The D2 economy is in a major depression

[droid]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

The original argument fails on three simple points:

One: the D2 economy is currently supermature...that is, everyone already has everything they need for all their characters. Supply has steadily gone up while demand steadily went down, so naturally there is no motor for the trading economy anymore. The overdue ladder reset is the main problem, and the upcoming reset will correct it.

Two: the D2 economy is not comparable to real-world economies because everyone in the game generates NEW wealth. In the real world, unless you work in something like mining or farming, your money comes from someone else paying you with their own money for your time and labor, you're not actually creating anything that wasnt there before. In D2, you gain wealth by MFing and item running, which creates new valuable items that werent there before. Its basically like everyone in the country is a prosperous gold miner, so eventually gold will go down in value. FG will inflate alongside this just the same. There's no real solution for this without fundamentally overhauling the entire game, which is ultimately about the l00tz....its not a depression, which is a self-perpetuating downward economic cycle, its just a simple flooding of the market.

-People do run the levels, not just the bosses. See Pits, AT, Mausoleum, CS, Cows, some people even run the WSK solo when they dont have impatient people going "tele to throne!" and leaving the game if you want to walk it.

 

[kberger]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

First, I have to say I love razen's post. I've read it three times now and I have laughed my head off every time.

My take on the D2 economy is that it is not ruined, it is at the same point it always is after this long in a ladder season. Some simple things like pgems, crafting supplies, spirit rune sets, and hel runes have a lot of trade value.

 

[Flax]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

I did not play for several months. I had a lightning die facet that was 5/5. It was worth 45fg. Now, people offer 10fg. It was just sitting in a stash for just a few months. I lost 35fg by simply keeping it on my character - 350% the value.

False
You had sometthing worth one 5/5 die lightning facet and you still have.
The fact that you and some other ppl give it some outof game attributes doesnt in anyway change the pixels.

Inflation happens in the real world - the Fed makes sure to that - but they at least only do it by fractions of that number. This is how depressions start, and the D2 economy is in fact in a great depression. The moment someone can not play the game for just a few months and probably lose 2-4 times their wealth is dangerous for everyone that plays. I probably had 2500fg worth of stuff on my accounts. Now, it is perhaps worth 700fg.

Its very simple supply and demand, as the pool of items grows and the player base shrinks and if you take into account the ppl who actually needs or wants your crap might mf for it or trade for it the demand shrinks even further.

The thing is that if you wanted to accuire the goods you had when you stoped playing you'd have to pay far less thus you havent lost anything in effective value.
You have only lost some ability to get the über gear that ppl still attribute some worth to.

That's why the economy is suffering, and why it needs to be discussed. I hope D3 does a very good fixing these problems.

It isnt suffering its just reached a high equelibrium where everyone can aqquire top end gear for more or less nothing.

If you want to call people with torches/annis/enigmas/cta's poor its entierly your problem.
I mean i play mainly NL atm and after some MFing i usualy create a free stuff game and give the crap away as i cant be botherd to mule even more shakos occuluses, leorik arms etc.
Things that would have held decent value in early ladder.
Do i loose a massive amount of wealth when i do this no i dont as i can aqquire theese things by just joining a similar game if needed.

The only way to fight inflation without a growing playerbase is drainage of resourses and i guess ppl like you whould whine even more then.

And as a last statement even by your standards whining that you loose what you consider worth by saying you cant be botherd to sell it is like whining about youre hungry but saying you cant be assed to cook dinner, live with it then.

PS. Please dissregard my horrible spelling, english is my second language and im not at home where my nice firefox plugin corrects me.:whistling:
DS.

 

[mysticc]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

I'm not sure I agree with many of your arguements. The D2 economy has grown in a natural way. Early on there were a few Shakos so they all had value. As time has gone on and general weath has grown on the realms, more Shakos are around so they lose their value. Only really good ones, ie perfect, have high value.

This makes sense, although because of bots and dupes, the inflation has gone to exponential proportions. It has anything BUT natural. Rarely do these market requirements lack any sense of rationality. 141 def on a shako compared to 132 is almost a non issue. It is sad that I literally have to charsi shakos below 137/138 defense because nobody will take them, even if they are in NEED of it. It's certainly not worth the mule space.

