Ideas on making gold more useful?

[visom]

I know this has been discussed before but it turned into a flame and got nowhere.

So what are some suggestions you guys believe would make gold more useful? If you DON'T want gold to have anymore uses than repair and buying potions then please don't post there.

These are a few of mines:
-Make it possible to obtain sets/uniques from gambling.
-Have special items that can only be obtained through buying with gold (runes, swords, armor, etc)

[Cormac McArt]

1)A number of smitheries to be available throughout the world where players could order custom weapons and armour with qualities they wish for great amount of pay , dependent of the qualities.
2)Pet-shops with various combat pets to be available.
3)Taverns with various drinks/elixirs to be available for price.
4)Multiple various mercenaries to be available to accompany you at the same time for dayly/weekly/monthly pay.
5)Gambling in various activities with other players to be available.
6)Pocket-picking to be possible.
7)Hidden (burried) treasures to be spread throughout the world.
8)Banks to be available where you can stash your money without risk of losing it.
9)Change bureaus to be available where you can exchange your gold for real-world stuff.

[Bandreus]

I know the most sure-fire way of making gold worth something:

Make it so that players have to pay 10k everytime they do a boss-run. They could just make the drop-rate equivalent of Mephisto, Pindle and Baal in D3 only be accessible through paying to fight them (like in a colloseum or something). That way in order to find items (do runs) you'd need a good supply of gold. It'll also control magic-finding because people wont just be able to do MF runs... they'd have to do gold-runs too.
No offense, that simply wouldn't work. Say, in the real world, you would ever make people have to pay a fee everytime they want to have a walk in the park, they wish to date a boy/girl, ride your skateboard or do some other thing they do for fun.
Having gold worth something is not about saying "Hey, do you want to have a boss-run? Then have a gold-run first!", it's rather about making it more usefull.
In D2, boss runs are so popular because its the funniest, enjoyable and most rewarding thing you can do in the game. In late/end-game thats expecially true.
Can you imagine blizard implementing the feature you propose in D2, and still have a solid playerbase?

----

One thing that made gold pretty useless in D2 is the fact you really can play the game without ever buying anything. You obtain almost all you need from monster drops. Repairing your stuff is cheap enought the devs could have made it free without changing the game economy in any noticeable way. The same goes for pots and ammos (arrows, bolts, throwable weapons).
The only thing you could seriously need more money for is rezzing you merch, if you let him die a lot.
Finally, Gambling is the most (and only, sic!) exciting thing you can put your gold into.

Clearly, when the game was designed, Blizzard North never thought at it as something that would be used in trading, they wanted the economy (when it comes to player trades) to revolve around bartering. And that was very good to me.

Now that the devs want gold to be something you'd really want to trade your stuff for, that really means the player should have meaningful ways to spend money.

First, the item market should be a viable option for you to buy what you need, was it in the form of the AH or simply NPC having a wider stock of goods to sell. I won't go into the specifics of what should be available for purchase tough.
The real reson players rarelly buy their equipment from NPC is, if you're searching for something specifc, given what they sell is randomly generated ( the amount of modifiers is so huge), the odds you'll find a close match are sooo low.

So my first thought is, make monster drops the only possible way to find very good equipment, but still make it very quick and easy for players to shop for it if they need a boost to their resitance/defence/damage/hit-rate/whatever.
Say, if you need an item with cold resistance/no freeze to kick Duriel's fatty ***, you really don't want to waste your time in finding a player who can offer you a good trade. Poor example maybe, but you should have got what I mean.

What's next? NPC should offer more services (which makes sense) for a little fee.
Comes to my mind, customization options. Say you can go to the blacksmith and have him paint your equipment. You found that rare exceptional rare breastplate, but it's green, and you hate green so much...you go to the bllacksmith, pay a little cash, and ask him to paint it <put you fav colour here>.
What If, after you saved Anya, she was able to put your name on an item for a fee? That was something people would have been glad to hand their gold for.

Last thing I think could make gold a convenient mean to have trades is a well thought crafting system.
The horadric cube was great, yet the single most usefull thing it did for you was giving you those 5 extra inventory slots.
You can use it to upgrade your gems and runes (which in the end leads to more bartering), you can upgrade your equipment, and of curse there are a lot of usefull recipes, but still you can come up with something better, when it comes to a crafting system (more control, more variety).

