A gem in the rough
#1
After coming back from my year-long D2 haitus, I have a single complaint. At this point, I could care less about skill changes, balance changes, what have you. The necro is woefully underpowered? Okay, that makes him a challenge. Sorcie too strong? Fine, that makes her "worthless" skills hell-viable variant fodder. Were the game to remain exactly the same with the patch, I would not mind. So long as my one complaint is addressed: Battle.net is a filthy, awful place and I can not stand it.

When I sit too long in a public channel, I want to scream. It's not so much the children and their clumsy swearing, or the arseholes and their all-too practiced swearing, or even the spirit-deflating ad bots, the top-of-their-lungs traders, the scammers, the crazies, or the beggars. That's us, baby, people. They're not changing.

What really gets me are the hacks, duped rares, bugged items, and infinite supply of ultra-high level uniques via massive duping orgies. Why? (You already agree, I know, but just bear with me here.) Because it makes pvp obsolete. Because item value is a myth. Because a godly, legit rare gets the "j00 n00b, that item sux0r!!" because it's not "white" or "hex" or "quark". Because trading is impossible, makes no sense, and forces you to accept or accrue bugged items. SOJs are worthless, they tell me. Wow. When D2 first came out, the ring was the holy grail. You know, back when it was called The Stone of Jordan. Now, there are probably more SOJs than players; they're common as dirt.

Assuming Blizzard nukes all the bugged items, hack programs, and that enough SOJs DO get used up in Blizzard's half-assed bid to rid b.net of the majority of them, we still have hope. Here's mine:

Item valuation, in an ideal world, is commensurate with time played. You play more, you get better stuff. With boss runs as they are, this isn't the case. You can get a sorc to lvl 80 in about four hours of play, buy store-bought MF equipment, and begin exploiting poor Meph and his riches, or Pindle and whatever he has in his pockets. In one afternoon, I kid you not, you can garner dozens of uniques. This isn't rewarding the dedicated player, it's rewarding the loophole player (we're ignoring duping, which of course is The Great Loophole).

What's the best barometer of play time? Gems. Period. They spawn everywhere, they reward progress in increasing quality, they have high utility, and barring duping, there's no way to get more other than to play. Or, even better, trade. But to make gems a worthy monetary unit on battle.net, a few stars have to align:

1. All other item loopholes must close. All, and I mean ALL, bugged items must disappear.
2. All static item runs (boss runs) must disappear.
3. New players must have access to coins, if not bills. They must be able to trade effectively within a few hours of play.
4. They must get "used up" with good frequency.
5. Gems must give you access, indirectly, to the best items in the game, or they will not hold their trade value and will be replaced with something that does.

Which brings me, finally, for god's sake, to my point: If what Isolde hinted at is correct, that the 3-socket cube sword trick will work for all items, then my hope may yet be warranted. Picture it: Weapons, almost invariably, need high damage numbers or they're not weapons, they're letter openers. CCBs with three sockets are much, much more valuable than regular old CCBs. The proof is that chipped gems are nearly a viable trade item now. Some people do accept them. And this because a small portion of D2 builds needs a small number of swords. If every weapon in the game was at its best when it was the magical, three socket version, then chipped gems suddenly become very valuable, indeed. That means that anybody with the patience to run around in Act 1 normal will be paid a salary in chippies. Those with no patience, the majority of course, trade for them. This would mean:

1. New characters, even new ladder characters, will have access to a very viable trade fodder right away.
2. The chippies get used up on a regular basis. Thus, there's always a demand.
3. The inherent differences between the patient and the impatient will be the dynamic that facilitates trading of high-level items for low-level gems.
4. If it worked on all items, then ALL players would want them. Assassins, Amazons, any and all attacking characters.
5. It would help deflate the luck factor of the have- and have-nots. So you don't get that lucky Lightsabre drop, ever. Instead, grab any old unique elite, and start cubing. Sure, there's luck there, too, but your odds are much better and you don't have to be in the right place at the right time, with the right amount of magic find on a correctly twinked out character. You just need patience.

