Ways to Remove High-end Items from the Game (To Curb Item Inflation)
" Well yes, but your talking about gems that when used by themselves are relatively useless end game. I am talking about scrolls of wisdom being a form of cheap currency which will be continuously used throughout the game to identify items. So to that person liquidating one good item is worth the potential and convenience of not having to trade for scrolls as well as being able to identify an item whenever you want. Also that was just an example as of now i have no idea of knowing the real value of a high end sword compared to scrolls, but you get the idea right? Yes good sir, I enjoy slaying mythical creatures.
|
|
|
Microeconomics 101
" This is absolutely wrong in a number of different ways. Inflation (or deflation) is just a way of saying that the price for something has changed. Generally these terms are used to describe price trends over the longer term. It's easiest to think about it in terms of supply and demand. If the supply of a good goes up and/or demand for it declines then its price will drop. Let's consider a high level item in a game economy like PoE's. As the game begins, the demand for this powerful item is very high, almost no one has it but everyone wants it. This is what's called a seller's market because the seller has the upper hand to charge almost any price they want and they'll still find someone willing to pay up. As the game continues, the larger proportion high level players means that more copies of the item are dropping and being circulated into the economy. For the time being, however, only a minority of people actually have the item so there's still plenty of demand to eat up the supply and the price of the item stabilizes to a reasonable market value. This is where you would like things to stay indefinitely. As a larger proportions of players get the item, demand begins a slow decline while supply remains constant (or may even grow) which will of course cause the price of the item to begin to drop. In many cases, the game can rely on an ever-growing player base to maintain demand but this is only a temporary solution. The number of players will level off as the game matures, demand for the item will continue to decline but supply will continue to remain constant. Eventually supply will so outstrip any demand for the item that the item will cost very little. This is the sort of economic arc that you absolutely want to avoid. Given no way to manage the economy, it will happen. Having random items (like PoE) can help because everyone is not looking for the exact same specific item but it doesn't solve the issue. In most cases, players pick their items based on two or three of the mods that they specifically want and the others don't really matter. Bringing in new more powerful items and content doesn't help anything at all. It just puts a band-aid over the problem instead of actually fixing it. It can actually make things even worse. There will be a huge glut of high-level equipment dropped into the economy ass all those high-level players ditch it for the new more powerful stuff. Supply goes through the roof, demand stays constant, and the price for high end gear plummets. Even worse, this can have a cascading effect all the way down the economy because mid and low level players can now afford better gear than they normally would be able to which reduces the price of the mid and low level gear they normally would buy. Of course, this sort of glut is only temporary and will work its way out eventually but not before permanently altering the economy. Item sinks can be a very good way of removing excess supply from the economy but they need to be implemented in a way that's not unfair to players. Vendors can sink items but need to be implemented sparingly otherwise you can just shift the inflation from items onto currency items. Since they can sink themselves, currency items are better able to regulate fluxes in supply and demand but even they can follow the inflation arc I described. Item sinks are nice in that they allow the market to regulate itself assuming player choices are perfectly efficient. You could also actively regulate the market. This would require dynamically adjusting the drop chances of items to limit supply and maintain constant demand. Implementing this would require a system to track all items and all trades. If the system sees that an item is trading for less than its objective value on average, it can decrease the drop chance of that item to shrink the supply and bring the item price back to where it should be. Of course, in PoE all items are random. So instead of tracking specific items, you would need to track item types and item mods. If it sees a specific mod (fire damage for example) is trading for less than it objectively should on average, it can adjust the drop chance of that specific mod. Alternately, the system can modify it's own objective valuation of the mod which would affect not how often the mod drops but how powerful it is when it drops. For fire damage, the system can reduce how often fire damage comes up on new items or it can increase the amount of fire damage an item gets when it drops with the mod. Either option should bring the price of the item back in line with where it should be. This sort of system is called closed loop feedback and when implemented properly it can solve almost any potential problem and single handedly balance the economy. Forum Sheriff
|
|
|
I see the points you've made, but speaking of definitions - inflation measures the price, which is reflected in a purchasing power of money/gold. The thing you absolutely reasonable speak about is an item accessibility. And to speak about inflation you have to measure this accessibility somehow by some values.
