Soulbinding - how it could work

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Crusx wrote:

When I saw the name of the thread I thought for sure I would be against whatever argument you put forth. However, I must admit, your idea is a solid one and you've managed to convince me for it.

I do, however, disagree with the buff only being 5% for the exchange. 5% isn't very significant and would most likely be ruled out as a viable option amongst higher tier players who often run dungeons and exchange loot with one another. On the other hand, making the buff 10% could possibly make it a bit too significant in the highest tier and give the players who use it an obvious edge in PvP.

Perhaps if we could split the buff around the 7%/7.5%/8% area we could get the desired effect of making it a completely viable option for all players, but not so much as to give a huge advantage to those who use it over those who do not. There would be a small advantage, but the player with the better skill should still (theoretically) be able to pull out on top regardless of the stat increase.

Debating the actual amount helps, but primarily looking at concept.
When it gets down to it, if this were to be implemented, testing could reveal that doubling the maximum quality was the proper balance and nobody guessed right. But balance comes after concept and design.

Thanks for your input on both aspects though. I honestly won't think any less of this game without some kinda of anti-deflation/inflation mechanic involved, but I think PoE would be a better long-term game with such a mechanic in existence.

I think that the ideal result would be an effect that makes Soul-Binding items worth it about 25% of the time. This would be enough to trim down the item pool while still enabling free trade.

My biggest insight though is that I think that a mechanic like this would get used on weapons more than armor, especially at low levels. Why? Because for half the classes, weapon dps is one of the most important things you have. Adding another 5, or 10, or whatever percentage to your damage output is HUGE. Getting 5% (etc) more defensive stats from 1 of your 4-5 defense items is a lot less impactful.

Try being less of a dick in your responses. As long as the option to soul-bind items is there, people will do it and be unable to give their items away, which will make both them and the person who wants that item sad. If you no longer have any use for the item, and you can't give it to somebody else who really needs it, you're not promoting social gameplay.

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Dreggon wrote:

Try being less of a dick in your responses. As long as the option to soul-bind items is there, people will do it and be unable to give their items away, which will make both them and the person who wants that item sad. If you no longer have any use for the item, and you can't give it to somebody else who really needs it, you're not promoting social gameplay.

But don't forget that if there is an option to soul - bind an item, there could be an option to undo that. But would it be worth using a rare Orb (which could actually be sold in a cash shop) just for the ability to trade an item?

However, I am currently indifferent to this suggestion. Even though it could be a solid, versatile system.

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Dreggon wrote:

Try being less of a dick in your responses. As long as the option to soul-bind items is there, people will do it and be unable to give their items away, which will make both them and the person who wants that item sad. If you no longer have any use for the item, and you can't give it to somebody else who really needs it, you're not promoting social gameplay.

The only reason at all that I have been crass in my replies is that people insist on posting stuff like "no that's bad".

That argument has zero value besides "some guy doesn't like it, but won't even say why".

Provide an argument, and I'm more than happy, even if said argument flies in the face of what I'm advocating for.

Now, to your point

This is a balancing act between two forces.
You see loot trading as integral to a social game.
Which means that you cannot have anything that prevents free trading of loot.

I see loot trading as just one aspect of the game.
Which means if there is another aspect of the game that can be improved, concessions in loot trading can be made.

I'm NOT proposing something that will eliminate loot trading. You seem to think I am.
Which means you're missing one of my key points.

The concept of my idea is that an item can be made Soul-Bound in exchange for a small boost in power.

The mechanic of my idea is that this amount of power will be balanced such that in at least 75% of the cases, players would elect to keep their item un-bound.

The result here is that 25% or less of items are removed from the trading pool. Yes, that DOES mean that less trading will occur. However, what else does it mean?
1) Less value-deflation over time
2) More demand for mid-high level gear (high enough to soul-bind, low enough that you eventually find better).
3) Another layer of player-strategy in decision making.

I suspect that only the utra rich must have perfect brigade would ever actualy use this tbh, meaning that only the items that were seen as perfect would get bound. I suspect that as a result this (short of insanly high bonus's which would make this approach vertualy mandatery) would have very little impact on the long term econemy.

Aditionaly i'd note that game economics has moved on alot since the D2 era and im sure GGG has looked hard at this issue and found mechanics to prevent deflation from getting out of hand. The currency items themselves being a good one i'd say based on my exp (I tend to use more than i spend).

Still I think this is the first time i've seen this idea so kudos for originality :)

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Any other ideas?

You do realize that inflation is physically impossible to stop in a world where production will always exceed consumption? The question you should be asking is "what is the current rate at which players accumulate wealth/power and why is this rate is such a problem that it needs a solution?"

Is there a specific rate of inflation you deem acceptable? Why can't it be done with less blunt ways? If inflation is so bad, why can't it be done with more decisive, direct manner?

There is no true solution to inflation without forcing consumption of items. You can slow it down by decreasing rates of production, you can try to give incentives for their destruction (and, really, there are a billion ways to do this without soul binding - any situation where a player has a significant incentive to consume the item works). But those won't stop it, so if we want a solution that physically stops inflation, why not just take one that resets the economy instead of making the players feel like they are being bled out of their wealth or are forced into a treadmill grind?

I suggest using the league system to the advantage by introducing new items in it to incentive people to run to it. Sort of like continuous LoD ladder rune words additions. This allows GGG to keep a high rate of production in the world for the more items (keeping the game less grindy and more fun) without worrying about inflation. An opportunity to adjust the leveling curve so the "long term grind" starts as late as possible. To make better use of ladder race features. Etc.

