I know that out of the millions of players, not everyone is going to agree with this post, but I think a vast, vast majority will and that signifies one of the biggest issues still affecting this game: terrible loot.
This game is many things, and with the addtion of PVP, it will continue to be many things - but hands down, its primary purpose is a farming game. We farm for hours on end, to get loot that is either an upgrade to our character or something that we can sell to gain gold to buy other upgrades. I have no problem with the AH or the RMAH. I think they should be around and allow a fair and open market for players to trade and further progress in this farming game.
The problem that I have is how bad loot is DESIGNED to be and how terrible most of the drops are. Every communication, every patch, every "we hear you and we are working on the game, but it takes time" continues to use up their credibility until there is nothing left to explain why loot is still bad, why drop rates are still bad and what anyone is supposed to think other than they want you to use the AH and RMAH to further your character is this game.
What other reason is there? What are we supposed to think?
Other threads have talked about the weight of the properties on items, specifically weapons - how a weapon is terrible if it doesn't have a high roll of elemental damage and weapon % damage on it. These two properties taking up two of the potential six that can roll an item is, obviously designed to be that way. They have had months to realize that these two stats, if not present together, make the drop worthless. They haven't made move to fix this - i.e. adjust the base damage of a high ilevel weapon be significantly larger than they are now, so that when you get a drop it isn't automatically sold because of its lack of dps. Why haven't they? I'm starting to believe that they want it this way - so that good weapons are rare and therefore a huge incentive to be sold on the AH or RMAH.
Maybe I'm just pissy because I do not find more than one item in 12 hours plus of farming that is remotely worth selling for usually a small amount on the AH. I do believe that all characters - or even accounts - have a hidden stat of "luck" and this stat affects, well - your luck at RNG. My brother-in-law opened my eyes to this years ago with WoW. He was a lead designer on a few titles in the past couple of years and I trust his information implicitly. He explained that charcters have to have a hidden stat of luck when they are rolled, so that some with higher luck can start obviously creating the market by finding items faster than others with standard luck. This is not a tin-foil hat thing - so save your keystrokes.
But I'm not the only one that spends hours and hours farming to find nothing of value - or new legendary items that have such huge margin of error built into the property rolls that its insulting. Take a look at legedary items - Tal Rasha's belt for instance. Can roll one of two properties - 90 to 100 int or 170 to 200 int. That's insulting. Its either significantly worse than a Rare belt you can buy off the AH (consdieringly only the primary resource) or its on par and just as good as some rares you can find on the AH. That margin of error is designed for one reason - to create extremely rare, great legendary items - within the legendary items. Why? So it will sell on the AH or RMAH.
If they just wanted there to be a range, than it would only roll between 170 to 200 int - so that if you were lucky enough to get a legendary drop (which is rare to begin with) and that legendary happened to applicable to your character (also rare) than it would be a viable, great piece and could always stand a little improvement.
(prepare for negative whining) Blizzard is taking a bate-and-switch devlopement to this game. They lower enemy health pools a while back and Extra Health became a more prevelant affix on champions. They get drug into the light by the community and fix the embarrassingly designed legendary items, to only keep a margin of error that makes them crap.
How much more do we have to see, before it becomes obvious to all players that this game has been designed for one reason - to make you buy things off the RMAH or AH.
That's not the game I want and I hope that TL2 or other games in the ARPG genre kick this game to the curb so quickly that they scramble to take their greedy hands out of the pot and fix it to be what it should be.
Thus ends the rant. Feel free to rant along with me - or tell me what else I'm supposed to think.
I agree, its a treasure hunt and you alway looking for better items, unfortunatly they've made this so bad they don't even think there is anything wrong with it, I wish they would bring in adding a socket or making magical rare, I guess there is always expansion to hope for and bring back my necromancer
I would agree, except I was soloing act 3 (progression, I know I'm behind) earlier today and found an upgrade for my shoulders. Near perfect upgrade, over 100 more strength, more AR, more armor, lost 350 health, and had to trade 15% mf for 18% gold find.
Long story short:
The more you use the AH to buy great gear, the worse drops will seem in comparison. Play a hardcore character without using the AH at all and see how crappy the gear dropping is... if you even make it into Inferno I guarantee you'll be getting upgrades often.
Seriously, mods, can we just make a forum for whining and hand wringing? It's getting a bit out-of-control of late. I come here to discuss the game, not to hear <forumgoer who doesn't post except once every three months to whine about loot #789878769111> whine about the SAME SHIT ALL OVER AGAIN.
