Economy in Diablo 3

[mouseman]

The big question: what should Diablo 3 multiplayer economy be based on?

Items, runes or just money?

I like the idea of money as a currency, because it makes everything so much simpler and easier to approach. However, if players can have a lot of money, it just won't work. My question is: what could be done that there wouldn't be too much money and money could be used as a currency?

1) You could get money just from NPC's/Quests/treasure chests. Why would monsters carry gold on them anyway?

2) Make a lot options to spend gold. Like repairs, hirelings, gamble and increasing the usefulness of items you get from the shops but also buying maps from vendors and so on.

There is a reason, after all, why real world uses money as a currency. It makes everything easier. I think the developers should make a real effort to implement this in Diablo 3. It would reward the players really playing the game and not just rushing/running bosses. You could get money that way, too, since you could trade your loot to gold, but it wouldn't be the only way.

[Valok]

I actually really enjoyed the trading / bartering system that was in place in D2 and I'd like to see its return. That way you don't have to feel obligated to go out and farm gold, which is extremely boring imo.

[Mythic]

The reason we use money in real life is because it makes the accumulation of wealth more practical by circumventing storage requirements. Don't really need it in games if you do it right.

[worlann]

Ummm, the economy in D2 was utter crap when people starting duping SoJs and other items. Instead of trading items other people want for stuff we want, SoJs turned into currency.

Hopefully it will return to the original intended vision with the improvement of BNet. If gold we find can be factored in as well, even better.

[moranor]

Farming items instead of gold is what makes D2 fun

[Rashiminos]

The D2 economy was based on massive dupage. I think Blizzard will be looking either to clamp down on it or extend its current support of it.

[fallen angel of satan]

I would cry if it becomes gold, that is 1 of the large banes of WoW.

The fun part of D2 is the massivly fluctuating economy, allowing you to do decent trades etc.

I dont care if gold is more sensible it just aint as fun. Gold would not stop duping anyways, the only way to do that is to design the game better in the 1st place. Which hopefully the 3rd time around they will manage

[moranor]

You could see gold dropping in the video and the axes sold for a few hundred gold each. If the ingame money was going to be the currency online then they probably wouldn't hand out that much gold, because gold tends to be the highest tier of money.

I just hope that the currency isn't farmable. The difference between gold farming and MF runs is pretty big, at least for me

[etslayer]

I think the currency will be whatever item happens to take up the minimum amount of space, is consistent (all SoJ's were exactly the same) and usefull for all chars. I can't see gold being the currency. With games such as WoW that revolve around gold, there are a lot of uses for gold within the game, so much so that the game is virtually unplayable if you don't have gold. However in diablo, so far the only important use for gold has been repairing items and buying potions/scrolls (which are cheep to begin with). Oh and reviving merc's... but overall it is a game about item hunting, not gold hunting. That's one of the reasons it was so fun.

[Dark_Times]

Item trading is always a fun way to trade.

There is often a lot of trading around since you might not always be able to get exactly what you need. But maybe you can trade for another item which will make it easier for you to get the item you wanted later.
Or if you are lucky you are able to trade a medium valued item for something good, since some guy really needed it to complete his set.

I like think that's fun trading like that anyway.

[Jinnai]

I bet D3 economy is going to be based on Jordans and Shackos!! :crazyeyes:

[superjayson]

i am soooo for having gold as currency.

right now d2's economy is based on highrunes that RARELY drop, yet every one has. that does not make a good/fun enconomy, unless you have tons of duped hr's that is.

[mitchflow]

I think there absolutely should be some sort of auction house/ebay/craigslist style listing mechanism within the game. I wasted too many hours of my life posting WTT blah blah blah in the chat screen looking for items. I also think there needs to be a gold based economy for the auction system to work. I think the gold system works very well in MMOs, especially WoW.

Lastly, item binding does wonders for the economy because it keeps the world from being flooded with items. I'm reminded of days way back playing Evercrack and seeing items sell for less and less almost daily because there were more and more of them dropped in the game.

[Vertigo X]

Well, the advantage of the trading system is that no matter how flooded the market gets, items (in theory, at least) don't depreciate in value. It's only when currency is involved that the items devalue. I guess the people naturally wanted some thing to be the currency in D2, though.

[syxxcowz]

Making gold valuable for trading would pretty much ruin one of the best parts of Diablo, imo.

[HRP]

I would love to see an auction house implemented in DIII.

