Annoyance with all the Giveaways/SPTF ideas

[Greebo]

EDIT by Thyiad

"I asked the moderators to include this header here. The part of this post below the dashed line is how it was posted originally. My first post was somewhat petty and immature, neither of which I'm proud of. I apologized for it."

From my point of view; some interesting issues did come up in later discussion and people post creative and interesting ideas. In the interest of keeping this discussion on track, let's leave the personal comments out of this.

########
ORIGINAL POST

Dear Retiring Members and otherwise generous donors,

Over the past week or so, there are more and more giveaways. People are retiring, quitting, temporarily quiting, switching to HC. Whatever.

And it's become pretty common to give away for free items, which are pretty expensive, for people just asking for them. And I don't mean something like Neksja giving away a Faith. He asked for ideas on how the bow will be used, and people wrote essays on the subject.

I mean, stuff worth ~80-100 PGems is being given out left and right. I've spent reasonable amount of time doing my 8,500+ Meph (unsuccessful) runs to get my Arachnid Mesh, and if people post ISO: Arach Mesh and get one for free a couple hours later, it makes me feel like a complete moron. It's different if you underprice beginners gear like guilliame's, whistans, or something, and if you underprice an Elite Unique.

I mean no offense, I do hope people in question enjoy their free gear. Write a Mat/Pat threads!

I'm mostly venting, but also would like the people who decided to leave us to think a bit about others, who paid 120 PGems on auctions for items they are giving out for free, etc.

Here's an idea: Make a fun tournament with amazing prizes! I'll take care of the organizational stuff for you, if you can't be bothered.

Or donate your items as prizes for next MFO, so that people take them from your stashes instead of each other. I think this way you'd help the community better. Just my $0.02.

--Greebo

[neumein]

I get your drift, and in part, I agree.

However, having taken part in more than a couple giveaways, and hosted a couple myself, I see it as such. I've earned the item, I've had my fun with it, now it's your turn. I'm pretty sure I speak for others too, when I say that seeing others go ecstatic about receiving that pair of Gore Riders, or being eternally thankful for donating my nth Ravenfrost. It makes me happy knowing that something I would normally throw out, can really brighten someones D2-day.

[Greebo]

Yes, I get that. What I'm saying is that perhaps the really rare items could be treated with a bit more caution. I mean we are an economy, those of us in the Trade Pool. It's a strange kind of economy, but it's economy nevertheless.

Charity is nice, but to an extend. There are examples out there that if people were given enough free stuff, they stopped working, countries went into recessions. I don't want to mention examples, since it's politically sensitive topic.

I get that giving is fun. If I MP with some beginning players, I like to give them better weapons and such. I enjoy doing that. It's all good.

I'm just slightly put out by how expensive items are given away. And mainly, I wanted to make these two suggestions as alternatives to giveaways:
(1) Tournament prizes
(2) Future MFO prizes

Again, my main concern is about expensive items. Something people trade for runes and/or items usually traded/auctioned for 100 PGems+. It will have effect on economy, same way as printing money does. And not a good effect either.

Having said that all, I do hope all you charitable people do get the joy of seeing your stuff getting used by someone else!

--Greebo

[Thirty-Thirty]

I understand your position, but maybe you're taking D2 too seriously. I mean, I don't so much run because I need items. I could just whip out my old stashes. I run because I actually enjoy it.

That said, I agree that we should try to keep things sensible by having to earn items in some way. I've been the recipient of giveaways in the past, but they were normally quite limited (and once totally unexpected). For example, I remember a giveaway where each player could only ask for one particular item beyond TC78.

[Grisu]

I see where you're coming from - that's why I play self-found. I like the thrill of actually finding items, not so much of using them. It's all about the chase, you know

Anyways, I do enjoy giving away items who prefer another playing style - namely making the builds they always wanted to make, optimizing it etc. I delight in other people being over the moon about an item they wanted very badly and finally received, really

So I think it's a matter of playing style - if it's more about the finding, then play self-found, if it's more about the earning, then do only trade but not participate in give-aways. And if it's about making the perfect/thought after character build, then enjoy those free items Just my 0.02$.

[Serdash]

I got a Ber rune for free once. It helped me make infinity.

