The best gold-sink in game would be an item-reroll, which could easily be available from the artisans. Not a complete reroll, like gambling would be, but a reroll of the sort that was proposed for the bonus stats on runes.
If you have a sword with 15 strength, but it could have a maximum of 20, you can pay for a chance to increase the strength up to 20 (preferably staying at 15 if a lower number is rolled). Adjusting the price by the current stat values would keep everyone from having perfect items.
Since everyone wants bigger numbers, it will always be popular. It also provides another, smaller but more sure, mechanism for upgrades, other than praying for new drops or trawling the AH all day.
And, as far as I am aware, the only gold-sink in the game right now is the death penalty, which will only be as effective at sucking up gold as players are at dying. Upgrading items is a more pro-active approach, and in games that have a system similar to this, I am always strapped for gold. Unfortunately, I think the developers are against a system like this.
Yeah its definitly an effective gold sink. However the Diablo series are an item -finding- game. This would really destroy those super rare PERFECT items. In the end it would just be: "hey I find this legendary, i don't care what i roll. I got enough gold to make it perfect anyways."
I am sure I read somewhere that this is going to be in the game? Or something similar - or it's an idea Blizzard was thinking of doing anyway.
I can't remember where sorry; I am sure someone else will find the link however.
This is what you heard of;
And there are many more gold sinks! The "perfect enchant" gold sink will work real good. It enchants an item with lets say 10-30 damage, lets say you roll a +15 damage. Now you can re-enchant it, but now it rolls from 15-30. This means it will never get lower, but if done enough you'll get a perfect enchant.
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I found this quote from Gamescom 2010. There (is / was going to be) enchanting, but it's more like WoW than Torchlight:
"Enchants work like Gems. We wanted the enchant to do what it does each time, rather than force players to use the enchant over and over again (on the same item)."
Astion - I see your point about how it could diminish the value of those nice rare finds.
There's also durability. Hopefully it'll be pricey enough to matter.
Durability is just an easy small gold-sink. Would it be cool to not be able to repair your armor? Or, making a decision if you should repair your armor, or replace it with a lesser one. Either way, it should be cheap but not so cheap that it doesn't act as a gold sink.
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This is slightly off-topic, but is in response to the OP.
Why would you prefer the "item re-roll" to only upgrade and not downgrade? I know they have another system like this with the artisans, and I just don't get it. Having a chance to "down-grade" your weapon is part of the risk and decision of you should spend the gold or not. If i find a really awesome rare that has all the stats I want but they aren't perfect, but they are still pretty good, it should be a risk re-rolling it. If it will always be the same or better there is really no decision to make, and eventually everyone will have perfect items. Idk, I think it is a bit lame kind of system.
This is slightly off-topic, but is in response to the OP.
Why would you prefer the "item re-roll" to only upgrade and not downgrade? I know they have another system like this with the artisans, and I just don't get it. Having a chance to "down-grade" your weapon is part of the risk and decision of you should spend the gold or not. If i find a really awesome rare that has all the stats I want but they aren't perfect, but they are still pretty good, it should be a risk re-rolling it. If it will always be the same or better there is really no decision to make, and eventually everyone will have perfect items. Idk, I think it is a bit lame kind of system.
I prefer the feeling good of obtaining better items than the disappointment of becoming less powerful. I understand the need for a trade-off to make such a feature balanced... mine was simply much more gold. Making the price increase exponentially could keep the perfect items from everyone's hands. I was looking for a more steady progression than a random progression.
Also, I think that with the ability to lose stats, the feature would only be used on items with good stat combinations, but poor values. And this would be counter productive toward it being a gold-sink, since it wouldn't be used as often.
This is slightly off-topic, but is in response to the OP.
Why would you prefer the "item re-roll" to only upgrade and not downgrade? I know they have another system like this with the artisans, and I just don't get it. Having a chance to "down-grade" your weapon is part of the risk and decision of you should spend the gold or not. If i find a really awesome rare that has all the stats I want but they aren't perfect, but they are still pretty good, it should be a risk re-rolling it. If it will always be the same or better there is really no decision to make, and eventually everyone will have perfect items. Idk, I think it is a bit lame kind of system.
I'm pretty sure in an interview at Gamescom, Jay Wilson mentioned that item re-rolling can only fail (doing nothing) or upgrade your item. Not that you'll always get an upgrade, but that nothing bad will happen to your item. The likelihood of an upgrade probably diminishes with the quality of the mods on the item. If I already have a pretty nice item, it might actually be pretty hard to get an upgrade out of the Artisan.
If you think about it, risking having your item rerolled into something worse, or destroyed all together (like Torchlight) is a pretty shitty deal. If you got a pretty awesome rare from Inferno, would you chance wrecking it? Or a rare you bought off the RMAH? Possibly even worse. Losing such an item would not be fun at all. Such a system would actually discourage players from using it at the higher levels.
It's much more 'fun' to have you risk gold. If a player has excess gold, it's a great sink.
I don't think it'd be good for the game's economy if you could just improve all the modifiers of an item by spending gold. It would be a very good gold sink, especially if it's expensive, but it gives far fewer incentives to actually buy/trade with other players long term. Without that you could have a good item that has all the modifiers you want but still far from a "perfect" version and could be replaced by another rare that might not have all the modifiers you want but due to higher values on what it does have is still an upgrade, which leaves room for additional upgrades in the future as well. With the ability to increase the modifiers with gold there'd be little incentive to buy an upgrade to the original rare unless it's all around better and you can get it for less than the value it'd take on average to enhance your item to that level.
I think it'd be better if that system was left to just enchants as it will likely be a gold sink to use and it won't likely impact the desirability of the base item itself since everything will likely be able to be enchanted.