Can we keep this a bit cleaner than the B.net forums? I'd hate to think that this place gets so bad that the subforums are the only worthwhile place to post and get decent information. But that's the direction we're headed... again.
If you find one item worth putting on the ah in 12 hours of gameplay, the problem may be a few things:
1) you're not recognizing good rares when you see them, and are vendoring/smashing hundreds of thousands, possibly millions worth of gear. The best way to understand what's good for a class is to play it at 60, but if you don't have the time, spend a bit of time reading their class forums. Understand their popular builds and what gear is good for them.
2) you farm slowly due to a bad build or bad gear. Check your class forum for popular builds and use one, and you should also be able to find some guidance on finding good, cheap gear for your build there as well. Even players with terrible gear can farm act 1 inferno very effectively and have a great shot at great loot. So if you're banging your head against a wall in act 2+ due to bad gear, just chill in act 1 for a bit.
3) you explore every last corner of every map, open every chest, shoot every skull pile or pot or whatever, etc. instead of focusing on killing elite packs and running as fast as possible to the next elite pack. Some people like to do this, and I won't put them down, since it's a game and if they enjoy it then they should go nuts. But you're not enjoying it, so if this is how you play, stop doing it.
There is absolutely nothing that could be done to drop tables, affix assignment, or any other loot code that would make any difference whatsoever.
The reason most loot is worthless is that millions of players are getting hundreds of drops every single serious playing session.
Hundreds of millions of drops. Millions of players. 99% of what drops is not wanted.
You talk about how a weapon is terrible if it doesn't have a high roll of elemental damage and weapon % damage. Let's say that every rare weapon drop was guaranteed to have those two affixes.
Instead of 99% of weapons being unwanted, many of them because they lacked those two affixes, instead, you'd have 99% of weapons being unwanted because they weren't in the top 1% of those affixes. Or because they lacked the new "must have" stats (primary stat, crit damage, whatever).
There would still be hundreds of millions of drops and only millions of players, and thus you would still not find more than one item in 12 hours plus of farming that was remotely worth selling.
You want to play for 15 minutes and upgrade every slot in that time, as well as get 50 godly items to sell on the rmah. Everyone else does too.
If what you want was implemented, no gear would be worth anything, the economy would die out completely and then so would the game.
Your outlook is so childish I have to wonder if you're trolling.
That's not true, you decided to take his POV to the extreme. Where did he say that he wants to get the best loot in 15 minutes? There is a middleground between "99% of drops are garbage" (current state of the game) and "all drops are awesome.
Flat out, the AH was the motivation behind the crap drops, and it was a bad call. I don't care what the devs have said in the past, it is logically impossible to believe that the AH has no affect on how they have balanced item drops.
The reason most loot is worthless is that millions of players are getting hundreds of drops every single serious playing session.
Yes, however; the AH is the reason all of these millions of drops are so readily accessible. If the only means of trade were chat and forums the pool of gear which is readily available would be drastically smaller and what we look at as mediocre now would seem much better.
It's just stupid. Currently I can hit 60 and with a couple of million easily clear inferno because the market is so saturated with mid to high-mid tier items that are laughably cheap. Because of that, only the absolute best gear is valuable.
Why in the world would I farm when I can just buy better gear right off the bat? Why would I continue to farm after I have bought that gear knowing that I am guaranteed to almost never see an upgrade drop for me? Poor game design.
That's not true, you decided to take his POV to the extreme. Where did he say that he wants to get the best loot in 15 minutes? There is a middleground between "99% of drops are garbage" (current state of the game) and "all drops are awesome.
Flat out, the AH was the motivation behind the crap drops, and it was a bad call. I don't care what the devs have said in the past, it is logically impossible to believe that the AH has no affect on how they have balanced item drops.
What I said was stupid, so I edited it out. Sorry about that.
It does seem like the biggest issue people have with this game is that they want a single player experience when the majority of players want the online multiplayer experience of diablo. Diablo really isn't a single player game, and what's more, there are thousands of great single player games out there. My friend's been playing Skyrim lately and keeps telling me about how good it is.
Purchasing Diablo 3 and then complaining about things that are a result of its orientation as a multiplayer game strikes me as stalking into Burger King, demanding they sell you a pizza, and refusing to accept their answer of "Sir, there's a Pizza Hut next door, if you want pizza you should go there."
In short, people who want a single player game and bought Diablo 3 should learn from their mistake, and go purchase a single player game. At least they can sell a few things on the RMAH and make back what they paid for this game, you can't say the same about most other games.
That's not true, you decided to take his POV to the extreme. Where did he say that he wants to get the best loot in 15 minutes? There is a middleground between "99% of drops are garbage" (current state of the game) and "all drops are awesome.