I got a bunch of Gul runes for free once. It helped me make Fortitude.

I got a Vex rune for free once, it helped me make my BotD.

I got a couple of Gul runes and an Ist rune once, it helped me make HotO.

I got a few Vex and Ist runes for free once, it helped me make CtA.

I got a Grief for free.

Someone gave me a free Windforce one time.

At one point I got 8 Offensive Aura skillers for free to use on my Tesladin. As well as a somewhat gg Griffon's Eye.

Someone gave me a bunch of Trap and Warcry charms at one point too. I also got a 35 life poison and bone skiller for free.

What do I do for any of this? Nothing. People were generous enough to give it away to me to help me along with builds I wanted to make.

What do I do in return? 99% of the time when someone asks me if I have something and they need it, and I have it spare, I toss it over to them. I give back to the community that helped give to me. There's no reason that a giveaway should be looked down upon. I don't get how "hundreds of pgems" worth of stuff is being given away, since I don't ever remember the SPF having a defined currency or price on anything. That was supposed to be one of the big glory parts about the SPF. We stick together in a tight knit community, and the trading is actually based around what people want and need instead of some arbitrary currency rate.

Cry moar plz. (Yes, that's a flame.)

[Greebo]

Fair enough. Point taken. (I mean the one about me taking things too seriously).

*Bursts into flames.*

(See what you did, Serdash?)

[Dark Matter]

*gets cap and slippers*

I remember when there was a weekly giveaway and only really rare items were traded.

[Low Key]

Concerning expensive items...

You could also argue that certain items are so expensive and sought at, that they do not function like normal items in the economy and can really only be moved by either extraordinarily huge trades, or by giveaways. In most cases these kind of items are very high runes (say Sur+) or runewords using them. You simply wont trade away, say a Faith bow, which was given away by a memeber recently. Thus they Faith bow doesnt effectively even touch the normal rules of our economy, or even directly affect it. Effectively as the economy is concerned, these items do not exist and giving them away doesnt distrupt it in any way. All this is of course pretty theoretical and stuff like LK and HF rushing change this.

But then there is the less rare, less expensive range of very valuable items that behaves in a very similar way. Good TC87 items, rare ethreal uniques, perfect items, godly rares, good vita skillers and their ilk. Generally the NTPP-resticted stuff. Items that you can normally both run for or trade for. These kind of items are the top tier of the economy and you do see them moving more. Thus you also see them given away at some regularity, usually when somebody quits. Still, even this wont really affect the economy in any noticable way. There simply wont be enough of a supply of these items to reduce the value, and there will always be a demand for them as the player base evolves. The occasional giveaway of an Azruwrath wont ruin their value, for example.

But I do see a small problem with the 1-100 pgem range of items, from the viewpoint of NTPP traders. Although it is very easy to get items from trades, it can be very difficult to sell any items if you are dealing on the pgem level. Due to the reluctancy of established traders of accepting any large payments from NTPP traders in fear of "taint", common normal, exceptional and low end elite items are often "sold" to the new users at the price of a pgem. This is all fine and good if you're a buyer, but if you're trying to sell a good, 20 pgem item, you face competition from tens of sellers that have a large enough stock to give them away for essentially free. Selling any low end uniques or sets is nearly impossible, because one half of the pool doesnt want them and the other receives them for free. But even this is more of a annoyance than a real issue.

tl;dr - The currency being entirely based on randomization and perceived value and trust between the seller/buyer makes for all sorts of wierd interactions happen. The system in place is never in any real risk, unless either of the two factors is seriously unbalanced. (Mass duping, globally forced values for items, etc)

[Greebo]

You make interesting points, from economical point of view.

I suppose I treated the trade thread too seriously, which mas a mistake. It's all about a community. It's like we live in a village and everybody has something to sell and give away. There is no currency.

I sure learned to admit it if I did something stupid in my life, and the first two posts in this forum are examples of stupid behavior. I apologize for it.

On the other hand I'm grateful, because people's posts in this thread helped me see the whole trading system in a new light, and I think I like it better that way.

No more need for flaming, lesson learned .

Valuable discussion on the topic of economy and community and trading and giving away is welcome of course.

--Greebo