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Gold
,→Gold in Diablo III
The Diablo 3 team has repeatedly stressed [http://www.diii.net/blog/comments/bashiok-on-gold-sinks] their interest in having gold remain a viable game resource. It did not in Diablo 1 and 2, since high level characters perpetually had much more gold than they could spend. In game design terms, those titles needed more "[[gold sink]]s" to give players something worth spending gold on. [[Gambling]] was a perpetual use for gold in Diablo 2, but odds of obtaining a useful item via gambling were too low to motivate most players to keep gambling, once they reached the end game.
While the D3 Team has been vague about what gold may be used for, they have given a few hints. It's known that skill [[respecs]] and item will probably cost gold. Item modifications (unsocketing) will be expensive, including [[crafting]], adding sockets to items, and there will surely be other desirable ways to spend goldremoving gems from sockets, are handled by the [[Artisans]], but not for free.
[[Jay Wilson]] described the creation of the game's economy, and named some of the ways the team is looking to make gold more valuable, in an interview from [[BlizzCon 2009]]. [http://g4tv.com/games/pc/28197/diablo-iii/articles/68225/BlizzCon-2009-Diablo-III-Game-Director-Interview/]
::As long as you’ve got a way to get it under control, you know, with DLC or an expansion, make an adjustment. So, having a lot of things for people to spend gold on is really important. Every system that we design, we go, “Oh, how can we spend gold here?” People have asked about a respec system, for example. We will have one. We haven’t designed it yet, but I guarantee you that you’ll have to spend a lot of gold. I can guarantee that because that’s one of the places we’d look at to try and balance the economy. There are a whole bunch of systems like that that we haven’t announced or are in progress. “Will you be able to remove gems from items?” Yes, you will able to and I guarantee you it will cost a lot of gold. Those are part of the ways that you handle and make gold valuable.
===Artisans==
One of the major purposes of [[Artisans]] is as a gold sink and a balancing element of the Diablo III economy. Jay Wilson spoke about that from Gamescom, in August 2010. [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/jay-wilson-interview-tweakers.net/]
''The introduction of Artisans brings a big change compared to Diablo II. Why did you choose to take such a big step?''
::'''Jay Wilson: '''Actually, there are two important reasons, the economic reason being the most important.
::In Diablo II it was very easy to earn gold, but there wasn’t much all the gathered gold could be spent on. Thus players were stuck with huge amounts of gold. I wanted to change that. In order to have a working economy in a game, about the same amount of gold needs to enter the economy as disappears from it. In order to gain control of the economy, there need to be things that yield gold and things that gold can be spent on. As designers of the game, we need to control these two things.
::Moreover, the things you can spend gold on have to be worth the trouble to gather the gold for. Thus we have introduced two changes. Players will earn a lot less gold in Diablo III from selling items they gather on the battlefield, and they will find a lot less gold on the battlefield as well. Additionally, we try to make sure that there are things players will want to spend gold on. The buying of gear pieces is an excellent way to diddle players out of their gold. There was already a way to use gold to buy more items in Diablo II, but it was used only barely. With Artisans, we try to improve that. With the new system, we hope to achieve that players will want to earn gold, but especially that they will want to spend their gold on the three Artisans.
::The second reason results from the economic background. So we wanted gold to be spent more often, and at the same time, we don’t want players to lose much time on creating items. That doesn’t belong to a game such as Diablo III, in our eyes. After all, you are on an urgent mission to beat Diablo, that terrible demon that threatens the world, so you don’t want to waste too much time on a nicer ring or better boots. That brought us to the idea of Artisans, three different characters that can play a very useful role for you on your quest through Sanctuary. The three won’t join you on the battlefield, but will instead deploy their mobile trading post at the nearest settlement.
::So through salvaging, a lot of items you find on the battlefield will disappear from the economy. They will not directly be turned into gold at least. In Diablo III, you will sell a lot less items than in Diablo II, and that way earn a lot less gold, also because we have lowered the sell value for items that you have found, and also because we have lowered the amount of gold to be acquired on the battlefield. You will thus earn a lot less gold, even though you will need the gold more than before, since you need to pay the Artisans for their services.
==Inventory==
