My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

Killafornia

Killafornia

Diabloii.Net Member
My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

I think a good way to develop an economy for d3 would be a ticket system. The idea behind this is a player at any given time can redeem gold on their character for tickets. But you have to set it so it takes quite a bit of money to redeem for one trading ticket, say like 5 - 10 million gold. You could also implement half tickets or quarter tickets if needed because of less valuable items, and then allow players to open the tickets store and transmute them into full tickets if they have enough.


Then what blizzard does to make sure tickets hold their value is sort of monitor the gold in the realm, and increase/decrease the amount of gold a ticket is worth depending upon auction house prices, inflation, total tickets in circulation, and overall gold not redeemed in tickets on accounts that have been around for longer then a month or half a month, and based on information gathered they can update the economy weekly, or daily. While maintaining some kind of control over it. As well as hold contests for tickets, special events, or sell fluff items to give an incentive to use the ticket system. Another plus is since tickets are not random drops in the game they can be more closely tied into warden with item IDs to prevent duping.
 
Lynchgrinch

Lynchgrinch

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

fair point beakachu . Also, you do realise D3 aint an MMO right?
 
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beakachu

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

Killafornia said:
It takes the place of runes/sojs, makes gold a viable trade item, and could be closely monitored by Warden to stop duping.



Who said it was?
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In what way will it take the place of runes/soj? Will a ticket be a ring that gives +1 to skills? Will it be used to create awesome items?

What I mean is, what intrinsic value will a "ticket" have beyond costing 10 million gold?

Put another way, why would people use tickets to trade instead of trading in items? This idea makes literally no sense if tickets don't actually do anything.


 
Killafornia

Killafornia

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

beakachu said:
In what way will it take the place of runes/soj? Will a ticket be a ring that gives +1 to skills? Will it be used to create awesome items?

What I mean is, what intrinsic value will a "ticket" have beyond costing 10 million gold?

Put another way, why would people use tickets to trade instead of trading in items? This idea makes literally no sense if tickets don't actually do anything.
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There is many ways to give them value. A few ideas I had, was some fluff items such as, character rename, put character names on items, character aura, change armor and weapon colors, change look of armor (make heavy look like light and so forth, tattoos, and change sex for example.

Another idea which would be a big incentive to use them would be to offer the choice to buy crafting materials for the new crafting system with them, or let people buy low level set items, something useful but not better then if you spent a but load for twinking a low level character. That way if your decently rich you can get some gear to level a new character on instantly.


 
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sicilian

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

Sounds too artificial to me. I would say simply make gold more viable as a currency by making all those things you mention cost gold. Simpler, no?

And my guess is duping won't be nearly as easy on BNET2. I'm sure someone will figure it out, but it won't be a mass thing like it was in D2.
 
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Syko

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

You're basing this plan largely around the thought that Blizzard has not already come up with some way to manage a better gold economy in the game. Blizzard is not a dumb company and I am sure if there is anything that they learned about gold from D2 it is that it needs to have actual value, and I am sure they are already brewing something up in that department.

You're also jumping to the conclusion that it is going to be easy to amass five or ten million gold to simply trade it off for a ticket, but there has been nothing really said about how easy it will be to get gold or what uses it will have other than to buy new gear at vendors with.
 
Krugar

Krugar

Banned
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

Syko said:
Blizzard is not a dumb company and I am sure if there is anything that they learned about gold from D2 it is that it needs to have actual value, and I am sure they are already brewing something up in that department.
Click to expand...
And that's essentially it. No more, no less. No need to enter into weird stratagems that essentially won't work because the core problem hasn't been solved.

A slightly big post... have fun if you will :)

Gold intrinsic value needs to raise considerably for it to become an attractive currency. This is however not an easy matter. Players will need hints and be gently pushed in that direction.

For one, an in-game economy is successfully ran by creating a balance between what is called money sinks and money fountains. These are essentially the ways money can be spent and gained. Increasing money sinks and reducing money fountains, raises the value of money and helps establish this as the in-game currency. However it must be done with care, or money can become too expensive and result in general deflation (which may lead players to look for another currency).

