I can cope with rifling through the inter-dimensional space wolf’s wallet to half inch his cash better than wondering how the fudge that tiny spider was carrying the massive polearm it just dropped.
Edit: apparently my phone’s autocorrect doesn’t have polearm in it…
True. TBH, if I was lead dev on a game, you’d only get gear and currency from quest turn-ins / chests/ etc. At most, I’d have vendor fodder items (non-gear) that specific vendors would give you $ for. The loot table / drop gold off all the filler mobs is near-irrelevant /unwanted in games most games it exists in. Just take a look at how much GGG is scaling back random drops for 4.0.
*Also, the way that EHG has set up gold to be such a crucial part of the game, having you get a majority if not all of it from mob drops promotes botting.
Crafting is the primary form of gearing and it’s not even close. As for your idea to tackle inflation, I’m not sure it changes much. You’re going from gold generation from loot tables to gold generated from VSCP. The problem with gold inflation in many games is that they are generated from loot tables AND there’s not enough ways to spend it. Right now I’m spending my gold on runes of shattering and gambling. If those didn’t exist, gold would be completely useless for me outside of the occasional use of rerolling modifiers on monoliths. To me the better experience is having multiple ways of spending gold (touch the demand side) rather than limiting gold generation (touching the supply side). Problems come up with 1) there’s no place to spend gold on (low demand) or 2) there are ways to spend gold, but the gold generation vastly outstrips what you can spend (excessive supply).
There is no NEW currency generation in the version I described. Only a set amount added to the pool for each new account.
And yes, there’d still need to be more gold sinks (returning gold from a player to the VCSP) in the SGS, as per the introduction/assessment of fees on the Bazaar, multiple tiers (higher cost) of shattering runes and protect scrolls for crafting, etc.
Either way, the current system employs an INFINITE supply of new gold just from the same number of ppl playing the game, which is the biggest issue that is prevented by SGS.
I disagree with your infinite comment. Theoretically yes, but the old adage time is money applies here. No one person or a group can ever generate infinite money (except GMs) because it’s gated by time. You can realistically map out how much money is generated an hour (by average or max) and map out what the gold sinks are. As long as the gold sinks > money generated, there won’t ever be an infinite supply of money because as much as the system generates gold, the system also takes away gold that goes into oblivion. It’s hard to apply real world economics as money spent doesn’t actually disappear (it circulates). Money spent on gold sinks do disappear and does not circulate.
Exactly my point; you can never create gold sinks that outpace gold created per hour when gold creation has no achievable limit, nor would you really want to.
Look at every Multiplayer game that’s been created in the past 2 decades where currency was generated on a loot table. Every single one has experienced significant inflation on some scale, some more drastically than others.
This system limits / prevents that, and if anything, as gold gets more scarce / used less, the value of the currency increases. It’s the exact opposite of a generate & expend system, and yields a better / more desired outcome.
Why not design & implement a system that completely alleviates having to create and manage inflating-currency sinks from the get-go?
I think the issue is not that you can “never” create enough gold sinks to outpace gold created. The issue is gold creation activities done by people who will not use the gold, aka gold farmers and people who are finished with the game. I suppose your solution precisely (tries) to tackles gold farming. However, I don’t believe gold farmers can’t get around the new system in some fashion. As long as the value of gold generated per account gives enough gold to pay for the new account, then they can just keep buying LE and create new accounts. Farm until max money, move to next account and keep the cycle going. Whereas the downsides of VSCP may possibly be harder to manage/create enough discomfort to regular players.
Also another flaw of the VSCP is that you’re proposing to disable gold generation from loot tables and instead have people sell gear to vendors to generate money. Gold generation via gear selling is technically (according to your standards) infinite if people know what they’re doing (multiple accounts, grab gold by the clock).
VSCP in the end is another form of supply that can be measured by gold generated by account + time. The current system used by most games is a form of supply that can be measured by gold generated per hour (time). What I’m trying to argue is that the cause of inflation is not (primarily) due to supply, but due to demand. You’re essentially introducing another bottleneck (account) that doesn’t tackle the inherent issue of demand. Not saying you don’t recognize that demand is also part of the problem. Just pointing out that you put too much into “infinite” supply being the primary cause.
Also, I’m indcens. For some reason my computer keeps logging me into my other account that I didn’t know I had…
The VSCP would be shared across all vendors and all players. Think of it as the “total amount of gold out there”.
For round #s sake, let’s say there are 10 players, 5 vendors, and the pool seed is 10K per account. Then each vendor would (at the start) have a split of the total 100k pool (20K ea. for this example), and subsequently get a disbursement every time a new account is added.
Then, as you play / loot items, they are sold to vendors for $, and you subsequently spend that $ on other vendor gear, skill upgrades & respecs, gambling, and eventually crafting mats & Bazaar Fees, etc, wherein each expenditure returns the gold to the respective vendor (the pool).
Yes, the return methods need to be conducive to the gameplay, but it is easier to manage deteriorating gold availability than trying to deal with constantly attempting to account for an ever-increasing supply of currency, generated just by playing the game.
