists ($2.50/million), many players value their dollars differently, often due to availability of items. Say an item is in the RMAH for $5 - that makes it worth 2 million in gold based on the aforementioned ratio. So a player has two options: buy $5 worth of gold, or buy the item outright. Chances are they won't find that exact item in the GAH, so they're going to purchase it right then and there. Maybe something similar is going in the GAH for 500k. Did they overspend? Technically yes, by 300%. But when you're talking about spending an amount of money many people make in 20 minutes at their jobs, why should they care?
The GAH holds the vast majority of items in this game, and prices are hardly "overpriced" at this point in time. In fact, most items are dropping in price thanks to the recent patch changes. If you think the RMAH is overpriced, don't buy there. Or take advantage of that fact, and sell some items for b.net cash, and turn around and use it to buy items you want; you know, use it as a second currency like the rest of the world.
Now don't get wrong. I never stated that the RMAH is a bad thing. People having the cash to buy items is great. People buying cheap and selling on the RMAH is also a great ideal. But as a causal player I find it hard to progress in the game even with going in a public game. I'm currently stuck on Act 2 and having a hard time getting any farther. Sure I can farm ACT 1 for gold until I get my BARB built up to tackle ACT 2. This I know, and have no problem doing that. I was just wanting to see the views of other players.
I feel that the reason why items are dropping in prices is due to the fact that the game's numbers have been tweaked down by a considerable margin recently, weapons (both 1 handed and 2 handed) have a much improved chance of being good (I think 1-handers can be good from lvl 61 onwards now, right? instead of just ilvl 63s), some monster affixes have been tweaked as well, and people who have been slowly progressing into Acts 2-4 in the first month are now consistently farming Act 3.
The new legendaries also contribute a lot to that big drop in price for decent rares.
The fact that everyone can cancel their auctions and repost them quickly without having to wait 2 days to check where the price will settle (helps a lot with the whole offer/demand factor that makes item prices drop).
All that paired with the fact that Act 3 can still drop really good items of ilvl 55-62, and the fact that a lot of people have moved away from Acts 1-2 (and are selling everything they aren't using anymore for any gold they can get), you can see why Act 1-2 gear has lost a lot of value.
Top-notch Act 3 gear is still really expensive on the GAH. "Decent" and "cheap" gear won't allow you to farm Act 3. And as I said in my previous post, if you were following prices from the beginning, you know that the RMAH's release made the GAH prices skyrocket (maybe they have become normal again lately, but when it was released the prices were crazy).
I'm finding that if I post something on the gold auction house for 200k and it doesn't sell after a few listings.. i can go to the rmah and post it for $2 and after a bit it will most likely sell. Then I use that $2 and convert it to 1 million gold and end up with profit.
Good idea, I'm gonna give that a shot with a couple items that I can't seem to get rid of.
I feel that the reason why items are dropping in prices is due to the fact that the game's numbers have been tweaked down by a considerable margin recently, weapons (both 1 handed and 2 handed) have a much improved chance of being good (I think 1-handers can be good from lvl 61 onwards now, right? instead of just ilvl 63s), some monster affixes have been tweaked as well, and people who have been slowly progressing into Acts 2-4 in the first month are now consistently farming Act 3.
The new legendaries also contribute a lot to that big drop in price for decent rares.
The fact that everyone can cancel their auctions and repost them quickly without having to wait 2 days to check where the price will settle (helps a lot with the whole offer/demand factor that makes item prices drop).
All that paired with the fact that Act 3 can still drop really good items of ilvl 55-62, and the fact that a lot of people have moved away from Acts 1-2 (and are selling everything they aren't using anymore for any gold they can get), you can see why Act 1-2 gear has lost a lot of value.
Top-notch Act 3 gear is still really expensive on the GAH. "Decent" and "cheap" gear won't allow you to farm Act 3. And as I said in my previous post, if you were following prices from the beginning, you know that the RMAH's release made the GAH prices skyrocket (maybe they have become normal again lately, but when it was released the prices were crazy).
Those reasons are precisely why items are coming down in prices. More players farming higher acts thanks to monster nerfs, a higher influx of quality items thanks to increased affix ranges on 61+ items, and better legendary items.