Money sinks in D2 were very few. And in here was the problem. Money uses were essentially limited to gambling, equipment repairs and shopping for those high level mods (cruel, whale, etcetera). In contrast it was available everywhere. Monsters dropped it almost always and in great quantities. The %GF modifier complicated matters even further. So, money was essentially valueless. There was too much, and very little one could do with it.

Now, let us imagine for one instant gold was also needed in D2 for leveling a character, to craft items, to be a part of many cube recipes, to fill sockets, to use free skill points, et cetera. Let us reduce slightly gold drops and let us cap %GF at something like 20%. Suddenly gold value would increase considerably. And you would have seen the birth of a currency.

Certainly I'm not advocating these changes to D3 in particular (neither I am against them, mind you). But the important idea to retain here is that without ways to spend money (and spend it in meaningful/valuable ways), there won't be a value to it. Contrary to items which have mods, rarity, usefulness, cool factor, and whatever else you can think of, money doesn't have any other property than its intrinsic value.

Now, this isn't usually enough. I've coded, ran and administered a few MUDs in and around the mid 80s to the mid 90s. On these MMORPGs forefathers, economy was everything. It was essential that players used in-game coin as the primary currency. But the operative word here is "primary". You really can't -- and you shouldn't -- stop direct trading (items trading) from also happening. This is essential since it pleases players the fact they can just trade an item they want for an item they don't want in one simple transaction and skip the middleman.

On many MUDs, game economy was (still is) a much more complex matter than on any MMORPGs in existence. We had to resort to tricks to hint and nudge players into trading through currency whenever possible and make direct trading an optional, but potentially more expensive matter. For instance, we could code Auction Houses or Markets, in which players could potentially make much better deals with their items, and we could tax direct trading.

So in essence D3 needs gold to become more valuable. That is the top priority. Note that it doesn't even need to be made less available. What is needed essentially is for money sinks and money fountains to balance nicely towards some expected inflation level (these calculations can actually be made with reasonable accuracy before the game world starts). And there is a need for certain mechanisms to be implemented in order to push players in that direction.

If this is achieved, money fountains and money sinks (especially money sinks) become completely controllable by the game administrators and the only game aspect they ever need to make minor adjustments if it starts to look its becoming out of hand (raise or lower prices, taxes, et cetera).

On a final note, I did use the word MMORPG ostensively on this post. It's not that I'm comparing Diablo 3 to an MMORPG. Simply that MMORPGs trading systems are useful basis for this discussion.


 
KillaMike

KillaMike

Banned
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

erm.... why just not make sojes and hrs being tradeble from npc's? this way gold>items
 
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windforce

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

It's so much simpler to just use a bartering system.. that way there would be no need to control and maintain the value of gold (to do so would just be unnatural and skew the value of everything). The only real problem, in my eyes, with the d2 system is the presence of dupes. You guys are making it so complicated when after all it's so simple.
 
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PahaLukki

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

No, trading is actually pretty difficult. People are always saying "nn" and that sucks. Gold as a viable currency would rock. The simple solution is to weaken the power of items in general, and then make the blacksmiths and witches actually sell viable game items for gold. And to not have ridiculous prices on everything, simple things should cost very little, like 5 gp for town portal and identify. Because otherwise when you start looking at the scale the items would cost millions. I think it would be good to have items cost less than 100k. Now, if the items in general are weaker, there are less rares around and uniques are more unique having negative attributes as well and generally not being too overpowered compared to regular magic items, and then if the store sells almost comparable magic stuff with 2 affixes, then players will spend gold in the store. In D1 the blacksmith sold even rings and amulets of noticeable strength and Wirt acted as a wild card seller that sold even better magic items, randomly. Speaking of random merchant tables, a quick gold sink is to just make a refresh button in the merchant window.
 
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Ravich

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

The problem with the gold economy in WoW was always that there was no sink within the game itself. Mounts, epic mounts, and repairs. That was literally it, so it was just a disaster waiting to happen.


But... we dont even know if D3 will be going for this type of presence of gold, and whether there will be bind on equip anything, which is vital to determining how the economy functions.
 
KnS

KnS

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: My idea for creating an economy in Diablo 3.

I dont think Blizz are looking to create a solution that requires long term supervision or anything like that...

B.net is F2P ..

Im not saying that blizz will abandon the game, far from it, but just patch the game when its needed etc.
 
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