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konfeta wrote:

I suggest using the league system to the advantage by introducing new items in it to incentive people to run to it. Sort of like continuous LoD ladder rune words additions. This allows GGG to keep a high rate of production in the world for the more items (keeping the game less grindy and more fun) without worrying about inflation. An opportunity to adjust the leveling curve so the "long term grind" starts as late as possible. To make better use of ladder race features. Etc.

I might agree with you here, EXCEPT

GGG have said that it is going to be similar to Diablo 2 in terms of time to level. Once you get to level 60, adding those additionally levels will really feel like it is slowing down.

So on one hand, you could use Leagues to encourage new characters/items/etc, but on the other, new Leagues stop people from really "finishing" playing one character.

Additionally, from what I've heard so far, Leagues exist for alternate rules, not alternate loot tables, which would prevent your idea from working.

Alright, gonna explore another anti-inflation mechanic: Salvaging for orbs.

Basic salvaging, where the game can only read the item rarity and base item, would be worthless, because people would only salvage bad to mediocre gear. This is the function selling to vendors will fill: selling tons of bad rares to vendors for small orb returns.

So you'd need some way for a salvage system to recognize if an item was good, and reward the player accordingly.

Is this possible? Well, you can have the game read the mod rolls and see if they are close to max. But some mods are more valuable than others, so you'd have to set values on mods, and put in some exponential reward scaling based on how many of those mods appeared on an item.

But this has serious problems. One is that GGG has to officially endorse some mods being superior, which I'm sure they don't want to do, both because it tells players what to do, and because they could frankly be wrong.
Secondly, it'll be a system that would be gamed, as people figured out which mods had the most value from salvage compared to their actual utility, as well as finding items that had maybe a couple high salvage mods but didn't quite put it all together.


As to the OP: I think it's a creative option to incentivize players to take good items out of circulation. But one problem I see:

If rares remain the best possible items, players will generally assume they'll find an upgrade to their current items. If I've got gear that I could upgrade, but is still good gear that has trade value, I'm not going to soulbind it for a small stats boost.

And if you have people only binding godly items that are the best of the best? Then you're not taking much out of circulation, and I don't like the idea of taking those few best of the best items out of circulation anyways.

So it would have to be a pretty significant boost to compensate people for the loss of trade value of the item.

Last thought: I think creative recipes from GGG for vendor selling will help a lot with inflation of mid-tier items.

PS: New leagues is not a solution. GGG has said they want someone to be able to play the same character for 10 years. The 'main' default and hardcore leagues are important.

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aimlessgun wrote:

Alright, gonna explore another anti-inflation mechanic: Salvaging for orbs.

Basic salvaging, where the game can only read the item rarity and base item, would be worthless, because people would only salvage bad to mediocre gear. This is the function selling to vendors will fill: selling tons of bad rares to vendors for small orb returns.

So you'd need some way for a salvage system to recognize if an item was good, and reward the player accordingly.

I think this is something like what vendoring items will yield, albeit with worse ratios. And what you run into here is that if the reward is good enough, nobody will trade *any* items to other players. Because the other players would rather just use the good orbs themselves rather than trade 2 orbs for a single decent item.
While if the trade rates are too bad, only items that currently get thrown away would get vendored.

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aimlessgun wrote:

Is this possible? Well, you can have the game read the mod rolls and see if they are close to max. But some mods are more valuable than others, so you'd have to set values on mods, and put in some exponential reward scaling based on how many of those mods appeared on an item.

But this has serious problems. One is that GGG has to officially endorse some mods being superior, which I'm sure they don't want to do, both because it tells players what to do, and because they could frankly be wrong.
Secondly, it'll be a system that would be gamed, as people figured out which mods had the most value from salvage compared to their actual utility, as well as finding items that had maybe a couple high salvage mods but didn't quite put it all together.

I don't think that they could reasonbly manage to put in what you implement, though it is "possible".
Assign each mod a weight. Increased damage might be a 4, while health regen/minute might be a 1. Then the value of the mod is looked at with a range from min (0) to max (100). 0-25 = 50% value, 26-75 = 100% value, and 76-100 = 150% value.[/quote]

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aimlessgun wrote:

As to the OP: I think it's a creative option to incentivize players to take good items out of circulation. But one problem I see:

If rares remain the best possible items, players will generally assume they'll find an upgrade to their current items. If I've got gear that I could upgrade, but is still good gear that has trade value, I'm not going to soulbind it for a small stats boost.

And if you have people only binding godly items that are the best of the best? Then you're not taking much out of circulation, and I don't like the idea of taking those few best of the best items out of circulation anyways.

So it would have to be a pretty significant boost to compensate people for the loss of trade value of the item.

Interesting input, I'll take some time to stew on this!

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PS: New leagues is not a solution. GGG has said they want someone to be able to play the same character for 10 years. The 'main' default and hardcore leagues are important.

Well, then, we will have to accept inflation as a fact of life for the default leagues and simply not worry about it.

You cannot defeat inflation without destroying wealth, without destroying items. Well, I guess you could try to usurp inflation with mudflation, but in practical terms, it is just as destructive.

P.S. - what would GGG say to the ability to transfer high level characters into the new league? Every new "reset" league, you bring over a certain character. For "fairness" sake, you could impose limitations such as "cannot play character until x level is reached by y% of the population, etc. Or some actually creative stuff.