Making crafting your equipment (at least part of it) a more accessible and viable option would lead to an arised need of crafting items (and I'm not referring to the insanelly rare stuff here), which would make more people go hunt/gather them for their own use or for a profit, which would make money a better way to exchange stuff in an effortless way.

Of course you can come up with a tons of other ideas, but I do think those are the main areas the devs can work in a way they make the game better and give more value to gold at the same time.

Thoughts and comments are welcome

[TammerHime]

Ok..... here is what we are going to do with our money.

We going to use it as ammo, instead of mana we are going to run off money you have to buy your spells if you want to use them.



But of course if that dosnt work we can always use it for more practical reasons. Like expanding our stash amount, or how bout adding a socket to an item or haveing gems removed. Or allowing areas where you have to say pay a guard to let you into a restricted zone.

But still i really think a better idea would be just taking all that money that was thrown away cause were bored and just killing each other with it.

[visom]

@Tammerhime
I do like the idea of increasing stash size with gold as well as removing socket items :D

[Knight_Wolf]

Ok here is a rundown on some ideas to make gold more viable.

Suggestions
-Make potions purchasable .. but very expensive.
-Gambling shop for items (that's a given i guess but still does need some revamping)
-Weapon and items crafting and customization can be an excellent gold sink
-Increasing the stash and inventory sizes
-Hiring and customizing mercs


Extra suggestions (involve things not currently in the game)
-A survivial mode in which you fight increasingly crazy combinations of monsters with very tough modifiers nonstop .. all items you obtain are gone if you die .. but if you want to exit with them you pay a insane huge gold fee.

-A pseudo-Auction house ... you can leave a sort of note for all players to see on your realm wether you are online or offline .. whenever a player enters a trading town (small instance made specially for trade) he can check your note and all notes of other players ... you can pay more gold to increase the number of notes you can leave regarding items you want to trade.

-entering the an arena for PVP should have some fee .. and there could be betting (with in-game gold of course).

---------------------------------------

There could be more ideas to make gold valuable and a good game currency but that's enough for now.

[Risingred]

I don't want to type out the entire system but I hope they blatantly steal the gold-based item upgrade system from Hellgate: London. It was absolutely awesome in every way.
Mix this with making uniques semi-random as well, and you will have a HUGE gold sink.
People would buy a unique from another player, but they'd want to put another modifier on it or improve the item itself, so they'd bring it to this machine and pay a very, very large sum of money to do it. Then, if they weren't happy, they'd sell it or toss it.
There are a lot of min-maxers out there who would absolutely go nuts over this once they actually used it.

I also like the "buy inventory space" idea. I hope they do that. Make it super expensive.
Someone mentioned personalizing equipment - excellent idea. People love that. They use it whenever they can. It also attaches you more to your character, which is important too.

Hefty gold fee whenever you die would help, too. If gold was valuable, you'd really not want to lose any, so it would also be an incentive to step up your game a bit and improve your skills.

[kavlor]

I know the most sure-fire way of making gold worth something:

Make it so that players have to pay 10k everytime they do a boss-run. They could just make the drop-rate equivalent of Mephisto, Pindle and Baal in D3 only be accessible through paying to fight them (like in a colloseum or something). That way in order to find items (do runs) you'd need a good supply of gold. It'll also control magic-finding because people wont just be able to do MF runs... they'd have to do gold-runs too.

Instead make it an Arena that has ever harder enemies and it costs more each level.DS2 has this and some other games Ive played.You could get a reward up to a certain difficulty then just some certificate of accomplisment(bound to your char).

[Jedouard]

In addition to the old ones - buying and repairing item - there are some pretty simple ones that seem to be overlooked here:

1) Improvements on item modifiers/stats: You could go to the appropriate NPC and have, say, the max damage of your sword increased by two. Every time you do this to the same item and same modifier/stat on that item it costs you, for example, 1.5 times as much as the last time. Perhaps there would even be a cap to the number of times you could do this. This way, the very best weapon drop in the game can be made even better. This would be a great gold sink, especially given all the modifiers we have seen on items in the past: attack rating, defence, magic/elemental/physical damage, magic/elemental/physical resistance, improving the base item (from say a simple cap to a shako), socketing and unsocketing, and, the biggie, any of the various skill modifiers.

2) You could do something similar to the aforesaid for player stats/skills, but this seems a bit powerful so it would have to be very costly and, again exponential (if not capped).

