I never once bought items with real money in d2 or d3, i used the real money auction house to sell items sure, but i could care less about the auction house, I was glad they removed it. Trading was an integral part to diablo, if people want to sell their stuff for real money who cares? whats it to you, lol.
because blizzards game is so successful they know people will try to make their own profits from their game? why does this even matter to them? what does BOA even achieve, you're putting in artificial hours just to get that said item instead of being able to trade for it, you know what diablo was all about lol. what are your guys thoughts on BOA? will they ever revert? I've stopped playing ever since they added this in, now i just complain about it.
Would you A: Like to sit in a trade forum / the AH for hours trying to get gear... Or B: Play the game for hours to get gear.
A = Borning
B = Fun
BoAs promote B, while none BoAs promote A.
What matters to blizzard, is that the game is fun and enjoyable, there is no reason for people to even play the game if they can get the items, without playing the game.
I think part of the problem with BoA at the moment is that it was meant to co-exist in an environment where build-changing legendaries were a lot more common. A lot of people play the game in order to get their hands on an item loadout that really delivers a 'holy crap, this is awesome' moment... currently, those moments are hard to come by due to the paucity of actual options.
However, it's worth noting that there are two solutions to this problem. One of them is free trade, but the other one is for Blizzard to greatly increase the number of build-changing legendaries (and, much more importantly, combinations of legendaries) in the game. BoA is only half of a two-part promise but bear in mind that Blizzard has already stated outright that they shipped RoS knowing that they'd under-delivered on the other half of that promise (See http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/topic/54961-whats-the-reasoning-behind-empty-legendaries for instance).
I defend it because it's made the game far more enjoyable for me. I barely have a couple hours a week now to play it, and knowing that there's super rare items that I might not even see during a season excites me, because if I do find it, it was because of my own playing, and not because I got frustrated and bought it.
However, it's worth noting that there are two solutions to this problem. One of them is free trade, but the other one is for Blizzard to greatly increase the number of build-changing legendaries (and, much more importantly, combinations of legendaries) in the game. BoA is only half of a two-part promise but bear in mind that Blizzard has already stated outright that they shipped RoS knowing that they'd under-delivered on the other half of that promise (See http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/topic/54961-whats-the-reasoning-behind-empty-legendaries for instance).
I think this needs to be emphasized. Just look at what is happening on the PTR right now. A simple example is the Grand Vizer, a totally worthless 2 handed staff, becoming the basis (due to itself and to the changes to the Meteor skill itself) of a build (Star Pact Meteor ftw).
I defend it because it's made the game far more enjoyable for me. I barely have a couple hours a week now to play it, and knowing that there's super rare items that I might not even see during a season excites me, because if I do find it, it was because of my own playing, and not because I got frustrated and bought it.
It took me well over 500 hours to find a Rhen'ho Flayer. I still have yet to find a Starmetal Kukiri.
Meanwhile I've found dozens of Angel Hair Braids and Kills, and Scrimshaws, and Slave Bonds, and Rondal's Lockets, and on and on ad infinatum.
None of this "excites" me. In fact it makes me rather apathetic and disenfranchised by the loot system. These are the SAME EXACT problems we had in Loot 1.0.... except that now we can't trade. It's like taking the worst of both scenarios and combining them into one and somehow trying to pretend that it's a great result.
As Catalept said (and I'm inferring above) BoA without many more DESIRABLE legendaries... BoA in a landscape dominated by RoRG and set items... BoA in a system where you can go MONTHS and MONTHS of playing without finding the items that really change how you play is giving half a solution to a problem. It doesn't make a goddamned bit of sense. I'm happy that they're re-re-re-re-doing legendaries in 2.1, but when Josh gave the hard sell on BoA and then gave us a set of legendaries where 80% of them are salvage fodder, I don't see much defensible about that.
This is the kind of shit that was commonplace in the Jay Wilson era... and yet it hasn't changed with Josh. These are things that SHOULDN'T be half-assed, but it seemed that 2.0 was more about erasing Jay's legacy and establishing Josh's legacy than it was about putting the nose to the grindstone and really delivering on the promises. The initial 2.0 drop rates were a complete joke.
I don't find it remotely exciting to know that I may never see a Starmetal Kukiri but that I will be inundated with THOUSANDS of completely-undesirable orange/green items because Josh and his team couldn't find the time to deliver on the itemization that they promised. As it stands, a DH without M6 is basically a piece of shit. Is that REALLY the itemization we want? Josh promised us the moon and the stars and the sky and he didn't come close to delivering it.
Jay didn't get a pass for fumbling legendary re-works. Why should Josh? It's time we hold that motherfucker's feet to the fire. Less talk, more action. If you're going to sell RoS on these awesome build-changing legendaries then what kind of cruel fucking joke is it to make almost all of the most-common legendaries total garbage? Why defend it? We deserve far better. So far most of what we're getting is a lot of hot air.
Somehow, through all this, weapon emeralds didn't get addressed, even though 2.0 was the perfect opportunity to do so. Somehow 2hers were not fixed in 2.0, even though it was the perfect opportunity to do so. Why? Why is the timetable for expansion release so rushed that we're not even close to getting the full set of changes that we were sold on?