Besides that, I'll most likely be happy with whatever Blizzard throws my way. I liked both the D2 item-based economy and the WoW gold-based economy. Shrug :)

[psykeman420]

I used to hate the item based economy, but now I think I'd prefer it

[Meyhem]

econonmy all depends on the hacks, id like to see gold tho

[Zalcitabine]

I just hope that the currency isn't farmable. The difference between gold farming and MF runs is pretty big, at least for me

Can't agree more - one is predictable (and boring) and the other is one of the things that make d2 a great game

[mooxhns]

Gold + auctionhouse

[mjkittredge]

I wish I could trade items for gold in D2 - things that I don't need but are valuable to someone else, then I could gamble a lot!

[Evinnon]

Item trading defined D2. I hope they lean that way developing D3. I also hope they keep the runeword system. It made use of many useless socketed items and diversified the market in the process. One gripe I had was the ridiculously low drop rates of high runes which led to mass duping.

The problem with gold as currency is that it's very farm-able. Bots can go to the easiest areas and kill monsters or run chests all day. This would lead to the rapid depreciation of gold.

[Jaquiezz]

It is completely possible to incorporate both items and gold as currency. Look at WoW- you can't buy the best set items, you have to find them through quests and through killing. Having gold as a secondary currency won't ruin the game. Bots will always exist, especially as client side programming develops.

Being able to turn those crap boots you had through the first acts of the game into gold to help buy the next best set is awesome, it ensure item development for each character and that not all characters are dependent on MF to get decent items.

[sbn]

So what is the basic idea behind this auctionhouse? Would these be something hosted in game? At Battle.net website?

Gold never worked in D2 simply because your char could not hold enough to have real value. Does anyone think a SOJ is equal to 2,500,000? As much as I dislike D2jsp (more so for the type of people that inhabit that place) I think the idea behind "fg" is good. As it stands now, SO MANY items you find are just worthless. You can hold them for ages and never get a single person to even inquire.

While back I had the idea where in game we could sell items we find to a special merchant who would provide us with a special currency that we could use to eventually save up to get better items, much like how jsp works now (as long as you don't get scammed lol)

[Warrax]

Trading in D2 was terrible imo, spamming WTT in the trade channels was really boring and a big waste of time.

I had to use a web based auction system like the one here (I don't know if it still active, I guess it is since D2 is still an active game).

I'm pretty sure the economy will be like Hellgate; gold is the main thing, gear is NOT BoP/BoE and there is an Auction House and a Mail system to make trades A LOT more convenient, easy and actually fun to use. This system does work btw.

I'm sure D3 staff will be smart enough to make the economy like that, just like they did to the self only loot drops thing. Online ARPGs really need that kind of stuff today.

[Kiroptus]

I think that player and player trades should be more about items but certainly gold to have some value in the grand PvM scheme of things because in D2 you pretty much had infinite gold.

[voraginous]

WoW's economic system seems to work great: gold economy supplemented with extensive trading. This is only possible through goldsinks which counter inflation and UI features which facilitate trade. This is one aspect of WoW I hope carries over to D3. From what I've seen/heard the economy in WoW is one of the least broken of the MMORPGs--and far less broken than D2's.

[Swiffer]

Gold never had a chance of being the trading currency in Diablo 2 simply because a) you could get so much of it in a very short period of time and b) there were no real money sinks (Gambling, but thanks to point a, it wasn't really a sink).

If they want gold to be the standard, they will either make it alot rarer, or put in many more money sinks.

My bet is it will end up like Diablo 2 using items. There is simply no real way to regulate the flow of gold over battle.net unless they put hard caps on how much you can earn per day, but that is a terrible way to do it ("Sorry, you have earned 20,000 today, you will be unable to pick up any more gold until 2am EST").

Either that, or they will make gear bind to you ala WoW/Hellgate: London, so you cannot simply keep passing items around.

[fallen angel of satan]

wow, quite a split here lol.

1stly WoW economy not broken? Its in the same situation as D2s the only difference is the gold doesnt poof :P In Diablo 2 you get alot of people that farm gold over and over and over. This then consiquently makes small amounts of gold meaningless and increases the price to everything else.

For example we used to sell bwl/AQ/Naxx items. The highest price being an axe from patchwork for 10,000! gold. We had people come along to bwl and spend 20,000g in 1 evening on some epics. These are people who blatantly used the services of bot farmers. By doing so they got the epics, but people who played the game properly got priced out of the market, no-one who played normally could actually compete.