3) Since Bashiok mentioned there will be two skill levelling dynamics now 1) levelling the skill, 2) raising the skill-level cap, originally at 5, but able to be increased to 15 - we might be paying raise the skill level cap.

4) You could set up a loan system, though this sounds iffy. Players could take on loan, say, 10% of their worth (average going price for all equipment in an auction house) and be forced to pay it back with a little interest. I think this idea might be better for a MMORPG, though.

5) If there are D2-style mercs, then, as suggested above, they could have a recurring fee, either set up to deduct automatically from the gold you find or to be paid periodically. I think they ought to give the player the choice between these two, as players who do not play a whole lot might find it cheaper just to give a percent of their findings to the merc. Also, the merc's pay ought to increase with his level.

I can't really think of any other viable sinks. Paying for skill usage or to do runs makes the game not fun; there is nothing cool about finding gold to go play. On the other hand, paying for improvements, be it in items stats, char stats or merc help is fun and adds value to gold so that it can be used for something else that is also fun: using it to trade for new items.

[PandadudeSP]

Hmm I think its going to be very difficult to make gold a viable all around currency. Items wont become soulbound, and when the most l33t and rare items drop you're not gonna want to sell it for gold so you can ress your merc and repair your gear and buy potions etc, youre going to want to trade it for another l33t rare item you can use yourself.
Gambling should be tweaked, but its a very fun feature. Repair costs should be substantial for items that are really good.

[Risingred]

Repair costs should be substantial for items that are really good.

There doesn't appear to be durability in Diablo III.

[Runestar]

I am thinking that one way would to be an option to use gold to customize your character. For example, you may have the option of paying to respec your skill points, change his appearance, or even to use misc services such as corpse retrieval (eg: instead of going back to the dungeon where you died, you pay to have the corpse transported back to you). Paying to remove gems/runes seems like an excellent idea. This gives players more room for experimentation, without the fear of potentially losing a precious item accidentally.

All sorts of options could be made available to those willing to pay.

I like the idea of paying to reroll/upgrade your gear's properties. It would be like some sort of town-based horadric cube, but seems a tad too similar to gambling. I guess it is all in the implementation.

[LittleOldLady]

I'd like to see an equivalent of lay-by (I think it's called lay-away in the US?): you pay a certain amount to keep an item (which you can't currently afford) at an NPC shop.

As someone who played (mostly) untwinked single-player, with many sorcs, often you'd spot the perfect early staff (e.g. +3 warmth, +3 fireball, +3 static), but couldn't afford it at the time. Of course, by the time you went to get more items/gold to buy it, the item would be gone. I'd gladly pay a fee to have it hang around for a while (like they used to at Gris' in D1) so you could save up for it.

[RogueJuggalo]

I know the most sure-fire way of making gold worth something:

Make it so that players have to pay 10k everytime they do a boss-run. They could just make the drop-rate equivalent of Mephisto, Pindle and Baal in D3 only be accessible through paying to fight them (like in a colloseum or something). That way in order to find items (do runs) you'd need a good supply of gold. It'll also control magic-finding because people wont just be able to do MF runs... they'd have to do gold-runs too.

I don't think having content that you have to pay to access (in-game or out-of-game) would be a terrible idea because it would require someone to work at getting the funds in order to access the content. Players should not be forced to do work in order to play the game. I'd be pissed if I had to go back through act 2 and gather/save enough gold to pay Meshif to go to Act 3. I don't think that it would be worth it to pay to access other non-essential areas of the game either because it would require too much effort balancing (why pay 10k to mf in WSK when I can pay 1k to mf in the Pits and get the same drops?) and it would restrict access to content for some players.

The gold sinks have to be something that isn't essential for playing the game but are things that make the game more fun and flexible. Having to pay to access content does not add to the games flexibility and it would make the game less fun because you have to work before you can play.

9)Change bureaus to be available where you can exchange your gold for real-world stuff.

This is a really interesting idea. I dunno how it would work (or if it could) but that would be a really unique and fun feature.

Here are my ideas/comments on gold sinks that people have mentioned:

1) Paying to reallocate your skill points. This allows the player to make mistakes, take risks, experiment, and optimize their character for various situations ("Wow, I can't believe Mephisto is so hard to beat... Maybe if I respec and try this build...") without having to completely remake the character and level it again. If it is as incredibly hard to reach the maximum level in D3 as it is in D2, I think this feature would have a pretty good likelihood of making the cut. But if it's really easy to reach the maximum level then it probably shouldn't be included because in a few weeks or so someone could have a character for each class at max level and then eventually get bored because that aspect of the game is over.

