Does anyone else feel it is absurd that they "assumed" players wouldn't make extensive use of the Auction House?
The number one goal for many players of the Diablo franchise is to collect equipment of ever-increasing power for your character. The Auction House makes this incredibly simple and efficient.
Did ANYONE think that the default position players would take with the Auction House is ignoring it? I didn't.
They can do a quck in-game poll and take numbers after a month has gone by. They have the technology already inside of WoW (polling a GM after you've talked to them). Just ask the question 'Do you want the auction houses removed'.
The Auction House is only a problem because loot drops are balanced around the existence of the auction house. The AH doesn't enable players to do anything they couldn't do in, say, D2 it just makes it easier to trade. If item drops had just been balanced around an AH not existing (note I'm not saying that the AH dynamically effects drops, which has been discredited countless times already) then less people would feel the need to use it to better their character.
also throw in the fact that Inferno difficulty was incredibly overtuned at release and tons of players were even forced to go to the AH if they wanted to continue their progressing their character.
I'm pretty sure the idea of the AH was thought with the best intention to provide a safe and easy way to trade but it's too convenient. We all saw the oversaturation of equipment because everyone wants to cash in to buy better stuff instead of salvage and craft, which was pointless before 1.0.7; AH provided better equipment.
Playing no AH-self found is something i did in hardcore, and it's quite fun but also tedious since drops are so random that it's no easy to find usable stuff. Not many are willing to waste countless hours to just find their own gear when they can spend 5-10 minutes and search for items with desiderable stats.
Also it would have helped to make equipped items account bound from launch. Not having any way for good items to be removed from the economy is just ridiculous.
I honestly think he is misremembering. There's no way they believed the auction house wouldn't be used by most of the population, given the absence of other gold and item sinks. I don't know about Jay Wilson, but there's no way all their designers are that detached from reality.
The ignorance in this thread is amazing. "Everyone knew this was gonna happen". "How can they not see this". "It was so obvious that the AH would be a game changer".
Guys, just browse threads from ~1.5-2 years ago; sure, you'll find some people who saw it coming. But you'll also find people who predicted the world would come to an end or Michelle Bachmann would become president.
What annoys me most about this is that if Travis Day had brought this news, everyone would be like "YAY THIS GUY IS AWESOME HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT MAKE HIM PRESIDENT OF BLIZZARD", but if Jay Wilson says the same everyone is just going crazy and turning into an ignorant holier-than-thou...
Looks like they should have built a game with an auction house instead of building a game around an auction house.That I've never understood why they thought it a good idea to give the ability to buy gold. That did nothing but destroy the gold economy and force players to buy gold.
It's shocking to hear this admission not even a year into the game. I actually expected to hear such things years from now.
My question; Now what?
Now we wait.
"the team is working on a viable solution, without giving any other details about what that would be like."
My follow up question; Was Wilson supposed to spill the beans on this issue?
As to the dubious comments at the end of the article about having no idea how players really feel on this issue; They have a website with every players account directly linked to it. Why not have a poll on their forums to extrapolate these opinions?
They can do a quck in-game poll and take numbers after a month has gone by. They have the technology already inside of WoW (polling a GM after you've talked to them). Just ask the question 'Do you want the auction houses removed'.
I'm sure it would have at most 10-20% of votes in favor of that. Despite all the outrage on the forums and websites over the AH, there's an undeniable fact that it makes "trading gear" a lot easier.
I've played quite a few public games recently (on the EU server) and it's INSANE the number of players (over 80% of the ones I've met - I can link profiles) who obviously didn't use the AH and had pretty "weak" gear, a lot of them with rares or non-BiS legendaries, despite the AH. These people would hardly vote against the AH, as they obviously don't care about all this (forum?) drama. And then there's the rest who use the AH and actually find it a useful tool.
The ignorance in this thread is amazing. "Everyone knew this was gonna happen". "How can they not see this". "It was so obvious that the AH would be a game changer".
Guys, just browse threads from ~1.5-2 years ago; sure, you'll find some people who saw it coming. But you'll also find people who predicted the world would come to an end or Michelle Bachmann would become president.
What annoys me most about this is that if Travis Day had brought this news, everyone would be like "YAY THIS GUY IS AWESOME HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT MAKE HIM PRESIDENT OF BLIZZARD", but if Jay Wilson says the same everyone is just going crazy and turning into an ignorant holier-than-thou...
The hate is too stronk in the D3 community. Too many are blind to reason, it's hard not being dragged into the tunnel vision theories they preach.
1 million players a day? On a goddamn ARPG? I wonder where are the smart asses now who said D3 had 50k players and was a "failure"? As usual on a Blizzard game, the community is fucking clueless.