I just want the bluespeak to stop and the team, as a whole, to step it the fuck up and take RoS from a B- to an A. Sure vanilla might have been a C+ and a B- is a step up from a C+, but the way Josh talked about BoA saving the game anything short of an A is a complete fucking failure and a case study in execuspeak.
Jay's team couldn't do itemc hanges like the team is doing now because it was tied to the AH and every little change would create masses of angry kids.
Two handed weapons are getting "fixed" soon so we can't really complain now...
Gems were too intertwined in the game any change would require a major overhaul. Therefore, the introduction of the legendary gems is viewed as a partial solution to the gem problem.
Yeah it sucks to know that you might never get an SMK but is there really a fine spot where loot drop chances are balanced? No. Because every person thinks that he should get item X in a certain amount of time played and that time changes from person to person. The current state of this in the game is actually quite balanced in my opinion and actually might be a bit too good.
Sure for dh it's M6 or go home but that's only true for T6. I don't think you can dismiss normal - T5 as irrelevant. There are tons of builds that work on all classes, just not optimized for T6. For endgame, every class has about 2 builds he cna go for. In 2.1 this will be fixed even further.
BOA chanegd the game drastically. The upside of it is that people need to actually play the game. The downside is that some items are very rare... I can see why some people hate this but seriously, what is the better solution? Can you give one? A solution that will both eliminate 3rd party websites and not make all items super easy to get.
The situation is a lot better than what you describe in my opinion. I really don't get all this doom-saying sort to speak....
Edit: And about specific items that you can't get, well tough luck. I can't seem to get anything on any class except for the DH so i'm playing mainly dh lately.
I'm in favour of BOA. It allows to design a drop system so that you can gear your character by yourself, not by means of trading. No matter what, it is your own progression, not something you traded from someone else. It is way easier in that way to adapt the progression curve of the characters. Otherwise, whenever you drop an item you already have, one more of those will go into the economy, meaning that sooner or later, no matter whether players play the game at all, they will be geared with high-end objects. This is simply not the way to go.
Notwithstanding trading for money, including third-party trading, which I agree with blizzard ruins the experience. Now that seasons are on and a semblant of competition will take place, it is even more important that you cannot trade for your progression.
I would overall be in favor of trading but that requires a system where items would disappear after a while... like having an unreparable durability of sorts... but I think people would not welcome that idea.
I defend it because it's made the game far more enjoyable for me. I barely have a couple hours a week now to play it, and knowing that there's super rare items that I might not even see during a season excites me, because if I do find it, it was because of my own playing, and not because I got frustrated and bought it.
It took me well over 500 hours to find a Rhen'ho Flayer. I still have yet to find a Starmetal Kukiri.
Meanwhile I've found dozens of Angel Hair Braids and Kills, and Scrimshaws, and Slave Bonds, and Rondal's Lockets, and on and on ad infinatum.
None of this "excites" me. In fact it makes me rather apathetic and disenfranchised by the loot system. These are the SAME EXACT problems we had in Loot 1.0.... except that now we can't trade. It's like taking the worst of both scenarios and combining them into one and somehow trying to pretend that it's a great result.
As Catalept said (and I'm inferring above) BoA without many more DESIRABLE legendaries... BoA in a landscape dominated by RoRG and set items... BoA in a system where you can go MONTHS and MONTHS of playing without finding the items that really change how you play is giving half a solution to a problem. It doesn't make a goddamned bit of sense. I'm happy that they're re-re-re-re-doing legendaries in 2.1, but when Josh gave the hard sell on BoA and then gave us a set of legendaries where 80% of them are salvage fodder, I don't see much defensible about that.
This is the kind of shit that was commonplace in the Jay Wilson era... and yet it hasn't changed with Josh. These are things that SHOULDN'T be half-assed, but it seemed that 2.0 was more about erasing Jay's legacy and establishing Josh's legacy than it was about putting the nose to the grindstone and really delivering on the promises. The initial 2.0 drop rates were a complete joke.
I don't find it remotely exciting to know that I may never see a Starmetal Kukiri but that I will be inundated with THOUSANDS of completely-undesirable orange/green items because Josh and his team couldn't find the time to deliver on the itemization that they promised. As it stands, a DH without M6 is basically a piece of shit. Is that REALLY the itemization we want? Josh promised us the moon and the stars and the sky and he didn't come close to delivering it.
Jay didn't get a pass for fumbling legendary re-works. Why should Josh? It's time we hold that motherfucker's feet to the fire. Less talk, more action. If you're going to sell RoS on these awesome build-changing legendaries then what kind of cruel fucking joke is it to make almost all of the most-common legendaries total garbage? Why defend it? We deserve far better. So far most of what we're getting is a lot of hot air.
Somehow, through all this, weapon emeralds didn't get addressed, even though 2.0 was the perfect opportunity to do so. Somehow 2hers were not fixed in 2.0, even though it was the perfect opportunity to do so. Why? Why is the timetable for expansion release so rushed that we're not even close to getting the full set of changes that we were sold on?
I just want the bluespeak to stop and the team, as a whole, to step it the fuck up and take RoS from a B- to an A. Sure vanilla might have been a C+ and a B- is a step up from a C+, but the way Josh talked about BoA saving the game anything short of an A is a complete fucking failure and a case study in execuspeak.
