What Exactly Killed Diablo 3's Economy (and Implications on PoE)

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HeavyUnit wrote:

You'll get there Xeju. It just takes time. I believe that's the point Scrotie and soulburn are making though. Your desire to know what your drops are worth is what immerses you in the game and drives you to learn more.

Pretty much. The shame with Diablo 3 isn't that you're trying to figure out what stuff is worth, because obviously you're trying to figure out what stuff is worth. The problem is that you succeed at it too easily, too quickly, and too obviously. It's about the journey, and having a deep enough system where figuring everything out is a challenge. Essentially, difficulty in item valuation is just as important to an ARPG as difficulty in fighting monsters — if it's such a cakewalk that you can never fail, it sucks ass.

An excellent post.

*slow clap*

convenient oversupply of items which would be god tier in any other game (which then end up on the AH) killed the D3 economy by utterly devaluing "good" items to the point where there was no sense of reward for playing the game.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

It's about the journey, and having a deep enough system where figuring everything out is a challenge. Essentially, difficulty in item valuation is just as important to an ARPG as difficulty in fighting monsters — if it's such a cakewalk that you can never fail, it sucks ass.

I guess that's the point of my walls of text. At what point do we cross the line of challenging into tediousness with value of items / mechanics / etc? I wholeheartedly agree that the AH made that too easy in terms of item value. But like I mentioned, I think it extends to other parts of the game, because the economy is only part of the problem with D3.

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conall88 wrote:

convenient oversupply of items which would be god tier in any other game (which then end up on the AH) killed the D3 economy by utterly devaluing "good" items to the point where there was no sense of reward for playing the game.

My RMAH argument from the OP applies here too: Diablo 2 was rife with rampant inflation of god-tier items, including massive amounts of rune-duping, and it didn't have the problems that Diablo 3 had. If you really want to make the argument that oversupply was D3's problem, you need to address that issue. My answer: oversupply wasn't the core problem, and by itself would have been no more annoying than the Diablo 2 economy was.

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HeavyUnit wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

It's about the journey, and having a deep enough system where figuring everything out is a challenge. Essentially, difficulty in item valuation is just as important to an ARPG as difficulty in fighting monsters — if it's such a cakewalk that you can never fail, it sucks ass.

I guess that's the point of my walls of text. At what point do we cross the line of challenging into tediousness with value of items / mechanics / etc?

I guess that's a good question. I guess I'll take inspiration from Mark Rosewater's article here and say this:

1. Items shouldn't have too many mods. In general, the six-affix plan for rares is just about what players can handle, an eight-affix system would likely be too much. I guess it's okay for some uniques to go past six, but designers need to be careful about doing it. Having a "runeword-esque" superlist of abilities tied to an item is generally a bad sign.
2. An individual mod shouldn't be hard to understand. Especially on rares, it's important that reading the item tells the player what the item does, even if they don't necessarily understand exactly how good those things are in combination. Keyword abilities like Crushing Blow and Culling Strike force wiki searches and should be used in moderation, and truly bizarre mods shouldn't be available except on uniques.
3. The benefit shouldn't be too hard to maintain. What I mean by this is that "x% chance to gain an Endurance charge on melee kill" wouldn't be a very good affix for rares, because it requires a lot of maintenance to keep up, and gives the feeling that you're helping the item instead of the item helping you. It's a lot more acceptable to do this with uniques, as they feel special enough where you build around them, but rares should mostly do the opposite and build around you.

The only thing that D3 fails at is the items. They are boring and the good ones are far too rare. AH is great. Respecs are great. They both save your time and allow you to be killing more baddies.

I am not one of the trade oriented players, most of the time I don't understand the mindsets of them. So my question is what do you mean "killed"? Just curious.

1. Inflation?

2. Most items being worthless and useless, everyone fights over only few items that are too widely used?

3. Gameplay time being totally devalued by the trading, aka AH Tycoon? And when players do is trading instead of playing, what does it mean dead economy?

Q. What if itemization was good in terms of build diversity, every item had a good usage even though it was over supplied and worthless, the economy still considered dead?

Q. What kind of economy is good economy, how does it improve the gaming experience? Or how doesn't it impair the gaming experience? (My belief is that economy is there because sometimes we need to trade, but not itself being fun to play, just my opinion though.)

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NameIsDon wrote:

I am not one of the trade oriented players, most of the time I don't understand the mindsets of them. So my question is what do you mean "killed"? Just curious.

1. Inflation?

2. Most items being worthless and useless, everyone fights over only few items that are too widely used?

3. Gameplay time being totally devalued by the trading, aka AH Tycoon? And when players do is trading instead of playing, what does it mean dead economy?

Q. What if itemization was good in terms of build diversity, every item had a good usage even though it was over supplied and worthless, the economy still considered dead?

Q. What kind of economy is good economy, how does it improve the gaming experience? Or how doesn't it impair the gaming experience? (My belief is that economy is there because sometimes we need to trade, but not itself being fun to play, just my opinion though.)

By "dead," I mean dead in terms of the joy of loot-finding, as described in Section 1 of the OP. What it looked like to many was your #3; when loot-finding stops being fun, what players do instead is recycle the same items between each other, back and forth. In other words, the main reason players traded so much was that actually killing monsters didn't present enough fun to make it preferable to trading.

Your #1: Diablo 2 also had it; didn't care.

Your #2: That's just what happens when the itemization system is so simple. Another symptom of the real disease.

I dunno in every arpg I have played I never really involved myself with its economy for many of the reasons you list but these problems exist in all video game economies and only affect those that obsess about those things. The magic of D2 and what killed D3 is that no one felt like they HAD to trade to progress in D2 because you well, you didn't, you just had to trade if you wanted some uber badass items that weren't really necessary to enjoy the game. D3 was the total opposite and that's were the hatred of the AH comes from. I agree its slightly misplaced as the hatred of the AH is a symptom not the the cause. simplistic gameplay all around and progression tied to the AH is what made me despise D3 and I imagine I am not alone in that.


Someone in another AH thread mentioned that no one complains about the AH in WoW or other MMOs well thats because progression is not tied to an MMOs auction house. It can be very useful and speed up progress but it is by no means a requirement. This is the difference. Peoples problem with trading here is obviously, that they feel like its required to progress at a certain point in the game just like it was (is?) in D3 and for those who don't like that part of the ARPG experience it pisses them off. If people feel its necessary to trade in this game than all the problems with trading and economy come to light (which is why even though MMO economies are often just as broken they dont come under the same amount of scrutiny) So if GGG wants to fix this all they really need to do is make end game gear easier to acquire for the solo player and BAM problem solved. Honestly I think "fixing" the economy is impossible at least to the expectations of the players. Its one thing in the game GGG really has very little control over which is why in most games that have an economy, it well sucks. I mean I have seen these same complaints for a decade now and its never going to change and you guys really just need to accept it so you can move past it.