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A lot of people who aren't familiar with Diablo 3 or the Diablo franchise always ask the same question which seems to be "What's the point of Diablo? You just go through the same level over and over again? I think I'd get bored." And it's true, you do run things repeatedly, possibly a thousand times over the span of a few months. But the sole purpose of this is for one thing and one thing only. Gold. Diablo is all about gold/money/items and they all happen to be connected to each other. Items sell off the AH, give you gold, and if you want to, sell it for money. Or you can reverse this process - use money to buy gold to buy items.
Now, I'm no economist, nor am I pursuing a degree in one, but I'm sure a video game economy would be a pretty interesting thing to delve into and analyze on a deeper level than what I'm about to do with my blog. It holds a lot of the same principles, but can be quite different if you look into specific cases.
The first thing I want to address is the balance between items and currency, in this case gold. One thing to realize is that items do not bind to characters/accounts/anything. If you get an item, you can resell it, throw it away, vendor it, or salvage it. This leaves behind quite an issue. What happens to the gigantic pool of items? I mean, the player base more or less does not grow that much beyond the release date, right? Well, what happens you could probably deduce on your own. Lower end items simply become worthless. Items that were worth something a few days ago may need to be salvaged or thrown away. People are constantly crafting, magic finding for newer gear, and this being added into the item pool diminishes the values of everything else.
So what happens to the godly gear? Shouldn't those start to get cheaper as well? Well, it depends on your definition. If it's a 3-5 million gold item, then yes, it does. Especially armors which can be crafted. Weapons/amulets/rings are slower to inflate. However, real godly items are the opposite. Because of the influx of gold those get much more expensive. They're very difficult to find as they usually require items to roll double stacks of very specific stats, and require high ends of those stats. Because of gold farming, gold buying, botting, etc. these will continue to get more expensive as long as inflation continues.
So I made a mention of botters, and yes, it's true, they exist and they aren't easily banned. You can refer to this thread for more information - http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=343265#13. From what I understand their main method of making gold is through mass accounts with some gold find gear and breaking pots in a few spots in act 1. It's not the greatest way to make gold, but it's safe, easy for scripts, and doesn't require much gear if at all. So why doesn't blizzard "catch" these botters? Well first of all, it's not very easy. If you think it is you should probably get hired and make a good living. Warden only updates a few times in several months, and for every account you ban, 2 more just show up. It's really quite futile to chase after them in this fashion. They're selling gold, hacking/phishing accounts anyway so it really doesn't hurt them at all but takes a great amount of effort from Blizzard.
"But Diablo 2 had the same thing for years and it seemed fine!" That's a pretty naive thing to say. It was fine if you wanted the lower end gear sure. Hell wasn't that difficult and there were enough cheap resist all items that could get you through it. However, if you wanted more, like an enigma, hota, decked out mercs then that was nearly impossible through regular magic finding means. Playing linearly and legitimately in Diablo 2 was a sure way to end up being poor. I mostly traded through d2jsp and made my items that way, but it took a lot of effort, time, camping, and of course, I had to buy from botters as well.
So is there anything that can be done? Well, there's probably several answers to this out there, but here are some suggestions I thought of within an hour.
1. Nerf gold finding. It's too easy to do and makes it ridiculously easy for farmers with 100+ accounts. In any case, it's mediocre for everyone else (although I do recognize its potential now with the inflating market and good act 1 items are hard to come by). This also helps stop inflation as gold becomes less and less common. We have gold sinks which aren't enough so blizzard intended to increase the cost of repairs, but this only hurts those who play legitimately and not gold farmers who are safe from that.
2. Fix item inflation. There should be something we can do with decent low level gear. Crafting comes to mind in that respect. There needs to be more demand for lower ilvl 60 items. My idea is that certain items could be used to craft new items (6 stat items). If you want to try and craft something good with similar stats then it should require a level 60 item of that kind with those stats and give a better chance at those stats. This also ties into number 3.