Compare that to RL. I have a job and I earn money. Guess what, so does just about everyone else. But I put that money under my mattress or stick it in a bank that gives virtually no interest. But as time goes on and everyone's earning money, the value of my cash is devalued by the inflation in the economy. Before I could buy a six-pack for $4, now it cost $8. My cash is your Shako. Unless I invest my cash in something that can outperform inflation, I will lose out over time.

Your argument here actually SUPPORTS what I am saying. Inflation is exactly the same as item duping and botting. The only difference is that the government inflates at about 2% here in canada (just as an example), whereas inflation in runes is WAY beyond that. It is more like 4000% (Made up number, but what I'm trying to say is that there are 400x more high runes than there should be). There could possible be 2000x more high runes than there should be. You are actually make my point for me.

Inflation has known to cause depressions in real life. There were never massive boom/bust cycles before central banking. There was no way to inflate gold. Only with the advent of fiat currency came inflation, which is actually proven to be flawed economics (yet the powers that be do it anyway).

In a way, the government is stealing your money every time they decide to inflate it and give it to the banks (or whoever they decide to give it to). This is no different than the dupers and botters stealing your wealth in d2. It's exactly the same.

Guy in D2 dupes a rune and trades it for something valuable? It's the same as the bank using new printed money and buying something valuable.

However (one of) the big differences between D2 and RL is the ladder reset. When the ladder is reset, we all lose all our ladder wealth and start again at zero. This equalizer doesn't happen in real life. [Remember, your FG is no good on these forums so currency earned now cannot be used after the reset - for the most part.

That's why I argued for more frequent ladder resets, to make sure the economy never got out of wack... outside of killing bots and dupes.

dude how many shakos have you found? 5? 10? how many hrs have you found? 1? 2? how could you expect a low shako to be worth a hr?

I have found about 30 or 40 shakos. Maybe more over the lifetime of D2.

Your logic is flawed though. Your runes are not "found". They are dupes. The shakos are not dupes. This fact lowers the value of runes and actually makes the shako worth more. Hell, it actually makes everything worth more.

Zod is incredibly hard to find. So is a crown of ages. Yet, you will have to find 20 zods to buy that good crown of ages. You are better off finding the crown of ages.

Your logic doesn't make sense.

the reason perfect items are worth more has nothing to do with the added benefits. it has to do with the fact that every person would prefer their item to be perfect, so the bidding on such an item drives their value up 3-5x. their values go up in the same way that a classic car in mint condition carries more value than the same car with a dent in the hood.

For some items, sure. Small def points rarely makes a difference. Nonetheless, I am not saying your logic doesn't make sense - I *am* saying that because of dupes and botting, this has become the case. If there were not so many shakos botted since the ladder started, lower shakos would still have value today. That is the REAL point here.

In a perfect world, there would be no economy. Believe me, I am a flaming leftist. (yes, call me a socialist, a commie... but in video game world, we are spot on)

I like to trade my xxx for your yyy without having to refer to a price chart. That's idealy how everything should work.

Of course, some items are more rare... so now... some people get the idea that "hum... rather than trade yyy for your xxx... maybe I can get xxx AND zzz"

Let's assume you happen to like the look of silver as opposed to gold. Do you have any gold in your house? I will give you all of my silver equivalents of everything you have in gold. Want to make that trade? Really, let's make that trade.

Of course people want to get X and Z for a Y if Y > X. To make a trade that is horribly unbalanced devalues your time/effort spent in the game. You may consciously make a trade that makes you worse off - but don't expect others to do the same.

If you ask me, the thing you don't like is healthy.

High runes help balance trades. Say you have an item worth 20 and another worth 30 - one person can give 10 additional high runes to even it up.

The thing I don't think you understand is that the wealth isn't about the items - it's about the hard work spent MFing (if they aren't botting anyway). If you spent 400 game hours to get a decent 2-socket crown of ages, do you really want to only get 200 game hours of items back for it?

I'm over-simplifying the issue... it's not only about rarity - there is supply/demand issues and other things to consider as well. Still, given a market rate, it makes perfect sense to try and get the market value for something you have and no less. This isn't greedy. This is sound wealth management.

