Gold Sinks

[zooply]

So I was just sitting around thinking about some possible sink ideas, and this is what I've come up with so far (these aren't all mine).


Possible Gold Sinks

Gambling - Who doesn't love gambling?

Repairs - Like off of D1 and D2. Somebody had also mentioned that sorcs have no worries of repairs, so sorc orbs could have some sort of durability in a magic form.

Vendors - The basics, such as potions, keys, armor, etc.

Mercenaries - If they are risking their lives for you, you should pay them at least! Personally I liked the idea of a constant gold drain from mercs.

Item Charges - Make these worthwhile again.

Bribing - You could bribe NPC's for information, entrance into an area, etc.

Personal Item - The one suggested by ryojirosan, in that you can use gold to add attributes to a unique weapon only for your character.

Respeccing - Well since it will be in D3, this could also serve as a gold sink. For those who fear an 'unlimited' amount of respeccing (say it costs a lot of gold, but you can do it infinitely), you could have a limited amount that still costs gold to use.

Travel - It could be a long walk, and Warriv may not be around for a free trip. You could also pay for safe passage through an otherwise dangerous area.

Socketing - Socketing is always useful.

Imbue - Another quest that could be used for a sink. It should be expensive enough though that it has no advantages of just searching for rares.

Ingredients - Allow the vendors to carry some crafting items.

Spell Items - Like the scrolls from D1, you could have an expendable item in your inventory for casting certain spells (they don't have to be spells from the classes), or they could boost your spells.

Currency Upgrades - 5000 gold too much for your inventory? Trade it in for 5 rubies at 1000 each. This doesn't serve as a gold sink necessarily, but it helps gold be used as one by saving yourself room.

Storage System - As tmeh mentioned in his thread, you could pay gold to use/upgrade a shared stash for your characters.

Clan Benefits - For a price, you can buy services for your guild. Perhaps a shared stash, or a clan banner.

Style - Tattoos, armor design, etc. This could double as a gold sink and a way of making yourself unique.

It doesn't need to be just one either. Actually I'd assume it to be better to have lots of places to spend gold.

[Kordova]

Man I am really for the ingredients, storage system, and style <--- ima huge fable fan

Ingredents-- It could be set up geographical maybe, like you would find diamonds in Africa and emeralds in England, acctually have a jewler that specificly sells jewels and runes.

Storage system--It would be a little more reallistic, how many times have you said, "hay(insert loved one here) I left that $10 on the (insert favorite "leave it here so they can find it place.") lol Who says your chars aint buddies and share equipment on the regular.

Style-- IMO this has been Extreamly lacking, I understand your proud of your programing design but come on not everyone looks alike, however I agree with the current armor/weapon, I like that unique items have specific colors and rares have the abuility to have a color.

[Daft]

The easiest way is having an indefinitely expandable central stash. Each new set of slots costs more than the last.
And no gold caps.
And no gold loss on death.

Particularly the last one is killer. You'd think it's not, because it reduces the amount of gold, but it doesn't work that way. People don't want to a resource that will evaporate over time when there are others that don't. Hardcore doesn't have that problem, but then you run into the gold cap as a slightly less detrimental but still fatal aspect. Together, they destroy the value of gold.


Heck, might not even NEED a gold sink... As long as it doesn't decay/cap, and inflates slower than items, it's fine.

[Kordova]

i also support Currency upgrade as well, if you cant carry it, put it in rubies. physicly it dont make sence bc in reality you could hold more gold that rubies but it makes for a more fun investment system

[stillman]

I like the ideas, especially the bribe one.

Many people on other threads complain about "too many gold sinks", but I don't see why this is bad. I mean, look at d2. There were close to zero gold sinks. The was gambling and reparing ubber gear, and that's about it. And merc revive when merc's die from being too dumb.

If there are gold sinks, lots of them, people will have more incentive to farm gold. Plus, people have to think hard about how they spend it.