There already is a gold sink that does this. Crafting. You can keep crafting items until you get one that's perfect and since there are so many variables, that will take ages. It also has the added benefit of taking items out of the economy too, so it's not just a gold sink it's a total economy sink. Obviously it can't last forever, but I'd say it will be a LONG time before everyone has every slot filled with a crafted BiS item. I suspect long before that happens for any normal person the expansions will be out.
This. I'm pretty sure I saw a blue stating the same thing. The items you get are either junk you sell for gold/salvage, worthy enough to put on the AH, or to be polished up and displayed on your mantelpiece as they're too good to use
This is a little off topic, but I wonder how the economy will balance out on "junk"? I wonder if there will be some salvage items that become so common and you have so many of that instead of salvaging more stuff, you sell it for cash and some stuff that's way more valuable as salvage.
The trick I think is going to be trying to figure out which is which. I assume that for starters I will salvage absolutely everything I can until it becomes clear I need gold far more desperately than more bone fragments or leather scraps or whatever.
I'm pretty sure in an interview at Gamescom, Jay Wilson mentioned that item re-rolling can only fail (doing nothing) or upgrade your item. Not that you'll always get an upgrade, but that nothing bad will happen to your item. The likelihood of an upgrade probably diminishes with the quality of the mods on the item. If I already have a pretty nice item, it might actually be pretty hard to get an upgrade out of the Artisan.
If you think about it, risking having your item rerolled into something worse, or destroyed all together (like Torchlight) is a pretty shitty deal. If you got a pretty awesome rare from Inferno, would you chance wrecking it? Or a rare you bought off the RMAH? Possibly even worse. Losing such an item would not be fun at all. Such a system would actually discourage players from using it at the higher levels.
It's much more 'fun' to have you risk gold. If a player has excess gold, it's a great sink.
Thus, a tough decision was born. You can always re-roll it, it just costs more money.
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If you have a sword with 15 strength, but it could have a maximum of 20, you can pay for a chance to increase the strength up to 20 (preferably staying at 15 if a lower number is rolled). Adjusting the price by the current stat values would keep everyone from having perfect items.
Since everyone wants bigger numbers, it will always be popular. It also provides another, smaller but more sure, mechanism for upgrades, other than praying for new drops or trawling the AH all day.
And, as far as I am aware, the only gold-sink in the game right now is the death penalty, which will only be as effective at sucking up gold as players are at dying. Upgrading items is a more pro-active approach, and in games that have a system similar to this, I am always strapped for gold. Unfortunately, I think the developers are against a system like this.
This is what you heard of;
And there are many more gold sinks! The "perfect enchant" gold sink will work real good. It enchants an item with lets say 10-30 damage, lets say you roll a +15 damage. Now you can re-enchant it, but now it rolls from 15-30. This means it will never get lower, but if done enough you'll get a perfect enchant.
"Enchants work like Gems. We wanted the enchant to do what it does each time, rather than force players to use the enchant over and over again (on the same item)."
Astion - I see your point about how it could diminish the value of those nice rare finds.
nop.. theres
repair, jewels upgrade (not 100% sure), add sockets, crafting, break down runes and gems
Durability is just an easy small gold-sink. Would it be cool to not be able to repair your armor? Or, making a decision if you should repair your armor, or replace it with a lesser one. Either way, it should be cheap but not so cheap that it doesn't act as a gold sink.
Why would you prefer the "item re-roll" to only upgrade and not downgrade? I know they have another system like this with the artisans, and I just don't get it. Having a chance to "down-grade" your weapon is part of the risk and decision of you should spend the gold or not. If i find a really awesome rare that has all the stats I want but they aren't perfect, but they are still pretty good, it should be a risk re-rolling it. If it will always be the same or better there is really no decision to make, and eventually everyone will have perfect items. Idk, I think it is a bit lame kind of system.
I prefer the feeling good of obtaining better items than the disappointment of becoming less powerful. I understand the need for a trade-off to make such a feature balanced... mine was simply much more gold. Making the price increase exponentially could keep the perfect items from everyone's hands. I was looking for a more steady progression than a random progression.
Also, I think that with the ability to lose stats, the feature would only be used on items with good stat combinations, but poor values. And this would be counter productive toward it being a gold-sink, since it wouldn't be used as often.
I'm pretty sure in an interview at Gamescom, Jay Wilson mentioned that item re-rolling can only fail (doing nothing) or upgrade your item. Not that you'll always get an upgrade, but that nothing bad will happen to your item. The likelihood of an upgrade probably diminishes with the quality of the mods on the item. If I already have a pretty nice item, it might actually be pretty hard to get an upgrade out of the Artisan.
If you think about it, risking having your item rerolled into something worse, or destroyed all together (like Torchlight) is a pretty shitty deal. If you got a pretty awesome rare from Inferno, would you chance wrecking it? Or a rare you bought off the RMAH? Possibly even worse. Losing such an item would not be fun at all. Such a system would actually discourage players from using it at the higher levels.
It's much more 'fun' to have you risk gold. If a player has excess gold, it's a great sink.
I think it'd be better if that system was left to just enchants as it will likely be a gold sink to use and it won't likely impact the desirability of the base item itself since everything will likely be able to be enchanted.
This is a little off topic, but I wonder how the economy will balance out on "junk"? I wonder if there will be some salvage items that become so common and you have so many of that instead of salvaging more stuff, you sell it for cash and some stuff that's way more valuable as salvage.
The trick I think is going to be trying to figure out which is which. I assume that for starters I will salvage absolutely everything I can until it becomes clear I need gold far more desperately than more bone fragments or leather scraps or whatever.
Thus, a tough decision was born. You can always re-roll it, it just costs more money.