Phatose on 28/6/2012 at 13:59

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No blind hate. The game is good, but has some major issues.


The AH does have inflation.

I believe part of this is purely psychological, a side effect of the fact that unsold listings remain up for 36 hours, and that you can't search prices for things that actually sold. A player gets a good drop that they can't use, so they go to the AH and check out prices for similar items to decide their price. Of course, since that listing shows only unsold items - most of which were unsold because they charged outlandish prices - they figure charging the same outlandish amount is going market rate.

There's also the glut of flippers - people who buy an item then immediately relist it. Since there's a 15% fee for a sale, every flip causes immediate inflation before the flipper takes any profit at all.


Genuinely new players don't need worry much though - this effect is only seen on top tier endgame items. While they won't be able to afford top tier items, the long term players have that same problem. And for things that aren't top tier - well, they're actually probably a little better off. Anyone selling gear below top tier does so very cheaply, just to increase the chance it actually sells.

The 10 item limit is working against them on that though - especially since you can't cancel an auction early. Players don't list items that aren't almost certain to sell, since they could run out of auction slots. The devs have indicated that they intend to allow auctions to be cancelled early if they don't have bids though, which should drive up the willingness of players to put less desirable, less pricey items up.

Repair costs haven't significantly effected my gold earning rate. For me, it's 20k for repairs, but 50k of gold drops in that time, plus item drops.




Currently, there is definitely a shortage of gold sinks. Repair charges are taking gold out, but certainly not enough to make up for the billions that are already out there.

Gemcrafting eats up a lot of gold if you use it, but with the large pricetag and the small benefits, most players simply don't use it. The benefit for upgrading, for example, a topaz socketed in armor from square to star is about 16 or so intelligence, for about 2 million - it's a terrible return on investment.

Item-crafting is borked from the get go - max craftable item is iLvl62. See above for why that screws it up.

That leaves 3 gold sinks. Potions - which don't get used like in D2, so are a minor sink. Repairs, which aren't large enough to really matter to anyone who isn't broke to begin with. And AH sale fees, which are significant but cause inflation of their own.



The game is still very much fluctuating, and bigger changes are on the way. The last patch introduced a bug into the Natalya's set, which made it much, much more powerful then intended. However, according the the Community Managers, the devs have decided not to fix this bug - rather to use it as a guide for how useful legendary and set items should be.

icemann on 29/6/2012 at 10:28

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It all sounds quite similar to what I remember quite clearly of the AH system in WoW, having played that game for 5 years (quit a year and a bit ago). I'd often check the price of items then go for those rates minus a dollar or so since that would result in those items being at the top of the list when someone would sort by price. And if someone was majorly underselling an item then I would buy up all the super cheap ones and then resell them at the "correct"price.

Worked quite nicely all in all.

Phatose on 29/6/2012 at 19:32

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For lower level characters, repair cost is a complete non-issue - the 400% increased applied only to items of iLvl50 and above. You'll be well into hell difficulty before you run into it.

Gems aren't a complete waste, but until you've maxed out your potentials on pure equipment, it's only worthwhile for weapons and helmets - the bonuses on those two item classes are far more worthwhile. And even on them, it's real hard to justify upgrading beyond Star. But, you can remove a gem when you change equipment, so you'll basically have it forever. But still, for most items it's not worthwhile until you're superman anyway.

Dunno about crafting at low levels. Hard to imagine it's worthwhile though, simply because everything before Hell difficulty is easy to begin with. A single flawless square ruby in your weapon, available on the AH for like 100 gold, will turn all of normal and nightmare into one big rofl-stomp.

Phatose on 7/7/2012 at 04:11

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Yes - that's the trick to it.

iLvl63 weapons can have up to -18 level requirements. I decided to start leveling a barbarian. The absolute best level 42 weapon for sale on the AH did 175 DPS.

A substandard i63 with -18 I picked up for 800k does 475.

Basically, gems turn normal and early nightmare into a ROFLstomp, and reduce level requirements turn late nightmare and hell into a ROFLStomp. Until Inferno, it's one giant "LOL". Then you hit the brick wall.

Kind of a moot point by now though - the player count's dropping like a bomb. Used to be if I wanted to relax, I could join a late hell game with my Wiz, find 100 people playing the last mission and just nuke crap. Got at least 15 players all the boss achievements doing that. Now, it's '3 players in game on this mission' - and 1 or 2 are typically doing the same thing I am.


Should anybody from here start playing, let me know and I'll hook you up with some equipment. But as it stands, that would be boarding a sinking ship.

Eldron on 9/7/2012 at 09:24

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Well...