[Dimmu]

LoL when I started reading this thread there were a couple of things I was going to mention until I realized you listed pretty much everything I was going to say, good job! :)

But something that can't be overlooked is how unbalanced the system is for selling items to vendors in d2. My superior grim wand with +2 poison explosion and +1 skeleton mages gets me 35k gold, but my superunique megasword of pure awesome gets me 11k. They need to remove the cap for sale value and significiantly reduce/buff up the value of items based on their actual usefulness/rarity. If iirc D1 actually had the system pretty well-balanced, because the imfamous Godly Plate of the Whale sold for more gold than you could even carry in an inventory, so I don't understand how they messed that up. It seems like they didn't even care about gold from the very beginning in D2.

Having that staple currency will also give people incentive to hunt for items and such instead of depending entirely on a few lucky finds. They could grind their way to fortune, like true Western Culture capitalism LOLz.

[Raith]

yes, make charged items happen again, but no to sorc orbs having magical durability, its lame.

[Jumped Up Pantry Boy]

The best ideas here are Gambling, which we all know works very well great, and Customisation - which I think everyone will want and has zero* impact on actual gameplay. It would have to be expensive though. Maybe unlockables through rare acheivements would be a prerequisite? Everyone loves customisation of their characters and it seems natural this could be an effective sink.


*for a given value of zero.

[fatwisconsinguy]

I don't think that D3 actually needs a gold sink. I think they should make gold a valuable trading resource. Possibly similar to WoW's economy where gold is actually worth something. I didn't even mind when millions of SoJs were duped and used as currency. Then FG came out. Personally, ForumGold ruined diablo 2 for me. Nobody would trade for items anymore, only FG.
Blizzard needs to create a currency for D3, and making gold rare and needed to actually do things in the game would do this. I know that diablo is based a lot upon item for item trading, but that can co-exist with a currency as well, and if there is no currency, someone will make some, such as FG did.

Thoughts, Opinions, Other Options?

[stillman]

I thought of something. Let's say you find a godly item like CoA or Tyreals or w/e. So you get it and [chuckles chuckles] it has zero durability...and you have to pay some outragous cost in gold to repair it because that sneeky blacksmith will only repair it to full durability. We kind of have this disappointment anyway with lev requirements and such, so why not millions of gold tacked on just to spur us to collect gold?

Idk, I'm tired. It's time for bed.

[Frostraven]

1: Don't have monsters drops a lot of gold in the first place.

2: Don't have vendors paying a lot of gold for useless items.

3: Have vendors sell items worth buying after character level 16.

4: Gambling. Make it worth it, once again.

[nEgativezEro]

I don't think that D3 actually needs a gold sink. I think they should make gold a valuable trading resource. Possibly similar to WoW's economy where gold is actually worth something. I didn't even mind when millions of SoJs were duped and used as currency. Then FG came out. Personally, ForumGold ruined diablo 2 for me. Nobody would trade for items anymore, only FG.
Blizzard needs to create a currency for D3, and making gold rare and needed to actually do things in the game would do this. I know that diablo is based a lot upon item for item trading, but that can co-exist with a currency as well, and if there is no currency, someone will make some, such as FG did.

Thoughts, Opinions, Other Options?

The only issue is that to make gold standard as the currency, you have to give gold actual value. In d2 gold was nothing more than a repair item necessity. You could gamble with it, but in most cases you wouldn't get anything useful.

In order for gold to be considered valuable, it has to be able to attain items and such of value. If you could save up gold in D2 to buy a Windforce, or buy an Ohm rune, or things of that nature, trading items for gold would be very common. However that also detracts from the fun of magic finding and finding those items on your own.

It's a two edged sword whether to have gold hold significant value or not. Personally I think in the D2 heyday, the barter system worked fine. As interest waned, they added the high powered rune words and super elite uniques that everybody wanted. Soon after that point high runes had been massively duped and become the basis for trading. Sort of similar to the SOJ's pre-LOD.

I think runes could've made a great standard currency if the drop rates hadn't been so unattainable. Early on in LOD, runes were a solid currency. Amn's and Sol's made decent low end trading material, Ist's and Gul's were very sought after and difficult to obtain. Even the duped high runes made a good currency, and if Blizz made runes more attainable, they could've been a fine currency without the duping.