So that's a pretty sweet little tirade you went on there, off of my quote. Did you mean to quote someone else? I never said the loot was perfect, I was commenting on BoA, and how I personally like it.
Kadala can be the way out of your troubles... IMO, the problem with Kadala is that you can only target a class of object, not a specific object.
A simple system would be the following: KAdala would have a second tab that lists all legendary items, where you would pay, say, 1'000'000 gold to double the chance of a specific item dropping off of Kadala's (and then another 1'000'000 for x4, etc...). And then you pay in shards just as now to try and drop that object. And once it is dropped, this bonus chance would cease to apply.
This would allow for a very effective way to drive players towards a goal, just as they did when the AH was live -- only, without the inconvenience an AH brings to the game.
There are many options to give a goal to players, and it's up to blizzard to implement them. I think the game is less frustrating if you just play with what you have, and try to make the most of it (season-style). If you want a very specific gear, then you'd need hours and hundreds of hours of farming, only to be stuck with all the items, minus that last one that just won't drop. Infuriating.
I have to agree. hated the auction house, resented the time I felt I had to put into it, hated that the gear levels were obscene as were the cost, and when you found something that was reasonably good, it never sold even at rediculously low prices because better gear, waaaay better gear was put out there at the higher prices and no one except flippers even looked at the mid stuff. And all this process did was prevent the designers from raising the drop rates because stuff WAS out on the AH, never mind you couldn't afford it.
So that's a pretty sweet little tirade you went on there, off of my quote. Did you mean to quote someone else? I never said the loot was perfect, I was commenting on BoA, and how I personally like it.
No, just voicing my opinion.
You think it's boner-inducing that you might never find an item in a season.
I, on the other hand, gained no satisfaction from it in practice. That rarity didn't make me bust a nut when I finally got a Rhen'ho Flayer. In fact, it was just the opposite. I felt like RNG had beat the fuck out of me and the experience was not rewarding even when it did drop mostly because of the massive amount of completely worthless immediately-to-the-salvage-yard junk that I slogged through in the meantime.
I think the difference here is basically masochism. Well and a degree of schadenfreude.
If I hadn't been duly rewarded with dozens of Angel Hair Braids for a single Rhen'ho Flayer then maybe my opinion would be different. But I simply think it's bad design to make me "appreciate" rare items by giving me dump trucks full of bad items. I'm OK with rare items. I don't hate rare items. I don't even hate the fact that it took so long to get a Rhen'ho Flayer. What I truly resent is how lackluster the means to that end were. And Catalept very adequately articulated why.
They gave us BoA, but they didn't give us enough "build-changing" items to make BoA feel very good for most players. Most of my friends who played D3C actually gave up on RoS faster than D3C. Even though the AH was evil, it still gave an means to an end. It gave you more than "keep spending those blood shards, eventually that Tasker and Theo will drop for you!"
BoA could be great, I'm sure. But it really shouldn't take a second re-work of legendaries 5+ months later (remember, Wyatt initially said they didn't even want to re-visit existing items, they just wanted to make new items) to fix the system. 2.0 was supposed to do that. They had, quite literally, over a year to get it right and yet so many legendaries are flat-out wrong. But they got that BoA in there to shut down those 3rd party sites. They got in the part that mattered to them... but they flopped on the other half, which was key to making it work.
Imagine how very few people would really complain about BoA if we truly had a lot of items that were viable... and you weren't JUST hunting those rare items plus a few sets and a RoRG. Imagine that game. That sounds like a good game to me.
Doing A1 bounties until your eyeballs bleed to get a RoRG so that you can gamble up X set pieces ... not nearly as good. But that's exactly where we're at because Josh half-assed the vaunted legendary rework. They had the opportunity to do it right. Now, just like Jay, Josh needs a "do-over" proving that as much as things have changed, they really haven't changed all that much.
Sometimes I really think that Wyatt may be the actual problem. His comment about not wanting to fix old legendaries, but instead wanting to just introduce new legendaries, was unbelievably offensive. It's impossible for anyone who actually plays the game to hold that opinion.
Game is better since AH closed. Removing trading completely didn't fix anything.
Might be good for those who enjoy collecting all their gear themselves, but what about those of us who likes to trade items ?
Can't please everyone. Not being snarky, but thems the facts, jack. This isn't a scientific poll, but it is representative of several polls I've seen on the subject so far, and it always comes out to about 1/4 of the respondees being against BoA.
We hear about the vocal minority so much, and here with this poll we see it again. The people that are happy with BoA are being quiet about it, and those in the minority are making the most noise.
If you don't like or accept BoA, you have to come to terms with the facts. You are in the minority, most people disagree with you.
Therefor, you must either do one of two things.
1) Learn to embrace BoA's finer points and accept it.
2) Shut your fucking mouth and walk away,. Goodbye. Door is that way >>>>
Why do people defend BoA? It doesn't matter. Most people do. If YOU do not, you are in the minority.
If you don't like or accept BoA, you have to come to terms with the facts. You are in the minority, most people disagree with you.
That's actually not true.
Unless you actually can prove that <forumgoers> are a representative subset of <Diablo players>.