3. Nerf crafting. Crafting is somewhat figuring itself out at this point. People are seriously inflating the AH right now with crafted items and the price of inferno mats shows it. Exquisite essences nearly doubled in one day when it was consistent on forums for several weeks. However, this still leaves a problem of overinflating item prices, while the lower end people have to make gold through boring means, which is selling mats and finding gold. People want to find and sell items, not stacks of essences.
Those are just some of my ideas. I'm not a botter, but I've also made a thousand dollars selling gold. To anyone in the gold selling business these issues are obvious and require addressing. The biggest balance issues lies in the economy, not class nor act difficulty. Every aspect of Diablo revolves around the economy, and it's the heart of everything you do. Add in a RMAH and things could get out of hand very fast. An economic crash could kill the game in one fell swoop. To be honest I wouldn't mind witnessing something like that, but I can't imagine it would be fun after a week of laughing at Blizzard's colossal mistake.
 
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they should just make it so that starting a level costs 1k/10k/100k/250k gold on normal/nightmare/hell/inferno and make repair costs more expensive. This way you can only make money if you actually get through a significant section of the game without dying too often, a task that bots just can't accomplish, and especially doesn't work if you break 10 pots and then restart the game. This way you get rid of most current botting opportunities. But probably most players as well x)
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Lol charging people to get into the game would be hilarious, and if it went wrongly it could definitely destroy the game. In particular if you need to pay money to sustain yourself and if that somehow ends up costing more than what you can get on a reliable basis then what happens? It's the same thing in real life when an economic crash happens. No one starts to spend money, people lose jobs, lack of item circulation. The diablo equivalent would be similar, people don't magic find or attempt to progress anymore, no one spends too much money, items are left up on AH for days on end. Thing is, overcharging people to play has many more potential disastrous outcomes than undercharging.
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I know not everyone cares but none of these issues exists in hardcore mode. At least not for the time being.
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On June 08 2012 08:11 DaCruise wrote:
I know not everyone cares but none of these issues exists in hardcore mode. At least not for the time being.
Probably not because of the hassle of getting to 60 just for a bot account, but I heard gold finding was really safe and it would make a LOT more profit on hardcore than on normal.
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Neal Stephenson's newest book REAMDE, while not his greatest work, addresses this topic in a very interesting way.
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On June 08 2012 08:25 sam!zdat wrote:
Neal Stephenson's newest book REAMDE, while not his greatest work, addresses this topic in a very interesting way.
I'd like to read it. What is it really about though? A whole book on video game economy?
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No, that is just one part. There are also terrorists.
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On June 08 2012 08:11 Itsmedudeman wrote:
Lol charging people to get into the game would be hilarious, and if it went wrongly it could definitely destroy the game. In particular if you need to pay money to sustain yourself and if that somehow ends up costing more than what you can get on a reliable basis then what happens? It's the same thing in real life when an economic crash happens. No one starts to spend money, people lose jobs, lack of item circulation. The diablo equivalent would be similar, people don't magic find or attempt to progress anymore, no one spends too much money, items are left up on AH for days on end. Thing is, overcharging people to play has many more potential disastrous outcomes than undercharging.
well normal level 1 doesn't cost money to get into, simple as that. ^^ so if you manage do lose all your money, you have to start at new tristram in normal and slowly work your way back up. or have some friend come "bail" you out.
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Well then what about going bankrupt in inferno? In any case, can you not see why people would hate that idea? It'd be no different than playing hardcore except it's economy based.
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Sounds like OP has never played D3.
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On June 08 2012 09:00 k1mjee wrote:
Sounds like OP has never played D3.
What does this even mean LOL
I've already said I've made a thousand dollars off this game, could make a thousand more if I sell what I have left.