Flat out, the AH was the motivation behind the crap drops, and it was a bad call. I don't care what the devs have said in the past, it is logically impossible to believe that the AH has no affect on how they have balanced item drops.
What I said was stupid, so I edited it out. Sorry about that.
It does seem like the biggest issue people have with this game is that they want a single player experience when the majority of players want the online multiplayer experience of diablo. Diablo really isn't a single player game, and what's more, there are thousands of great single player games out there. My friend's been playing Skyrim lately and keeps telling me about how good it is.
Purchasing Diablo 3 and then complaining about things that are a result of its orientation as a multiplayer game strikes me as stalking into Burger King, demanding they sell you a pizza, and refusing to accept their answer of "Sir, there's a Pizza Hut next door, if you want pizza you should go there."
In short, people who want a single player game and bought Diablo 3 should learn from their mistake, and go purchase a single player game. At least they can sell a few things on the RMAH and make back what they paid for this game, you can't say the same about most other games.
Well, the fact that the majority of people are playing it as a single player game (Blizz confirmed this) would speak otherwise, but regardless, the problem remains. I don't believe you need an AH in a multi-player game, and it poses a real problem for a game that is all about farming.
I suppose my point is that the drops aren't garbage in and of themselves; they are garbage because you can buy their equivalent for peanuts on the AH. If that were not the case the drop rates would probably be fine.
EDIT:...
Actually, that seems to contradict my earlier statement a bit, doesn't it :P. Ok, so while I do believe that the Ah (specifically, the RMAH, which is Blizzard's recurring revenue model for D3) affects the game's drop rates, I also believe that the perceived problem of too many garbage drops is a direct result of a centralized mechanism for buying and selling items, i.e., the AH.
Well, the fact that the majority of people are playing it as a single player game (Blizz confirmed this) would speak otherwise, but regardless, the problem remains. I don't believe you need an AH in a multi-player game, and it poses a real problem for a game that is all about farming.
Blizzard has confirmed that the majority of people play in single player mode, not that they play it as a single player game. I play exclusively single player mode, and yet I greatly enjoy the multiplayer aspect of the economy. I think a lot of other people feel the same way.
The problem is that multiplayer in this game is done very poorly. It's limited to 4 players, which is horrible. Further it's linked by quest, forcing you to play directly with other players.
I felt that D2 multiplayer was great, as it allowed players to choose their level of sociability. You could join an 8 player game and solo stuff, just enjoying reading the chat and the harder monsters + more loot that came from being in a full game. Or you could join full diablo run games (or baal runs for those who enjoyed LoD - I thought it sucked and always played classic). Or anything in between.
The point is, the level of sociability was up to the player to decide. Lately, Blizzard is forcing the issue on players. In WoW you are now forced to join a guild - it's part of why I quit that game. It's due to a big deal they made a while back with another company that refuses to let people decide how sociable they want to be - Facebook. (Oh god is it wonderful to watch their stock die ^_^)
I suppose my point is that the drops aren't garbage in and of themselves; they are garbage because you can buy their equivalent for peanuts on the AH. If that were not the case the drop rates would probably be fine.
EDIT:...
Actually, that seems to contradict my earlier statement a bit, doesn't it :P. Ok, so while I do believe that the Ah (specifically, the RMAH, which is Blizzard's recurring revenue model for D3) affects the game's drop rates, I also believe that the perceived problem of too many garbage drops is a direct result of a centralized mechanism for buying and selling items, i.e., the AH.
Did you play D2? Any time people get together around a common resource (loot, in this case), we start trading it. And any time we trade it, we look for a 'standard candle', something whose worth is relatively stable and allows us to pay, and sell for, a more precise amount vs. the resource we're going crazy over. This is how economies get started and it is unavoidable. In Diablo 2 we used SoJs as currency.
If we didn't have the AH we'd have to sit around trading as in D2. Join a "Trading" game, or make one of your own, and sit around for minutes or hours trying to barter. It didn't work well because with only 7 other players to trade with (max), someone was unlikely to want to buy or sell anything in particular.
In fact, the situation was so bad that d2jsp formed to help with it, and the guy who founded that site is now rich.
In short, if you think this game could function without an AH, you're wrong. History proves it.
I wish strong petitions could emerge or something. And why isn't Diablofans (this website yes) organizing something ?
Well, idiots for me are not gonna be idiots for you and humans will never perceive, be on par as well as understand each others. Human nature.
As it stands right now, intelligent people will perceive things exactly as OP does. Period.
butthurt will be butthurt, your "statement" is nothing but insulting other people get over your self. Why don't you start a petition of WTF Blizzard you owe me, go ahead do it, I'm sure it will do well. fsakes.