This idea also depends on whether or not there will be such a huge difference in character strength based on the level of the character (in Diablo 2 a level 99 isn't much stronger than a level 85 and I hope it stays this way in D3).

2) Gambling or imbuing. This one would be tricky because it would require a lot of balancing in order to tempt a player to gamble. Why would I waste 1000 gold in hopes of getting a eBotDZ when I could go spend 800 gold at an auction house (or offer it to a player, whatever) to buy the eBotDZ without any risk. With an improved economy and an auction house (sorry if my assumption bothers you, I think D3 will have an auction house), gambling/imbuing will not be viable gold sinks because I don't think there would be a way to balance it perfectly. Either gambling will waste gold because the gold is better spent buying the item from a player or gambling will become too good.

For example, if you had 1,000 gold to gamble and you brought 100 items, 50 of them being Griefs, Enigmas, Shakos, Tgods, gores, nightwings, etc. then trading with other players becomes pointless. If you spend that same 1,000 gold gambling and you get nothing or a Skullders, then it was a waste because someone is selling the same item for only 500 gold.

3) Item upgrading/customization. Gores range from like 150% ed to 200% ed when they drop so it might be viable to have an NPC that can upgrade your 192% gores to 193, 194, 195, etc. until capping at the 200% for gold. My problem with this is that if the trading system/economy in D3 is strong then it would be more beneficial for me to go and just buy a better version of the item from a player instead of dumping the gold at the NPC. Depending on drop rates and the range of variables on the item, it would probably just be better to go kill monsters in hopes of a better one just dropping. If the economy is strong then players won't want to waste their gold on upgrading an item that has the potential of dropping at the max without requiring a gold sink.

Allowing players to pay gold to add new magical bonuses to an item that weren't originally on the item would be a terrible idea. If that were possible then there might as well be no gear, instead, as the game progresses the player pays X gold to increase whatever stat they feel like. This topic is actually a really good segway (sorry, I know it's the wrong spelling but I can't find the correct spelling and I really want to use this word :p) into my next topic:

4) Socketing. This is a really great means for players to customize their items within reasonable limits. Also, from my understanding in Diablo 3 you can add runes to skills to make them have different effects. This creates a lot of room for gold sinks involving creating sockets in items (maybe adding additional sockets to skills if game balance allows for it) and also for removing items from the sockets without destroying them. I would totally pay a hr in D2 for someone's socket quest rather than rushing a new character to do it.

I'll add more later probably. But ultimately, I think re-allocating skill points and socketing/'socket-related services' are very likely candidates for gold sinks in D3. Gambling/imbuing/adding stats to items are unlikely to appear in D3 in my opinion.

[Synchrotron]

Repairing in D2 is a useless feature, the only time when you search for the shop for repair is when your item has 1 durability and, depending of the item, reaching 1 durability takes eternities.

If Blizz change how durability works, like making your armor/weapons loose defense/damage the more they get damaged that would make people go to shops more often and spent their gold with repair.

The damage/defense loss could be like: You loose like 1% of damage/defense for every 1% of the durability lost but the penalty would only appear when your item reaches caps of 10% durability, otherwise it would be too annoying going to shop every minute to repair that tiny scratch in the equipment.

[miediejev]

I think that a way make gold more useful is by making players pay gold for upgrading their skills

[LonelyAnon]

I like the idea of paying to reroll/upgrade your gear's properties. It would be like some sort of town-based horadric cube, but seems a tad too similar to gambling. I guess it is all in the implementation.

This would be awesome!:jig:
Find a magic weapon that doesnt compliment your skill set or your other armour, go to an NPC mage/enchanter or blacksmith (or something like that) and for a fee thats relative to the strength of the weapon you can get it changed into a randomly chosen magic weapon of the same strength but with different effects! Mayby even for a large sum of cash you could get its effects increrased, or the weapon upgraded to a higher level, got a scythe with a wicked effect but its too weak for the area you're in, pay and get it turned into a battle scythe etc.

The same could apply to unique's or sets, but the prices would have to be huge and balancing would take a lifetime.

