Gold hyper inflation and making the games currency feel good

Feedback and Suggestions
7

I think that whether or not there is hyperinflation generally relying on the market to dress your character is wrong regardless of deflation or inflation.

The game is built on a loot base and this should remain so, I think it should primarily encourage the exchange of items between players rather than buying them against the currency.

There is nothing wrong with having a marketplace, but it has to be limited so that it does not become the main thing in the game and does not turn out like with the auction house in Diablo 3, because then everyone will lose interest in playing for loot. Basically everyone will spend most of their time searching for the right item in the marketplace. I am totally against such a thing!

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8

Yeah, maybe the market should only be for consumables (affix shards & possibly glyphs/runes), that way the AH-tradeable items get taken out of the economy rather than just recycled.

9

The thing is at the end of the day, when the market matures. Something always end up being the de facto currency. In D2, when gold failed to be of any value, we still have SOJs. In POE, its chaos/ex.

10

Yes, you are absolutely right. That is why the economy is complicated, if you promote one thing it is at the expense of another thing and as a result, things become very unbalanced and turn to the extreme. I think the economy needs to be approached very carefully by developers.

Even if we have only an exchange system, it will not be right either, because certain items will be more in demand than others, which will inevitably make them something like a standard exchange currency.

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11

Dang, I was really hoping for more gold drops. Gold shrines drop minimal amounts of gold. Gold Boxes sometimes just drop 2 gold. I’m level 77 and I always seem to be broke from gambling on items.

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12

There is devblog about the bazar here:

It is outdated, but explaines the plan EHG has in mind. If you have a lot of time you could read through the posts. It is super interesting. I am really curious what the bazar will look like when it is implemented.

I read through it a while ago and can say that the devs are aware of many things that did not work in other games. Therefore gold will not be tradable between players. So no goldfarming/ -selling viable. This will also prevent hyper inflation. As long as there’s no duping method the economy can probably grow with player progression.

13

Hey all, just want to say this we’re very in tune with this idea and we will not be afraid to drastically alter gold drop rates and sale prices closer to release, especially once we have most systems in place that will affect and relate to the economy. We’re fans of keeping numbers low so I could see us going in this direction. The largest concern is dropping enough that you feel a sense of progress from the delta in drop amounts when going through the game but the current implementation leaves plenty of room for reductions. Good topic!

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14

My biggest concern with a topic like this is that a balance needs to be struck between the nolifers and the “regular” players.

In any grind-based system, nolifers are going to have an advantage straight out of the gate because they pour hours and hours into the game. This group gets referred to as “the 1%” regularly in economy discussions.

Meanwhile, the regular players who are playing through the story more casually, rolling a bunch of other characters, and don’t generally give a rip about min-maxing tend to suffer when grinds are made excessive so that they feel “right” to the 1%.

It’s not a matter of “casuals always want handouts” and it’s not a matter of “hardcores always complain that games are too easy”. It’s more that trying to balance between these two play styles is a massive pain in the ass, because you want each group to feel rewarded for the time they’re able to play your game. If the person who can only play 5 hours a week is earning 50 gold per monolith and gambling costs thousands of gold per item, they’re going to have a lot harder of a time interacting with a core game mechanic than someone who can play 40 hours a week and is able to optimize his or her build to clear instances as quickly as humanly possible.

If the designers can find balance between these extremes, it’ll be a beautiful thing.

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15

This might be an impossible task. I don’t think you can balance this without putting the “nolifers” at a disadvantage. Efforts should pay off. People putting more time into a game should also get more out of it. I say this as a casual player myself.

There might be some mechanics that can help casual players. I think of an XP and/or gold boost dependent on how many days in a row you did not log in up to a max cap. But this has to be used carefully to not encourage not to play. Because as a dev you might want to motivate the players to play more not less.

At the end it is important that people have the feeling they get something worth their time.

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16

I think this task is impossible without people being affected on both sides. These types of games reward the player’s hard work and tenacity, though to some extent this is largely determined by your own luck. But the basic rule of this type of game is the more you put in, the more you have to be rewarded and the better you will be.

In terms of basic character optimization, I don’t think it’s going to be that difficult for casual players. By basic optimization, I mean leveling and finding key items according to the build that is being developed. But on the gameplay mechanics, there may be some trade-offs I guess, but they really have to be very well balanced. If the developers find this balance, it will be a really big leap into this genre of games.

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17

Sure, as long as those who can’t nolife don’t feel like they’re being punished.

Adjusting the ease of resource gain based on the most hardcore of grinders is like saying it’s okay to hold back 99%+ of the playerbase on progress just to make sure that the 1% can feel like they’re seeing value from the hours they dump into a game.

At some point, if you can dump endless hours into a game, you SHOULD be able to outpace the resource curve. If you want to make resource balance a challenge for someone who literally has nothing but time, you’re going to make it impossible for everyone else, and that’s not cool.

I’m sure there are nolifers ready and waiting with their “filthy casual” comments, but not being cutting edge doesn’t make someone a filthy casual. It makes them normal. The nolifers are the outliers, and balancing around outliers is bad. (The inverse of the nolifer, i.e. the ultra-casual player, is also an outlier and should also not be balanced around. Outliers on both sides are not good as balancing points.)

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18

I am inclined to agree with @XLVI_carpo view. My problem with the quote is that some casuals think every game element is part of the core game. So they are entitled to be able to defeat every boss and obtain every item even if they don’t necessarily have the time to play (cue I have job and family argument).