High-end gear is always going to be expensive. In fact, the gap between the high-end gear and middle-of-the-pack gear is probably going to widen as time goes on, simply because more and more gold will accumulate in that period. With that said, I guess the issue is with definition as to what is "decent" and "cheap." Depending on build and class, you can be farming Act 3 with gear that costs less than 20 million gold now, and very likely even cheaper than that with patience and intelligent bidding. I've heard plenty of stories of people farming Act 3 with less than 5 mil in gear; part of that is skill, part of it is simply finding good deals. I don't find 5 million gold to be much of a stretch for most players investing at least a few hours a week into the game at this point.
As for the RMAH influencing prices early in the game: it did, but I don't believe it was the entire cause. In every game there's always a point at which prices begin to level out, and many times that means in an upward direction as players begin to price relative to power. Early in a game there is no metric on which to base prices (and not a lot of gold in the economy, either), which leads to lower pricing. As both of those factors expand, so too do price ranges. I really don't believe the RMAH had as marked an increase as is believed; it did have some influence, but that was eventually eliminated by the sheer volume of goods being moved.
I'm finding that if I post something on the gold auction house for 200k and it doesn't sell after a few listings.. i can go to the rmah and post it for $2 and after a bit it will most likely sell. Then I use that $2 and convert it to 1 million gold and end up with profit.
Good idea, I'm gonna give that a shot with a couple items that I can't seem to get rid of.
Not a terrible idea, but realize that a $2 sale will only return $1 after the cut, and is equivalent to 400k gold (still a profit, though not as much as initially believed).
This is what I was refering to in my earlier post: people often value dollars less than gold, simply because it takes less time to earn them for many (especially if they're spending someone else's money ;))
The overpricing goes far beyond "simple supply and demand". Supply and demand also takes into account production schedules and various other things beyond "customer demand". Supply and demand would also apply if the market were anywhere near competitive.
Here's a list of issues in no particular order which affect the economy. They are and of course not limited to:
Major inflation and lack of monetary control on the part of blizzard
Marginalism/marginal utility
Stupidity
Late release of RMAH/selling gold
MAJOR market liquidity issues
Luck
Bots
Extreme uniqueness of items (vast range of rolls)
Massive spread of wealth/inequality
I made a post asking how much gold people had on average, in around 200 responses, and giving a conservative estimate on math. Those 200 participants had a total purse of 5 billion gold. Imagine what the rest of this game looks like...
Well, had an item that wouldn't sell on GAH for 200k. Posted o RMAH for $2 and it sold. After cut $1 or around 4-500k gold. This is my first RMAH sell, any idea how long before my $1 hits my bnet balance?
Edit: Found the answer, it looks like minimum of 24 hour waiting period.
Iv'e never found any godly items, but plenty of decent ones. But they don't sell very well, even at very low prices.
So while people complain about high prices, why don't they buy my cheap auctions I wonder
When I say cheap, it's between 10k - 50k gold. And that's for pretty decent items.
So instead I salvage everything now, at least the materials seem to sell.
Though I've never managed to sell anything at the RmAH, even at the lowest possible price available.
I made a post asking how much gold people had on average, in around 200 responses, and giving a conservative estimate on math. Those 200 participants had a total purse of 5 billion gold. Imagine what the rest of this game looks like...
That's a pretty terrible premise on which to base the idea that everyone in the game is filthy rich and that, therefore, the economy is nonexistant/destroyed.
People who don't have massive amounts of gold aren't going to respond to an epeen poll like that because the "haves" are going to mock them. It's almost like saying "I went into a very exclusive country club and there weren't poor people, therefore, poverty must not exist!"
As a completely anecdotal counterpoint, if you added up everyones wealth on my friends list you wouldn't get 5 billion gold. Hell, it's possible you wouldn't even get 1 billion gold.
At the end of the day, though, just like in the real world, if you're selling a good/service there need to be people who can afford to purchase it. Who do you think is out there purchasing those 250 million gold items so that you can pocket the profits? If you want to be able to sell items for hundreds of millions of gold you have to be willing to accept that the buyers almost assuredly have that price covered by at least one order of magnitude.
RMAH is pushing prices in gold down after the changes in 1.04.
The reason is simple: the minimum price of gold is low enough now to 1) push people away from the black market; 2) to invite new players to buy gold. That gold is spent in GAH, and the increased traffic removed a lot of gold from the system (with the GAH 15% fee).
Also, high rolled uber powered items will be expensive, as those are extra rare. Deal with it. New legendaries/sets are powerful enough on their own without high rolls, and their prices are dropping constantly. Good rares are super cheap because of the new powerful legendaries, so all-in-all you can kit up without spending a lot.