(please remember these figures were at lvl 60, so multiply them by at least 3 to get the equivalent numbers at 70)

the other problem with having gold used for everything, potions, repairs, buying items etc etc etc....... you have to farm alooooot. Fast forward this economy style to Diablo 3, you log on one evening trying to get your char to 99, ready to settle down to an evening of 'baal' running to find your superior runeword of X needs repairing. So instead of leveling you are forced to go grind the gold to repair. Then you just click repair and you thenspot a new nice weapon for sale, but you just spent your gold repairing :/

nah gold would ruin diablo, can almost garentee people would stop playing after 2-3months. MMOs can get away with it because everyone is aware they are a time sink but diablo at its fudamental level can be played casually or hardcore, and both style of players fit into the economy perfectly.

Hrs in D2s economy are quite simply a traded resource NOT one to be found, in fact whenever I find a Hr I never trade it, or trade it here where the legitness has extra value.

[mouseman]

Yeah of course you think D2 trading system is fun. You've all played the game for eight years. What about the newcomers? Is it really the BEST way to do it or just they way you have GOTTEN USED to?

That was the real question and all I've got is that you've gotten used to an old system and don't want to change it because you feel all cozy and warm inside.

[sbn]

Yeah of course you think D2 trading system is fun. You've all played the game for eight years. What about the newcomers? Is it really the BEST way to do it or just they way you have GOTTEN USED to?

That was the real question and all I've got is that you've gotten used to an old system and don't want to change it because you feel all cozy and warm inside.

You have a very good point here. Especially regarding newcomers. Allow me to add something else; casual players. As it is now, D2 is NOT good for the casual player. My brother is one of those, and he is lucky he has me to set up his character's with items. For many people, this type of game is a turn off because of the items and their availability. Some, well actually many prefer NOT to spend countless hours killing Meph over and over and over again just to get the 1 in 1000 chance of getting a nice belt to drop that adds a skill point.

[Plasmamortar]

I have not used much of either the D2 economy or the WoW economy, however from what I have used of each, I personally think the D2 economy is more fun, it gives a degree of randomness to the economy that is not found in WoW. The economy in WoW has come to simulate that of real life, it is suffering the effects of inflation, which is really annoying in a game.

[Rashiminos]

I think the currency will be whatever item happens to take up the minimum amount of space, is consistent (all SoJ's were exactly the same) and usefull for all chars. I can't see gold being the currency. With games such as WoW that revolve around gold, there are a lot of uses for gold within the game, so much so that the game is virtually unplayable if you don't have gold. However in diablo, so far the only important use for gold has been repairing items and buying potions/scrolls (which are cheep to begin with). Oh and reviving merc's... but overall it is a game about item hunting, not gold hunting. That's one of the reasons it was so fun.

SoJ's were almost all exclusively dupes when they were enjoying their use as trade medium...

wow, quite a split here lol.

1stly WoW economy not broken? Its in the same situation as D2s the only difference is the gold doesnt poof :P In Diablo 2 you get alot of people that farm gold over and over and over. This then consiquently makes small amounts of gold meaningless and increases the price to everything else.

For example we used to sell bwl/AQ/Naxx items. The highest price being an axe from patchwork for 10,000! gold. We had people come along to bwl and spend 20,000g in 1 evening on some epics. These are people who blatantly used the services of bot farmers. By doing so they got the epics, but people who played the game properly got priced out of the market, no-one who played normally could actually compete.

(please remember these figures were at lvl 60, so multiply them by at least 3 to get the equivalent numbers at 70)

the other problem with having gold used for everything, potions, repairs, buying items etc etc etc....... you have to farm alooooot. Fast forward this economy style to Diablo 3, you log on one evening trying to get your char to 99, ready to settle down to an evening of 'baal' running to find your superior runeword of X needs repairing. So instead of leveling you are forced to go grind the gold to repair. Then you just click repair and you thenspot a new nice weapon for sale, but you just spent your gold repairing :/

nah gold would ruin diablo, can almost garentee people would stop playing after 2-3months. MMOs can get away with it because everyone is aware they are a time sink but diablo at its fudamental level can be played casually or hardcore, and both style of players fit into the economy perfectly.

Hrs in D2s economy are quite simply a traded resource NOT one to be found, in fact whenever I find a Hr I never trade it, or trade it here where the legitness has extra value.

You don't have to sell to the highest bidder and support botfarming in the process. Use some willpower.