 

[emitnulb]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

lower shakos are worth around pul-um. they are worth that because you stand about the same chance of finding a low shako as you do in finding a pul-um.

if duping and botting did not exist on servers, a single hr would be worth more than nearly every unique item in the game. that situation would ensure that nobody but the extremely wealthy would be able to obtain the best runewords in the game. your arguement of increases in the number of available hr's causing depression is just absurd. ebotd is better than 99.99% of weapons that you would find in the game. their overpopulation puts the economy into prosperity, not depression. depression is when you can't obtain good items due to their lack of existance. prosperity is when you can obtain all of the good items due to overpopulation.

 

[mysticc]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

lower shakos are worth around pul-um. they are worth that because you stand about the same chance of finding a low shako as you do in finding a pul-um.

if duping and botting did not exist on servers, a single hr would be worth more than nearly every unique item in the game. that situation would ensure that nobody but the extremely wealthy would be able to obtain the best runewords in the game. your arguement of increases in the number of available hr's causing depression is just absurd. ebotd is better than 99.99% of weapons that you would find in the game. their overpopulation puts the economy into prosperity, not depression. depression is when you can't obtain good items due to their lack of existance. prosperity is when you can obtain all of the good items due to overpopulation.

The runewords are supposed to be rare, but because they have been mass produced, they have thrown the economy out of wack.

By the very nature that runewords >>>> unique items, it makes nearly all the unique items worthless. Which means that the overall value of spending a lot of time MFing is drastically reduced as well. It's like the workforce getting paid much, much less value to the same kind of work. This is why minimum wage goes up in real life - otherwise they would get less value for the same work due to inflation.

You are incorrect though in your analysis. The best items are sometimes NOT runewords, and because they were not duped, they are exceptionally rare. 3-socket, 30% faster run walk tiara/diadem for example run about... what? 160 hrs? I'm just guessing here, but you understand the point I am making.

Any of rare/magic/crafted items are WAY out of the scope of most players now because of what the duping has done. While a Ohm or Ber may have fetched a helm like this if the drop rates were the only thing that mattered... you need 160 Ber runes to buy said helm. That is the real indication that the economy is in a depression.

While you may be able to use 'most' of the best items cheaply, you are NOT wealthy. This is an important distinction. I just want to make sure you are aware of that.

The truth is that all of your runewords are just duped pieces of crap. They are worthless. You are not wealthy at all. I don't mean to criticize you or whoever owns a bunch of runewords - it's just the truth.

I also want to add that if you happen to find a Zod, you are not much richer than before you found it... because of the duping. If the duping did not exist, finding such a zod would take your wealth and it would jet up to astronomical proportions. This is real wealth. You could probably have gotten an entire account filled with amazing characters and items for the rune. Now, however, you can get a zod by trading a typical hr-valued unique for it, which are incredibly common place.

What this has done is make new wealth extremely hard to build. You cannot go around and MF and expect to build real wealth. It's not impossible, but it is MUCH harder as a result of the dupers.

 

[razen]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

Let's assume you happen to like the look of silver as opposed to gold. Do you have any gold in your house? I will give you all of my silver equivalents of everything you have in gold. Want to make that trade? Really, let's make that trade.

Of course people want to get X and Z for a Y if Y > X. To make a trade that is horribly unbalanced devalues your time/effort spent in the game. You may consciously make a trade that makes you worse off - but don't expect others to do the same.

If you ask me, the thing you don't like is healthy.

High runes help balance trades. Say you have an item worth 20 and another worth 30 - one person can give 10 additional high runes to even it up.

The thing I don't think you understand is that the wealth isn't about the items - it's about the hard work spent MFing (if they aren't botting anyway). If you spent 400 game hours to get a decent 2-socket crown of ages, do you really want to only get 200 game hours of items back for it?

I'm over-simplifying the issue... it's not only about rarity - there is supply/demand issues and other things to consider as well. Still, given a market rate, it makes perfect sense to try and get the market value for something you have and no less. This isn't greedy. This is sound wealth management.

If I like silver, and this is a perfect socialist world, yes... I will give every ounce of my silver for every ounce of your gold, no second question asked.

You are invoking the problem of availability, which I don't deny exist. Look, I have found 2 legit gaze through my hours of mfing...