Thing is I dont think it’s necessarily a bad thing that there are some endgame bosses and items for nolifers to aspire to that casuals cannot realistically obtain. It provides goals to chase for for those who can, and are willing, to put in the time in the game.

I broadly agree with this. But I suppose my point is that while most of the game shouldnt be balanced around both outliers. I think there is room for some content to satisfy both - e.g. some (very few) elite endgame content for the ultra nolifers. And perhaps ensuring the basic story compaign is accessible and completable by ultra casuals within a season length?

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19

That’s the “tryhard”. While the satisfied casual player gets along with playing less - getting less (because he doesn’t care about an online game that much), the tryhard always struggles. He wants to play more, but can’t because of outside influences.

For this type of player it is really hard to see the nolifers doing the hardcore things while he can’t because of lack of gear or level.

But also the nolifers can make the life of casual players easier. For example by trading gear they find useless but is desirable by casuals.

20

Right, which is why I included the comment about ultra-casuals also being outliers.

This entire thread is about how limited Gold should be, and as the “currency” of the game, Gold is a core game mechanic.

My position is that there will always be hardcore grinders who will amass more Gold than the average player, and that Gold drops should not be balanced around that degree of outlier any more than they should be balanced around the player who barely plays yet expects enormous piles to fall from the sky.

I’m not against there being aspects to a game to entice the longterm/nolife chase. The game’s default currency should not be that aspect.

21

“This entire thread is about how limited Gold should be”

Actually no it isn’t. You and other people in this thread seem to have misunderstood my original suggestion in the OP.

I was suggesting the overall amount of gold that is dropped whilst playing is reduced to a smaller number to make the gold coins feel more valuable.

The relative gold income would be EXACTLY the same just the numbers are reduced.

For example if someone farmed hard for 1 hour (no matter if you’re a no lifer or a casual) rather than farming 500,000 gold per hour on average make it 50 gold per hour.

Gold would retain its relative value as vendors/respec would be adjusted accordingly.

The original OP had nothing to do with casual gamers vs no lifers and the suggestion has no impact on the topic.

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22

You’re right. My apologies for the off-topic swerve.

23

I’ve put most of my hours into D3 since launch, so it’s easily my best reference material regarding gold.

Back when the auction house was a thing, I didn’t really make huge amounts of progress in the end game until I either crafted some high value items or won bids for extremely low prices last second and resold for 10x what I paid. I liked being able to “shop” for good deals on things and once my auction house was set, than I would go play. Once I had less time to grind, the auction was a stable source of income to keep making progress on my build until I could barely scratch the surface of T10 before going on hiatus from the game.

That was all played on PC and by the time I got around to trying it again, it was on console and I got RoS with it. Given that legendaries and gold dropped more frequently, I immediately felt more rewarded for the hours I poured into the game and I didn’t feel starved every week waiting for items to sell and I could just enjoy the content. While it didn’t take long until I was starting to Min/Max my gear, my gold eventually became obsolete and I had hundreds of millions with nothing to really use it on. It was all about farming materials at that point.

In one case, it was extremely grindy to get your own personal drops to challenge harder content and gold was King in being able to attain viable gear for the end game.

In the second, the progression curve felt really good for a long time until it falls off drastically as soon as you are looking for slightly better rolls on the same pieces of gear and grinding out expensive resources for even further RNG chances on getting Ancient gear. It was at that point that the game fell off for me finally since I had never been a big seasonal player. I’ve always enjoyed just making my all of my Alts stronger and stronger. Even though gold became meaningless because there was no trade, I put more hours into RoS than on release because of better drops and more end game content.

With that being said, I’ve been spending all my gold on runes of shattering and stashing extra gear with certain affixes I want. Buying gear with everything I need is convenient, but it would probably be a lot cheaper to roll the stats yourself on a blank piece in comparison. At that point, it’s a value of time VS convenience that you’re paying for.

If I were to sell a piece of gear with 4 T5 affixes, I could easily see it going for 100,000 right off the bat and I don’t even think it’s unreasonable.
Runes of shattering already cost 2k a pop and limited in availability on shop visits, That’s 10k to shatter 5 pieces of gear with no guarantee you get the shards you even wanted potentially. That could cost up to 40k to shatter enough shards for each affix. Than you probably used glyphs of warding to increase your chances when forging. No market price on those yet. Can save money on picking up runes during the grind, but that’s still your time invested. Than if it goes up for bid, you have to compete already with everyone else who wants this hot piece of gear. That 100k is probably a low ball offer.

Does this make things already hyper inflated? Anyway, I’ve been rambling a lot already, lol.

24

It kinda is.

If a thing feels more valuable, that’s because it’s either scarcer (you have less of it) or more useful (you can use it for lots of things, or very useful things), or both.

But if the relative gold income (I assume it’s relative to outgoings) was the same, then I have the same value as I did before, therefore the value has not changed, just the numbers are smaller. Nothing actually changes. If I can currently gamble 100 items with the 50,000 gold that I collected from 10 hours of play time, but under the new scheme I can gamble 100 items with the 500 gold I collected in 10 hours of play time, how has the value of gold changed?

25

Nothing changed in terms of what you can afford for the gold you earn when playing 10 hours. But the gold value is 100 times higher than before.

It’s all about the feeling of value. The higher the numbers the more it feels unrealistic. In Germany there was a time of hyperinflation after the 2nd world war when the price of a bread was 105000000000 Mark. People brought their money with a pushcart to the market.

https://images.app.goo.gl/zpHXYnSxRNVTAADa9

26

Yeah, I think I’m skipping ahead & valuing the time played (which remains the same) instead of the currency ('cause surely it’s the value of the time played that’s most important).