Also, if you are using a closed system like SGS, there is no way that someone can ‘farm gold’ directly. At a minimum, it would be very convoluted and require multiple points of transaction in order to accomplish. (Farming items, selling items to vendors to get the gold, then somehow using the bazaar to overpay for items posted by the person you are selling the gold to.) All of which can have stop-gaps put in place to prevent.
Assuming botting and RMT of in game items and currency stays against TOS/EULA and will remain a focus of EHGs, culprits of these types of actions would be easily flagged and actionable through server-side transaction metrics and heuristics.
As for exploits and dupes, that’s just coding issues that can happen in any game, and hopefully they are taken care of quickly.
The other nice part about SGS, is the total gold in the system can be monitored and devs can quickly ascertain if something is awry just by doing a simple calculation server side.
Not to mention, gold no longer needs to becomes an object (in order to drop on the ground from a mob). Gaining and spending currency is basically just a journal entry akin to cryptocurrency.
Fellaz, RMT will never cease to exist in any game - it ends only once it’s dead. If you’d use your imagination a little bit more, you could paint some very vivid pictures about the avalanche of complaints and ragequits if these suggestions ought to be realized.
Not to mention, RMT is not inherently bad and plenty of games have had them become a net positive for both players and devs.
I haven’t seen a single successful fight against RMT in any game but can name Runescape( temporarily) & Torchlight 3 as it’s contenders for games which ruined themselves completely, simply by creating systems against RMT.
I have never RMTed but I know that fighting against RMT always ends bad.
on the topic of trade, I think in the FAR future, players should have the option of trading cosmetics like pets with each other, that would be cool.
20 posts were split to a new topic: RMT in Diablo III, RMT in Path of Exile, and Other Off-Topic Posts
This, basically. If a player’s argument is “I won’t play X game if it has RMT”, and the game in question has any aspect that can be sold - and this could be currency like in PoE, powerlevels/lootshare like in D3, achievements like in WoW, and the list goes on…then just don’t play the game. The way the RMT market has evolved more or less ensures that if there’s an aspect of a game that can be monetized, and there’s a market for that monetization, it’s going to happen.
The fact that RMT will likely exist in some form no matter what is what makes it even more important that any in-game economy be kept as an optional feature, so that players who do not wish to participate can still have a satisfying game experience.
There is HUGE difference between black/gray market and native RMT support in the game - and if you say it’s the same thing, you are being dishonest.
EHG has already stated there will not be a supported RMT system other than MTX, which will only be for aesthetics uses in-game. Anyone using the term “RMT” at this juncture needs to understand that this would be referencing unsupported 3rd party RMT (Black Market) that violates the TOS / EULA EHG has set forth.
Games that use supply and demand mechanics have a whole player driven economy that revolves heavily around crafting an consuming the crafted items. LE doesn’t have all this.
Also this system can be abused by 24/7 trade addicts to maximize profit while mere mortals will sell items for near to no profit.
The bazar will already add stuff for people to trade and play merchants.
Games that use supply and demand mechanics have a whole player driven economy that revolves heavily around crafting an consuming the crafted items. LE doesn’t have all this.
I know, it’s the beta, and there no multiplayer yet. Assuming the objective of LE is to create a ‘diverse multiplayer economy’ and ‘avoid worthless / currency inflation’, as they have stated is their goal (in several EHG posts), then the game WILL have those attributes. Therefore, utilizing a system that supports economic motives, as opposed to an infinitely inflating gold creation system they are using now, would help support that. If they decide to continue w/ the GAL (Gold as Loot) system, then there’s no way to avoid inflation / devaluing of gold, just like UO, Everquest, Wow, etc, and mostly like D3 (arpg).
Also this system can be abused by 24/7 trade addicts to maximize profit while mere mortals will sell items for near to no profit.
Any person who devotes 24/7 to understanding and using a system will have an advantage over people who don’t. That’s the way life works…
The Bazaar will already add stuff for people to trade and play merchants.
Not sure what you are referring to…
I mean that I mostly play this game as an ARPG and not as a economic simulator. All this stuff is too much fluff for me to be interesting.
Just my opinion.
The gameplay is important. But I also agree with Chris Wilson that a large part of the success of POE is getting items right and making items the focus of the game. I take this to mean also that items need to find its value in a healthy working economy.
Which unfortunately for some, means that a strong working economic simulator is an integral part of a successful ARPG. Which is why I’m very concerned whenever I get the impression that trade may be curtailed in some way.
No prob with that. I like the idea of the bazar. That’s absolutely fine. But I won’t need additional economic features like a demand and supply system for vendors, where I sell my stuff I don’t need.
I don’t want to be forced to make up my mind wether or not it is ok to sell my stuff when I come from an expedition. There will then be certain times where vendors are out of gold and offer a bad price. So it would be better to sell the stuff when the vendor has a lot of gold so prices are better.
That’s a very complicated workflow for just selling stuff to the vendor.
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