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

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Skivverus wrote:

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.

1.
A change in value of one item does not happen in a vacuum. It will have an effect that ripples through the rest of the economy. Of course all the best players get the best gear and in general it stays within the top tier of players because they have first dibs due to their greater purchasing power. If the top tier of items is so inflated that the top tier of players are all satisfied with their gear then the price of top tier items drops and the supply becomes much more readily available to the next tier of players. The second tier of players are now able to buy top tier goods when they couldn't before and they do because now you can buy top tier items for second tier prices. Of course the demand for second tier items drops and their price drops and the supply shifts to third tier players. This process cascades down all the tiers of the economy and you have players regularly equipping gear that used to be reserved for characters a level or two above them. Eventually you get players that already have all the best gear they can have at a specific level because it's so easy and cheap to buy it in town. Obviously, this will have a significant impact on the balancing of the game because players now are much more powerful than they used to be. If the devs make the monsters harder to compensate then players are forced to go and get the most powerful items to even be able to play but if they don't then the game will be way too easy and won't present any sort of challenge. It also means that players don't care about loot drops anymore. ARPGs are so fun because of that rush you get when that one awesome piece of loot drops and you get to equip it and start using it. This is lost when you know you can just go to town and buy all the best loot for cheap. When you kill the fun of a challenging game and the fun of loot drops, what's left?

2.
If one powerful item becomes very inflated and generally available and players all choose characters to take advantage of it then suddenly half the players in a league are all playing the exact same character build. Where's the fun in that? It's like in poorly balanced PvP where one build is clearly the most powerful. To be competitive you're forced to play that build and tournaments become clone wars. If PvE had the same problem then it'd become an ARPG with a single class and that would be boring as hell.

If you can't see the potential for these sorts of issues then I can only assume you're willfully ignoring them.

on point 1: What I get out of what you wrote is

"if players have the best gear at a certain level, they will be overpowered for that level, and the game won't be any fun."

Well, remember, the skill gems level up with you. This one feature provides enough reason to keep playing. Also, the best gear at level 30 will be crap at level 40 (or, it should be, if PoE follows other games) So, unless the player want's to stay level 30 (say for PvP or something) then I don't see the problem. Either the player chooses to stop or not, just like any other ARPG.

Also, your scenario in which "all players are satisfied with there gear" which leads to the cascade of items from the "top tier" raining down onto the "second tier" players. I just don't see that as realistic at all. The only way that could happen is if the developers gave 100% chance for "X" to drop off a certain boss and then that boss got farmed to death. However, even if that happened, we are only talking about ONE item that is most likely only the "best" for ONE specific build of ONE character class. For your scenario to take place, would require the entirety of the game itself to be completely broken. Like, when someone releases a mod that makes monsters only drop unique items or something.

On point 2: Notice the importance of the word "and" & "choose" in your first sentence.

If one powerful item becomes very inflated and generally available and players all choose characters to take advantage of it then suddenly half the players in a league are all playing the exact same character build"

Ok, well if I know of item "x" and decide to make a player that can use it. Then that's my choice. I doubt EVERY player in the game will make that choice very much. Take D2 for example, it was once the case that Hammerdins were WAY overpowered and with the right gear they were basically Gods, even then it wasn't as if half the player base of D2 rolled a hammerdin.

Also, in every game I have ever played, eventually the "best" PvP/PvE builds are discovered and coppied. At that point the game becomes about player skill. Take WoW for example, When I played (bout three years ago) I had some of the best tank gear in the game. I was the maintank for my guild. At the same time we had 3 other tanks who all basically had the same gear that I did, but guess what, I was a better player. So, even in your scenario the game isn't "ruined" or anything, it just forces people who want to compete in either pvp or pve to focus on honing their skills.

Alright. Fine. You're right. Item inflation is absolutely impossible and can never happen. The fact that it happens on a daily basis in other games and in the real world is completely irrelevant because it's absolutely impossible for it to happen in PoE. The economy will always be perfect and the game will be fun forever.

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The economy will always be perfect and the game will be fun forever.

So be it.

The second point of Wittgenstein is not about inflation but that the game will still be quite playable even with the top gear on everybody and his dog. I hope he is right that the gameplay will be so amazing)

Part of the reason people play an ARPG is to find items. It’s the lottery effect. Honing your combat skill has nothing to do with the economy.

So, you’re saying that it’s fine if the market gets saturated with gear, because high-end gear will get cheaper, thus people will focus on combat skill.

Combat skill will generally be a players focus regardless of the economies' situation.

It’s clear that there is a pretty big difference between what happens in the economy and player combat skill.

Anyways, the economy is part of what makes a community based ARPG fun. Therefore, if it’s too easy to get high-end items, the fun of finding those items will be sucked out of the game. Because instead of finding a great item and going “Alright awesome! I’m Rich!” you’ll go “Wow, another one of these? I already 50 of these…”

Alright, so someone please make this idiot proof for me. I rarely use the auction houses in any mmo that I play. And for as long as I have played Diablo, when it was trading time I generally went item for item.

So I don't understand the idea of altering the drop rate to produce less "top tier" items. I mean how many times in other ARPG's did you find something "top tier" and couldn't use it?

Maybe i'm just missing the point by and large, but I think this falls more unto what league you're going to play in as opposed to general populous.

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tpapp157 wrote:

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.

I can see possible avenues for abuse of this sort of thing:
1. X is objectively worth 100 scrolls
2. I trade you X for 1 million scrolls
3. you trade X back to me for 1 million scrolls
4. repeat a few hundred times
5. closed loop feedback sees that the price of X has skyrocketed, and it starts dropping like crazy
6. we go and farm the crap out of it
7. I trade you 100 X for 1 scroll, and you trade back, repeatedly
8. closed loop feedback sees price has plummetted and lowers the drop chance too far
9. X is now very rare and we have effectively cornered the market with our massive hoard (even if only temporarily)

I can see that there would be ways to eliminate/discourage this sort of behaviour, such as upper and lower limits on the amount of compensation the feedback loop could apply. But things really start to get complicated in such a system.

Really what it all comes down to is this:

In any system, where there is infinite supply, there will be inflation, unless consumption is at the same rate as supply. Since items in PoE will be invincible and never break, consumption will be effectively zero.
The only consumption will be:
* items that are never picked up (which implies that they were nearly worthless anyway)
* items that are destroyed or thrown away (again, already worthless)
* items on characters that stop playing the game and never return (this will be the only real source of consumption for high value items)

Since there will be infinite supply in the game, there is only one way to avoid inflation, and that is to have items decay as they are used and eventually break. I imagine this would be very unpopular. The only other way is to limit supply somehow.

Thank you, Malice, for that explanation; my thoughts almost exactly.

The "almost" comes in here:
Hardcore leagues will also have character death, effectively removing all the items on that character from that particular league's economy, and thus transferring some portion of the inflation of the hardcore league to its parent.

As for limiting supply, considering that all new items come from dying enemies, this translates into "reduced drop rates"; more specifically, it means "reducing drop rates repeatedly (or continuously) as time goes on", which disproportionately benefits established players and is therefore, in my view, unacceptable.

Short version:
Inflation may have drawbacks, but I think the alternatives are worse.

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Short version: Inflation may have drawbacks, but I think the alternatives are worse.

Well said. I concur.