The truth is, no matter how great of a chance a rare unique item might drop, chances are... you are going to find 1 or 2 in your entire playing career. I spent about 3-4 years online, and I have found about 50% of the unqiue items, never completed a set, and found runes only through HF. The point I am trying to make is... in this instance, it doesn't matter if yyy is 2% more likely to drop, in a perfect world... (assume no farming, no dupe), because yyy will most likely pop up once or twice in your entire playing career, they should be worth the same as xxx.

Now, obviously, it's a little rediculous when we are talking about trading that unique breastplate (Forgot name) for whatever high end items, but we are not stretching it.

There is no issue of being worse off... only what the issue of whether you are getting what you need. That was the original intention of the game. If you are a sorc needing a +2 ammy, you are not supposed to trade it into currency then "buy" from a non-existant shop. You are supposed to come across a barb and you have a 300% ed sword, you two trade and go merrily along the way.

That's the perfect world. The world we USED to have for a very brief period at the very beginning. I cannot stop market trend from developing, nor do I make a judgement that's morally wrong, but just know... Diablo was like that once.

Look, it's like the real life equivalent of arguing whether doctors or farmers should get equal pay. A long time ago, yes... they WERE paid equal. You grow food, I treat you when you are sick... very fair society. Then some people figured out some jobs might be easier or require more/less controllable knowledge... greed... and once that pandora's box is opened, paradise fell and we have the world today. Is it necessary a bad thing? Nope. But is it a good thing? HELL NO

 

[Greizer]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

If items took no space and muling was easy (read: a shared, unlimited stash), a true barter economy could easily take place. There would still likely be some form of currencies (i.e. the most useful, consumable items), but if you could see the other person's whole stash in the trade window, it wouldn't be as prominent. Right now bartering is non-existent because using a currency, whether that be HRs or fg, is just so much more convenient.

 

[KillaMike]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

you want to hear about REAL economy? fair enough. take new ladder reset into account. JSP has perfect proof of it ( i read you are big fan of it )

people going nuts about High runes. when Simple Vex goes vs 20 1.12 hrs, ber and jah ( only ) goes for 200-220 high runes. can you explain to me, why people buying it on PTR when items will be deleted after 1 month?

its all about happy pixels. and please, do not say poor getting poorer, rich getting richer, and bots dominating it all.

i know lots of people who play legit, and ending up earning enough to get their nigmas coh's forties etc etc. only reason why, is because they enjoy game and run everything with high tlvl. if you have brains, join baal runs, get high level, start gambling + crafting. you ll end up with god like amulets that all will want to buy. or just get a javazon, kill lots of cows, and get your hrs. if using sp, do kurast runs because its some how bugged.

ecconomy only dictates what is common, and lower's its prices. 1st shako been found on ptr was worth about 50 high runes on 1.12, now it wort no more then 10. and i am not talking about torches.

/e and i also agree with this:

Look, it's like the real life equivalent of arguing whether doctors or farmers should get equal pay. A long time ago, yes... they WERE paid equal. You grow food, I treat you when you are sick... very fair society. Then some people figured out some jobs might be easier or require more/less controllable knowledge... greed... and once that pandora's box is opened, paradise fell and we have the world today. Is it necessary a bad thing? Nope. But is it a good thing? HELL NO

 

[emitnulb]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

The runewords are supposed to be rare, but because they have been mass produced, they have thrown the economy out of wack.

By the very nature that runewords >>>> unique items, it makes nearly all the unique items worthless. Which means that the overall value of spending a lot of time MFing is drastically reduced as well. It's like the workforce getting paid much, much less value to the same kind of work. This is why minimum wage goes up in real life - otherwise they would get less value for the same work due to inflation.

You are incorrect though in your analysis. The best items are sometimes NOT runewords, and because they were not duped, they are exceptionally rare. 3-socket, 30% faster run walk tiara/diadem for example run about... what? 160 hrs? I'm just guessing here, but you understand the point I am making.

Any of rare/magic/crafted items are WAY out of the scope of most players now because of what the duping has done. While a Ohm or Ber may have fetched a helm like this if the drop rates were the only thing that mattered... you need 160 Ber runes to buy said helm. That is the real indication that the economy is in a depression.

