It doesn't matter if trading would take place outside of the game, in forums. The important part, which you all seem to (conveniently) disregard is this: Blizzard wouldn't balance the game around the existence of those trading forums like they do with the AH. I don't care that people have better gear than me, I don't care that "people would still flip and trade and buy their gear in 3rd party sites". I DO care that my experience when I play the game by.....actually PLAYING the game (alien concept, I know) is being negatively affected (by way of reduced drop rates) to accommodate those that want to spend hours looking at listings in the auction house.
Current itemization sucks, yes. However I don't think there is a conspiracy to force players to use the AH. There has been no changes made to support the theory that the game is balanced around the Auction House. I remember all resist was quite a rarity before the first item changes. Now less than 70 can really hurt the value of an item. The problem is current itemization SUCKS, which makes good items unfairly expensive.
Hypothetically let's say Lacuni Prowlers in itemization 2.0 always rolled crit and 100+ main stat. It now becomes very inexpensive to buy a "good" pair of Lacunis and always makes self found ones good. I find a couple pairs of lacunis per week and probably brim them all. However if I find 1 pair per month, there is a good chance that the second pair I find are an upgrade, and if not they would probably be good for a friend, an alt, or can be traded via whatever platform I prefer. This is why I strongly believe it is important to wait until itemization 2.0 to see exactly how it works before trying to fix an economy that won't function the same way in 8 months.
the problem with the ah is not the flippers and the prices. it is the low drop rate of good items. in d2 i could find all of the items i needed by simply normal farming. blizzard really made good drops so low that it made ah a valuable part of the game if you want to progress in dps or quicker farming speed. i finally got to the point where a great item cannot be found for weeks or months unless i buy it. so what is the point of farming if you cant find an upgrade regularly?
Hypothetically let's say Lacuni Prowlers in itemization 2.0 always rolled crit and 100+ main stat. It now becomes very inexpensive to buy a "good" pair of Lacunis and always makes self found ones good. I find a couple pairs of lacunis per week and probably brim them all. However if I find 1 pair per month, there is a good chance that the second pair I find are an upgrade, and if not they would probably be good for a friend, an alt, or can be traded via whatever platform I prefer. This is why I strongly believe it is important to wait until itemization 2.0 to see exactly how it works before trying to fix an economy that won't function the same way in 8 months.
In your hypothetical situation there would still be the same ammount of Lacunis, and those that are one or two stat points worse will still be almost worthless and the price for the "perfect" ones will still skyrocket. So overall, it wont change from today except for the few people who actually play totally self found.
And yes, Blizzard will of course wait and work on fixes that fix everything. It's not like they saw this thread here today and are now pushing to have it done by next friday.
the problem with the ah is not the flippers and the prices. it is the low drop rate of good items. in d2 i could find all of the items i needed by simply normal farming. blizzard really made good drops so low that it made ah a valuable part of the game if you want to progress in dps or quicker farming speed. i finally got to the point where a great item cannot be found for weeks or months unless i buy it. so what is the point of farming if you cant find an upgrade regularly?
if all good items have high drop rates, where is the point ? YOu play for two weeks, find every good item, then you are bored and play something else. Great game design...
The real problem is expectations. You can quite easily play trough the entire game ( all 4 difficulties ) with selffound gear. But everybody looks at the very best players, compares his gear with theirs and comes to the conclusion that their gear sucks. The same gear that he cleared inferno with. People just need to get real about their own expectations and we would not have 99% of this discussion.
I think just making things BoE created more hurdles and problems than it solves. I really hope the devs will do the right thing before we bash eachother's skulls in here on Diablofans
I am very confident that the devs will find a good solution in the end.
Till then we bash each other in forums, isnt that the gamers favourite past time anyway ? ^^
1 : More mempos every day can be a good thing, specially for people who dont have billions to throw around. As it is atm, low, middle and high class items keep getting cheaper, and only the top end highest best items keep getting more expensive. Which is good IMO, otherwise only the richest players would be wearing good gear.
2 : We need better and worse items to make the game somewhat interesting. Not everybody should wear a mempo, or they can hand out free mempos rigth at the character creation. And I think that is more motivating than disheartening.
3 : What do you mean by "average" players ? There is a little bit of a skill factor in this game, but most of the time the quality of your gear is directly related to the time invested. Which again is a good thing IMO. ( Of course not talking about people botting, but I think we all agree that this is so bad that we dont need to talk about it. )
Now I don't agree with your opinion #1, but I like opinion #2, which is the contrary
It's more rewarding to run around in yellow stuff and be ecstatic when you see that orange glowing helm some day, than it is to get an almost free Mempo handed to you at 60 via the AH for the price of your act 1 normal mode funds.