I may be grasping at straws, here, to a degree, but I really think that if that cube recipe works on all items, and the best damage affix can still get attached to magical items, then fair trading and item valuation may yet be possible.

Edit: I had to hit edit and apologize for the length. I'm sorry!
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#2
Quote:Which brings me, finally, for god's sake, to my point: If what Isolde hinted at is correct, that the 3-socket cube sword trick will work for all items, then my hope may yet be warranted.

snip

Quote:The proof is that chipped gems are nearly a viable trade item now. Some people do accept them.


I don't mind the chipped gem economy, but I'd rather see it as a perfect gem economy. If the 3 chipped gem + [weapon] recipe was altered to require perfect gems, I think it would make for more balanced trading.

The reason for this is that it makes no sense to make the common-as-dirt chipped gems have more value than their upgraded counterparts. Any low level character can have a full stash of them by the end of Normal Difficulty, and trade them for some gear they would never find until much later in the game through normal playing.

Perfect gems are comparitively much harder to come by, allowing for saner trading. The only real way to gather a lot of perfect gems is to gather up those flawless gems and cube them up (or search for gem shrines). This takes much more time than slumming Act 1 Normal for chips. It's also quite reasonable for anyone to do, given enough play-time. Just collect them as you naturally play, and you'll build up a nice stash of them.

Chipped gems should really have little value. They should be useful for starting characters, but that's about it. I mean, how ridiculous is it for people to center entire character BUILDS around finding chipped gems? Gogo Holy Fire Paladin.

In conclusion, I hope the recipe is altered to use perfect gems with ANY weapon and grant 3 sockets. Heck, maybe even have it grant anywhere from 1-3 sockets. If the chance to get 3 sockets was pretty low, people would be cubing things all the time, making the perfect gem even more valuable.


-DeeBye
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#3
You can go scarcer than Perfect Gems I think. All you'd have to do change the recipe to regular grade gems. ;)

Chips are easy to get - just zip around Act 1 Normal and collect what falls. Regular gems fall sparingly around the end of Normal and Act 1 Nightmare and otherwise would need to be cubed into existence. By contrast perfect gems never drop (aside from one quest), but nearly two thirds of the game is dominated by flawless gems and cubing them up is a snap.
Heed the Song of Battle and Unsheath the Blades of War
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#4
I hope I'm not the only who HATES the 3-chipped recipe. It's one of the most stupid ideas they've come up with yet, allowing you to not only get the most damaging weapons in the game, BUT with sockets to go along with it, for a measly few chipped gems. I cringe when I hear people give "advice" of cubing for a Cruel CB as the end-all of strategies, but the fact is that's pretty much all you need to do to run rampant through 8-player Hell. And of course, it makes any other weapon class aside from swords worthless. I know they're extending it to all weapons, but they should remove it completely, or severly nerf it.
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#5
It takes forever. No, I mean it. Forever. I tried once and went through about 600 chippies before it happened. That's no exageration. It'd be silly to take it out since it takes less time to shop for a CCB (sans sockets) at Larzuk. However, for those willing to invest the time it takes, it's a great way to reward that. IMO, that is.
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#6
okay, I'll broaden it to include other things besides a CCB because there ARE other VERY good weapons you can get with the recipe. I wouldn't mind AS MUCH if the swords weren't socketed, but the ability to get just a ridiculous weapon for practically nothing is absurd. But what do I know, I don't think you should be able to buy Elite items either, I'm just old-school in that I think you should have to find your gear :(
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#7
I agree. I've exhausted all the chipped gems I ever had and still nothing. :P
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#8
I'd rather that anything might be available in the shop, but accurately valued both on the buy and the sell. In order for that to work you need a monetary system that is based on more than one coin. (e.g. every store sells a gemmed talent for 500,000 gold which is stackable (say up to 500). Then you base the economy on the best item = 500 (250 million gold) talents in the shop. )