While you may be able to use 'most' of the best items cheaply, you are NOT wealthy. This is an important distinction. I just want to make sure you are aware of that.

The truth is that all of your runewords are just duped pieces of crap. They are worthless. You are not wealthy at all. I don't mean to criticize you or whoever owns a bunch of runewords - it's just the truth.

I also want to add that if you happen to find a Zod, you are not much richer than before you found it... because of the duping. If the duping did not exist, finding such a zod would take your wealth and it would jet up to astronomical proportions. This is real wealth. You could probably have gotten an entire account filled with amazing characters and items for the rune. Now, however, you can get a zod by trading a typical hr-valued unique for it, which are incredibly common place.

What this has done is make new wealth extremely hard to build. You cannot go around and MF and expect to build real wealth. It's not impossible, but it is MUCH harder as a result of the dupers.

what you are claiming does not make much sense. i mean, say for instance that the drop rates for zod runes and 3 os 30 frw tiaras were equal. if you were mfing, under this "ideal" economy, you would have an equal chance of finding each of these items. if you were to find this tiara, you would only be able to obtain 1 zod for this item. even though it is one of the most hard to come by items in the game, it would only be worth 1 hr. your "wealth" would have grown significantly, but if you wanted to buy something like a high botdz, you would need to find 2-3 of these items. i mean sure, if you find a zod rune now, you won't have too much in the way of increased wealth, but you still obtain the same value compared to a runeword that uses that rune. like, that zod rune is still worth around 1/3 of a botd, but this 3os 30frw tiarra that is still as rare of a find as a zod rune and will net you ~20 botd zerker axes, while under an ideal economy, that tiara would not even allow you to purchace 1/20 of the items it can now.

basically, dupes allow for the economy to make extremely rare items more accessable to everybody. no dupes and no bots make the number of items in circulation MUCH lower. sure your zod rune could be a gg item if there were no dupes or bots, but then everybody would be running around looking for grandfather swords and everybody would have TERRIBLE characters. there would be 1/1000 characters that could solo baal, and 1/10000 characters that could solo ubers. nobody would have a torch. is that the perfect economy? is that an economy that is not in a depression? i am not saying that the current d2 economy is perfect, but calling it a depression and saying that there are "too many hrs" is absurd. the fact that more good items exist mean that more people can create good characters which makes becoming rich easier. you can not base your definition of a depression on currencies outside of the game (fg), nor can you base it on overpopulation of in game items that are not meant to be currencies (hrs). a depression would be where you could not get good items because there werent enough of them.

by the way, if you found a shako under an dupeless economy, how would you EVER expect a rune higher than lem for it? even if it was perfect, it is still not even close to being as rare as a high rune.

 

[Viconia]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

Dupes do indeed allow extremely rare items more accessible but isn't the point that they are supposed to be extremely rare (at least that's how the game was designed)? However I don't think everyone would have "terrible" characters... you can beat the game without equipping a single runeword and you can kill Hell Baal and you can even do ubers; granted it's going to be very difficult, you're going to need good equipment or be forced to actually use teamwork, but it is possible. It's just not going to be the cakewalk everyone is used to now with rampant runewords. Also there are many runewords (not the most "godly" ones, but still) that can easily be made with runes that commonly drop and there would always be runes from hellforges even if duping ceased. I think this has already been said, but currently there are certain uniques and certain sets that still hold value for specific builds/situations but the majority of what once would be a good find is now worthless. How many times does a unique or set item drop and you have to throw it away because it's essentially junk since it won't compare to a Grief or a Fortitude? Even runewords themselves are prey to devalue by duping. Take a +1 BO Call to Arms. It's worth becomes about one of the high runes it took to make because it's so easy to make ones that roll 4, 5 or 6 since the materials are not difficult to come by. Without dupes even low rolling runewords would be awesome simply because you'd own one at all. If high end runewords were actually rare as Blizzard intended them to be I think the economy would be more fun, because you'd care about practically ANY runewords you did make, and uniques and sets that are completely overlooked now, and you'd see people using them and wanting them. Rares would also be more useful in general besides just circlets, rings and amulets. Sure everyone would still hope to put together a Breath of the Dying or a Fortitude or whatever but in the meantime many more items would suddenly be useful and in that sense it would be easier to find 'wealth'/good items, and trading would open up to a broader range of items. Anyway that's just my two cents.