Somehow though, I don't see gold being the currency in D3. However if the new system can keep duping and hacking in check, the tried and true barter system of old will still hold solid ground for trading. The new rune system could provide a good tool in trading too, if they fixed the ludicrous drop rates of the D2 runes.

[Generic]

Weapon/Armor Enhancement - Allows you to upgrade weapon/armor quality.
For example: Cracked - > Normal -> Exceptional

[peasant]

Currency Upgrades - 5000 gold too much for your inventory? Trade it in for 5 rubies at 1000 each. This doesn't serve as a gold sink necessarily, but it helps gold be used as one by saving yourself room.

That's certainly a possibility, especially if the developers intend on making gold a useful currency. Though, odds are 'rubies' will be socketable items, and so probably wouldn't quite work as the second currency. Personally, I think it'd be really funny if instead of rubies, we get actual gold sinks (http://www.enigmaart.com/images/marble_and_gold_sink.jpg).

Incidentally, we can make this second currency a gold sink as well by having the 'bank' buy and sell the currencies at different rates. For instance, they sell you the higher currency at say, 1 sink for 1000 gold and buy your sinks at 900 gold, or what not. That way, carrying too much gold would be uneconomical as well.


Another idea is to implement item depreciation. For instance, the value of equipment goes down the longer you've been carrying it around, and possibly breaking more frequently the more times it's been repaired.

[droid]

I've argued economies in many another MMO before....I was at the forefront of the debate in SWG, and then again in HGL I was lobbying hard for economic reforms, and I think the model there was becoming good just before that company went under...

First, you have to accept that a barter system is the sign of utter failure. Barter is the economy that springs up when there's a lack of economy. Economy by default. Barter bad, you dont want it. Having an economy with a fungible currency is infinitely better - it gives a universal medium of valuation, it allows you track economic flux, it gives you something you can convert any item to and from.

Second, for a currency based economy to work, the currency has to be attainable at all points, collectible, and usable. Basically, you cant successfully control an economy by making gold so rare that it becomes impractical to go out to earn gold (unattainable). Nor can you control it by introducing exorbitant taxes, fees, depreciation (bleh) and/or death penalties, or people just wont bother saving it up at all (uncollectible), like they basically do in D2 now.

Lastly, you have to provide some meaningful thing to do with the gold, it has to have some value of its own, and thats the hardest part - giving players a resource to spend gold on that A) draws gold out of the system fast enough to stabilize the economy, but b) doesnt offer rewards that are too overpowered.

My argument has always been to provide POSITIVE sinks; that is, voluntary options for players to spend gold on that give bonuses, rather than penalties or inconveniences you have to pay to avoid. No one likes to have to lose money just to play, or feel like they're forced to go out and grind just to break even. An economically effective buff is also one that players will repeatedly purchase, not one-time deals. They also have to be pricey enough to make an effect on the economy, but not so expensive that players wont regularly buy them without hesitation.

Some ideas and/or other games have done that work well:

-Temporary buffs, in cheap/weak, moderate/medium, and expensive/uber (for PVP typically) flavors
-Temporary access to bonus level areas
-Gambling, and/or bonuses to gambling (ie, guaranteed rare or better)
-Crafting, and/or bonuses to crafting (ie, a certain stat guaranteed on a random craft)
-Powerful consumables (ie, thawing potion with CBF for the duration, or a health potion that does a HOT rather than just filling your globe)
-Non-permanent minions
-Small, repeatable bonuses to items (like +5 defense or +1 max damage) that get exponentially more expensive with each successive application

You can go along that vein as much as you wanted, the more you put in, the more the value of gold remains stable and doesnt inflate, and the better the economy is, plus players love having all the new options available for gameplay too.