Which, to anyone with an objective mind, they clearly are not. And, in terms of polling, the less-representative the sample is the larger the error. Even meticulously-conducted polls, like what they do during presidential races, still have 3-5% error.
The most-glaring thing that really jacks up this discussion is that most people who dislike BoA probably didn't buy RoS and aren't frequenting forums. Most of the people that I know who picked up D3V and RoS actually played D3V longer. Almost EVERYONE I know who plays D3 does *not* visit the forums, yet of that subset <D3 players Nick knows> every single one of them thinks that BoA is a bad idea.
Now, that's not scientific. It's purely anecdotal. But it makes good sense. And I'm not arguing that BoA is good/bad for the game here. But I am arguing that a poll conducted five months post-RoS, and six+ months post-2.0 surely isn't going to be representative of <Diablo players>. Hell, the forum is barely representative of <People who are active> let alone people who haven't played the game in a few months.
My one friend knows developers at Blizzard. He told them that he thought D3V sucked ass, so he didn't buy RoS. They gave him a free copy and asked him to give RoS a shot and let them know what he thought of it. His response was that RoS is worse than D3V and that whomever came up with BoA should be fired on the spot. I guarantee he doesn't visit this site, hasn't voted in this poll, and probably doesn't do a ton of other things that *we* consider "normal."
My guess is that "BoA is not a good idea" is a much more prevalent opinion among people who bought RoS and have since quit playing, or even among people who played 2.0 and didn't buy RoS than among active players. Whether inactive players matter could be debated from now until the cows come home. But I have a gut feeling that if you polled all however-many million people actually purchased and played RoS on the subject you'd find that the "minority" is actually people who like BoA.
If the "majority" of RoS purchasers loved BoA it would stand to reason that there would be a lot more active people. The posts on this forum, along with the official forums, incgamers, and reddit all tell the tale that activity in the community is at a pretty low point. For better or worse. Only time will tell.
But you are completely right that this discussion is completely pointless. The ship has sailed on it. The ship sailed on it long before Josh even announced BoA to us. He had his mind made up on the subject even before he was hired to replace Jay, if you ask me. In fact, my guess is that he made a pretty hard sell on it at his interview. "He could sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves!"
If you don't like or accept BoA, you have to come to terms with the facts. You are in the minority, most people disagree with you.
That's actually not true.
Unless you actually can prove that are a representative subset of .
Which, to anyone with an objective mind, they clearly are not. And, in terms of polling, the less-representative the sample is the larger the error. Even meticulously-conducted polls, like what they do during presidential races, still have 3-5% error.
The most-glaring thing that really jacks up this discussion is that most people who dislike BoA probably didn't buy RoS and aren't frequenting forums. Most of the people that I know who picked up D3V and RoS actually played D3V longer. Almost EVERYONE I know who plays D3 does *not* visit the forums, yet of that subset every single one of them thinks that BoA is a bad idea.
Now, that's not scientific. It's purely anecdotal. But it makes good sense. And I'm not arguing that BoA is good/bad for the game here. But I am arguing that a poll conducted five months post-RoS, and six+ months post-2.0 surely isn't going to be representative of . Hell, the forum is barely representative of let alone people who haven't played the game in a few months.
My one friend knows developers at Blizzard. He told them that he thought D3V sucked ass, so he didn't buy RoS. They gave him a free copy and asked him to give RoS a shot and let them know what he thought of it. His response was that RoS is worse than D3V and that whomever came up with BoA should be fired on the spot. I guarantee he doesn't visit this site, hasn't voted in this poll, and probably doesn't do a ton of other things that *we* consider "normal."
My guess is that "BoA is not a good idea" is a much more prevalent opinion among people who bought RoS and have since quit playing, or even among people who played 2.0 and didn't buy RoS than among active players. Whether inactive players matter could be debated from now until the cows come home. But I have a gut feeling that if you polled all however-many million people actually purchased and played RoS on the subject you'd find that the "minority" is actually people who like BoA.
If the "majority" of RoS purchasers loved BoA it would stand to reason that there would be a lot more active people. The posts on this forum, along with the official forums, incgamers, and reddit all tell the tale that activity in the community is at a pretty low point. For better or worse. Only time will tell.
But you are completely right that this discussion is completely pointless. The ship has sailed on it. The ship sailed on it long before Josh even announced BoA to us. He had his mind made up on the subject even before he was hired to replace Jay, if you ask me. In fact, my guess is that he made a pretty hard sell on it at his interview. "He could sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves!"
For this issue I chose not to make guesses and suppositions. I just cited what I've seen, what I've witnessed. That being, the majority of players who do play this game, who espouse a desire to continue playing this game, seem to land in a majority support for the Bind On Account system.
It could be argued that a great exodus occurred, sending with it throngs of players who quit specifically due to the BoA system. But then that means they preferred what existed before the BoA went into affect. These must be people that preferred the AH's, or am I off-base?
Anyone that would show preference for that twisted, perverted orgy of capitalism oozing into the realm of online gaming, I simply cannot take them seriously.