By "average" I mean those players, who don't play so much, that they can get 20 legendaries a day, if they feel like it. For the record, I'm one of those who could. But for those average players, like some friends of mine, I feel kind of sad, when they are excited about that one legendary in 3 evenings, which then turns out to be garbage
You dont have to. Go kill shit all day. You will find stuff to sell, and you will make gold. Nobody is forcing you to play the AH. There are even players who only play selffound. If that's what you want, there is nobody stopping you from doing it.
I don't have to and I don't. But I'm not really making any meaningful money from my drops. I actually got a Mempo yesterday, it's listed at a ludicrous price of 500k and hasn't sold yet. Ludicrous because it's (almost) the best helm one could ever have in the game for a price you could pay after arriving in hell mode for the first time, I think. (edit: haha, I just saw, that I wrote a1 normal before, well )
That's where my personal gaming experience is influenced. My stuff isn't worth shit because there is just too much stuff.
And also maka had an important point being that drop rates have been adjusted down because of the AH.
I've had sufficient back-and-forth to understand that you truly feel this way. I fully agree with you here, for the record.
But, the cynic in me simply says that MOST people who whine about the AH (and I'm not calling you a whiner) are really whining about other people's gear.
I doubt, he's the only one who has valid reasons to complain.
in d2 i could find all of the items i needed by simply normal farming. blizzard really made good drops so low that it made ah a valuable part of the game.
[...]
so what is the point of farming if you cant find an upgrade regularly?
That last question pretty much sums up the most basic problem of the game.
You don't get rewarded (enough) for playing (=farming in the Diablo franchise) the game.
You can get rewards, but you have to "work" the AH or pay money for them.
So, to put it as nicely as possible: It's more of a Wall Street sim than an action rpg.
in d2 i could find all of the items i needed by simply normal farming. blizzard really made good drops so low that it made ah a valuable part of the game.
[...]
so what is the point of farming if you cant find an upgrade regularly?
That last question pretty much sums up the most basic problem of the game.
You don't get rewarded (enough) for playing (=farming in the Diablo franchise) the game.
You can get rewards, but you have to "work" the AH or pay money for them.
So, to put it as nicely as possible: It's more of a Wall Street sim than an action rpg.
You can just farm the game and get upgrades "regularely". Of course the rate of upgrades will decline as your gear gets better and better, just as the price for upgrades increases as you gear gets better if you go the ah way. You can't keep getting upgrades at the rate of the early game cause that would lead to insane inflation.
And about comparing to d2 : d2 is incredibly easy, one of the things I am very glad they changed in d3. At least in d3 you can set your own difficulty and it takes a while before you can beat the hardest one. D2 has been cleared with naked hc chars over and over again. I dont want my gaming experience watered down that much just that some people can play selffound.
By "average" I mean those players, who don't play so much, that they can get 20 legendaries a day, if they feel like it. For the record, I'm one of those who could. But for those average players, like some friends of mine, I feel kind of sad, when they are excited about that one legendary in 3 evenings, which then turns out to be garbage
For the record, the gear you see in my profile is all collected trough playing, and while I dont own MP10 like it's nothing, I can kinda hold my ground in up to mp8-ish and do a satisfying lot of damage. By playing I mean selling stuff I find to buy upgrades, but not playing the AH.
And if your friends still get excited about every leg that drops then they are not very familiar with the drop tables and the chances for the random attributes to be useful
The important part, which you all seem to (conveniently) disregard is this: Blizzard wouldn't balance the game around the existence of those trading forums like they do with the AH.
So you think that the vast majority who wants to keep the AH should be forced out of it just so you can have your dropchances tweaked a few % when you play selffound ?
You brag about gear on your profile because you have collected it yourself? You collected it yourself from the Auction house...
People just don't get how much more rewarding the game is when you can find upgrades for yourself without the AH ruining the game for ya'. I know what you find rewarding, I do. Jokes aside. Everybody benefits from less loot on the floor and items with higher quality. The reason for the shitty quality and the mountains of trash loot is the AH.
There is not much to brag about with my gear. And how i collected it is quite clearly explained in my last post.
Now I am playing hc though, with pretty much selffound gear cause I have no gold...
The loot fountains is a part of the diablo game. It was the same in d2. Loot is always flying around in huge quantities and that has nothign to do with the AH.
How do you benefit from less loot in better quality? That sound to me like you get the same ratio of usable items.
Please dont put words into my mouth and dont tell me how I played the game before or how I am enjoying it now. You clearly dont know much about that.
My 2 cents...
