Ways to Remove High-end Items from the Game (To Curb Item Inflation)

I agree with Silver. I think inflation has the potential to be a very serious problem and it should certainly be treated as such. That's not to say that it will definitely become a problem but it is something that needs to be considered and not simply dismissed. The last thing you want to happen is to find yourself in a situation where you need to shut down entire leagues or do item purges because the economy has spiraled out of control.

The inclusion of some sinks from the beginning can act as a very good safety valve for this. The more the economy inflates, the more the sinks are worthwhile to use. Simply selling items to vendors does not count as a sink. Vendors would just shift the inflation to currency items. Even though currency items are their own sink, the currency item economy can still also inflate (especially once a significant percentage of people are satisfied with their equipment).

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Wittgenstein wrote:

Not to be a forum nazi but I think this thread can be left alone from now on. People post comments, Silver disagrees. People make suggestions. Silver disagrees. No dev's have said anything about it.

What suggestions do I disagree with? I suppose if there is a good enough reason to disagree with a suggestion then I would voice my concern.

Everyone's opinion is valid; I'm just mentioning potential future issues. I don't even know the dev's true intent about the economy. If the dev's don't see inflation as an issue, then I would just leave it at that. But I'm not convinced that's the case.

I like that thread anyway, refreshing after browsing 20 others filled 'when beta begins?' posts.

Well silver has his points.
But I don't like idea of BOE/BOP.
It could be fitting and working on later stages of the game (half year or year since realease) but in the beginning it won't make any impact, just being annoying (wow I just found uber item! crap I can't wear cause I will not be able to sell it :(). It might even make ppl quit game. That's not we (not only devs) want.
And it's just troublesome. Especially if PVP will demand variety of items when playing against different builds/teams. You could not exchange it with friends.
In short if good PVP buildwise will be present ;>

I think it should be considered now, when the core game mechanics relating to items/drops/difficulty/trading could be easily altered.
To not make wrong moves like blizz done with D2Lod, when they wanted to push ppl to playing by sinking all old best items, making them totally useless in expansion (excluding some jewelery only), and they gone too far with that (1.08 editions especially).

But in case of POE I think some typical causes of inflation in MMOs will just solve by themselves.
Inflation = decrease of a price due to bigger supply and/or lesser demand.
Supply = high lvl players.
Demand = low/avg lvl players.

Since POE is free to play kinda niche game from unknown dev and it's not marketed widely/aggressively there won't be swarm of players on launch date and lower influx as time goes by.
It could actually be the opposite way.
Some ppl will try it, recommend it and more ppl will join.
So there won't be large difference between most advanced players who could find best items and the others who couldn't do it yet.

Of course it won't work indefinitely just for some time, how long I don't know.
The better and more popular game will be, the
longer heavy inflation won't occur.
If it takes long to exhaust playerbase (numbers of new ppl dropping) then most correct move will be adding some expansion which will again solve inflation problem for some time.

If POE turns out to be popular, cheating will be bigger threat to good designed game economy then natural bigger item inflow to the market + lesser number of low lvl players.

In later stages of community development I think the best way is to employ some kind of game currency (intentionally or not) other than cash.
Pretty much like SOJs/Perfect skulls in D2C.
Something which won't be easy obtainable even for avg lvl players but could be found/gained without much problem on higher lvls, not depending on luck just playtime.
Then sink it by some mechanism like open special instances or sth.

The currency should flow between ppl (excess will be sinked), the items should remain in use (out of market) and will be sinked when ppl quit.

Ok well than wether you think item sinks should or shouldn't be implemented best thing we can do is brainstorm and come up with ideas.

So current ideas for item sinks as i am getting it include sacrificing items for better drop rates,rerolls, etc. Dying maybe player looses an item or a couple items, and players in general selling there higher level items for currency items. Which as tpapp said will be its own sink.

So do people think it will be enough to stop inflation or not? Those are the only ones in my head that do not provide a negative experience for the player.

If devs will be in control of game economy (no dupes etc) then they could solve any inflation problem if they decide to it.

They could do that by adding some item/currency sinking schemes, pulling diff lvl higher and adding next tier of items, drive them out of the market by adding some options to use them instead of trading them (wep switch, mercenaries and so on), creating custom time limited leagues on hardcore mode where using previously found items (on softcore ones) will be allowed and so on and so on.

A lot of possibilities one condition, they must control things completely not just extinguish fires set by haxors. Preventing not just reacting as blizz in d2lod (ineffectively most of the time).

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Zidjian wrote:

So do people think it will be enough to stop inflation or not? Those are the only ones in my head that do not provide a negative experience for the player.

I believe that if the item sink is fun or compelling enough, it will be effective.

Maybe I missed some simple things, but here is my vision:

Inflation is by definition a decrease of the item/currency ratio, but since there will be no gold so far, there will be no inflation. Usually in most games world currency is aquired by the way different from the way players get the currency-rated high-end items. In PoE "currencies" like orbs etc will be aquired in the same way the items do - direct drops. The ratio of drop chance and demand of these items will go (I suppose) to some asymptotical value. Not much of inflation should take place even without BoP/BoE/whatever.

Even if the item/orbs ratio will be constantly growing - what then? Is that bad, this inflation will mean nothing to the game since you cant choose what will drop - an item or an orb. No reasons to worry. Again: no world currency=no inflation.

Or you may speak of estetical inflation: like today I'm ready to grind the whole day for "that" item, after two month - not an hour worth "it". Such an item/desire ratio is indeed woth to worry about, but this matter is too volatile to control IMHO.

since items will be the currency it will be susceptible to inflation how much so remains to be seen. for example

beta release sword of awesomeness is very rare and cost 100 scrolls to buy.

6 months after beta releases sword of awesomeness is somewhat common and can be purchased for 50 scrolls enabling new players to get better equipment earlier de facto making the game easier to beat as inflation increases.

The following thoughts are made under the assumption that there will be no currency item inflation!

i think that inflation could happen to lower level items. But because of the fact that there could be always a better item, the best items will always have a high value => the price of the other items will decrease... But is that really so bad?

The only problem i can think of is the balance for newer players... But is it really that dramatic if a new player could have low level items a little bit faster then it was possible at the beginning?

And there is yet another important point i think: If you are a high level player with awesome items do you really spent time trading low level items? Maybe there will be a few that are really awesome for leveling (e.g. with xp bonuses) and therefore interesting for everybody who wants to twink. But the other low level item won't be worth the time, especially when there is no auction house or something like that...

=> I think that the trades will progress, which means that the items will get better and better (=> low level trades will be rare => The chance for a new player to get awesome equipment wouldn't increase that much)

I expect a disconnection between high-lvl items and low-lvl currency to happen. It means that lvl 99 (I dont know exact values) titanic devastatory sword of godly awsomeness will not be traded for ANY amount of scrolls, but to similar items or high-end orbs only. I don't think in D2 you could trade SoJ/high runes for any amount of non-unique jewels/gems or low runes (though i didnt play multiplayer). Again no relation of currency=no inflation.