But you should know, I'm more reasonable than that. Many that hated D3V and the AH's looked to 2.0 and the BoA system as an affront, they thought change would come more in the form of reverting back to D2's open trading system. For some, seeing BoA replace the AH's was akin to having their pest exterminator remove their rats by introducing tigers into their home.
So what are the numbers, exactly? What's the damage done by BoA? How many people quit over this?
Are forums a good litmus test for measuring popular opinion, in regard to D3's BoA? My answer; Yes. Are most players posting on forums? Certainly not. But we still get a sample of players and their opinions. As we've seen at Bnet, people tend to use the forums for senseless complaining, trolling and cynicism. So to that end, I assert that it is somewhat of a miracle that so many people show up to wave their in support of BoA, contrasting the attempts to poise popular opinion against it.
So why do I defend BoA, when only months ago I was still trumpeting the awesomeness of trading? Because the game is truly fun to play and I embrace the rules of the game. I would not play the game if I did not agree to the rules. I also enjoy the utmost challenge that can be offered, which is why I play Hardcore exclusively.
The presence of trading has the same awful result that the AH's did. It dissolves a great deal of the challenge. Simply put; What items you wield are removed as part of the games challenge with open trading. Any dumbass with $50 to blow can gear-up only moments after opening their game box. BoA ceases this approach and presents ARPG players with a new challenge. What can you do with what you find while playing? Are you good enough to build around random offerings? Is the piece that makes your character ascend to greatness laying just under that rock?
I find the concept intriguing, and most importantly, challenging.
For this issue I chose not to make guesses and suppositions. I just cited what I've seen, what I've witnessed. That being, the majority of players who do play this game, who espouse a desire to continue playing this game, seem to land in a majority support for the Bind On Account system.
But that's exactly a confirmation bias.
OF COURSE people who are still playing don't have a (generally) negative opinion on BoA. But that's probably because the inclusion of BoA drove away many people who dislike the system. So it's not really telling us anything we don't know.
It's like surveying roulette players on roulette and then concluding that, because 95% of roulette players like roulette that people who dislike roulette are in the minority. Only a complete fucking moron would actually try to argue that because, CLEARLY, it's a very biased sample. Likewise, polling people who continue to play post-BoA about BoA doesn't really provide an accurate opinion on the matter because it marginalizes and, in many cases, outright ignores the dissenting opinion due to circumstantial factors that automatically squelch their opinion.
It's very similar to how we're repeatedly told by Blizzard that only a small fraction of the playerbase even uses the forums. It's a cautionary tale not to extrapolate on things like this. A couple hundred votes on a fansite can be insightful, but it's very much not sufficient to make any kind of conclusion as to what the "majority" of D3 players think.... particularly on a divisive issue like BoA which may very well have driven a certain segment of the playerbase away from the game (and the forums).
In order to prove this I only need to point back to last year when Josh dropped the bomb and it was basically a 50/50 issue. You don't really think it's a 75/25 issue now because half of the haters suddenly fell in love with BoA, do you? Like I said, the traffic on all fansites is very low at this point in time. It's very unlikely that people who have a negative view about something so big as BoA are anywhere around here anymore. The people who are still here are almost certainly people who are actively playing the game and not just hanging around for patch notes. So why is it surprising that when you poll that subset of people you get such a breakdown? To me it's completely logical, and is very well-explained without making the false correlation that dissenters are in the minority.
I defend BOA because the only alternative we know is full on AH madness and i think that the thread with the dude who made thousands of dollars from the ah just shows you why that's not a good alternative. There are hundreds if not thousands of people exactly like that person. Shit WILL hit the fan unless they introduce something better. A well thought out trading system that limits players with who, how and when they can trade their items.
As long as such a limited system is not introdduced, the better alternative is full boa and not full ah. In my opinion, there's no argument here.
I support BoA, and I've played D3 since it's first release tho on and off, I actually stopped playing after a few months because of the AH.. i found it truly impossible to get gear with the drop rates with the AH and with the constant inflation of the AH. I came back when they removed the AH and increased the drops rates, especially with RoS and the new legendaries we'd get.
I mean I understand when people say the legendaries are broken, but i think the only reason people say that is because the legendary isn't T5 or T6 worthy to be used. Everyone knows that as you go up the torments the amounts of builds to use get smaller.. there will always be that great cookie cutter build that everyone will aim for if T6 and up coming GRifts.
BoA has my total support at least now instead of spending 500 hours try to farm for a single set when the AH was on, we can actually get a viable T3-5 toon just by playing 2 days worth of grinding and kadala. People are just upset that they can't get that Perfect item be it WoW, FoTF or what not. I'd say the grind when the AH was longer if I didn't want to buy gear of trading sites and AH. I like it now that the drops are more frequent and more giving.
D3 shouldn't be a pay2win game. Might as well download a mobile app if you want to pay2win lol, just my 2 cents
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A = Borning
B = Fun
BoAs promote B, while none BoAs promote A.
What matters to blizzard, is that the game is fun and enjoyable, there is no reason for people to even play the game if they can get the items, without playing the game.
However, it's worth noting that there are two solutions to this problem. One of them is free trade, but the other one is for Blizzard to greatly increase the number of build-changing legendaries (and, much more importantly, combinations of legendaries) in the game. BoA is only half of a two-part promise but bear in mind that Blizzard has already stated outright that they shipped RoS knowing that they'd under-delivered on the other half of that promise (See http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/topic/54961-whats-the-reasoning-behind-empty-legendaries for instance).