[mouseman]

Good point there with the casual players, sbn.

It's ridiculous that you have to use resources from outside the game if you don't want to be tricked in the trades. And if you want to be rich, you have to study MF'ing, build specific builds and all that. It really takes time out of gaming and it is not for everyone. I realize I might not be popular around here, but I think I speak for the majority of gamers, anyway.

If gold is used as a currency, everyone playing the game knows that they can stash their gold and every dungeon they clean is a step towards that better piece of an equipment. Now casual gamers in D2 get nothing - it's really specific areas and bosses, where specific builds and item combinations are used in order to get the best items in the game.

With gold as a currency, you can still optimize, power build your characters and run the bosses. That's probably still the best way to get currency: MF and trade for money. But only this way the casual gamers get their share of the loot, and the game rewards the players actually playing the game.

It doesn't have to be the current way, even if we veteran gamers have gotten used to it. If we try to look at this objectively, there's not that much argument in favor of the current trading system, save the "it's fun, I like it, I'm gotten used to it"-argument.

[Glaucous]

Hopefully it won't use Gold as the currency. One of the wonderful things in Diablo 2 was the itemtrading.
'cause, well, it's more personal. It's as easy as in real life, the money itself is quite pointless, you can't use it for anything - except the small part of buying other stuff.
Anyway, I doubt they'll change the currency to gold.

[Rashiminos]

Hundreds of thousands of DIII players (likely), 8-player trading games...

Seems cumbersome to me...

[Approon]

You have a very good point here. Especially regarding newcomers. Allow me to add something else; casual players. As it is now, D2 is NOT good for the casual player. My brother is one of those, and he is lucky he has me to set up his character's with items. For many people, this type of game is a turn off because of the items and their availability. Some, well actually many prefer NOT to spend countless hours killing Meph over and over and over again just to get the 1 in 1000 chance of getting a nice belt to drop that adds a skill point.

Wait wait....

If good things were more common then there would be no rush finding one, i mean stuff gets sought after because they are rare, and that makes you feel better because you got something rare. It wouldnt be fun if everyone got that 1+ skill belt.

And is it really necessary to have that belt, i bet you can be successfull without it. You dont need to kill meph over and over, just to simple monster killing and you will find good stuff. It sounds in your post as if everyone even just causal gamers should have access to the most powerful items. Ill say like repeated many times, determination, time and luck are the ingredients to get good items.

[mouseman]

While I agree on the above post, I have to point out that even if the casual gamers might not necessarily need the most powerful items, it should be even relatively available for them without outside resources and studying the inner mechanics of the game. Just that playing honestly and clearing areas could get you a little closer to your goal and that more areas could drop the top-items, even if the chances are really slim.

To me, the best loot are while I'm playing with the party and something just happens to drop. And if nothing doesn't drop, I would still have that much more gold towards my next trade, so it wouldn't be all for nothing like now. It's so anticlimax playing and knowing that not much good can drop and all the crap I get is worthless anyway, so I'd better just take a taxi and go baalrunning and after that make my own MF-runs.

[red.13]

In my opinion gold should not be the trading 'currency'. Trading items (anti-dupe system (ADS) ftw!) should be the main method of obtaining different items. Blizzard should also - apart from ADS - incorporate some kind of auction houses where you could post your item that you want to sell and note what you would like to get in return, or you should be able to post simply a 'Looking for item' message.

That said gold should be present in the game in the same way it it now (repairing, respecing (?), gambling etc.) BUT those 'money sinks' should be much deeper, where a fully equipped high level player would have to spend most of it's gold on repairing.

[Evasive]

The problem with using gold as a currency is that the people with the items have to want the gold.

In D2 there is not much benefit of having gold (except for mercs and repairing) beyond the first few levels, so there is little demand for it.

[Renata]

In D2 there is not much benefit of having gold (except for mercs and repairing) beyond the first few levels, so there is little demand for it.

You forgot gambling. :D

...Ren

[Gordondondnb]

I am torn on this issue. I like the randomness of using the bartering system, but I also understand the allure of the WoW gold system. I have played both games extensively, though I am not sure if I qualify as a true hardcore player of either. There will always be farming of one sort or another, be it Meph runs or mass mob killing for gold. If Blizzard is going to use the gold system, they need an auction house like in WoW. If they are going to keep the item trading only scheme they had in their two previous Diablo titles, then I suggest the following:

1. Some sort of Marketplace posting of haves/wants that has some sort of true spam protection. Should be more of a message board, with a search option.

