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

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

If that's the case, trade them to players who are willing to. These people exist, in large numbers, because unlike you they realize that using an orb on a high-level item or on a map is as good as using an orb ever gets, for anyone. The economy exists as an outlet for the risk-averse... with convenience fees attached, of course.

I mean, if you were advocating a moderate increase in orb droprates — as I have in the past, and will continue to do so, but along with the suggestion of decreasing gear droprates simultaneously to keep the game equally challenging — then I might agree with you. But there is no pleasing you; even a massively upped droprate will not help you conquer your fear of RNG. So go trade instead. Apparently that's your preference.

I play solo self-found, so often do use orbs to craft (I have to if I want upgrades in some cases). Since that means I'll likely never have large numbers of them on hand, the expenditure of even one Divine, Exalted, or Eternal (and I have yet to find even one of either of the latter two after four months of play) represents a significant investment on my part, unlike some folks who apparently have (seemingly, at any rate) bottomless supplies thereof. Thus my hesitancy to expend them, since odds are very high I'll get nothing in return.

If I ever do find them I will probably use them, since that's their whole point as far as I'm concerned, but even if they did become common (which, by the way, I don't actually advocate, that was just an example) the underlying issues with the crafting system would still remain and the expenditure of them would still be something of a fool's errand.

Note that I'm not asking for anything like a guarantee of getting a specific affix; rather, I'm asking for a crafting system that feels more like crafting than a game of Russian Roulette. I would still expect to have to expend a goodly quantity of orbs, but at least along the way I'd still be making something useful since I'd be building up what I already had rather than basically rolling the dice and hoping that RNGsus is feeling beneficent at the time.

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Veta321 wrote:

This is a misunderstanding, I explained what I meant poorly. When I say attractive items I mean items that are only slightly less powerful or attractive than what a player is already using. And when I said price fixing I meant it as price flooring, which has an identical economic impact.

It wouldn't be price flooring, either, because the decrease in price would be based on the removal of items rather than their addition. For example:

The current price of a Shavronne's Wrappings is usually quoted as being around 50-55 Exalted Orbs, and people are willing to pay it because those Orbs are floating around in the economy due to crafting being pretty much a sucker's bet in its current state. Make crafting more viable and a goodly portion of those orbs promptly disappears, which lowers the price due to few(er) people still having that much spare currency and/or the will to spend it on a single item.

Note that having more extant Wrappings as a result will not significantly impact the price in comparison, since the number generated thereby would be infinitesimal compared to the number of orbs so removed from the economy.

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Hathrox wrote:

It wouldn't be price flooring, either, because the decrease in price would be based on the removal of items rather than their addition.

Maybe you're not advocating for an item wealth sink after all, just MMO style item progression. An item sink that addresses loot depreciation would target powerful items whose value has been destroyed by market saturation. If you were advocating for an item sink for items which would otherwise not have any value then that is different. That's more like a value creator and than a wealth sinker.

When I was suggesting that may be price flooring, I meant it would be flooring the value of otherwise not valuable items to their value in a vendor recipe.

All forms of price flooring, price ceilings, and other economic manipulations by GGG are horrible ideas. Here is an article by an actual economist on why the gold floor in Diablo 3 was a bad thing.

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Veta321 wrote:

Maybe you're not advocating for an item wealth sink after all, just MMO style item progression. An item sink that addresses loot depreciation would target powerful items whose value has been destroyed by market saturation. If you were advocating for an item sink for items which would otherwise not have any value then that is different. That's more like a value creator and than a wealth sinker.

When I was suggesting that may be price flooring, I meant it would be flooring the value of otherwise not valuable items to their value in a vendor recipe.

What I've been saying is that if you remove currency from the economy, in this case though an improved crafting system, the value of items will drop as a result. Said improved crafting is what I'm advocating for, so that aside from Chance Orbs (as that's their function, after all) it won't feel so much like gambling.