 

[Gorny1]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

Dupes do indeed allow extremely rare items more accessible but isn't the point that they are supposed to be extremely rare (at least that's how the game was designed)? However I don't think everyone would have "terrible" characters... you can beat the game without equipping a single runeword and you can kill Hell Baal and you can even do ubers; granted it's going to be very difficult, you're going to need good equipment or be forced to actually use teamwork, but it is possible. It's just not going to be the cakewalk everyone is used to now with rampant runewords. Also there are many runewords (not the most "godly" ones, but still) that can easily be made with runes that commonly drop and there would always be runes from hellforges even if duping ceased. I think this has already been said, but currently there are certain uniques and certain sets that still hold value for specific builds/situations but the majority of what once would be a good find is now worthless. How many times does a unique or set item drop and you have to throw it away because it's essentially junk since it won't compare to a Grief or a Fortitude? Even runewords themselves are prey to devalue by duping. Take a +1 BO Call to Arms. It's worth becomes about one of the high runes it took to make because it's so easy to make ones that roll 4, 5 or 6 since the materials are not difficult to come by. Without dupes even low rolling runewords would be awesome simply because you'd own one at all. If high end runewords were actually rare as Blizzard intended them to be I think the economy would be more fun, because you'd care about practically ANY runewords you did make, and uniques and sets that are completely overlooked now, and you'd see people using them and wanting them. Rares would also be more useful in general besides just circlets, rings and amulets. Sure everyone would still hope to put together a Breath of the Dying or a Fortitude or whatever but in the meantime many more items would suddenly be useful and in that sense it would be easier to find 'wealth'/good items, and trading would open up to a broader range of items. Anyway that's just my two cents.

Holy run on Batman!

 

[buddah]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

What's wrong with perfect items being desirable and expensive? It has nothing to do with the economy, it's just human nature to like perfection and it will not change if the economy was better. If regular shakos were more expensive then the perfect ones would scale accordingly.

 

[GoldenBird]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

How is the economy suffering? I don't get it.

More people wanting perfect stuff = people throwing out non-perfect stuff to poor people = poor people now have gear (which can be used for mfing, which essentially = even more good gear, in which they can now afford perfect stuff if they wish, and so the cycle repeats). And so, the economy thrives.

I think your point is rather that it is over-thriving to the point that the economy isn't fun anymore. Maybe you should make that clearer.

 

[mysticc]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

you want to hear about REAL economy? fair enough. take new ladder reset into account. JSP has perfect proof of it ( i read you are big fan of it )

people going nuts about High runes. when Simple Vex goes vs 20 1.12 hrs, ber and jah ( only ) goes for 200-220 high runes. can you explain to me, why people buying it on PTR when items will be deleted after 1 month?

This doesn't prove against against anything I've said. You're just pointing out something completely separate to what I am saying. People can freely spend their wealth for PTR items however they want. It's their wealth.

its all about happy pixels. and please, do not say poor getting poorer, rich getting richer, and bots dominating it all.

Why not? That is pretty accurate description.

i know lots of people who play legit, and ending up earning enough to get their nigmas coh's forties etc etc.

You are assuming that owning an enigma, coh, fortitude, etc. means these legit people are wealthy. That is not the case. If that is all they own, they are not wealthy. They are basically tied with the rest of the poor people on the server. As I already explained in a previous post, this is not true wealth.

I actually own several items above and beyond 20 or 30 runewords on my account - some really nice rare rings, amulets, and rare and magic helms, etc. Even still, I would say I am far from wealthy. I've seen what wealthy is... and the dupers and botters who've been behind the inflation have the true wealth in the game. You just haven't experienced it yet.

only reason why, is because they enjoy game and run everything with high tlvl. if you have brains, join baal runs, get high level, start gambling + crafting. you ll end up with god like amulets that all will want to buy. or just get a javazon, kill lots of cows, and get your hrs. if using sp, do kurast runs because its some how bugged.