Meanwhile I've found dozens of Angel Hair Braids and Kills, and Scrimshaws, and Slave Bonds, and Rondal's Lockets, and on and on ad infinatum.
None of this "excites" me. In fact it makes me rather apathetic and disenfranchised by the loot system. These are the SAME EXACT problems we had in Loot 1.0.... except that now we can't trade. It's like taking the worst of both scenarios and combining them into one and somehow trying to pretend that it's a great result.
As Catalept said (and I'm inferring above) BoA without many more DESIRABLE legendaries... BoA in a landscape dominated by RoRG and set items... BoA in a system where you can go MONTHS and MONTHS of playing without finding the items that really change how you play is giving half a solution to a problem. It doesn't make a goddamned bit of sense. I'm happy that they're re-re-re-re-doing legendaries in 2.1, but when Josh gave the hard sell on BoA and then gave us a set of legendaries where 80% of them are salvage fodder, I don't see much defensible about that.
This is the kind of shit that was commonplace in the Jay Wilson era... and yet it hasn't changed with Josh. These are things that SHOULDN'T be half-assed, but it seemed that 2.0 was more about erasing Jay's legacy and establishing Josh's legacy than it was about putting the nose to the grindstone and really delivering on the promises. The initial 2.0 drop rates were a complete joke.
I don't find it remotely exciting to know that I may never see a Starmetal Kukiri but that I will be inundated with THOUSANDS of completely-undesirable orange/green items because Josh and his team couldn't find the time to deliver on the itemization that they promised. As it stands, a DH without M6 is basically a piece of shit. Is that REALLY the itemization we want? Josh promised us the moon and the stars and the sky and he didn't come close to delivering it.
Jay didn't get a pass for fumbling legendary re-works. Why should Josh? It's time we hold that motherfucker's feet to the fire. Less talk, more action. If you're going to sell RoS on these awesome build-changing legendaries then what kind of cruel fucking joke is it to make almost all of the most-common legendaries total garbage? Why defend it? We deserve far better. So far most of what we're getting is a lot of hot air.
Somehow, through all this, weapon emeralds didn't get addressed, even though 2.0 was the perfect opportunity to do so. Somehow 2hers were not fixed in 2.0, even though it was the perfect opportunity to do so. Why? Why is the timetable for expansion release so rushed that we're not even close to getting the full set of changes that we were sold on?
I just want the bluespeak to stop and the team, as a whole, to step it the fuck up and take RoS from a B- to an A. Sure vanilla might have been a C+ and a B- is a step up from a C+, but the way Josh talked about BoA saving the game anything short of an A is a complete fucking failure and a case study in execuspeak.
Two handed weapons are getting "fixed" soon so we can't really complain now...
Gems were too intertwined in the game any change would require a major overhaul. Therefore, the introduction of the legendary gems is viewed as a partial solution to the gem problem.
Yeah it sucks to know that you might never get an SMK but is there really a fine spot where loot drop chances are balanced? No. Because every person thinks that he should get item X in a certain amount of time played and that time changes from person to person. The current state of this in the game is actually quite balanced in my opinion and actually might be a bit too good.
Sure for dh it's M6 or go home but that's only true for T6. I don't think you can dismiss normal - T5 as irrelevant. There are tons of builds that work on all classes, just not optimized for T6. For endgame, every class has about 2 builds he cna go for. In 2.1 this will be fixed even further.
BOA chanegd the game drastically. The upside of it is that people need to actually play the game. The downside is that some items are very rare... I can see why some people hate this but seriously, what is the better solution? Can you give one? A solution that will both eliminate 3rd party websites and not make all items super easy to get.
The situation is a lot better than what you describe in my opinion. I really don't get all this doom-saying sort to speak....
Edit: And about specific items that you can't get, well tough luck. I can't seem to get anything on any class except for the DH so i'm playing mainly dh lately.
I'm in favour of BOA. It allows to design a drop system so that you can gear your character by yourself, not by means of trading. No matter what, it is your own progression, not something you traded from someone else. It is way easier in that way to adapt the progression curve of the characters. Otherwise, whenever you drop an item you already have, one more of those will go into the economy, meaning that sooner or later, no matter whether players play the game at all, they will be geared with high-end objects. This is simply not the way to go.
Notwithstanding trading for money, including third-party trading, which I agree with blizzard ruins the experience. Now that seasons are on and a semblant of competition will take place, it is even more important that you cannot trade for your progression.
I would overall be in favor of trading but that requires a system where items would disappear after a while... like having an unreparable durability of sorts... but I think people would not welcome that idea.
Just my two cents.
A simple system would be the following: KAdala would have a second tab that lists all legendary items, where you would pay, say, 1'000'000 gold to double the chance of a specific item dropping off of Kadala's (and then another 1'000'000 for x4, etc...). And then you pay in shards just as now to try and drop that object. And once it is dropped, this bonus chance would cease to apply.
This would allow for a very effective way to drive players towards a goal, just as they did when the AH was live -- only, without the inconvenience an AH brings to the game.