The other path, the dark path, is runaway inflation....people save up gold with nothing to spend it on except items from other players, so the gold just cycles around and around the player-trade economy until everyone has 50 billion gold, and items' costs inflate so much that new players can never earn enough gold by playing to afford them. Thats when the end begins....chinese gold-farmers come in and start selling gold, new players buy it because its the only way to get 50 billion gold, so the chinese farmers farm even more, and it all gets injected into the player-trade economy and it hyperinflates until its so worthless that not even gold-farmers can farm it fast enough, the economy collapses, barter sets in, and in a few years Hitler overthrows the Reichstag and invades Poland. See? no good comes of sinkless MMO economies :)

[Keighvin]

*Slow Clap*

[FredisHostile]

yea yea yea i do agree on some points with droid however gold sinks are the way to go and you have to have alot of them to give gold real value the oldies are always good:

Merc Res
Repiar
Health pots
Gambling

and some of the new ideas mentioned in this forum i like also:

Small, repeatable bonuses to items (the prices would have to be extremely high even in the begining)
Style (now be honest you dont want to have blue armor and an acid green hat you want to match lol)
Personal Item (but in the sence that your name goes on it not special bonuses like mentioned in this forum)

i also have a couple more ideas that some of you may find interesting:

1. go back to the basics a real oldy that some may remember the stat potions from diablo 1 these were a great gold sink every 1 needs stats and in my opinion would pay through the teeth to get them they would need to be very vey expensive like 5 mill gold or something and the avg drop on monsters would need to be like 400 gold. this would ceretenly give gold value and remember that when you play in a party you split the gold so in a party of 4 you only get 100 gold but this will make you want to sell to the shopkeepers wont it and you will seriously think about who you play with and how many are in your party.

2. guilds should also in my opinion be added. playing with friends is a big part of diablo for me and if for example you could buy a guild room with community banks and stashes to share with your carfully selected clan. a big part of this would be that the room NEVER turns off (unless system crashes lol) and your guild can use this place to meet talk and xfer items easily and most of all have fun. come to think of you maybe you could reset the room on different difficulties so you can continue play in the same room. and there would have to be a admin type infistructure

[peasant]

For multiplayer, auction houses with set items (individual pieces not whole sets) would also be a potential gold sink. I mention set items chiefly because (at least in theory) there would be a reasonable demand since people would be out trying to complete their sets.

[Apocalypse]

droid wins the thread lol. very nice post that can be eleborated on even more to really make things run well. for instance not everything has to be a gameplay bonus. some "positive sinks" could be purely cosmetic. for instance armor dye in mmo games. does nothing at all but everyone spends money on them. something like, customized stashes. lets say your stash spawns in the game you are in and we do not all use 1 common stash. now give players options to decorate thier stash and pick the size(up to a max or min) of the stash.

of course plenty of players would say this stuff is worthless and would never spend a single piece of gold on it, but if even 50% of the people did it(i think the % would be alot higher if you remove the casual gamer who would never take part in the economy anyway) you will have removed alot of gold(based on how costly these upgrades would be) from the game without having people swearing at thier screens.

[Hakarrod]

I like the idea of spending gold to get to do something I enjoy doing, like killing an act boss with the hope that he/she will drop something I want. I always played a sorc so that I could tele to meph and blizzard him to death. Usually 10 times but sometimes 20 or 30 times a day. I know a lot of people in D2 do the same with other monsters for other reasons, such as the Countess, Horazon and Nihlathak, or those TC85 areas. So I would like a way to be able to do that without having a sorc or enigma and still do it in a timely manner.

Admission fees to some kind of repeatable event that becomes unlocked after completion of a difficulty level or some quest or other in-game accomplishment (i.e. you have killed meph for the 100th time).

Accumulate gold from adventuring through the game killing monsters.
Accumulate gold trading with other players.
Accumulate gold providing services for other players. (Falls under trading but whatever)

Spend gold on tickets or just an admission fee to go kill mephisto or cow level or ubers etc. No gold drops in the admission areas, only items, and you can run them as much as you want, paying admission each time(of course), until you are broke. The items found are devalued to the npc merchants so you can either keep what you find, sell it for 1/10 what it's worth to a vendor, or sell it for what it's worth to a player.