The AH provides a mechanism to trade in an easy way. Is A LOT better than trade chat/ a trade window. Most games these days have AH systems (but not a RMAH).
The RMAH is also good to solve the issue that occurred in D2 (and other games) where 3rd party sites would spam chat channels/games and possibly rip players off. Real money purchases would still happen no matter if the D3 RMAH existed or not.
I think some have a problem with how easily the auction houses enable players to get godly gear.
It is funny though in some ways that the ELITE players talk about efficiency all the time but don’t like the AH even though it is more efficient to farm currently (bar Exp)..
I do agree that players should be rewarded more for playing the game and not the AH though.
At the moment there are a few options:
Remove Auction Houses
Not a good idea as they are needed to solve the other problems that occur in games without them
Have a BOA model
Allows players to get better gear playing than from using the AH/RMAH - Is also away to have the AH stay intact
Have a different drop rate for BOA items (new type of rarity introduced maybe)
Have a Top Tier Gear Sink
A BOA model is a form of a Gear Sink
Having a reason to salvage Top Teir Gear
It used to be for Brimstones (long ago).
Idea - Maybe salvaging a Tal Rasha Chest so that you get a ‘Tal Rasha’ Jewel that is used to socket an item. The better the perfection of the item, the better the Jewel salvaged will be.
Cosmetic item rewards for selling good items to a new vendor.
Gear that levels up
Items that are self-found can grow in power (levelled up). The more you play the better your gear will become. If traded items lose levelling potential
TLDR:
I think all I am trying to say is that there are more elegant solutions that can be implemented than removing the AH’s (which were required to solve different issues of previous/other games)
There is nothing wrong with the AH, people who still claim that are delusional.
The AH is nothing but a trading platform. If you are not happy with itemisation or drop rates or your drop luck or whatever, then complain about those, not about the AH.
To me the OP didn't want to solve some AH problem, but wanted to address the lack of item sinks. However making items BoA on trade would only slow down the item inflation, how much is very hard to know since we don't know how big part of the items on AH are resells of items that players have found/bought upgrades to and how many are "fresh unused" items.
Right now the game only has item sinks for the low quality items, vending and salvaging. To really make a dent in the item inflation players would need to have reason to destroy the top quality items too.
BOE and BOA also has the problem of completely wiping out demand for mid tiers.
This means that because it's going to be so costly for a marginal upgrade (due to the fact that once you acquire an item it can't be resold for money to finance your next purchase) people will skip mid-tier gear altogether.
It'll also bring about a greater demand for high end gears and RMAH usage.
On high end item sinks.
Some Asian MMORPG's have solved that problem via costly upgrades (i.e. adding a 7th stat to the equipment) at a risk of lowering the equipment's stat quality or completely destroying the equipment altogether.
Not sure if Blizzard would want that, but it would serve as a very efficient high end item sink.
I think just making things BoE created more hurdles and problems than it solves.
You are 275% right on that. It's completely against the spirit of the Diablo franchise (and even ARPGs in general). The devs are absolutely aware of this and I'm confident that they will be taking this strongly into account when going forward. I think the 1.0.7 crafting stuff was really just a stopgap thing to address self-found playstyle as well as to provide another, semi-viable, moneysink and not an indication that BoA is here to stay.
They definitely want people trading because that was a huge part of D2 online. They also want everyone who fires up the game to feel that they "have a chance" without trading (among friends or strangers).
They're not going to achieve that by going on some kind of anti-flipping crusade, though. Or any means that dictates that people who want to trade gold for items cannot do so. D2 managed to appease both traders and self-found people despite the clusterfuck of duping. I have the absolute utmost confidence that they can do the same with D3, at least enough so that we all feel like they're listening to us and doing their best.
The first step, though, is changing the itemization (and drop rates). We cannot possibly assess the rest of the situation without seeing first-hand the repercussions of those changes.
I think just making things BoE created more hurdles and problems than it solves.
You are 275% right on that. It's completely against the spirit of the Diablo franchise (and even ARPGs in general). The devs are absolutely aware of this and I'm confident that they will be taking this strongly inot account when going forward. I think the 1.0.7 crafting stuff was really just a stopgap thing to address self-found playstyle as well as to provide another, semi-viable, moneysink and not an indication that BoA is here to stay.
They definitely want people trading because that was a huge part of D2 online. They also want everyone who fires up the game to feel that they "have a chance" without trading (among friends or strangers).
They're not going to achieve that by going on some kind of anti-flipping crusade, though. Or any means that dictates that people who want to trade gold for items cannot do so. D2 managed to appease both traders and self-found people despite the clusterfuck of duping. I have the absolute utmost confidence that they can do the same with D3, at least enough so that we all feel like they're listening to us and doing their best.