You assume I have no brains... when in fact, I do know how to take advantage of the current economy. I am only saying that this current method of gambling, crafting, shopping, re-rolling, etc. is pretty crap. It literally takes out MF out of the game completely. Also, the economy is still messed up even with these activities going on.

ecconomy only dictates what is common, and lower's its prices. 1st shako been found on ptr was worth about 50 high runes on 1.12, now it wort no more then 10. and i am not talking about torches.

Of course. If you read my post, you'd see that I agree with this. The only problem is that bots have increased the rate of this happening exponentially.

 

[mysticc]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

what you are claiming does not make much sense. i mean, say for instance that the drop rates for zod runes and 3 os 30 frw tiaras were equal. if you were mfing, under this "ideal" economy, you would have an equal chance of finding each of these items. if you were to find this tiara, you would only be able to obtain 1 zod for this item. even though it is one of the most hard to come by items in the game, it would only be worth 1 hr.

Maybe that's the way it should be, no? I have no problem with that.

your "wealth" would have grown significantly, but if you wanted to buy something like a high botdz, you would need to find 2-3 of these items.

Great! I'm not seeing a problem with ANY of this. This sounds great.

i mean sure, if you find a zod rune now, you won't have too much in the way of increased wealth, but you still obtain the same value compared to a runeword that uses that rune. like, that zod rune is still worth around 1/3 of a botd

You're looking at the trees and not the forest. Yes, in the context of it's own runeword - of course it's worth a similar amount if the runeword's random stats are average. This is not the problem though, if you've been following my posts. It's how it effects the REST of the economy.

but this 3os 30frw tiarra that is still as rare of a find as a zod rune and will net you ~20 botd zerker axes, while under an ideal economy, that tiara would not even allow you to purchace 1/20 of the items it can now.

Again, this is awesome. Do you think you are more wealthy by owning those 20 botd zerker axes? If so, give me your 3-socket 30% frw tiara. I will go and get those botd's for you in an instant!

Why? Because when they dupe more runes, the tiara is going to be worth 30 botd's. Then they dupe the runes some more... and then that tiara is going to be worth 40 botds. See the pattern here? When does it end?

basically, dupes allow for the economy to make extremely rare items more accessable to everybody. no dupes and no bots make the number of items in circulation MUCH lower.

Yes, but it also damages the economy and distributes wealth unevenly at the same time. Let's imagine you are the FIRST duper on US EAST Ladder. Everyone thinks that Zod is crazy rare and expensive. You get lucky enough to find a Zod... and dupe the living crap out of it. In a day's effort, you could probably get several 3 socket 30% frw tiara's and similar items before people realized what you were up to... and before they realized that the zods were, in fact, dupes.

Eventually, the market will realize the Zod is not rare anymore, and it's value will be adjusted. But before that happens, you will have walked away with several AMAZING items for the cost of ZERO production. You sir are now WEALTHY. Everyone who got those zods from you? You basically stole the items from them.

This is why duping is bad. You think the Zod's become more accessible... but in actuality, everyone except for the original dupers are much poorer. Yes, you have zod runes - but not real ones. They are dupes. They are worth very little. And all the people that traded very rare items for them lost their wealth big time.

I hope this makes sense... because it makes perfect sense to me. It also makes sense to many economists around the world in regards to real inflation of fiat-based currency around the world. The same principle applies.

sure your zod rune could be a gg item if there were no dupes or bots, but then everybody would be running around looking for grandfather swords and everybody would have TERRIBLE characters.

Yay! This sounds great. It means there is something to strive towards again. Why is this bad?

there would be 1/1000 characters that could solo baal, and 1/10000 characters that could solo ubers. nobody would have a torch. is that the perfect economy? is that an economy that is not in a depression?

Yes, this would be a perfect functioning economy. Just because people think the game is harder doesn't make the economy messed up. And since there is no inflation, there is no longer an economy moving towards depression.

i am not saying that the current d2 economy is perfect, but calling it a depression and saying that there are "too many hrs" is absurd.

No, it's not absurd. It makes perfect sense. Go back in North American history... and all bubble busts, recessions and the great depression are very much linked to inflation. Learn some economics.

by the way, if you found a shako under an dupeless economy, how would you EVER expect a rune higher than lem for it? even if it was perfect, it is still not even close to being as rare as a high rune.