I bought a new xbow form my character a month before the patch: 1150 dps, 100 dex, socket, 23mil gold. I bought a new xbow last week: 1300 dps, 140 dex, socket, 15mil gold. Sold my old xbow for 2mil. That's a good example for how much cheaper power is after the patch.
I made a post asking how much gold people had on average, in around 200 responses, and giving a conservative estimate on math. Those 200 participants had a total purse of 5 billion gold. Imagine what the rest of this game looks like...
That's a pretty terrible premise on which to base the idea that everyone in the game is filthy rich and that, therefore, the economy is nonexistant/destroyed.
People who don't have massive amounts of gold aren't going to respond to an epeen poll like that because the "haves" are going to mock them. It's almost like saying "I went into a very exclusive country club and there weren't poor people, therefore, poverty must not exist!"
As a completely anecdotal counterpoint, if you added up everyones wealth on my friends list you wouldn't get 5 billion gold. Hell, it's possible you wouldn't even get 1 billion gold.
At the end of the day, though, just like in the real world, if you're selling a good/service there need to be people who can afford to purchase it. Who do you think is out there purchasing those 250 million gold items so that you can pocket the profits? If you want to be able to sell items for hundreds of millions of gold you have to be willing to accept that the buyers almost assuredly have that price covered by at least one order of magnitude.
I'm guessing you didn't see the poll I'm talking about, but it was more or less what one would expect of a distribution of wealth:
This entirely far off of what most economies are. A lot of very average income folks, with few "extremely poor" and fewer "extremely rich". I suppose some people are probably "e-peening" as you say, but I'd hardly say that this is in line with your "country club" example seeing as how I think 1M-5M is a pretty reasonable amount of gold for one to beat inferno. Distribution wise this more or less falls in line of what MOST economies are, however the real issue is just the volume of currency.
I wasn't saying that the D3 economy is "nonexistent or destroyed". I named a good number of factors which contribute to the nuttiness that is this market.
For starters money is being injected constantly with every second the game is being played. In fact my original point of that poll post was to eventually form an argument against GF being included in the Paragon system. Imagine your job gave you a 3% raise every week, would you ever leave that job? Blizzard has almost completely nullified the higher repair costs. The 15% AH cut, repair costs, and the abysmal blacksmithing system are the only real ways that money is taken OUT of this economy, but frankly I highly doubt it can keep up with the gold find bonus of the Paragon system. This is the major inflation I was talking about. This doesn't include the bots who exclusively exist to constantly farm gold (and who have now gotten a great bonus for all their hard work playing).
Part of the overpricing also comes from irrational sellers. That is in part due to the knowledge that there's a ton of money in the system. There's ZERO cost to someone to produce anything (except perhaps opportunity cost of not playing the game itself). So if you take into the fact you know there are people with tons of gold, and you have a good item, why wouldn't you post it insanely high and just keep dropping the price every time it doesn't sell. Maybe you'll even take it to the trade channel and avoid the 15% cut (which happens with a lot of high priced items, circumventing Blizzards own system). If it sits on your shelf or on your AH listing for a few days it isn't costing you money, you keep dropping the price until someone who has that money will buy it. I'll acknowledge that crafting of set/legendaries does come at a cost to the producer, but it's a small part of a bigger picture.
Remember back to the first day of the RMAH when every dickhead was putting things up for $250? Why? because they could and it was of no cost to them for doing so.
The other point about overpricing is just the vastness of stats, because of such a varied array of rolls it's also hard nail down an actual price because comparison is so loose. It's not like WoW's early day economy where the blue/purple BoEs on the AH were all set amounts.
Now where the RMAH falls into it is the fact that overall, it's simply more stable to do business over there so people will. The RMAH is fueled by actual money which undoubtedly grows considerably slower than the Gold in the economy. I sort of smirk at the idea that some people are actually putting money into the RMAH but hey, that's their money and they can "invest" it in whatever they want.
So overall, no I don't think it's a terrible premise to assume there's a ton of gold floating around which in turn raises prices not because they are valued higher than they were before, but because there is more money in the system.
First off, apologies, because I very much misread your words which was part of the premise of what I said to you.
You said that the 200 people totaled around 5 billion gold.
I thought you said that 200 people responded that they had 5 billion gold.