The first step, though, is changing the itemization (and drop rates). We cannot possibly assess the rest of the situation without seeing first-hand the repercussions of those changes.
Great response. This is what I've been trying to say but couldn't find the right words. +1
I think just making things BoE created more hurdles and problems than it solves.
You are 275% right on that. It's completely against the spirit of the Diablo franchise (and even ARPGs in general). The devs are absolutely aware of this and I'm confident that they will be taking this strongly into account when going forward.
[...]
They definitely want people trading because that was a huge part of D2 online.
A BoA system wouldn't prevent you from trading at all. You could find stuff and trade it with others, with help of the AH or without it. It would only take away two -imo needless- aspects:
a)recycling your old stuff (Is that so important to you? Never seemed to be a problem for me in WoW.)
b)buy stuff only to resell it: That's clearly nowhere near the spirit of an action rpg, do we agree? Not that it is against it, either, but it doesn't have anything at all to do with monster slaying.
balance the drop quantity/quality around self-found. Keep the AH.
It would totally screw over the economy and people who use the AH would be so overpowered that they can sleep trough the game. Now that is of course not your concern, playing selffound and all. But I fear it would lead to a balance around where d2 was, and that is really not the game I want.
It would only take away two -imo needless- aspects:
a)recycling your old stuff (Is that so important to you? Never seemed to be a problem for me in WoW.)
b)buy stuff only to resell it: That's clearly nowhere near the spirit of an action rpg, do we agree? Not that it is against it, either, but it doesn't have anything at all to do with monster slaying.
1 : Wow is a totally different game and the BoE concept was in that game from the very start.
I like to be able to resell my stuff cause that way your accumulated value trough your play time keeps increasing. You may have it in the form of currency or items, but your wealth increases. If you cannot resell items and buy something for nearly all your gold, you are back at zero. Let's say you wanna switch chars and sell your barb gear to equip your wizard. With your proposition we can not do that.
2 : People who are sniping good deals help balancing the market, It's a part of the market as you can see in any other market anywhere on the world trough all of history. It is very near the spirit of open markets, and the AH is just that put inside a arpg.
balance the drop quantity/quality around self-found. Keep the AH.
It would totally screw over the economy and people who use the AH would be so overpowered that they can sleep trough the game. Now that is of course not your concern, playing selffound and all. But I fear it would lead to a balance around where d2 was, and that is really not the game I want.
I would wish for a separate sf-mode (like hc) with improved drop rates. Don't know, if that would be my primary playing ground, but it would make for a welcome change, starting all new and on your own.
I agree with you, that higher drop rates in the regular ah-sc mode would not be good.
I don't think, the balance in D2 was bad, though. If you played truly legitimate, the difficulty was fine. Only those losers with their wannabe "legit" JahIthBer and BerMalBerIst etc. had a too easy time. But they took away their own fun, so well.
It would only take away two -imo needless- aspects:
a)recycling your old stuff (Is that so important to you? Never seemed to be a problem for me in WoW.)
b)buy stuff only to resell it: That's clearly nowhere near the spirit of an action rpg, do we agree? Not that it is against it, either, but it doesn't have anything at all to do with monster slaying.
1 : Wow is a totally different game and the BoE concept was in that game from the very start.
I like to be able to resell my stuff cause that way your accumulated value trough your play time keeps increasing. You may have it in the form of currency or items, but your wealth increases. If you cannot resell items and buy something for nearly all your gold, you are back at zero. Let's say you wanna switch chars and sell your barb gear to equip your wizard. With your proposition we can not do that.
2 : People who are sniping good deals help balancing the market, It's a part of the market as you can see in any other market anywhere on the world trough all of history. It is very near the spirit of open markets, and the AH is just that put inside a arpg.
1: Yes, so?
The char switch is a decent argument, but I don't think that justifies a no-bind system. I consider it failed. WoW's system was better.
2: It's tolerable as a niche, but not as the be all end all main aspect of an arpg. In my opinion, that is.
My 2 cents...
The AH provides a mechanism to trade in an easy way. Is A LOT better than trade chat/ a trade window. Most games these days have AH systems (but not a RMAH).
The RMAH is also good to solve the issue that occurred in D2 (and other games) where 3rd party sites would spam chat channels/games and possibly rip players off. Real money purchases would still happen no matter if the D3 RMAH existed or not.
I think some have a problem with how easily the auction houses enable players to get godly gear.
It is funny though in some ways that the ELITE players talk about efficiency all the time but don’t like the AH even though it is more efficient to farm currently (bar Exp)..