[jacobgold]

Im not sure about more useful, but they should have a system that lets you manage currency better. A useful way to do this would be to divide the coinage like they have in WoW.

Copper, Silver, and Gold.

Think of it like eliminating a lot of zero's. It's easier to think of 1 gold than it is to think of 100 silvers or 1000 coppers (assuming a ratio of 1g:10s:100c). Then just use the new copper like you did the old gold.

Im not sure how a guy fits 5,000,000 gold in his pocket anyways.

[Nadnerb]

I like the idea of paying for item customization like socketing, imbuing, etc. That stuff is practical and makes sense as it is really hard to find a good unique weapon that is socketed or vice versa.

However, we don't need to have a loan system or a system that you use to pay back a weapon slowly. That makes this game way too complicated. I think I am more interested in killing zombies and stuff rather than making payments on my BRAND NEW WEAPON!!!

No offense to anyone but I also don't think we need to complicate the money system any more than it is. If we did have copper and silver, paying for items would mean counting out how much of each coinage we would want to give out. Therefore, this would actually be MORE of a hassle than having just gold. And the point is not HOW they are carrying the 10k in their pocket. Its a game about killing and weapons and fighting, not about accounting and pocket size.

That's just my opinion, though

[CombatShrine]

My suggestions/ideas:

Paying for sockets
Paying for desocketing (WITHOUT DESTROYING THE RUNES OR JEWELS)
Paying for imbues, instead of a 1-time quest.
Paying to zoddify ethereal items
Be able to buy Rare items at shops (with a Wirt-type fee for being able to view the goods, so you cant just waypoint out to refresh the screen)
Paying for good cube reagents
Paying for recoloring your items
Paying to change the base item type of your special items (e.g. be able to transfer the mods on Hwanin's Justice onto a Great Poleaxe, or IK maul into a Legendary Mallet, or your rare sword into a rare bow).
Paying for respeccing your skills and stats
Paying for access to power-up shrines (e.g. you pay the vendor 500k and you get the shrine of your choice activated on you e.g. combat shrine, xp, resist, armor, etc.)
Betting on pvp matchups, with a rake to act as a gold sink.
Using gold as a cube reagent, with more gold = better results.
Be able to purchase elixirs, like from Diablo 1.
Pay for portal access to a battle arena (already mentioned by others)
Be able to buy and gamble jewels

[lunarleif]

I don't want to type out the entire system but I hope they blatantly steal the gold-based item upgrade system from Hellgate: London. It was absolutely awesome in every way.
Mix this with making uniques semi-random as well, and you will have a HUGE gold sink.
People would buy a unique from another player, but they'd want to put another modifier on it or improve the item itself, so they'd bring it to this machine and pay a very, very large sum of money to do it. Then, if they weren't happy, they'd sell it or toss it.
There are a lot of min-maxers out there who would absolutely go nuts over this once they actually used it.
Here are some examples of stuff you said. In Fate, you could add enchantments to items by going to a persona and upgrading it and in the Median mod for Diablo 2 you could get uber expensive orbs or something to upgrade and add things to any item you wore.
I think that gold could be made more useful by allowing you to buy almost anything. For example, facing Durial you could get a +75 resistance armor set for 20 k or something like that.
Another thing I would like to see is the incarnation of hard quests that are optional and are hidden in extra areas. These could require gold to access through the acquisition of expensive items. In reward, these quests would give you one specific item that had awesome power or maybe a piece of the set.

[jacobgold]

If we did have copper and silver, paying for items would mean counting out how much of each coinage we would want to give out. Therefore, this would actually be MORE of a hassle than having just gold. And the point is not HOW they are carrying the 10k in their pocket. Its a game about killing and weapons and fighting, not about accounting and pocket size.


On this point you are wrong.

This isn't real life where you are manually counting money. It's a video game with variables. Any game that doesn't automatically make change for you is retarded.

[Nadnerb]

On this point you are wrong.

This isn't real life where you are manually counting money. It's a video game with variables. Any game that doesn't automatically make change for you is retarded.

Yah that makes sense. I didn't make myself clear last time. It would make something simple complex. Instead of having one thing such as gold with one value (1), you have gold (10), silver (5), and copper (1). Whats the point? Why does it matter how correct we are about how much money they are able to carry?