There are many options to give a goal to players, and it's up to blizzard to implement them. I think the game is less frustrating if you just play with what you have, and try to make the most of it (season-style). If you want a very specific gear, then you'd need hours and hundreds of hours of farming, only to be stuck with all the items, minus that last one that just won't drop. Infuriating.
WD Season 8 https://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/Kildare/84509816
Monk season 7 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/MojoJoJo/42225505
DH season 6 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/DeadShot/75655606
Angry Chicken http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/WhoDoVooDoo/68187610
What? Me worry?
You think it's boner-inducing that you might never find an item in a season.
I, on the other hand, gained no satisfaction from it in practice. That rarity didn't make me bust a nut when I finally got a Rhen'ho Flayer. In fact, it was just the opposite. I felt like RNG had beat the fuck out of me and the experience was not rewarding even when it did drop mostly because of the massive amount of completely worthless immediately-to-the-salvage-yard junk that I slogged through in the meantime.
I think the difference here is basically masochism. Well and a degree of schadenfreude.
If I hadn't been duly rewarded with dozens of Angel Hair Braids for a single Rhen'ho Flayer then maybe my opinion would be different. But I simply think it's bad design to make me "appreciate" rare items by giving me dump trucks full of bad items. I'm OK with rare items. I don't hate rare items. I don't even hate the fact that it took so long to get a Rhen'ho Flayer. What I truly resent is how lackluster the means to that end were. And Catalept very adequately articulated why.
They gave us BoA, but they didn't give us enough "build-changing" items to make BoA feel very good for most players. Most of my friends who played D3C actually gave up on RoS faster than D3C. Even though the AH was evil, it still gave an means to an end. It gave you more than "keep spending those blood shards, eventually that Tasker and Theo will drop for you!"
BoA could be great, I'm sure. But it really shouldn't take a second re-work of legendaries 5+ months later (remember, Wyatt initially said they didn't even want to re-visit existing items, they just wanted to make new items) to fix the system. 2.0 was supposed to do that. They had, quite literally, over a year to get it right and yet so many legendaries are flat-out wrong. But they got that BoA in there to shut down those 3rd party sites. They got in the part that mattered to them... but they flopped on the other half, which was key to making it work.
Imagine how very few people would really complain about BoA if we truly had a lot of items that were viable... and you weren't JUST hunting those rare items plus a few sets and a RoRG. Imagine that game. That sounds like a good game to me.
Doing A1 bounties until your eyeballs bleed to get a RoRG so that you can gamble up X set pieces ... not nearly as good. But that's exactly where we're at because Josh half-assed the vaunted legendary rework. They had the opportunity to do it right. Now, just like Jay, Josh needs a "do-over" proving that as much as things have changed, they really haven't changed all that much.
Sometimes I really think that Wyatt may be the actual problem. His comment about not wanting to fix old legendaries, but instead wanting to just introduce new legendaries, was unbelievably offensive. It's impossible for anyone who actually plays the game to hold that opinion.
We hear about the vocal minority so much, and here with this poll we see it again. The people that are happy with BoA are being quiet about it, and those in the minority are making the most noise.
If you don't like or accept BoA, you have to come to terms with the facts. You are in the minority, most people disagree with you.
Therefor, you must either do one of two things.
1) Learn to embrace BoA's finer points and accept it.
2) Shut your fucking mouth and walk away,. Goodbye. Door is that way >>>>
Why do people defend BoA? It doesn't matter. Most people do. If YOU do not, you are in the minority.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Unless you actually can prove that <forumgoers> are a representative subset of <Diablo players>.
Which, to anyone with an objective mind, they clearly are not. And, in terms of polling, the less-representative the sample is the larger the error. Even meticulously-conducted polls, like what they do during presidential races, still have 3-5% error.
The most-glaring thing that really jacks up this discussion is that most people who dislike BoA probably didn't buy RoS and aren't frequenting forums. Most of the people that I know who picked up D3V and RoS actually played D3V longer. Almost EVERYONE I know who plays D3 does *not* visit the forums, yet of that subset <D3 players Nick knows> every single one of them thinks that BoA is a bad idea.
Now, that's not scientific. It's purely anecdotal. But it makes good sense. And I'm not arguing that BoA is good/bad for the game here. But I am arguing that a poll conducted five months post-RoS, and six+ months post-2.0 surely isn't going to be representative of <Diablo players>. Hell, the forum is barely representative of <People who are active> let alone people who haven't played the game in a few months.
My one friend knows developers at Blizzard. He told them that he thought D3V sucked ass, so he didn't buy RoS. They gave him a free copy and asked him to give RoS a shot and let them know what he thought of it. His response was that RoS is worse than D3V and that whomever came up with BoA should be fired on the spot. I guarantee he doesn't visit this site, hasn't voted in this poll, and probably doesn't do a ton of other things that *we* consider "normal."
My guess is that "BoA is not a good idea" is a much more prevalent opinion among people who bought RoS and have since quit playing, or even among people who played 2.0 and didn't buy RoS than among active players. Whether inactive players matter could be debated from now until the cows come home. But I have a gut feeling that if you polled all however-many million people actually purchased and played RoS on the subject you'd find that the "minority" is actually people who like BoA.