I do agree that players should be rewarded more for playing the game and not the AH though.
At the moment there are a few options:
Remove Auction Houses
Not a good idea as they are needed to solve the other problems that occur in games without them
Have a BOA model
Allows players to get better gear playing than from using the AH/RMAH - Is also away to have the AH stay intact
Have a different drop rate for BOA items (new type of rarity introduced maybe)
Have a Top Tier Gear Sink
A BOA model is a form of a Gear Sink
Having a reason to salvage Top Teir Gear
It used to be for Brimstones (long ago).
Idea - Maybe salvaging a Tal Rasha Chest so that you get a ‘Tal Rasha’ Jewel that is used to socket an item. The better the perfection of the item, the better the Jewel salvaged will be.
Cosmetic item rewards for selling good items to a new vendor.
Gear that levels up
Items that are self-found can grow in power (levelled up). The more you play the better your gear will become. If traded items lose levelling potential
TLDR:
I think all I am trying to say is that there are more elegant solutions that can be implemented than removing the AH’s (which were required to solve different issues of previous/other games)
Good to see someone laying out the options, the problem with the AH comes down to 3 individual problems which synergiestically create an ever greater problem.
1.The supply of items increases over time which drives down their prices.
2. Its easier to get upgrades through the auction house than through farming.
3. Farming is dissatisfying because you never find upgrades.(the motivation for going self-found)
From these there emerge sets of broad strategies which could be used to solve these problems.
1. Decrease the item supply
eg. provide better and more attractive item sinks (the expected reward of these item sinks must be equal or greater than the expected reward from using the auction house)
A ladder counts as an item sink
2.Limit the efficacy of the auction house/make trading less appealing/make item hunting more appealing..
E.G make it longer to execute a trade, Limit the amount of items that can be purchased/sold, increase the tax applied to AH items
3. Make finding/acquiring upgrades easier
Increase drop-rates etc.
Personally i favour more and better item sinks as the best solution to the auction house problem. Anything which gets players destroying items is going to be good for the game. There's no point in making items easier that will only exacerbate the problem unless accompanied by corresponding AH controls/nerfs.
I dont actually think a ladder would be as good in D3 as it was in D2 the design decisions have lead to D3 losing its Account based strategy and systems such as paragon are really designed for longterm play. also creating a new character in D3 is just not as fun since you can already experiment however you like within that class. Finally there not so many low level sets and legendaries so getting from normal to inferno is not nearly as fun D3 is an ALL about inferno atm at least.(prays for more low level sets etc.
2.Limit the efficacy of the auction house/make trading less appealing/make item hunting more appealing..
E.G make it longer to execute a trade, Limit the amount of items that can be purchased/sold, increase the tax applied to AH items
There is an other option for this : "Whenever you put an item for sale at the AH (or trade it), all it's stats are reduced by X% (X% could be 10% for example). If the same seller relists the item, the stats are not reduced again, but they will be if someone else sells the item after buying it." Obviously it would only work for stats that can be divided (not sockets for example).
For example, I find this awesome +100 str blue ring. I list it at the AH. It becomes a +90 str ring. No one buys it. I put it again at the AH. It is still a +90 str ring. Someone buy that +90 str ring. Now he can use it and if he sells it, it will become a +81 str ring, etc...
This is a frequently suggested idea however this is also unfair. Why should an item become less valuable just because it is traded? When I buy items and then find upgrades I hope to resell for close to what I'm paying for it. The auction house is a valid trading platform and those who choose to use it should not punished with the inability to resell gear. Sure put a nice little warning that says you will be this items second owner and your stats will decreased upon relisting, I don't know about others but I'm instantly skipping that item. It's honestly hurts the value just as much as a weapon that says "Inflicts 100 poison damage to player" for every strike or something.
I continue to reply to this thread because these suggestions to decrease AH influence do nothing but hurt players who choose to use the auction house and most times have no effects on self found players. Making items boa, decay etc has no effect on a self found player so these ideas can easily be suggested without realizing the consequences. However what does a self found player care, they don't face any of these consequences.
Like it or not there is an Auction House, and it is a valid form of trading. Yes the AH has an influence on prices, yet again if you are self found what does it matter to you what the prices of items are, you aren't trading them. I simply fail to understand why these suggestions are made that impose consequences to AH users however none to self found. Itemization changes should benefit EVERYONE. That's why we should wait for them because it will likely benefit all play styles and punish nobody.