I didn't read that post because, frankly, I'm at the upper end of those poll choices, but one thing I hate is making others feel inadequate. I rarely talk about my wealth (I consider myself poor compared to the truly wealthy) in this game or any other. Therefore I stayed clear of that thread and didn't know its contents, and when I misread your sentence obviously that caused me to take a rather... different.. approach to a response than what I would have had my eyes not deceived me.
That being said, I think it was absurd that they scaled back repair costs, especially in light of Paragon Levels. As it stands now, even with 10+ deaths I can still pull in 200k+ per hour not including anything that goes to the AH. That's 200k+ per hour while having low efficiency due to dying and throwing repair costs on top of that. Now, rarely do I ever come close to that, but sometimes the Fallen Maniacs in Keep Level 2 really get the best of me (/sigh).
I just sold an item for 50 million gold last night. It hurt when it came back as 42.5 million. However, even for high-ticket items I realize that the time I would have spent selling it in trade chat it almost certainly balanced out by investing that time back into farming. So I'd, personally, much rather to continue to take the AH cut and have a hands-free way to sell my wares. But, hey, that was a fast way to remove 7.5 million gold from the economy, I think.
Anyway, the gold find on Paragon Levels... I'll give you my take on that because it does somewhat confuse me. I think that, in reality, it's a way to put the "players" on the same playing field as the "botters." Bear with me here because I know that sounds weird. Most botters were just stacking GF and pickup radius and doing Hell, right? Most players were not stacking GF. Now, wouldn't it cut into the overall percentage of gold that the botters "own" versus what the players "own" if the players were suddenly getting gold find too?
I mean, sure it causes inflation. But, I guess the way I'm looking at it is that the botters had control of X% of the gold "pie" and the players had control of Y% and a lot of people were arguing that X > Y. Anyway. I see the GF from Paragon Levels as a way to add to Y and subtract from X. Perhaps at the end X > Y still. I don't know. But it would seem that it would be a measure to close that gap and put some of the power back in the hands of the players. I could be entirely wrong on that.
Furthermore, there are people who piss, moan, and groan about the game being an "AH simulator" and AH barons ruining the game by getting totally rich without "playing the game." In terms of inflation, I see AH barons as doing us a service. The more items that pass through the AH the more gold that is taken out. All AH barons are doing is throwing items through a system that takes 15% on each transaction - that has long-term economical ramifications.
Anyway, there very well should be more goldsinks. Gems are probably too expensive, enough so that they keep the average person from blowing money on upgrading them. It would provide much a much more reasonable goldsink, especially for the poorer among us, if gems were not able to be salvaged from gear (since the cost of salvaging it is almost always less than what the gem is actually worth) but if upgrading gems weren't nearly as expensive. I see the Jewelcrafter as a failure because, quickly, his prices scale out of control and get in the range of "not going to happen" for the average player.
The blacksmith. Well, don't get me started on him. The only real goldsink he's provided is leveling him so that I can teach him the patterns I've found.
EDIT
I realize the Jewelcrafter part may be a bit confusing. I'm not saying that it's too much of a goldsink, I'm saying that it quickly scales up to a point where it's too expensive to be a goldsink for the average player. Goldsinks have to be... reasonable. You can't squeeze blood from a stone, basically, and I simply don't see someone crafting Radiant Star gems without a fairly large bankroll. For it to be an effective goldsink it has to be something that people participate in - like repair bills (like them or not).
I agree with your point about repair costs. At this point it's entirely possible for lower-gold players to maintain and even come off with a profit even after repair costs.
The AH 15% cut is fine, and it's a great start. Honestly I think there should be an upfront cost of some kind just to post an auction. I think this would encourage far less stupid auction postings while continuing to siphon money out. However the downside is of course discouraging sales on the AH at all. A lot of trade chat talk I see for high level items. While you sold a 50M item and Blizz took their cut, Trade Chat markets are avoiding that. Honestly, I think 15% is too low and should probably be some sort of sliding scale based on the volume of gold being transferred (higher the transaction, higher the cost).
Like you said with the AH barons, if they keep trading they will continually exhaust money supplies. However I simply think that the volume of trading isn't keeping up with the volume of currency. With the concept of gold dropping, it's almost the equivalent of every business being able to print their own money.
The RMAH is a nice option because if 10 people are participating and all first put in 10 dollars, we have $100 among 10 people. Now if 10 more people come on but don't put money in and sell items, now we have 20 people with $100 among them, which should cause prices to drop.
