DiabloFans

There's no purpose to play the game, and I mean that as literal as possible. As it was highlighted in that well written post by Vaelfire, I'm forced to play through the same content 4 times to accomplish nothing more than what I did the first 3 times.

I played all 5 classes, to inferno completion, I don't need to farm to get gear to farm to get gear to farm to get gear to farm to get gear etc. etc. I still got well over 300 hours among the 5 classes, that's a good value for a game in today's age. I don't need to put anymore time into it if I'm not getting anything out of it. Especially if there are other games out there to be played.

Shame on them. 7 months to realize that it wouldn't work? And that's after getting outside developers to chime in? (they couldn't realize this themselves?)

This is just one giant bungled game that people are still playing. I feel sorry for fans who may have been waiting for this blog to see it was really a blog about...nothing.

Not only that, but dueling? Sure it was fun in D2, but D2 didn't have the comically overgeared players this game has in less than a year in existence.

Low marks blizzard!

Quote from Psychatog

Selling now is really disappointing, I save up 5 billion and then cash out when prices are desirable. I may just start hoarding now and hope for PVP patch to burn through gold stocks. The reality is a lot of people buy from websites, which are offering close to .2 $ per million, which is less than you can actually post gold. Prices will hit the floor soon, and I would much rather cash out my 5 bil at like .55 $!

Thank the Monster Power and Paragon systems for accelerating inflation.

Quote from Gohei27

pretty sure .25 cents is the floor, we'll never see .20 cents unless they lower it.

Totally forgot about that, you're correct. I still think we will see it bottom out by end of 2012, the only thing that would slow this economy down is mass exodus of players, and players who are considerably active gold traders and deep pockets.

Sell while you can! On US. Gold has been around $0.35 for the last day or so, after dropping from $0.47 the week before. I estimate that vacation time around the holidays will lead to more gold being put on the market. By Jan 1 we could see gold as low as $0.20. Hurray hyperinflation!

If I were you I would cross check cost of desirable set items on the GAH and RMAH. For instance if an Inna's Radiance (sorry I play monk) is going for $8.00 on RMAH, but on GAH is going for less than 20 million you can turn a considerable profit by undercutting the lowest posted item.

Hurray hyperinflation and volatile price points!!!

1. Farming gear to re-farm areas I've already farmed to fight an Inferno Diablo I've already beaten is unsatisfying
2. Farming gear to re-farm areas I've already farmed to fight an Inferno Diablo I've already beaten is unsatisfying
3. Farming gear to re-farm areas I've already farmed to fight an Inferno Diablo I've already beaten is unsatisfying

There's truly no point in playing this game after a point... At least I think so.

I think it's laughable that they compare spirit walk to mass confusion in their chart. Comparing something with an incredibly long CD to something with a much more acceptable CD is a no brainer.

MC as an ability I find fun but impractical when trying to find it a spot in any build. They use it in the chart as an example of not being used, and then present a system which, as far as I can tell, doesn't benefit it at all.

Based on what they are proposing, MC seems like it would always end up being cast on mobs which are already being affected by a CC resistance. Which flies in the face of the "well why would I have an ability that is less useful" While 12 second duration IS useful, 12 second duration on a 60 second CD is feel is not useful.

Maybe I'm missing something, I'd like to see MC be used a little more as a fun ability but the CD is one of the longest in the game for a fun, but unrewarding debuff imo (when you consider other options). Hopefully they will tune the skill appropriately.

I wonder if the AI of hex will be changed so that it would hex a target that had not previously be CCed.

Quote from shaggy

All of your post

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.

Quote from shaggy

Quote from KiriONE

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:

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.

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...

Quote from serrie

Hey is there a way to search damage range for sources (off-hand)? The "damage" option is grayed out....is that a bug? I don't want any that are like 30-60 damage ha.

The grayed out part you see isn't a selectable option but rather a header for the section that follows it, you'll see others representing different things, "defense" "stats" etc.

People have requested and I believe blizzard said they are aiming to put this in at some point. The fact they didn't only tells me they don't play wizards/WDs as it's pretty important to know that damage range.

Unfortunately you have to simply sort by stats you're looking for and highlight to check the best ones.

Yes, you need more damage, more resist and more HP to take that extra hit or two. Crit damage also won't hurt, you wouldn't believe how fast damage starts to scale with +crit damage% vs intellect or another primary stat. Start by looking for some bargain items on the AH.

All resist can get pricey fast, so instead of springing for the 50 AR get a 25-35. I would invest in a decent helm with a socket. I wouldn't say your current helm is bad but it certainly isn't good. Thorns is a waste of a stat roll.

Maybe also consider using templar as a follower to tank some initial damage before he dies.

Manitou is also a great ability for set-and-forget damage (which can also crit AND proc LoH) for both its cost and duration. It works well to supplement damage.

It's a level 57 rune, and it's probably one of the best 57 runes, and one of the better abilities that the WD has.

It's good but it's risky in some cases considering the fact you need to stand still for extended periods of time.

Quote from sifuedition

I suspect I have the same theory as you on this. I'm firmly in the "have nots" group.

Haha, yes I'll admit that I am at a point where the AH is becoming less and less an option. But before I completely fly off the handle with why blizzard needs to do something about the economy I wanted to see what the "weather" is like out there.