Come to think of it, I don't blame blizzard so much anymore after reading the forums the last few weeks. Since May 2012 the ever so elite community of superior intelligence who knows all the fixes that need to made haven't come with single way to properly address the influence of the auction house. So now that Blizzard says changes won't be made to after Blizzcon, maybe that's a good thing. I'd like them now, but I'd rather it done be right so I can be playing this game 5 years from now. Rather then be done in August and I'm done with this game by Blizzcon.
balance the drop quantity/quality around self-found. Keep the AH.
It would totally screw over the economy and people who use the AH would be so overpowered that they can sleep trough the game.
Would that not be your choice? You could choose: to be overpowered and sleep through the game, or NOT to be overpowered and sleep through the game.
Makes sense actually. If they balance drop rates assuming there is no AH, and then just keep the AH the way it is. And that's been my feeling on flipping. Sure you can flip, and get 5b in one night and be able to slaughter MP10. Yet what's the fun if you have no future upgrades that are priced under 20 billion??
I understood it correctly which is why I stated it is unfair. As I've said, the Auction House is a valid form of trading and there is no reason players should be punished for using. I respect those who don't use it whether it be only playing self found or only trading with players via chat channels and forums.
From what I'm gathering from your reply is that there are people who simply believe the Auction House is a problem because it exists and not because of its functionality or consequences. That's also fine however it's irreversible at this point. Diablo III is going to have a functional Auction House for the rest of its existence.
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Current itemization sucks, yes. However I don't think there is a conspiracy to force players to use the AH. There has been no changes made to support the theory that the game is balanced around the Auction House. I remember all resist was quite a rarity before the first item changes. Now less than 70 can really hurt the value of an item. The problem is current itemization SUCKS, which makes good items unfairly expensive.
Hypothetically let's say Lacuni Prowlers in itemization 2.0 always rolled crit and 100+ main stat. It now becomes very inexpensive to buy a "good" pair of Lacunis and always makes self found ones good. I find a couple pairs of lacunis per week and probably brim them all. However if I find 1 pair per month, there is a good chance that the second pair I find are an upgrade, and if not they would probably be good for a friend, an alt, or can be traded via whatever platform I prefer. This is why I strongly believe it is important to wait until itemization 2.0 to see exactly how it works before trying to fix an economy that won't function the same way in 8 months.
In your hypothetical situation there would still be the same ammount of Lacunis, and those that are one or two stat points worse will still be almost worthless and the price for the "perfect" ones will still skyrocket. So overall, it wont change from today except for the few people who actually play totally self found.
And yes, Blizzard will of course wait and work on fixes that fix everything. It's not like they saw this thread here today and are now pushing to have it done by next friday.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
if all good items have high drop rates, where is the point ? YOu play for two weeks, find every good item, then you are bored and play something else. Great game design...
The real problem is expectations. You can quite easily play trough the entire game ( all 4 difficulties ) with selffound gear. But everybody looks at the very best players, compares his gear with theirs and comes to the conclusion that their gear sucks. The same gear that he cleared inferno with. People just need to get real about their own expectations and we would not have 99% of this discussion.
I am very confident that the devs will find a good solution in the end.
Till then we bash each other in forums, isnt that the gamers favourite past time anyway ? ^^
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
Now I don't agree with your opinion #1, but I like opinion #2, which is the contrary
It's more rewarding to run around in yellow stuff and be ecstatic when you see that orange glowing helm some day, than it is to get an almost free Mempo handed to you at 60 via the AH for the price of your act 1 normal mode funds.
By "average" I mean those players, who don't play so much, that they can get 20 legendaries a day, if they feel like it. For the record, I'm one of those who could. But for those average players, like some friends of mine, I feel kind of sad, when they are excited about that one legendary in 3 evenings, which then turns out to be garbage
I don't have to and I don't. But I'm not really making any meaningful money from my drops. I actually got a Mempo yesterday, it's listed at a ludicrous price of 500k and hasn't sold yet. Ludicrous because it's (almost) the best helm one could ever have in the game for a price you could pay after arriving in hell mode for the first time, I think. (edit: haha, I just saw, that I wrote a1 normal before, well )
That's where my personal gaming experience is influenced. My stuff isn't worth shit because there is just too much stuff.
And also maka had an important point being that drop rates have been adjusted down because of the AH.
I doubt, he's the only one who has valid reasons to complain.
That last question pretty much sums up the most basic problem of the game.
You don't get rewarded (enough) for playing (=farming in the Diablo franchise) the game.
You can get rewards, but you have to "work" the AH or pay money for them.
So, to put it as nicely as possible: It's more of a Wall Street sim than an action rpg.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
You can just farm the game and get upgrades "regularely". Of course the rate of upgrades will decline as your gear gets better and better, just as the price for upgrades increases as you gear gets better if you go the ah way. You can't keep getting upgrades at the rate of the early game cause that would lead to insane inflation.