The gems I think are actually the best way to take money out of the system, the star emerald from flawless squares is around 500K to make if you got all your flawless squares and tomes from drops rather than purchasing, I think this is actually a pretty good money sink because you're getting an item that is guaranteed to be what you want it to be. If you use it in your helm, 25% extra gold is nice. As a weapon gem, 70% crit damage is EXTREMELY good for what you are paying for. An item with a base of 70% crit damage and other stats is going to be on the expensive side (that is without a socket).
The blacksmith, by and large is the gamble merchant of D2 but for some reason I didn't feel bad when I gambled in D2. D3 using the blacksmith feels like a straight up waste of time. I agree with you that it's an almost entirely pointless part of the game.
There's also another thing to consider that the circulation of goods never ceases. The hardcore market has a nice mechanic where when a player dies, the gear goes with it. It will only come back if a similar item drops again. There's none of this on the standard market. The new "increased" drop of Legendaries is an interesting situation, what happens over time as legendaries get recycled, will we see hundred and hundreds of totally useable legendaries on the market? It remains to be seen.
Honestly I think one of the fastest ways the currency issue solves itself is when players stop playing and leave their money on their accounts instead of injecting it via the RMAH/gold sales. That may or may not be happening haha.
I neither support nor dislike the AH. I think it creates an interesting and honest discussion about economics within a (what should be) a close/controlled system. However like most economists will tell you, there's an element of human nature which can never be predicted which will continue to cause the unpredictability of an economic system. I do support the notion that Blizzard had no idea what they were doing with it beyond the "let's have an AH to trade gear" approach.
The irony is that while purists out there shun the AH and go by drops only those who would normally be using the AH for gear advancement will effectively be priced out and forced to wait on drops only (whether massive value items for another class or their own) if they have any hope of advancing their gear.
This new patch while fun isn't really advancing the game. It's sort of like getting new living room furniture to take care of your asbestos problem, at least you'll die comfortable.
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Prices on gold AH were high before RMAH launch aswell.
Back when the game was launched, I remember rushing asap to the end, because I was going to travel for 2 weeks and not be able to play. So I wanted to have a headstart compared to my friends. I did pretty fine until Act 2 Inferno, then things became really painful with those Spiders and Writhing Deceivers in Act 2 (even with Force Armor Wiz and tons of regen). I couldn't get past Desolate Sands before leaving
2 weeks (and a half?) later, the RMAH was announced as going live. I don't recall exactly when it went live, but it wasn't much after I came back.
Good weapons in the 1000-1200 range (yeah, people bought those, remember? The blue weapons with attackspeed? :P) were costing 3-5 million when I left. I got a 900ish~ one for about 2 mil.
When the RMAH was launched, these same weapons skyrocketed to 10-15 million. From one day to the other. People who had the gold, and were already farming Act 3 by then (with Force Armor and SS) definitely bought these and made a ton of money in the RMAH, because I checked it and they were selling for anywhere between 30-100 dollars.
I had friends saying "wtf, I can't buy any upgrades, they're all expensive", and I told them "it's the RMAH, what did you expect.. who's going to sell an item for 500k when they can sell it for 5-10 dollars?".
you can find plenty of cheap, great items on the gold AH
if all you're doing is searching for items with perfect selection and stat rolls then of course it's going to be expensive. this would be the exact same without a rmah.
The GAH holds the vast majority of items in this game, and prices are hardly "overpriced" at this point in time. In fact, most items are dropping in price thanks to the recent patch changes. If you think the RMAH is overpriced, don't buy there. Or take advantage of that fact, and sell some items for b.net cash, and turn around and use it to buy items you want; you know, use it as a second currency like the rest of the world.
All of this hullabaloo is for nothing.
The new legendaries also contribute a lot to that big drop in price for decent rares.
The fact that everyone can cancel their auctions and repost them quickly without having to wait 2 days to check where the price will settle (helps a lot with the whole offer/demand factor that makes item prices drop).
All that paired with the fact that Act 3 can still drop really good items of ilvl 55-62, and the fact that a lot of people have moved away from Acts 1-2 (and are selling everything they aren't using anymore for any gold they can get), you can see why Act 1-2 gear has lost a lot of value.
Top-notch Act 3 gear is still really expensive on the GAH. "Decent" and "cheap" gear won't allow you to farm Act 3. And as I said in my previous post, if you were following prices from the beginning, you know that the RMAH's release made the GAH prices skyrocket (maybe they have become normal again lately, but when it was released the prices were crazy).
