Players give value to things according to how "cool" they will be wih it: changing their title, their rank, that looks nice,help to show big damage, something nobody else have....

Showing off is the only thing that matters for most of the people I think.

2 hours ago, Doci-lowraptor said:

Players give value to things according to how "cool" they will be wih it: changing their title, their rank, that looks nice,help to show big damage, something nobody else have....

Showing off is the only thing that matters for most of the people I think.

4

While I think aesthetics is an extremely important and sometimes undervalued aspect of value in games, I'd argue that aesthetics, by itself has less to do with aesthetics than does rarity.  If everyone starts out a game with a super-awesome ninja unicorn, no matter what it looks like, it will be common and its novelty will wear out quickly.  Aesthetics are the best way for a player to visually distinguish him/herself from others.  Since the best way to ensure rarity is through difficulty, this, in turn, means that items of higher utility increase in value.

Think about this, assuming equal utility, would you go for the sparkling glowing uber sword that everyone has or a one of a kind rusty sword that you earned from defeating the super hard boss dragon?

This leads me full circle back to the idea that value in a game is proportional to its utility.

In the case of game money, the value is determined simply by some combination of time to acquire and what it can be used to obtain.  Aesthetics are one of the many "carrots" that players chase and this, in turn, drives value into the items necessary for players to meet their goals.

So.....

Factors that increase value:

Utility
Rarity
Athletics

As I said above, money's value in-game comes simply from what it can buy modified by its difficulty to obtain...

 

I think it doesn't look nice to look the same as every body. To that regard, rarety is important but I think that's almost just about it. 

Cosmetic is probably the most valued thing to my opinion. You always have things that are only there to be there (collector) in every game and that's super expensive all the time.

Usually rare things are very hard to get through RNG but that not the actual definition of the word "difficulty" you'll agree with that I think. I don't know many games where hard stuff to get aren't very few and the most valuable thing at the beginning to finally just be kind of casual. 

About your question, I think I will always keep the cheapest and sell the other one. You mainly have 2 kind of people: - - those who get a little money and get back to poverty

-Those who always invest money and always stay posh

The second category don't spend money for nothing very often and wearing an expensive stuff who has a cheap equivalent is the beginning of loosing money. No matter how hard it was. Profitability's always first in multi-player gaming (which is quite sad). 

The most important things you dismiss are 1) knowledge 2) lazyness. 

You can always earn money in other's laziness or because you know something they don't. That usually how you get gold x10 on a game. 

Doing hard stuff is not usually the best way to get richer. It's good. But not the most efficient at all. (unless you find a way to make it easier an quickly, which as I said is more about knowledge) 

look into Octalysis:  Its a big topic

11 hours ago, DisagreeWithD said:

look into Octalysis:  Its a big topic

 

That is fantastic.  Thank you.

14 hours ago, csbrown28 said:

That is fantastic.  Thank you.

Your welcome, I hope its helpful.