My follow up question; Was Wilson supposed to spill the beans on this issue?
As to the dubious comments at the end of the article about having no idea how players really feel on this issue; They have a website with every players account directly linked to it. Why not have a poll on their forums to extrapolate these opinions?
Because they'd have very biased and screwed results. Most people who go to Blizzard forums enjoy being dramatic just for the sake of getting changes that benefit them personally (and not the game as a whole). If you even remotely visited WoW or SC2 forums, you'd see that any "community" poll results would be fubar.
The random casual player who just logs in every now and then and actually has fun playing the game (instead of wasting time whining) is probably gonna be left wondering why they removed a whole feature from the game.
1 million players a day? On a goddamn ARPG? I wonder where are the smart asses now who said D3 had 50k players and was a "failure"? As usual on a Blizzard game, the community is fucking clueless.
I saw this as well and was waiting for it to be mentioned. This should've been obvious to many haters. The traffic via the AH is a strong indicator that the number of active players is still quite high.
As to the dubious comments at the end of the article about having no idea how players really feel on this issue; They have a website with every players account directly linked to it. Why not have a poll on their forums to extrapolate these opinions?
Survey responses should never be mapped 1:1 to new design goals without reflection (basic lessons of usability engineering). Users will just pick whatever option seems to be best for them at the time of the survey, and how it would affect their game play on a short-term basis. However, there's no way the survey respondents can assess the long-term implications resulting from such a change.
Just remember if you had ask the 12 million people who own a D3 copy now back in 2011 "would you rather have an auction house or not" - sure, some die hard D2 fans might have chosen "no", but the overwhelming majority would've picked "yes", for sure.
As to the dubious comments at the end of the article about having no idea how players really feel on this issue; They have a website with every players account directly linked to it. Why not have a poll on their forums to extrapolate these opinions?
Because they'd have very biased and screwed results. Most people who go to Blizzard forums enjoy being dramatic just for the sake of getting changes that benefit them personally (and not the game as a whole). If you even remotely visited WoW or SC2 forums, you'd see that any "community" poll results would be fubar.
The random casual player who just logs in every now and then and actually has fun playing the game (instead of wasting time whining) is probably gonna be left wondering why they removed a whole feature from the game.
Still a poll would act as a barometer. Sure, some may vote whom don't even play anymore (at all). It doesn't make their opinion regarding the AH any less relevant.
I've long been a supporter of the AH but I recognize the negative issues it brought into the game. Having confirmation that Blizz views the existence of the AH's as a liability to the games integrity....well you can't argue and say this is coming from your aforementioned "dramatic" troublemakers.
If the "random casual player" actually gave a fuck-shit about this game, they would keep their fingers on the pulse. If they did so, they would make sure their voice is heard.
Just remember if you had ask the 12 million people who own a D3 copy now back in 2011 "would you rather have an auction house or not" - sure, some die hard D2 fans might have chosen "no", but the overwhelming majority would've picked "yes", for sure.
What reason do you have to say that?
After years of frothing at the mouth for news on D3's release, I heard that they planned on having a RMAH. I damn near shit my draws.....I honestly had to adjust to that idea over a long period of time. I hated it.
At my home website......the idea of AH's was detested and used as a key reason why many of the hard-line D2 vets wouldn't even play D3.
Just remember if you had ask the 12 million people who own a D3 copy now back in 2011 "would you rather have an auction house or not" - sure, some die hard D2 fans might have chosen "no", but the overwhelming majority would've picked "yes", for sure.
What reason do you have to say that?
After years of frothing at the mouth for news on D3's release, I heard that they planned on having a RMAH. I damn near shit my draws.....I honestly had to adjust to that idea over a long period of time. I hated it.
At my home website......the idea of AH's was detested and used as a key reason why many of the hard-line D2 vets wouldn't even play D3.
The idea of a RMAH was a lot more shocking to the community than the idea of an AH. For me personally the community I frequented most were excited for an AH to allow easier trading. They just didn't realize the AH was going to become a necessary toll via poor design to balance drops based on the existence of the AH.
To get any sort of usable poll data, they'd basically have to select a sample pool among people using the client and either choose randomly or carefully select a sample pool through demographic research. The big issue in either case is correcting for people who don't care about the poll and either answer strangely or not at all without messing up their data or skewing it away from the actual player-base's feeling. Just posting a poll on the forums wouldn't provide anything meaningful even if players knew what was good for the game's health since the majority of players of pretty much any game don't use the forums and forum-users are generally not representative of the player-base.
Even if they did have meaningful data, it wouldn't really change things. They can't just strip the AH out of the game. The outrage from something like that would drive players away in droves. That would be missing the point anyway as the issue isn't that the AH is too convenient and therefor needs to go away -- the issue is that you can't come close to finding gear yourself for your own characters which is as good as what you could buy given a similar amount of effort. The solution needs to improve self-found gear without significantly improving AH gear or gold found, such as the BoA crafting recipes. I think they are on the right track.
