Why RMAH will kill Diablo 3 (and how to save it)

[cozmiccc]

Two huge factors go into this: item rarity, and encounter difficulty.

If the items are rare enough, and the encounters hard enough, then items will not glut the market, at least not until such a time as we as a playerbase have had our money's worth, if you will.

I don't think the RMAH will kill D3; I think that freespecs will be what people will blame the "death" of D3 on, in this case where death=not lasting as long as D2, which will be the barometer of success, no regards to fairness.

Even in D2 with no freespec you can still raise a character from 1 to 70-ish in 2 days. But there is no way you can guarantee that you'll get a Windforce drop within 2 days of playing....

So which one is more 'permanent' here? :P

[Eagle]

Also depends on what you consider "massive"

Well I was using it relatively speaking, with 'massive' being very close to the top of my relative scale . Dunno how the guy I was quoting it was using it. I expect prices for gear to fall off exponentially as they move further away from perfection.

BiS items can't even be crafted. Crafts only go up to tier 15 and there is one tier above it.

That would be counter to what they've indicated in the past. (Edit: although I suppose that might just been at any given tier that is true, if there was no crafted gear at the top tier it wouldn't apply) They said that crafted gear can be better than legendary gear if perfectly rolled. What I took from that was that your not always going to get something better than the berst legendaries but with a perfect roll it can be. Have they said anything to change that? I quite possibly missed it if they did.

Completely agree with the rest of what you said.

[Karpalo]

Legendary gear isn't that great. Probably less random with fixed more ideal affixes and pretty good on average, but even the affixes have lower thresholds than same level rares. Tier 15 rares with good rolls are definitely inferno quality gear, but best in slot gear will be tier 16 rares, which is a tier that can only be looted.

[Eagle]

Ah yes, I forget about drop rares sometimes.

[imthedan]

I think people still think in terms of D2. They think it's going to be as easy as creating a character, then having someone rush you, level you all the way to 80+ then being able to go farm hell yourself (or Inferno in this example).

It's not going to be like that. It's going to take time to get through Inferno. Plus, yes, good items can drop from urns, but it's a low-low chance.

I'm fine with the RMAH. People forget that Diablo is a game. Who cares if others want to buy items? If you don't, then don't buy anything. In fact, be thankful that others want to buy items as you'll be able to put your items up and make a few extra bucks.

[skien]

Well I was using it relatively speaking, with 'massive' being very close to the top of my relative scale . Dunno how the guy I was quoting it was using it. I expect prices for gear to fall off exponentially as they move further away from perfection.

That would be counter to what they've indicated in the past. (Edit: although I suppose that might just been at any given tier that is true, if there was no crafted gear at the top tier it wouldn't apply) They said that crafted gear can be better than legendary gear if perfectly rolled. What I took from that was that your not always going to get something better than the berst legendaries but with a perfect roll it can be. Have they said anything to change that? I quite possibly missed it if they did.

Completely agree with the rest of what you said.

When we get to an equilibrium these items will devalue only as low as the materials that can be salvaged from them. One thing the OP mentioned was that it would be better to sell some item for X amount of gold then just buy out X material - If the items ever reach a point where they have 0 in-game value, they will still be worth the same as X material, or they will not be listed. It will be very rare to buy X materials, craft it into Y item then sell Y item for more than the value of the materials - this will only happen if you have the ZoD rune equiv of a recipe on one of your artisans or you get an insane roll.

[ShadoutMapes]

I certainly think the goldfarmers will drive prices very far down on the best items as well.
I'm not convinced that Inferno will be so difficult that farmers cant farm it. I'm not sure why people have the idea that goldfarmer-employees are necessarily bad players. If they spend enough time farming surely they can improve like everyone else.

And that is even ignoring bots, which might not be able to clear Inferno act1, but at least should be able to repeat some easy areas (lots of urn clicking ) and such.

Tier 15 rares with good rolls are definitely inferno quality gear, but best in slot gear will be tier 16 rares, which is a tier that can only be looted.

Source?

[pwt]

Yes you can simply ignore RMAH if you don't like it, all true. But try imagine this scenario that might happen someday:


**you login to your character, you're a reasonable skilled player but recently you're stuck on act 2 Inferno due to no small part to the fact that you haven't upgraded your sword since act 3 hell..
Now you can as usual go through and farm act 1 inferno or act 4 hell again OR open RMAH and drop $3 for the best legendary tier-16 sword with the best mod that only has reasonable chance to drop from inferno act 4 boss**

Exactly this... I dont want to ruin myself the game, but having a gimped char is not fun at all. Hopefully trading in this forums will help with not feeling "forced to take out the credit card".

But tbh, I expect diablo 3 to be a challenge for me a my pal, and not only an online roulette with demon shape (like d2 was, no matter how much we loved it).

[skien]

I certainly think the goldfarmers will drive prices very far down on the best items as well.
I'm not convinced that Inferno will be so difficult that farmers cant farm it. I'm not sure why people have the idea that goldfarmer-employees are necessarily bad players. If they spend enough time farming surely they can improve like everyone else.

And that is even ignoring bots, which might not be able to clear Inferno act1, but at least should be able to repeat some easy areas (lots of urn clicking ) and such.

Source?

Experience with farmers in WoW. They grind areas or farm nodes utilizing large amounts of time to grind cash rather than hitting high profit areas that require teamwork and gear. They grind GOLD, gold is not going to be that valuable and wouldn't affect the market drastically if they were farming it, it would only affect the Gold AH. Farming items requires a knowledge of the game. I think they would have to start losing profit from the black market before they try and go 'legit'.

Everyone keeps saying gold farmers are going to destroy the market as if within 5 days of release the market is going to be crushed by gold farming companies. The setup alone to get a farm of IP masked computers running diablo 3 will be relatively large, and with an unproven profit margin I don't know why they would. They have fulfilled a niche in MMO's because players are to lazy to level characters and grind gold but in D3 it will be readily available thanks to american item farmers pursuing the dream of being a professional gamer.

Wow gold farmers competition = My mate who collected herbs for a couple of months and made about six hundred bucks to subsidize his income.
D3 gold farmers competition = Every teenager, unemployed person, hardcore gamer.

Combine this with the difficulty level of farming the valuable items, the low drop rate and the amount of time they would have to spend to gear characters up to farm hell and you have a terrible business model. There could be a market for selling characters (if that's still on the cards) which could be viable and could shatter the market, but if everything we've been lead to believe is true. Getting a toon from 1-60 is just not going to be that easy, it will apparently take skill. Getting to max level in wow required you to read a quest, kill x monsters and drop it off.

All of this remains to be seen, but if I was a chinese MMO gold merchant, I would be considering D3, but I wouldn't have **** my pants and bulk ordered my crew copies.

[ShadoutMapes]

They farm gold/mats in WoW because there is nothing else to farm. Since items are BoP.

I find if very unlikely that it would require any particular skills to get to lvl 60 in Diablo 3 though.

Sure the competition from the average player in D3 will be higher than in WoW, which is only helping on driving the prices down.
Your average American player is not willingly to go as low on selling price as some goldfarmer company however.