A well written piece: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6307652827

As a banker, I find the overall analysis fascinating and worth the time to read.

My simple take on the D3 economy is: Similar to all virtual and real economies, they have a life cycle until collapse. Make as much profit prior to collapse.

I wasn't very impressed. I have an economics background as well and what he described was all really "duh" stuff, because he simplified it too much. He may be a behavioral economist, but has no concept of game design whatsoever. Half of his suggestions are ridiculous from a game design perspective. By narrowing his focus specifically to the economics of the situation, he painted himself into a corner almost immediately and neglected everything exogenous to his framework (look, I can use big words, too).

He entirely neglects the idea of a higher level cap, higher item cap and introduction of higher powered items. The patch 1.04 2H weapons will all but eliminate an entire class of weapons from the entire economy overnight. Blizzard also wiped out tens of billions of Gold from the market with their dps nerf. Blizzard has so many more levers to pull than what he limited himself to that it wasn't nearly worth the effort he put into it.

Starting it out with saying he won't be giving away his best ideas for free is so arrogant and pompous, you just feel the need to punch the guy through the internet. If he wasn't so clearly full of himself, I would think he was trolling.

@ecocd I agree that he approached it from a very myopic standpoint regarding the strict economics of the game and could have taken into consideration other programming options Blizzard could utilize. However, his underlying message regarding droprates should be taken into consideration. He advocates for lower droprates of high level items. I agree somewhat. Personally, I feel that Blizzard should not have made elites/champs easier and increase the rare droprates for trashmobs. Rather, they should have increased rare drop rates in Act 3 and 4 Inferno to reward those that can actually farm those levels. I would have not nerfed a single elite/champ in those levels but ensured that everything an elite/champ dropped would be a 63 yellow to legendary. This ensures that those that have the ability to swim in the deep end can at least have some chance for a proverbial gold medal and those that cannot will drown and work harder for the ability to do so.

Regarding his arrogance, I see no issue with it as every successful person from Obama, Romney, Mother Theresa, Ghandi, etc. can be labelled as arrogant by the various John Q Public. It is subjective and and an illogical ad hominem.

@Khan A lot of the changes being made are to level the playing field. Right now, it's definitely a "rich get richer" economy. Sure, people can move up with hours of grinding (me), but anyone that has enough gear to farm Act 2 comfortably and Act 3 fairly comfortably is at a huge advantage compared to the players forced to do Butcher runs. The change to the damage on 1H weapons, HP drop on Elites and the increase in Magic drop rates on White packs will all serve to give more casual players a chance to find items they could actually use instead of relying on the Auction House. The highest sale I've had is 2.3 million Gold and I've logged 150 hours on my DH. Even after all that time, I haven't even been able to clear Act 3 with my equipment. That's utterly ridiculous by any rational standards. With these changes, I'm at least going to have a chance.

Regarding drop rates, what's the point of having really cool Legendaries if a player never sees one drop? The long tail on Legendaries is already plenty long.

you never found one?
I played "only" 120h and found 7 Legendaries (I am only using the 300th Spear to get MF on my Templar, the other 6 are useless) and one amazing Set pair of pants, still equipped (you can see it on my profile)

I played 70 to 80h before finding the first one.
I had 2 drop in one day once.
Most of them were found with 190 to 210% base MF and 5x NV on top.
I found 2 or 3 in the Hell Pony Level.

Random RNG is random.

but it's not that bad.
if they were not worthless, I would have been happy with the drop rate.

what annoys me is the drop rate on recipes. I never found a single Legendary/Set one, only 3 or 4 useless 4-affixes yellow ones.

I've found 3 Legendaries and one fell relatively early. I waited some 80 hours for the next one and have my 3rd drop at around 120 hours. Only one Lvl 61 Legendary and like most, it was only worth salvage. Ditto for me for plans, but I did get one useless 5-affix plan unless 2H weapons really are legit in 1.04.

I'll really never understand the point of having level 60+ plans that give 200-400 DPS weapons.

No one does. Easily the most baffling design decision of the entire game, in my opinion. Also, Ruby prices are already up to Amethyst prices. Doesn't look like there's much opportunity there anymore.

I've spent 381 hours total for my characters and have found 3 yellow plans, a zunimassa boot, a ghenna plan, and several nat peices all from butcher runs. My only awesome legendary item drop was my skull grasp in A3. They've all come from trash mobs also. Not a single legendary drop from an elite.

At any rate, I do welcome this change as it will continue to demonstrate that regardless of providing a greater "equality" to gameplay, "inequality" of fortune will continue based on hours played and possibly this paragon system (if true). The highest gold sale I've had was 12 million for 30 brims and I forsee this to be the hot commodity for some time so I'm stockpiling those bad boys.

Regarding Paragon, I just read the official release. Its true and I am happy.

When you say 3 yellow plans, are you only including 6-affix Grand plans or any plan? I've had 4 normal plans (1 dupe >_<) and 1 fine plan drop in my 150 hours. If you've only found 3 total, that's a crazy difference in results between our play times. I had 1 Legendary from an Elite, 1 from a trash mob and 1 from a corpse. As rare as the Legendaries are, it makes sense they're coming from trash mobs due to the sheer number of trash mobs you can kill vs. elites.

Good luck with your Brim play!

The yellows were all the same thing: Grand Sovereign Mail. Gave them away to friends as I had already purchased it. I haven't found any normal yellow plans yet.

For the trash mobs, sometimes I run around and wait for those skeleton spawn monsters (not sure what their called) to spawn quite a few skeletons on screen to get a larger mob and then hack away. I'm sure this will be a good strategy to increase paragon experience also...