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On June 08 2012 08:55 Itsmedudeman wrote:
Well then what about going bankrupt in inferno? In any case, can you not see why people would hate that idea? It'd be no different than playing hardcore except it's economy based.
thats what i mean, if you go bankrupt in inferno you have to start back in normal to earn money. you can jump back in difficulty at any time already, that's not an issue. Yes it's tedious, but that's the point. You need to make botting not worth it (at least with current stupid bots)
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On June 08 2012 09:25 Sated wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2012 09:06 Itsmedudeman wrote:On June 08 2012 09:00 k1mjee wrote:
Sounds like OP has never played D3. What does this even mean LOL I've already said I've made a thousand dollars off this game, could make a thousand more if I sell what I have left. You've made a thousand dollars off a game that only just came out... so why are you complaining? It's pretty obvious you're lying.
Lol, I'm not lying. And I'm complaining because the game is heading down a road where you'll have to bot to keep up or get extremely lucky with drops. I said I made a thousand dollars, and I did. I could even screenshot the transactions for you, but I don't really feel it necessary to spend the time to essentially try and boost my ego through validating my own earnings to some stranger. There's no reason for me to lie here.
But that's not to say I will be able to in the future, since gold is inflating and botters are rising. With the implementation of the RMAH there's pretty much no way to make sure 1 million gold stays above 10 dollars per. And the game didn't only "just come out". It's been out for 3 weeks, plenty of time to earn that much money legitimately.
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On June 08 2012 09:25 Sated wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2012 09:06 Itsmedudeman wrote:On June 08 2012 09:00 k1mjee wrote:
Sounds like OP has never played D3. What does this even mean LOL I've already said I've made a thousand dollars off this game, could make a thousand more if I sell what I have left. You've made a thousand dollars off a game that only just came out... so why are you complaining? It's pretty obvious you're lying.
On June 08 2012 09:00 k1mjee wrote:
Sounds like OP has never played D3.
I'm really confused by these posts. OP is bringing up a legitimate issue (though there's already a thread on it, but blogs are blogs and he's just getting his thoughts out).
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On June 08 2012 09:32 Duka08 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2012 09:25 Sated wrote:On June 08 2012 09:06 Itsmedudeman wrote:On June 08 2012 09:00 k1mjee wrote:
Sounds like OP has never played D3. What does this even mean LOL I've already said I've made a thousand dollars off this game, could make a thousand more if I sell what I have left. You've made a thousand dollars off a game that only just came out... so why are you complaining? It's pretty obvious you're lying. I'm really confused by these posts. OP is bringing up a legitimate issue (though there's already a thread on it, but blogs are blogs and he's just getting his thoughts out).
Yeah, I don't get it either. I only briefly mentioned what I made to give myself some credibility on how the d3 economy works, and I only mentioned again because someone accused me of lying. In any case, I made this blog to draw attention to a serious problem that affects everyone on a large scale (not just botters, but more importantly the economic system). The inflation of gold doesn't just affect gold sellers, but anyone who tries to play the game in a legitimate fashion.
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The stat of Gold Find on items is part of the problem, no? Realistically it's far too exploitable, and makes such a small impact on casual players who have a small amount on their random gear (very little psychological reward per increase of the stat). I'm not entirely knowledgeable, but what kind of values for GF are we looking at for bots/farmers, especially where the risk is so low to farm. In the short term all I can see Blizzard doing (if they're smart) is slowly nerfing farm locations one by one, which as you said they're already aware of. Just slow to take action, unless they're hotfixing which I don't believe they are.
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the biggest problem isnt economy balance.
Economy balance would be fine if banner Hopping / botting / goldcheats and several other bugs wouldnt completly have destroyed softcore mode, as well as DHs being able to farm anything with low gear.
Look at HC: everything runs perfectly fine. Despite the fact that 1 little lag which u cant do shit about can kill ur char and all ur work ( how about lag = makes the game pause? )
well, d3 is currently more or less unplayable as an "honest" gamer.
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EPT