This currency value of an item makes sense in a game, where money and items purchased by this money have different sources. For example in WoW gold is earned in a miriad of ways, many of them requiring no skill but just blunt grinding. However high-lvl not-BoP/BoE items are aquired by raiding hard content only and only minority of actual players have access to it. In PoE currency and items have the same source - mob drops. Thats why I think that this is not important how they relate, since they dont link different areas of gameplay. Speaking of accessibility I completely agree with proposed scenarios, however, you mentioned that along with items accumulation the amount of high-lvl players will also grow. And the accessibility is a ratio of these quantitites, which depending on a gameplay can vary from item-abundant to balance and then to character-abundant state. And this is what we definetely don't know until the game is played in open release for long. The active drop chance feedback can stretch this ratio in a hope to get the balance, but IMHO that will distort the gameplay and may lead to innatural instabilities, which any feedback has. Apart from main discussion I sincerely hope that there WILL be new content because any online game has to add content regularly (D2:LOD is an exception) to keep audience. And for the item sink, unless it is a permanent loss of the items you actually didn't want to lose (equipped), its just another way to introduce additional currency step, which you willingly trade for some bonuses. I think that the latter (i.e. willing sacrifice of an item) will just postpone saturation of market by super-enchanced items and make the "price" equilibration just slower. The former (permanent occasional undesirable loss) will indeed fixes the market still as you can perfectly see in EVE-online: any ship (from million to thirty-billion priced) you fly can be blown leaving nothing behind, and it WILL be blown, all ships are produced by players, all resources are harvested by players, so you finally get a self-containing equilibrium. But many or even the most of players really hate just to have a minor possibility to lose (no shit - up to everything) their possessions. However, PoE is announced to have a cut-throat aggresive enviroment, and this loss threat can be a nice peppercorn in a gameplay)). |
|
|
I'm not smart, so bare with me. Why is this a problem? I just dont get it.
Item X drops. Everyone wants it. So player A trades it with B for item C,D,E,F. Eventually a whole lot of people have X. So when player A finds a new one, and trades it again with B (who unfortunatley lost his X to a monkey) player B now only offers E and F in exchange (due to the item being more available and thus less valuable.) After this, item X becomes as common as flies on shit, and nobody cares. People toss them on the ground in disgust and X is left to rot. Whats the problem? "the premier Action RPG for hardcore gamers."
-GGG Happy hunting/fishing |
|
|
I'm with Wittgenstein on this one.
(I may have said as much earlier in this thread, but it bears repeating) I have wandered through insanity;
I have walked the spiral out. Heard its twisted dreamed inanity In a whisper, in a shout. In the babbling cacophony The refrains are all the same: "[permutations of humanity] are unworthy of the name!" |
|
" What happens when item X is one of the most powerful items in the game? Suddenly there's nothing left to grind for. Nothing left to play for. You can just go trade for item X when you're level 1 and be set for the rest of the game. Boring. Forum Sheriff
|
|
" Well, aside from the fact that item X (or item set Y) is going to have attribute requirements to meet in order to actually use it, and so you're not going to be "set" with your level 1 character. Now, if we're talking about "one of the most powerful items in the game for your character's level", there are two basic solutions: 1. Level up further. 2. Start a new character to take advantage of the abundance of item X. I have wandered through insanity;
I have walked the spiral out. Heard its twisted dreamed inanity In a whisper, in a shout. In the babbling cacophony The refrains are all the same: "[permutations of humanity] are unworthy of the name!" |
|
" Neither of those solve the base problem and in fact create additional problems of their own. Forum Sheriff
|
|
|
Maybe it's just that it's two in the morning here, but I'm not seeing the problem. Mind elaborating?
Specifically, how does creating new characters cause extra problems? It allows players who want to do so a chance to experience a new play-style, creates new demand for those items you're worried about inflating, and doesn't increase the rate of item accumulation (since presumably a player isn't going to be using both characters at once). I have wandered through insanity;
I have walked the spiral out. Heard its twisted dreamed inanity In a whisper, in a shout. In the babbling cacophony The refrains are all the same: "[permutations of humanity] are unworthy of the name!" |
|
" your the smart one bro. "turn based rpg's are for people who have sausage fingers" -me
|
|