Good idea, I'm gonna give that a shot with a couple items that I can't seem to get rid of.
Those reasons are precisely why items are coming down in prices. More players farming higher acts thanks to monster nerfs, a higher influx of quality items thanks to increased affix ranges on 61+ items, and better legendary items.
High-end gear is always going to be expensive. In fact, the gap between the high-end gear and middle-of-the-pack gear is probably going to widen as time goes on, simply because more and more gold will accumulate in that period. With that said, I guess the issue is with definition as to what is "decent" and "cheap." Depending on build and class, you can be farming Act 3 with gear that costs less than 20 million gold now, and very likely even cheaper than that with patience and intelligent bidding. I've heard plenty of stories of people farming Act 3 with less than 5 mil in gear; part of that is skill, part of it is simply finding good deals. I don't find 5 million gold to be much of a stretch for most players investing at least a few hours a week into the game at this point.
As for the RMAH influencing prices early in the game: it did, but I don't believe it was the entire cause. In every game there's always a point at which prices begin to level out, and many times that means in an upward direction as players begin to price relative to power. Early in a game there is no metric on which to base prices (and not a lot of gold in the economy, either), which leads to lower pricing. As both of those factors expand, so too do price ranges. I really don't believe the RMAH had as marked an increase as is believed; it did have some influence, but that was eventually eliminated by the sheer volume of goods being moved.
Not a terrible idea, but realize that a $2 sale will only return $1 after the cut, and is equivalent to 400k gold (still a profit, though not as much as initially believed).
This is what I was refering to in my earlier post: people often value dollars less than gold, simply because it takes less time to earn them for many (especially if they're spending someone else's money ;))
Here's a list of issues in no particular order which affect the economy. They are and of course not limited to:
Edit: Found the answer, it looks like minimum of 24 hour waiting period.
So while people complain about high prices, why don't they buy my cheap auctions I wonder
When I say cheap, it's between 10k - 50k gold. And that's for pretty decent items.
So instead I salvage everything now, at least the materials seem to sell.
Though I've never managed to sell anything at the RmAH, even at the lowest possible price available.
.
That's a pretty terrible premise on which to base the idea that everyone in the game is filthy rich and that, therefore, the economy is nonexistant/destroyed.
People who don't have massive amounts of gold aren't going to respond to an epeen poll like that because the "haves" are going to mock them. It's almost like saying "I went into a very exclusive country club and there weren't poor people, therefore, poverty must not exist!"
As a completely anecdotal counterpoint, if you added up everyones wealth on my friends list you wouldn't get 5 billion gold. Hell, it's possible you wouldn't even get 1 billion gold.
At the end of the day, though, just like in the real world, if you're selling a good/service there need to be people who can afford to purchase it. Who do you think is out there purchasing those 250 million gold items so that you can pocket the profits? If you want to be able to sell items for hundreds of millions of gold you have to be willing to accept that the buyers almost assuredly have that price covered by at least one order of magnitude.
The reason is simple: the minimum price of gold is low enough now to 1) push people away from the black market; 2) to invite new players to buy gold. That gold is spent in GAH, and the increased traffic removed a lot of gold from the system (with the GAH 15% fee).
Also, high rolled uber powered items will be expensive, as those are extra rare. Deal with it. New legendaries/sets are powerful enough on their own without high rolls, and their prices are dropping constantly. Good rares are super cheap because of the new powerful legendaries, so all-in-all you can kit up without spending a lot.
I bought a new xbow form my character a month before the patch: 1150 dps, 100 dex, socket, 23mil gold. I bought a new xbow last week: 1300 dps, 140 dex, socket, 15mil gold. Sold my old xbow for 2mil. That's a good example for how much cheaper power is after the patch.
I'm guessing you didn't see the poll I'm talking about, but it was more or less what one would expect of a distribution of wealth:
Under 1M: 9% (19 votes)
1M-5M: 31.5% (67 votes)
5M-20M: 27% (58 Votes)
20M-50M: 15% (32 votes)
50M-100M: 12% (27 votes)
100M+: 4% (9 Votes)
This entirely far off of what most economies are. A lot of very average income folks, with few "extremely poor" and fewer "extremely rich". I suppose some people are probably "e-peening" as you say, but I'd hardly say that this is in line with your "country club" example seeing as how I think 1M-5M is a pretty reasonable amount of gold for one to beat inferno. Distribution wise this more or less falls in line of what MOST economies are, however the real issue is just the volume of currency.