2. Find a way to make low level uniques/set items/rares worth something or be useful in some way. This is the biggest reason to use a gold system in my opinion, as the casual player who finally kills Diablo can get some sort of use from his Courpsemourn armor, even if he just uses it to get one step closer to an item he actually wants. I honestly don't know how to make this work.
Maybe find a way to use some number of similar level rares to spawn a new rare of the same general level. This would be similar to the old cube recipe of three magic rings or ammies, but with an actual potential to give us something different. What do you guys think? It would be another way to gamble, but with items instead of gold. Make the highest level item the cap on the level of the item spawned, with average item level influencing the drop.

3. Make every unique or set item worth a damn. I realise that this is nearly impossible, which is why the gold system sounds better and better. If need be, make the sale of items give a different currency than the gold dropped from monsters, and make this currency only usable in the auction house. Also have the currency received from an item sale be very dependent upon the actual rarity of the item. This would still promote magic finding in general, and would at least cut down on some of the general mob farming, as normal and magic items would be worth next to nothing in this auction currency. Remember, plain magic items and even desirable normal items could still be listed in the auction houses, thus retaining their value.

I realise that some or all of these ideas won't work for various reasons, but I hope that some of my fellow forum mates can sift something useful from my general ramblings.

[eyetriforce]

If Blizzard just keeps the system of d2: Makeing it hard to find good items, that arent soulbound untill used. But just adding good cheat/dupe protection.

That would be my dream.

But the nightmares of late is that Blizzard thinks "well the casual player also wants to play with a Grandfather lets make it 50% drop chance on the best sword of the game" wow type of idea.

[Zeek]

Good point there with the casual players, sbn.

It's ridiculous that you have to use resources from outside the game if you don't want to be tricked in the trades. And if you want to be rich, you have to study MF'ing, build specific builds and all that. It really takes time out of gaming and it is not for everyone. I realize I might not be popular around here, but I think I speak for the majority of gamers, anyway.

If gold is used as a currency, everyone playing the game knows that they can stash their gold and every dungeon they clean is a step towards that better piece of an equipment. Now casual gamers in D2 get nothing - it's really specific areas and bosses, where specific builds and item combinations are used in order to get the best items in the game.

With gold as a currency, you can still optimize, power build your characters and run the bosses. That's probably still the best way to get currency: MF and trade for money. But only this way the casual gamers get their share of the loot, and the game rewards the players actually playing the game.

It doesn't have to be the current way, even if we veteran gamers have gotten used to it. If we try to look at this objectively, there's not that much argument in favor of the current trading system, save the "it's fun, I like it, I'm gotten used to it"-argument.
I 100% disagree. I don't think you're thinking this through all the way. If gold is the currency then the casual gamer will merely fall farther and farther and farther behind the hardcore players and the farmers. The casual player will finally beat Diablo and take his 10,000 gold that he scrimped and saved and head off to trade. He'll proceed to be called a total noob because all the hardcore players are flinging around 10 million gold like it's growing on trees.

The difference with the D2 system is that it's a lottery. Yes, there's still a very good chance that the players who run baal 100,000 times are going to find that COA before the casual gamer, but at least that casual gamer has a chance of hitting the jackpot and getting somewhat rich.

P.S. lol at the guy talking about the corpsemourn being worth something. I had a casual player friend who kept trying to trade his corpsemourn a few months ago even though I kept trying to link him to the price guide here and telling him it wasn't worth anything.

[redground]

One of the parts that makes diablo so unic is the fact that most things u get are useless. If everything that drops is usefull it is not fun, not chalenging. It is pretty fun to me finding 30 iseharts armors before finding a Vipermagi. Gold has a good aproach in diablo 2. The gambling sistem is good, and the only way to find good stuff in gamble is having LOTS of gold.

[patriach owen]

i would like to see Gold along side items.

the main way this will happen is by makiig it usefull ed buying low runes/pgems

AND NOT LOOSING IT ALL UPON DEATH !

[JunkStory]

Make it so that only the best items can only be bought from NPC's, and they cost a ridiculous amount.

Also, you can only buy these Elite NPC items one at a time, and you must buy them in order.

For example, you must buy the the Legendary Sword of Awesomeness lvl1 for $1 Million gold, before you can buy the Legendary Sword of Awesomenesss lvl2 for $5 Million gold, etc.

This way, gold will be in super high demand.