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...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
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The number one goal for many players of the Diablo franchise is to collect equipment of ever-increasing power for your character. The Auction House makes this incredibly simple and efficient.
Did ANYONE think that the default position players would take with the Auction House is ignoring it? I didn't.
also throw in the fact that Inferno difficulty was incredibly overtuned at release and tons of players were even forced to go to the AH if they wanted to continue their progressing their character.
Playing no AH-self found is something i did in hardcore, and it's quite fun but also tedious since drops are so random that it's no easy to find usable stuff. Not many are willing to waste countless hours to just find their own gear when they can spend 5-10 minutes and search for items with desiderable stats.
Guys, just browse threads from ~1.5-2 years ago; sure, you'll find some people who saw it coming. But you'll also find people who predicted the world would come to an end or Michelle Bachmann would become president.
What annoys me most about this is that if Travis Day had brought this news, everyone would be like "YAY THIS GUY IS AWESOME HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT MAKE HIM PRESIDENT OF BLIZZARD", but if Jay Wilson says the same everyone is just going crazy and turning into an ignorant holier-than-thou...
My question; Now what?
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Now we wait.
"the team is working on a viable solution, without giving any other details about what that would be like."
Ha. Bagstone.
My follow up question; Was Wilson supposed to spill the beans on this issue?
As to the dubious comments at the end of the article about having no idea how players really feel on this issue; They have a website with every players account directly linked to it. Why not have a poll on their forums to extrapolate these opinions?
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
I've played quite a few public games recently (on the EU server) and it's INSANE the number of players (over 80% of the ones I've met - I can link profiles) who obviously didn't use the AH and had pretty "weak" gear, a lot of them with rares or non-BiS legendaries, despite the AH. These people would hardly vote against the AH, as they obviously don't care about all this (forum?) drama. And then there's the rest who use the AH and actually find it a useful tool.
The hate is too stronk in the D3 community. Too many are blind to reason, it's hard not being dragged into the tunnel vision theories they preach.
1 million players a day? On a goddamn ARPG? I wonder where are the smart asses now who said D3 had 50k players and was a "failure"? As usual on a Blizzard game, the community is fucking clueless.
The random casual player who just logs in every now and then and actually has fun playing the game (instead of wasting time whining) is probably gonna be left wondering why they removed a whole feature from the game.
I saw this as well and was waiting for it to be mentioned. This should've been obvious to many haters. The traffic via the AH is a strong indicator that the number of active players is still quite high.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Survey responses should never be mapped 1:1 to new design goals without reflection (basic lessons of usability engineering). Users will just pick whatever option seems to be best for them at the time of the survey, and how it would affect their game play on a short-term basis. However, there's no way the survey respondents can assess the long-term implications resulting from such a change.
Just remember if you had ask the 12 million people who own a D3 copy now back in 2011 "would you rather have an auction house or not" - sure, some die hard D2 fans might have chosen "no", but the overwhelming majority would've picked "yes", for sure.
Still a poll would act as a barometer. Sure, some may vote whom don't even play anymore (at all). It doesn't make their opinion regarding the AH any less relevant.
I've long been a supporter of the AH but I recognize the negative issues it brought into the game. Having confirmation that Blizz views the existence of the AH's as a liability to the games integrity....well you can't argue and say this is coming from your aforementioned "dramatic" troublemakers.
If the "random casual player" actually gave a fuck-shit about this game, they would keep their fingers on the pulse. If they did so, they would make sure their voice is heard.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
What reason do you have to say that?
After years of frothing at the mouth for news on D3's release, I heard that they planned on having a RMAH. I damn near shit my draws.....I honestly had to adjust to that idea over a long period of time. I hated it.
At my home website......the idea of AH's was detested and used as a key reason why many of the hard-line D2 vets wouldn't even play D3.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
The idea of a RMAH was a lot more shocking to the community than the idea of an AH. For me personally the community I frequented most were excited for an AH to allow easier trading. They just didn't realize the AH was going to become a necessary toll via poor design to balance drops based on the existence of the AH.
Even if they did have meaningful data, it wouldn't really change things. They can't just strip the AH out of the game. The outrage from something like that would drive players away in droves. That would be missing the point anyway as the issue isn't that the AH is too convenient and therefor needs to go away -- the issue is that you can't come close to finding gear yourself for your own characters which is as good as what you could buy given a similar amount of effort. The solution needs to improve self-found gear without significantly improving AH gear or gold found, such as the BoA crafting recipes. I think they are on the right track.