I wasn't saying that the D3 economy is "nonexistent or destroyed". I named a good number of factors which contribute to the nuttiness that is this market.
For starters money is being injected constantly with every second the game is being played. In fact my original point of that poll post was to eventually form an argument against GF being included in the Paragon system. Imagine your job gave you a 3% raise every week, would you ever leave that job? Blizzard has almost completely nullified the higher repair costs. The 15% AH cut, repair costs, and the abysmal blacksmithing system are the only real ways that money is taken OUT of this economy, but frankly I highly doubt it can keep up with the gold find bonus of the Paragon system. This is the major inflation I was talking about. This doesn't include the bots who exclusively exist to constantly farm gold (and who have now gotten a great bonus for all their hard work playing).
Part of the overpricing also comes from irrational sellers. That is in part due to the knowledge that there's a ton of money in the system. There's ZERO cost to someone to produce anything (except perhaps opportunity cost of not playing the game itself). So if you take into the fact you know there are people with tons of gold, and you have a good item, why wouldn't you post it insanely high and just keep dropping the price every time it doesn't sell. Maybe you'll even take it to the trade channel and avoid the 15% cut (which happens with a lot of high priced items, circumventing Blizzards own system). If it sits on your shelf or on your AH listing for a few days it isn't costing you money, you keep dropping the price until someone who has that money will buy it. I'll acknowledge that crafting of set/legendaries does come at a cost to the producer, but it's a small part of a bigger picture.
Remember back to the first day of the RMAH when every dickhead was putting things up for $250? Why? because they could and it was of no cost to them for doing so.
The other point about overpricing is just the vastness of stats, because of such a varied array of rolls it's also hard nail down an actual price because comparison is so loose. It's not like WoW's early day economy where the blue/purple BoEs on the AH were all set amounts.
Now where the RMAH falls into it is the fact that overall, it's simply more stable to do business over there so people will. The RMAH is fueled by actual money which undoubtedly grows considerably slower than the Gold in the economy. I sort of smirk at the idea that some people are actually putting money into the RMAH but hey, that's their money and they can "invest" it in whatever they want.
So overall, no I don't think it's a terrible premise to assume there's a ton of gold floating around which in turn raises prices not because they are valued higher than they were before, but because there is more money in the system.
You said that the 200 people totaled around 5 billion gold.
I thought you said that 200 people responded that they had 5 billion gold.
I didn't read that post because, frankly, I'm at the upper end of those poll choices, but one thing I hate is making others feel inadequate. I rarely talk about my wealth (I consider myself poor compared to the truly wealthy) in this game or any other. Therefore I stayed clear of that thread and didn't know its contents, and when I misread your sentence obviously that caused me to take a rather... different.. approach to a response than what I would have had my eyes not deceived me.
That being said, I think it was absurd that they scaled back repair costs, especially in light of Paragon Levels. As it stands now, even with 10+ deaths I can still pull in 200k+ per hour not including anything that goes to the AH. That's 200k+ per hour while having low efficiency due to dying and throwing repair costs on top of that. Now, rarely do I ever come close to that, but sometimes the Fallen Maniacs in Keep Level 2 really get the best of me (/sigh).
I just sold an item for 50 million gold last night. It hurt when it came back as 42.5 million. However, even for high-ticket items I realize that the time I would have spent selling it in trade chat it almost certainly balanced out by investing that time back into farming. So I'd, personally, much rather to continue to take the AH cut and have a hands-free way to sell my wares. But, hey, that was a fast way to remove 7.5 million gold from the economy, I think.
Anyway, the gold find on Paragon Levels... I'll give you my take on that because it does somewhat confuse me. I think that, in reality, it's a way to put the "players" on the same playing field as the "botters." Bear with me here because I know that sounds weird. Most botters were just stacking GF and pickup radius and doing Hell, right? Most players were not stacking GF. Now, wouldn't it cut into the overall percentage of gold that the botters "own" versus what the players "own" if the players were suddenly getting gold find too?
I mean, sure it causes inflation. But, I guess the way I'm looking at it is that the botters had control of X% of the gold "pie" and the players had control of Y% and a lot of people were arguing that X > Y. Anyway. I see the GF from Paragon Levels as a way to add to Y and subtract from X. Perhaps at the end X > Y still. I don't know. But it would seem that it would be a measure to close that gap and put some of the power back in the hands of the players. I could be entirely wrong on that.