The ability to break items down for parts could be used as a wealth sink, for example, by scaling the amount of parts obtained via scrapping according to the item's rarity and/or quality: higher iLvl items would, on the whole, generate more parts due to usually having better affixes, which would encourage sacrificing them to improve the ones you were actually using, which in turn would reduce the amount of wealth in the system. Making said items consistently more desirable to scrap would probably require keeping low-end rolls from spawning on high-end items, but then I've always felt that that should be the case anyway as it would encourage farming.

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What I've been saying is that if you remove currency from the economy, in this case though an improved crafting system, the value of items will drop as a result. Said improved crafting is what I'm advocating for, so that aside from Chance Orbs (as that's their function, after all) it won't feel so much like gambling.

But a more progressive crafting mechanic, as opposed to RNG, wouldn't have the effect you intend. It would create a new paradigm where wealth is accumulated in the form of item progression until players perfect their gear and lose interest in not only the item hunt but also currency. It wouldn't be a currency sink as much as an item faucet. And when the market is inundated by great items nobody will have any interest in farming at all. The ultimate result of MMO style progression is item saturation, no different than now. Although it may take more than 4 months to materialize.

There's nothing wrong with some items being extremely valuable either. When item valuation becomes a binary '300 exalts' or 'garbage', that's when you have a problem. And that is usually indicative of item saturation. Resolving item saturation is really the only way to keep the item hunt interesting over the long term and beyond 4 month leagues. Well, that and introducing new more powerful items via an expansion every few years.

I wrote a bit on how item saturation, or rather loot depreciation (they're the same thing), can be solved. If you're interested.

@Hath: You should really check out my Dust idea; Veta linked it on a previous page. I don't support SFL because I can see through the trade-hate and know that what really pisses self-found players off is how the orb system heavily discourages early use, particularly in the softcore leagues. The dust system is specifically designed to make low-level crafting more viable while minimizing oversaturation and the resulting power creep at high levels.

@ Veta and Scrotie: you're still not quite getting it.

Market saturation is going to occur no matter what, it's merely a question of how long it takes (see: prices tanking in the late stages of the previous leagues). The only way to prevent it would be a wipe, and you know how well that would go over. My idea delays that occurrence by removing items from the trade pool, whether that be by consumption (crafting) or usage (end-game kit). The interim items never actually enter the pool, because you keep improving them (where/when possible, at any rate)as you go. Yes, there is the issue of gear satiation, but that, too, has no solution because it will occur at some point no matter what.

I'm not sure the gradual deterioration of gear is the way to go, although if you couple that with the ability to sacrifice more gear to repair it I could maybe see that as an additional damper. I'd recommend going by the base item, so that you don't have to hunt down, say, another Soultaker to repair the one you already have, as I can guarantee that such a setup would start a massive riot (ask a veteran D2 player about end-game repair bills (if you're not one yourself, that is) and you'll understand why).


Re: crafting

I'm concerned about crafting on the whole, not just at lower levels, and the Dust idea, while it has some merits, does nothing to address the fact that as long as affix generation is basically a lottery the odds of actually crafting something usable at a reasonable cost are virtually nonexistent.


Re: trading

I don't hate trade, and really wish that sort of statement would die in a fire because it's clearly meant to inflame rather than discuss. What I do hate, however, is price-gouging, and that's what I see when I read people advertising single items for 15, 20, 30, or even 50+ Exalted Orbs. Unfortunately, as mentioned above crafting just cannot compete, which gives those prices traction.

An auction house is an extremely efficient trading mechanism, so much so that as better items are found the lesser items become devalued at an alarming rate. This also happens in poe but it takes months instead of weeks.

This leads to the great majority of items you find being far worse than what you can see and buy in the auction house. This leads to a very dull farming experience as you rarely find anything useful when compared to what's in the AH.

Am not the guy who reads The Great Wall of Text, but when a game dies, it dies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDgcc5Sif3k

Pretty much sums it up to me.