And about comparing to d2 : d2 is incredibly easy, one of the things I am very glad they changed in d3. At least in d3 you can set your own difficulty and it takes a while before you can beat the hardest one. D2 has been cleared with naked hc chars over and over again. I dont want my gaming experience watered down that much just that some people can play selffound.
For the record, the gear you see in my profile is all collected trough playing, and while I dont own MP10 like it's nothing, I can kinda hold my ground in up to mp8-ish and do a satisfying lot of damage. By playing I mean selling stuff I find to buy upgrades, but not playing the AH.
And if your friends still get excited about every leg that drops then they are not very familiar with the drop tables and the chances for the random attributes to be useful
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
Enugh of this "hi pot, meet kettle".
So you think that the vast majority who wants to keep the AH should be forced out of it just so you can have your dropchances tweaked a few % when you play selffound ?
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
There is not much to brag about with my gear. And how i collected it is quite clearly explained in my last post.
Now I am playing hc though, with pretty much selffound gear cause I have no gold...
The loot fountains is a part of the diablo game. It was the same in d2. Loot is always flying around in huge quantities and that has nothign to do with the AH.
How do you benefit from less loot in better quality? That sound to me like you get the same ratio of usable items.
Please dont put words into my mouth and dont tell me how I played the game before or how I am enjoying it now. You clearly dont know much about that.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
The AH provides a mechanism to trade in an easy way. Is A LOT better than trade chat/ a trade window. Most games these days have AH systems (but not a RMAH).
The RMAH is also good to solve the issue that occurred in D2 (and other games) where 3rd party sites would spam chat channels/games and possibly rip players off. Real money purchases would still happen no matter if the D3 RMAH existed or not.
I think some have a problem with how easily the auction houses enable players to get godly gear.
It is funny though in some ways that the ELITE players talk about efficiency all the time but don’t like the AH even though it is more efficient to farm currently (bar Exp)..
I do agree that players should be rewarded more for playing the game and not the AH though.
At the moment there are a few options:
I think all I am trying to say is that there are more elegant solutions that can be implemented than removing the AH’s (which were required to solve different issues of previous/other games)
BOE and BOA also has the problem of completely wiping out demand for mid tiers.
This means that because it's going to be so costly for a marginal upgrade (due to the fact that once you acquire an item it can't be resold for money to finance your next purchase) people will skip mid-tier gear altogether.
It'll also bring about a greater demand for high end gears and RMAH usage.
On high end item sinks.
Some Asian MMORPG's have solved that problem via costly upgrades (i.e. adding a 7th stat to the equipment) at a risk of lowering the equipment's stat quality or completely destroying the equipment altogether.
Not sure if Blizzard would want that, but it would serve as a very efficient high end item sink.
You are 275% right on that. It's completely against the spirit of the Diablo franchise (and even ARPGs in general). The devs are absolutely aware of this and I'm confident that they will be taking this strongly into account when going forward. I think the 1.0.7 crafting stuff was really just a stopgap thing to address self-found playstyle as well as to provide another, semi-viable, moneysink and not an indication that BoA is here to stay.
They definitely want people trading because that was a huge part of D2 online. They also want everyone who fires up the game to feel that they "have a chance" without trading (among friends or strangers).
They're not going to achieve that by going on some kind of anti-flipping crusade, though. Or any means that dictates that people who want to trade gold for items cannot do so. D2 managed to appease both traders and self-found people despite the clusterfuck of duping. I have the absolute utmost confidence that they can do the same with D3, at least enough so that we all feel like they're listening to us and doing their best.
The first step, though, is changing the itemization (and drop rates). We cannot possibly assess the rest of the situation without seeing first-hand the repercussions of those changes.
Great response. This is what I've been trying to say but couldn't find the right words. +1
A BoA system wouldn't prevent you from trading at all. You could find stuff and trade it with others, with help of the AH or without it. It would only take away two -imo needless- aspects:
a)recycling your old stuff (Is that so important to you? Never seemed to be a problem for me in WoW.)
b)buy stuff only to resell it: That's clearly nowhere near the spirit of an action rpg, do we agree? Not that it is against it, either, but it doesn't have anything at all to do with monster slaying.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
It would totally screw over the economy and people who use the AH would be so overpowered that they can sleep trough the game. Now that is of course not your concern, playing selffound and all. But I fear it would lead to a balance around where d2 was, and that is really not the game I want.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
1 : Wow is a totally different game and the BoE concept was in that game from the very start.