Furthermore, there are people who piss, moan, and groan about the game being an "AH simulator" and AH barons ruining the game by getting totally rich without "playing the game." In terms of inflation, I see AH barons as doing us a service. The more items that pass through the AH the more gold that is taken out. All AH barons are doing is throwing items through a system that takes 15% on each transaction - that has long-term economical ramifications.
Anyway, there very well should be more goldsinks. Gems are probably too expensive, enough so that they keep the average person from blowing money on upgrading them. It would provide much a much more reasonable goldsink, especially for the poorer among us, if gems were not able to be salvaged from gear (since the cost of salvaging it is almost always less than what the gem is actually worth) but if upgrading gems weren't nearly as expensive. I see the Jewelcrafter as a failure because, quickly, his prices scale out of control and get in the range of "not going to happen" for the average player.
The blacksmith. Well, don't get me started on him. The only real goldsink he's provided is leveling him so that I can teach him the patterns I've found.
EDIT
I realize the Jewelcrafter part may be a bit confusing. I'm not saying that it's too much of a goldsink, I'm saying that it quickly scales up to a point where it's too expensive to be a goldsink for the average player. Goldsinks have to be... reasonable. You can't squeeze blood from a stone, basically, and I simply don't see someone crafting Radiant Star gems without a fairly large bankroll. For it to be an effective goldsink it has to be something that people participate in - like repair bills (like them or not).
I agree with your point about repair costs. At this point it's entirely possible for lower-gold players to maintain and even come off with a profit even after repair costs.
The AH 15% cut is fine, and it's a great start. Honestly I think there should be an upfront cost of some kind just to post an auction. I think this would encourage far less stupid auction postings while continuing to siphon money out. However the downside is of course discouraging sales on the AH at all. A lot of trade chat talk I see for high level items. While you sold a 50M item and Blizz took their cut, Trade Chat markets are avoiding that. Honestly, I think 15% is too low and should probably be some sort of sliding scale based on the volume of gold being transferred (higher the transaction, higher the cost).
Like you said with the AH barons, if they keep trading they will continually exhaust money supplies. However I simply think that the volume of trading isn't keeping up with the volume of currency. With the concept of gold dropping, it's almost the equivalent of every business being able to print their own money.
The RMAH is a nice option because if 10 people are participating and all first put in 10 dollars, we have $100 among 10 people. Now if 10 more people come on but don't put money in and sell items, now we have 20 people with $100 among them, which should cause prices to drop.
The gems I think are actually the best way to take money out of the system, the star emerald from flawless squares is around 500K to make if you got all your flawless squares and tomes from drops rather than purchasing, I think this is actually a pretty good money sink because you're getting an item that is guaranteed to be what you want it to be. If you use it in your helm, 25% extra gold is nice. As a weapon gem, 70% crit damage is EXTREMELY good for what you are paying for. An item with a base of 70% crit damage and other stats is going to be on the expensive side (that is without a socket).
The blacksmith, by and large is the gamble merchant of D2 but for some reason I didn't feel bad when I gambled in D2. D3 using the blacksmith feels like a straight up waste of time. I agree with you that it's an almost entirely pointless part of the game.
There's also another thing to consider that the circulation of goods never ceases. The hardcore market has a nice mechanic where when a player dies, the gear goes with it. It will only come back if a similar item drops again. There's none of this on the standard market. The new "increased" drop of Legendaries is an interesting situation, what happens over time as legendaries get recycled, will we see hundred and hundreds of totally useable legendaries on the market? It remains to be seen.
Honestly I think one of the fastest ways the currency issue solves itself is when players stop playing and leave their money on their accounts instead of injecting it via the RMAH/gold sales. That may or may not be happening haha.
I neither support nor dislike the AH. I think it creates an interesting and honest discussion about economics within a (what should be) a close/controlled system. However like most economists will tell you, there's an element of human nature which can never be predicted which will continue to cause the unpredictability of an economic system. I do support the notion that Blizzard had no idea what they were doing with it beyond the "let's have an AH to trade gear" approach.
The irony is that while purists out there shun the AH and go by drops only those who would normally be using the AH for gear advancement will effectively be priced out and forced to wait on drops only (whether massive value items for another class or their own) if they have any hope of advancing their gear.
This new patch while fun isn't really advancing the game. It's sort of like getting new living room furniture to take care of your asbestos problem, at least you'll die comfortable.