If you can't get a high rune for shako... that's perfectly fine. Why is that a bad thing? You shouldn't be able to. The very fact that you CAN suggests there is a problem. I dunno why you can't see that.

 

[droid]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

Yay! This sounds great. It means there is something to strive towards again. Why is this bad?

....

Yes, this would be a perfect functioning economy. Just because people think the game is harder doesn't make the economy messed up. And since there is no inflation, there is no longer an economy moving towards depression.

....


If you can't get a high rune for shako... that's perfectly fine. Why is that a bad thing? You shouldn't be able to. The very fact that you CAN suggests there is a problem. I dunno why you can't see that.

Well keep in mind there's another extreme if you go too far the other way. Yes, its probably too easy now to deck yourself out in full-HR-runeword gear. But if there was no duping at all, HRs would be so exponentially rare that they'd only be worth other HRs, you could never trade for them unless you actually found one yourself. In a world of no dupes, who would ever trade their legit self-found Jah for a basket of uniques and set items, even if their aggregate value may be close to a HR?

In other words, there's two extremes - one where everything is so common that they're too easily attainable, and another where things are so rare that they're essentially unattainable.

 

[mysticc]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

Well keep in mind there's another extreme if you go too far the other way. Yes, its probably too easy now to deck yourself out in full-HR-runeword gear. But if there was no duping at all, HRs would be so exponentially rare that they'd only be worth other HRs, you could never trade for them unless you actually found one yourself. In a world of no dupes, who would ever trade their legit self-found Jah for a basket of uniques and set items, even if their aggregate value may be close to a HR?

In other words, there's two extremes - one where everything is so common that they're too easily attainable, and another where things are so rare that they're essentially unattainable.

No, that's not true at all. There are several very nice items that could trade for legitimate runes, such as the tiara we've been talked about. Items like magic claws... 3-4 socket 95+ life armors, etc. would continue to sell for high amounts. ias/ed jewels and rare charms would also continue to sell well.

I wouldn't discount the uniques either. High randomizations of very rare items would still continue to trade very well, such as very high Crown of Ages, or very high griffons. Lesser uniques with high randomization would go for a lot more. Any second-best unique item that has a high TC would sell well if runewords were not common place. These items would still be worth a lot in the economy.

I think you'd see over time, the economy would be quite balanced and fair. There would be lots of opportunity as well, no matter how you wanted to spend your time. The fact that it would take a lot of "Trading upwards" and lots of hard work to get a Zod would be one of the best things to happen in the game since it was originally released IMO.

If the only disadvantage is that not everyone can get the best gear... sign me up!

How is the economy suffering? I don't get it.

Keep reading all of my posts... you'll understand eventually. My logic is not flawed. Sometimes economics can be hard to understand. If more people understood it, more people would upraise against real governments too. Take some time to educate and understand it, and I'm sure you'll come around to my way of thinking. It really does make sense.

More people wanting perfect stuff = people throwing out non-perfect stuff to poor people = poor people now have gear (which can be used for mfing, which essentially = even more good gear, in which they can now afford perfect stuff if they wish, and so the cycle repeats). And so, the economy thrives.

There's nothing wrong with this when it happens naturally... but the bots have over saturated the market with perfect items that MFing new items is a very labour-intensive task that just isn't very profitable anymore. This is damaging to the game.

I think your point is rather that it is over-thriving to the point that the economy isn't fun anymore. Maybe you should make that clearer.

That's only a side benefit, but if you read my other posts/responses, you'd see that there are bigger issues at stake.

 

[TarnishedHope]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

This thread is so pointless it hurts my soul.

It's call supply and demand.

As for the rest of your whiny complains, you are playing a game that's nearly one decade old. Bot/dupe, though annoying, are out of Blizzard's hands now.

I don't want to be offensive, but do you even know what the word depression means, or did you just happen to see that word on TV and decided to toss it around for fun?

 

[mysticc]

Re: The D2 economy is in a major depression

This thread is so pointless it hurts my soul.

It's call supply and demand.

As for the rest of your whiny complains, you are playing a game that's nearly one decade old. Bot/dupe, though annoying, are out of Blizzard's hands now.

I don't want to be offensive, but do you even know what the word depression means, or did you just happen to see that word on TV and decided to toss it around for fun?

This is borderline troll comment :/