If the "majority" of RoS purchasers loved BoA it would stand to reason that there would be a lot more active people. The posts on this forum, along with the official forums, incgamers, and reddit all tell the tale that activity in the community is at a pretty low point. For better or worse. Only time will tell.
But you are completely right that this discussion is completely pointless. The ship has sailed on it. The ship sailed on it long before Josh even announced BoA to us. He had his mind made up on the subject even before he was hired to replace Jay, if you ask me. In fact, my guess is that he made a pretty hard sell on it at his interview. "He could sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves!"
It could be argued that a great exodus occurred, sending with it throngs of players who quit specifically due to the BoA system. But then that means they preferred what existed before the BoA went into affect. These must be people that preferred the AH's, or am I off-base?
Anyone that would show preference for that twisted, perverted orgy of capitalism oozing into the realm of online gaming, I simply cannot take them seriously.
But you should know, I'm more reasonable than that. Many that hated D3V and the AH's looked to 2.0 and the BoA system as an affront, they thought change would come more in the form of reverting back to D2's open trading system. For some, seeing BoA replace the AH's was akin to having their pest exterminator remove their rats by introducing tigers into their home.
So what are the numbers, exactly? What's the damage done by BoA? How many people quit over this?
Are forums a good litmus test for measuring popular opinion, in regard to D3's BoA? My answer; Yes. Are most players posting on forums? Certainly not. But we still get a sample of players and their opinions. As we've seen at Bnet, people tend to use the forums for senseless complaining, trolling and cynicism. So to that end, I assert that it is somewhat of a miracle that so many people show up to wave their in support of BoA, contrasting the attempts to poise popular opinion against it.
So why do I defend BoA, when only months ago I was still trumpeting the awesomeness of trading? Because the game is truly fun to play and I embrace the rules of the game. I would not play the game if I did not agree to the rules. I also enjoy the utmost challenge that can be offered, which is why I play Hardcore exclusively.
The presence of trading has the same awful result that the AH's did. It dissolves a great deal of the challenge. Simply put; What items you wield are removed as part of the games challenge with open trading. Any dumbass with $50 to blow can gear-up only moments after opening their game box. BoA ceases this approach and presents ARPG players with a new challenge. What can you do with what you find while playing? Are you good enough to build around random offerings? Is the piece that makes your character ascend to greatness laying just under that rock?
I find the concept intriguing, and most importantly, challenging.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
OF COURSE people who are still playing don't have a (generally) negative opinion on BoA. But that's probably because the inclusion of BoA drove away many people who dislike the system. So it's not really telling us anything we don't know.
It's like surveying roulette players on roulette and then concluding that, because 95% of roulette players like roulette that people who dislike roulette are in the minority. Only a complete fucking moron would actually try to argue that because, CLEARLY, it's a very biased sample. Likewise, polling people who continue to play post-BoA about BoA doesn't really provide an accurate opinion on the matter because it marginalizes and, in many cases, outright ignores the dissenting opinion due to circumstantial factors that automatically squelch their opinion.
It's very similar to how we're repeatedly told by Blizzard that only a small fraction of the playerbase even uses the forums. It's a cautionary tale not to extrapolate on things like this. A couple hundred votes on a fansite can be insightful, but it's very much not sufficient to make any kind of conclusion as to what the "majority" of D3 players think.... particularly on a divisive issue like BoA which may very well have driven a certain segment of the playerbase away from the game (and the forums).
In order to prove this I only need to point back to last year when Josh dropped the bomb and it was basically a 50/50 issue. You don't really think it's a 75/25 issue now because half of the haters suddenly fell in love with BoA, do you? Like I said, the traffic on all fansites is very low at this point in time. It's very unlikely that people who have a negative view about something so big as BoA are anywhere around here anymore. The people who are still here are almost certainly people who are actively playing the game and not just hanging around for patch notes. So why is it surprising that when you poll that subset of people you get such a breakdown? To me it's completely logical, and is very well-explained without making the false correlation that dissenters are in the minority.
I defend BOA because the only alternative we know is full on AH madness and i think that the thread with the dude who made thousands of dollars from the ah just shows you why that's not a good alternative. There are hundreds if not thousands of people exactly like that person. Shit WILL hit the fan unless they introduce something better. A well thought out trading system that limits players with who, how and when they can trade their items.
As long as such a limited system is not introdduced, the better alternative is full boa and not full ah. In my opinion, there's no argument here.
I mean I understand when people say the legendaries are broken, but i think the only reason people say that is because the legendary isn't T5 or T6 worthy to be used. Everyone knows that as you go up the torments the amounts of builds to use get smaller.. there will always be that great cookie cutter build that everyone will aim for if T6 and up coming GRifts.
BoA has my total support at least now instead of spending 500 hours try to farm for a single set when the AH was on, we can actually get a viable T3-5 toon just by playing 2 days worth of grinding and kadala. People are just upset that they can't get that Perfect item be it WoW, FoTF or what not. I'd say the grind when the AH was longer if I didn't want to buy gear of trading sites and AH. I like it now that the drops are more frequent and more giving.
D3 shouldn't be a pay2win game. Might as well download a mobile app if you want to pay2win lol, just my 2 cents