I like to be able to resell my stuff cause that way your accumulated value trough your play time keeps increasing. You may have it in the form of currency or items, but your wealth increases. If you cannot resell items and buy something for nearly all your gold, you are back at zero. Let's say you wanna switch chars and sell your barb gear to equip your wizard. With your proposition we can not do that.
2 : People who are sniping good deals help balancing the market, It's a part of the market as you can see in any other market anywhere on the world trough all of history. It is very near the spirit of open markets, and the AH is just that put inside a arpg.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
I would wish for a separate sf-mode (like hc) with improved drop rates. Don't know, if that would be my primary playing ground, but it would make for a welcome change, starting all new and on your own.
I agree with you, that higher drop rates in the regular ah-sc mode would not be good.
I don't think, the balance in D2 was bad, though. If you played truly legitimate, the difficulty was fine. Only those losers with their wannabe "legit" JahIthBer and BerMalBerIst etc. had a too easy time. But they took away their own fun, so well.
1: Yes, so?
The char switch is a decent argument, but I don't think that justifies a no-bind system. I consider it failed. WoW's system was better.
2: It's tolerable as a niche, but not as the be all end all main aspect of an arpg. In my opinion, that is.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Good to see someone laying out the options, the problem with the AH comes down to 3 individual problems which synergiestically create an ever greater problem.
1.The supply of items increases over time which drives down their prices.
2. Its easier to get upgrades through the auction house than through farming.
3. Farming is dissatisfying because you never find upgrades.(the motivation for going self-found)
From these there emerge sets of broad strategies which could be used to solve these problems.
1. Decrease the item supply
eg. provide better and more attractive item sinks (the expected reward of these item sinks must be equal or greater than the expected reward from using the auction house)
A ladder counts as an item sink
2.Limit the efficacy of the auction house/make trading less appealing/make item hunting more appealing..
E.G make it longer to execute a trade, Limit the amount of items that can be purchased/sold, increase the tax applied to AH items
3. Make finding/acquiring upgrades easier
Increase drop-rates etc.
Personally i favour more and better item sinks as the best solution to the auction house problem. Anything which gets players destroying items is going to be good for the game. There's no point in making items easier that will only exacerbate the problem unless accompanied by corresponding AH controls/nerfs.
I dont actually think a ladder would be as good in D3 as it was in D2 the design decisions have lead to D3 losing its Account based strategy and systems such as paragon are really designed for longterm play. also creating a new character in D3 is just not as fun since you can already experiment however you like within that class. Finally there not so many low level sets and legendaries so getting from normal to inferno is not nearly as fun D3 is an ALL about inferno atm at least.(prays for more low level sets etc.
This is a frequently suggested idea however this is also unfair. Why should an item become less valuable just because it is traded? When I buy items and then find upgrades I hope to resell for close to what I'm paying for it. The auction house is a valid trading platform and those who choose to use it should not punished with the inability to resell gear. Sure put a nice little warning that says you will be this items second owner and your stats will decreased upon relisting, I don't know about others but I'm instantly skipping that item. It's honestly hurts the value just as much as a weapon that says "Inflicts 100 poison damage to player" for every strike or something.
I continue to reply to this thread because these suggestions to decrease AH influence do nothing but hurt players who choose to use the auction house and most times have no effects on self found players. Making items boa, decay etc has no effect on a self found player so these ideas can easily be suggested without realizing the consequences. However what does a self found player care, they don't face any of these consequences.
Like it or not there is an Auction House, and it is a valid form of trading. Yes the AH has an influence on prices, yet again if you are self found what does it matter to you what the prices of items are, you aren't trading them. I simply fail to understand why these suggestions are made that impose consequences to AH users however none to self found. Itemization changes should benefit EVERYONE. That's why we should wait for them because it will likely benefit all play styles and punish nobody.
Come to think of it, I don't blame blizzard so much anymore after reading the forums the last few weeks. Since May 2012 the ever so elite community of superior intelligence who knows all the fixes that need to made haven't come with single way to properly address the influence of the auction house. So now that Blizzard says changes won't be made to after Blizzcon, maybe that's a good thing. I'd like them now, but I'd rather it done be right so I can be playing this game 5 years from now. Rather then be done in August and I'm done with this game by Blizzcon.
Makes sense actually. If they balance drop rates assuming there is no AH, and then just keep the AH the way it is. And that's been my feeling on flipping. Sure you can flip, and get 5b in one night and be able to slaughter MP10. Yet what's the fun if you have no future upgrades that are priced under 20 billion??
From what I'm gathering from your reply is that there are people who simply believe the Auction House is a problem because it exists and not because of its functionality or consequences. That's also fine however it's irreversible at this point. Diablo III is going to have a functional Auction House for the rest of its existence.