[Risingred]

Yah that makes sense. I didn't make myself clear last time. It would make something simple complex. Instead of having one thing such as gold with one value (1), you have gold (10), silver (5), and copper (1). Whats the point? Why does it matter how correct we are about how much money they are able to carry?

It's all about convenience to the player. Quick scanning, stuff like that.
In EQ and games like Warhammer online they use the good old copper/silver/gold type of currency which just helps out the user by seeing a "1" instead of a "1000".

I mean, if items and whatever don't go for much gold (median value of an AH or traded item being like 300 gold) then it wouldn't matter.

[Nadnerb]

yah that makes sense. I guess I haven't played enough games on computer to see that in play. I don't know though. It doesn't really matter one way or the other.

[Phidias]

9)Change bureaus to be available where you can exchange your gold for real-world stuff.

The rest of your ideas are kind of cool, this one just plain disgusts me, it should be clear that this is a game, and it should be for fun,besides, this would just encourage gold farmers and all that bullcrap.
Not to sound too harsh, as it depends on what real-world stuff you're talking about, if it's some stupid stickers or pencils or stuff like that then it would be fine and innocuous.

I think gold could become more valuable if some shifting around happened between Player-to-Merch trade values and Gold-from-monster amounts.
I think it just comes to a point where it's a bit too easy to accumulate gold, and thus trading your crazy unique or crafted item for 200k isn't worth it because you could farm that yourself in a fairly reasonable time. It probably stems from the limit of gold that can be in ones stash and how easy it can be to get gold.

[deathbykittens]

1)A number of smitheries to be available throughout the world where players could order custom weapons and armour with qualities they wish for great amount of pay , dependent of the qualities.
2)Pet-shops with various combat pets to be available.
3)Taverns with various drinks/elixirs to be available for price.
4)Multiple various mercenaries to be available to accompany you at the same time for dayly/weekly/monthly pay.
5)Gambling in various activities with other players to be available.
6)Pocket-picking to be possible.
7)Hidden (burried) treasures to be spread throughout the world.
8)Banks to be available where you can stash your money without risk of losing it.
9)Change bureaus to be available where you can exchange your gold for real-world stuff.

absolutely correct especially #9, but i would also like crossovers into other games like wow,who wouldn't like a mini baal or a fallen. pocket picking sounds cool. buried treasure should only be accessible through buying a digging kit or hiring certain lackeys, you should be able to buy a base of operations and hire guards to defend against both player (b.net connection) and npc (both) raids you could hire multiple mercs and have packbeasts to have extra bag space, you could also equip your mercs to have different weapons, banks are a good idea, but they sould also have an AH, and preferably a capital city, because in the previous games the towns got smaller and smaller as you went along, for artistic relief, i believe there should be an open air market. professions would be nice to have because, if you've ever played wow thats what your spending most of your income on. the ability to build camsites where you could rest in the wilderness to recover hp/mp could cost money for mats, minions should have to be payed, or else they quit, mounts and mounted combat could be fitted into the economy and increase gameplay enjoyment, and on that note, only certain weapons and skills should be used on mounts to avoid the use of fist weapons and skills like leap to be used, but on the whole, very good job:thumbup: dbk out:coffee:

ps:to solve the problem of the aforementioned game-to-realworld transactions, you can only have a limited amount of the items per account, and we all know that you should have to have ONLY ONE ACCOUNT

[jacobgold]

I'd like to say that having to pay gold for a boss run sounds incredibly retarded to me.

"I'm here to slay baal and bring peace to all of sanctuary!"

"Pay the toll."

Some things that I think would also be cool for purchasing would be out of the game itself, like a battle.net avatar for your character, or another character slot for your account.

[RogueJuggalo]

I'd like to say that having to pay gold for a boss run sounds incredibly retarded to me.

"I'm here to slay baal and bring peace to all of sanctuary!"

"Pay the toll."

Some things that I think would also be cool for purchasing would be out of the game itself, like a battle.net avatar for your character, or another character slot for your account.

I think paying gold for another character slot on your account is a great idea. It would be something that isn't essential (someone could just make a second account) but it would be a convenience for hardcore gamers to dump gold on.