[Apocalypse]

"yes i would like to buy a ticket"

"ok sir where would you like to go"

"hell. going to kill diablo so please drop me off at his front door"

"no problem sir that will be 50000 gold, and would you like the 10:15 to hell or the 10:20?"

[Chukcharcoales]

The admission fee is present in games with decent economies such as guildwars. You need to pay 1k gold (a platinium piece) in order to enter an elite area. 1k gold is a decent amount due to monsters dropping only 20g on average and items selling at vendor for 30-400 gold.

[Generic]

Vendor buy prices should be reduced tremendously . It was far too easy to make a fortune selling items to npc vendors with limitless amounts of gold.

[Apocalypse]

Vendor buy prices should be reduced tremendously . It was far too easy to make a fortune selling items to npc vendors with limitless amounts of gold.

the vendors were completly messed up anyway in d2. you could have this super rare unique sell for 3 grand while some basic run of the mill armor sells for 20.

also i always thought inventory should determine sell price. if you are selling leather armor and that vendor already has 3 leather armors in stock why would he pay top dollar for your armor?

[Generic]

Also, they are a professional merchant; you are a professional demon killer, they should have a higher mercantile skill then you. :)

[Apocalypse]

thinking about it more, why would they ever buy a used piece of basic equipment from you? Why buy something that they could easily make themselves a lot cheaper? Really they should never buy anything non magical if you really think about it lol

[deadbeater]

the vendors were completly messed up anyway in d2. you could have this super rare unique sell for 3 grand while some basic run of the mill armor sells for 20.

Also i always thought inventory should determine sell price. if you are selling leather armor and that vendor already has 3 leather armors in stock why would he pay top dollar for your armor?

And they cap selling to them at 25k, 30k, 35k. Would you sell Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' to them for a mere 35K? What ridiculousness.

[Teleportation]

I'd like some kind of extra Waypoints that would cost a sum of gold to use...

You would for example be able to warp to 3 different locations in the stony field (for example)

[jamesisbest]

I like most of the gold sink ideas. I think one thing that is needed to give gold actual value is an auction system. I know it's an odd thing to implement in Diablo, especially since it isn't a mmo. Personally I think that is the reason why Blizzard hasn't announced or even thought of a solution for some type of auction system to be implemented.

The reason why an auction system is necessary is because it focuses trade through gold currency so it forces the economy to be gold based. Of all the games I played, ones with auction systems always had the gold or equivalent to gold be it's game currency, not items. In Diablo 2 it was a barter system because gold was capped, was too abundant (mmo's ramp up increases a lot better than d2 did), and of course there was no manditory need for gold through trade. So people decided to use items instead of near valueless gold as the main commodity. I think Diablo 3 needs some sort of auction system, I have no clue how it should be implemented, but as long as they do the following four things gold should always be the main currency: 1. auction system
2. no gold cap 3. ramp up gold accumulation appropriately (and not make it overly abundant as well) 4. and obviously the reason for this thread gold sinks to prevent hyper-inflation

I hope they get rid of repairs (which it seems like a real possibility) because it is not only a gold sink but an irritating time sink as well, especially if they are getting rid of frequent quick access to town. Many of the other gold sink suggestions are pretty cool, I think guild gold sinks and "fluffy items" would make good gold sinks. What I mean by "fluffy items" is items with no stat bonuses that are used for flare and looks. These fluffy items could also be items that don't take up gear slots so you can have the flare without any extra buffs but also no stat penalties.

[Gigashadow]

I'd love an auction house system. Maybe I'd actually trade in that case...

[Sein Schatten]

No one likes to have to lose money just to play

I never found repair costs a drain or feeling unhappy to repair my items...

[Jcakes]

I never found repair costs a drain or feeling unhappy to repair my items...

It is not that it is a drain, it is that it takes you away from the action. Having to tp out to repair items is fairly annoying.

The idea I like the most is being able to pay gold to customise your character, plus buying crafting supplies.

[Gigashadow]

The idea I like the most is being able to pay gold to customise your character, plus buying crafting supplies.I believe those are the things they'll charge real money for.

[Retro]

Gold sinks should NOT make gameplay tedious. Ever.