Then if they would ever implement Pete's suggestion of making (all) items eventually wear out, new items would always be valuable. And, then to accelerate destruction of Iths, and hacked items, they could introduce the dreaded "Rust Monster" from D&D that shows up when godly gear is present and always chooses to hit the best weapon or armor, heh. This will keep the economy in perspective and related to the game space, rather than what item farmers and what some dupers might do to it.
”There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

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#9
Ignatz,May 30 2003, 08:23 PM Wrote:It takes forever. No, I mean it. Forever. I tried once and went through about 600 chippies before it happened
I know, and this is btw the reason to why the chipped economy exists. :)

I don't really have anything against it -- it's the recipe that might be a bit screwed up, not the economy. People needs HUGE amounts of chippeds to get something decent and when they do (think 3-socketed Cruel Colossus Blade of Swiftness) it's an item of awesome power. ;)

Since the chipped economy is perfectly legal and everything, I have more problems with the SOJ economy. Luckily, I play on Europe and it seem to have been destroyed by the cheaters themselves due to massive duping causing massive inflation. It's funny, since one time the soj economy was based on dupes to a large part. Sure, they were massively gambled in pre-expansion but I still think there were lots of dupes 1.08 sojs with no item id's so they went undetectable by Blizzard's dupe scanner. :(
<span style="color:orange">Account: jugalator // <span style="color:orange">Realm: Europe // <span style="color:orange">Mode: Softcore (kinda inactive nowadays though)
Loyal Diablo fan since 1997 :-)
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#10
The SOJ debacle will be a thing of Blizzard legend, I think. You could write a case study in online-persona psychology on that phenonmenon itself.

What I really like about a chippie-based (or gem based in generall...I'd be perfectly happy if the new recipe were 3 perfects...but it IS true that chippies are scarcer than pgems given where most people play) is that there will never be a duping problem! Who in their right mind will spend an afternoon duping, what, maybe a couple hundred chippies?

One reason I like chippies better than pgems to build an economy around, though it certainly DOES, I admit, seem entirely counterintuitive, is that in order to get them you DO have to "slum" (an apt term) it. But that's the beauty of it: By slumming it, you guarantee that you're not doing ANYthing else useful. There's nothing at all in Act 1 Normal that's of any use to anybody in terms of trade value. Except for those fanatic Biggin's Bonnet collectors, of course. So to run around slumming it for chippies, IS to whore yourself out...but at the opportunity cost of something worthwhile, like leveling or hunting, etc.
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#11
I do agree on one point... it should be a gem. Let me explain. After playing Hellfire The Dark for many months, I've grown acustomed to the Blood Stones Akara sells. When you have some much gold your inventory is going to explode, you buy a blood stone and everything is right as rain. The concept is novel and usable for all; 1,000,000 GP = 1 blood stone. 1 blood stone = 1 SOJ, or some equivilant like that. With blood stones, you can easily set the monetary value of items with stones. However... you must make money worth something. How do you do that? I thought all that gold was worthless...? Well, glad you asked. First, you must make rare items a lot more useful so people will actually pick them up off the floor when they drop and start gambling again. Once people have started gambling for "good" items (like they use to), gold will be worth something, and the blood stone will be worth a lot to most people. The beauty behind the stone is that it allows everyone to acquire it through gameplay and does not cater to the cheaters, hackers, or even the botters. Everyday people who play the game for fun and not money or not to be #1 on the ladder or (put your favorite reason you hate people on b.net here) can benefit from a blood stone, having something of value without 100,000 mindless magic finding runs. No my friend, this method virtually a Perfect Diamond ;) <pun> .
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." -Albert Einsetin
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#12
I totally agree. That would be a fantastic feature in the game. In an economy, bartering doesn't work. Capitalism proves that real trade efficiency can't be achieved without a monetary unit. The SoJ became that for a while, but that's bunk. It should be a built in game unit. You know what I want? I want a goddamn Plutonium gem. That would f-ing rule.

Anyway whatever the name I think that's a great idea and I really, really hope Blizzard agrees.
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