[visom]

absolutely correct especially #9, but i would also like crossovers into other games like wow,who wouldn't like a mini baal or a fallen. pocket picking sounds cool. buried treasure should only be accessible through buying a digging kit or hiring certain lackeys, you should be able to buy a base of operations and hire guards to defend against both player (b.net connection) and npc (both) raids you could hire multiple mercs and have packbeasts to have extra bag space, you could also equip your mercs to have different weapons, banks are a good idea, but they sould also have an AH, and preferably a capital city, because in the previous games the towns got smaller and smaller as you went along, for artistic relief, i believe there should be an open air market. professions would be nice to have because, if you've ever played wow thats what your spending most of your income on. the ability to build camsites where you could rest in the wilderness to recover hp/mp could cost money for mats, minions should have to be payed, or else they quit, mounts and mounted combat could be fitted into the economy and increase gameplay enjoyment, and on that note, only certain weapons and skills should be used on mounts to avoid the use of fist weapons and skills like leap to be used, but on the whole, very good job:thumbup: dbk out:coffee:

ps:to solve the problem of the aforementioned game-to-realworld transactions, you can only have a limited amount of the items per account, and we all know that you should have to have ONLY ONE ACCOUNT

Haha your idea isn't bad. But IMO isn't it a bit over the top? I mean like the base of operation, having a numerous number of guards to hire as well as a pet? No offense though but D3 takes more of a solo-heroic role (or within a small party), it would please some people but I think it would overall dissappoint most of the people that plays D1/D2 including myself. I think a good way to make gold more important is correcting their amount as well as preventing loss of gold on death. In D2 if I loot every item I find I could fill up my entire stash in 1-2hours (if I play hell mode). However if I were to die, I'd lose 10% of my gold. Because of that gold can never be a form of currency in D2. Make it so that gold is never limited, that you can have as many gold as you want in your stash (or on your character) and that you shouldn't lose gold on death (just EXP).

I personally think the root cause is what I've just mention about gold limit and loss of gold on death. If you fix the root cause then the gold would be more stabilized.

[Knight_Wolf]

I personally think the root cause is what I've just mention about gold limit and loss of gold on death. If you fix the root cause then the gold would be more stabilized.


Actually it would result in the opposite, if gold became so easy to accumulate and too easily available it's value will drop significantly and it won't be of much value in trade.

The problem with D2 is that it had no meaningful varied activities that required gold ... and even with the death penalty gold subtraction people could still accumulate tons of it easily thus making it more worthless in trade (why would i take your 1,000,000 in trade if i can make 4,000,000 in few hours with a high level character .. and i won't use it for anything worthy anyway) .... that's all.

[visom]

Well that is true for the other part. But if the value of gold were to fluctuate too much then it wouldn't be stable currency.

Preventing loss of gold on death as well as allowing unlimited number of gold in stash and person. Removing the price limit on what NPC's are willing to pay for a certain item and make it a bit more challenging to find gold instead of NPC'ing every elite, normal item you find. This is what gives gold it's stablility.

Of course having numerous area on where to spend gold is what gives gold it's importance and value.

[LongScar]

I think there are a lot of good idea's on here, especially the pay for creating sockets, empty sockets etc, just look at what the uses are for runes and gems in D2, they make a decent currency, so the same things we use them for, if we could pay gold for such things would add value to gold.

Also in gambling it seems most are stuck on the idea of gambling for items, why not allow gambling among players in a casino type environment, the casino takes a cut, so it makes a gold sink, and many people will gamble in an effort to make more money, even knowing the odds are against them. You could have any of the standard type games, blackjack, texas holdem, roulette, slots, or you could implement a racetrack in the game, where you could go bet on the races, or have fallen fights, who wouldn't want to go bet on the fallen fights?

Many many options on the gambling end that they could go with if in need of a gold sink, while adding to the entertainment of the game.

I do agree with Visom, that making gold a penalty for death, at least in the manner of D2, makes it poor as a currency. People will invest in items that cannot disappear like that. If death was just a set amount depending on lvl, then maybe it would work, but when it drops a % of your gold it makes it a poor choice of a way to store your wealth.

[RogueJuggalo]

To fix the 'losing gold on death' issue, it could be changed so that you only lose the gold on your character if you die and the gold in your stash is fine, just like Single Player D2.

[LongScar]

To fix the 'losing gold on death' issue, it could be changed so that you only lose the gold on your character if you die and the gold in your stash is fine, just like Single Player D2.

That thought crossed my mind once too, it would encourage you to be careful, but whats in the bank is there and can't go away. If gold has some real value, it would also convince you to be very careful if your a long ways from town and have picked up quite a bit of gold.