If I have to add anything to the topic I'm sure I could find something stated from 50000000 other threads so I'll leave it at this:
Quit playing if life sucks so bad, and if you have quit and are here being bitter seriously find something else to do with your life, how about tying a rope around your penis and jump from a bridge.... nerd rage is entertaining.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
I would have to agree for the most part. After hours and hours of farming. I have only reached PLevel 8, but still have yet to get anything as an UG. I farm act 3, and even did a couple act 4 runs. 2 Legendaries that sold for nothing and one yellow that netted me a million. I do understand that if everything came easy though, that I would quickly run out of things to do. I feel they are doing a great job slowly improving the system and I am sure they will continue to do so. Atleast my grinding has more value then it used to, with the addition of the Paragon system and better legendaries.
If most drops are "good", then drops which were only "decent" will become the new garbage. If the int range of a certain item is restricted to 199-200, then the 199 version will sell a lot cheaper than the 200 version. We see this in D2 all the time with perfect stat items having 5x-10x the value of a non-perfect stat one. It's one thing to complain about not having interesting enough affixes (which are usually garbage, by the way), and quite another thing to complain about not getting good loot. Having bad loot (and lots of it) in the game is absolutely necessary, unless you want the game to not be about farming at all.
OP, I agree with you. I remember reading something on an old addon for WoW that would allow you to see what loot was going to drop when you went into an instance, so you could just reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted. Further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person. Something like that, I haven't played in years.
To the person who complained that the OP compared this game to WoW: Since you obviously didn't know, WoW and Diablo 3 are both made by Blizzard. Looking at all the cross-game idea-bleeding makes me nauseous.
To everyone else: Legendaries are still totally screwy and unreliable, but that's obviously the only way that different copies of the same legendary can maintain any resale value to make Blizzard more money.
I'm eagerly awaiting TL2 as well.
Blizzard's drastic alteration of their games is getting very old. Anyone who played WoW for any length of time should agree to that point, at least.
Did you play D2? Any time people get together around a common resource (loot, in this case), we start trading it. And any time we trade it, we look for a 'standard candle', something whose worth is relatively stable and allows us to pay, and sell for, a more precise amount vs. the resource we're going crazy over. This is how economies get started and it is unavoidable. In Diablo 2 we used SoJs as currency.
If we didn't have the AH we'd have to sit around trading as in D2. Join a "Trading" game, or make one of your own, and sit around for minutes or hours trying to barter. It didn't work well because with only 7 other players to trade with (max), someone was unlikely to want to buy or sell anything in particular.
In fact, the situation was so bad that d2jsp formed to help with it, and the guy who founded that site is now rich.
In short, if you think this game could function without an AH, you're wrong. History proves it.
Ummm... history proves only that the game could function perfectly well without an AH... D2 did. I think you missed the point; of course people will trade, but there is no massive, centralized place to do it that. That makes a huge difference as to how large the pool is. The larger the pool, the more prices for all but the best of the best items drop. *That* is the problem.
There was nothing *bad* about the situation before, that is your perception. I can tell you this; D3 in its current form will not last nearly as long as D2 did. No way, never. Now the AH isn't the only reason for that, lack of randomization is a huge problem, but to say things like the lack of an AH in D2 was a huge problem and that this game could not possibly function without an AH is ridiculous.
I usually get the feeling that Blizzard puts gameplay first in all of their games, however in this game, I feel like they're absolutely putting the economy before gameplay.
No matter what, 99% of drops are going to be bad because they won't be in the top 100%. However, to demand two affixes for a weapon to have good dps, let alone the high primary stat you'd want on it, the life on hit, or lifesteal if you have good enough gear to not need it any more, or the crit, or the socket, you know what screw it, it takes like 4 affixes to make a decent weapon. Try getting a comfortable dps number without a ton of crit damage on weapons.
Everybody needs similar gear. Most builds really want AR, primary, vitality, and crit on gear that can get it. A green poster on the official forum talks about some ideas that could be solutions for the gear problems here: http://us.battle.net...opic/6489780839
The thread is capped out, but blizzard should probably hire the guy and give him thousands of dollars.
One thing he doesn't quite touch on that I believe is a problem is that level 63 gear shouldn't roll with 30 of a primary stat. What the op said about legendaries is spot on, and I believe the same of rares, the important stats have too much variability.
Getting the right stats on a piece of gear is already pretty rare, but then you wind up with one of more of the stats being around 50 out of 200-300 and it just ruins the piece.
In D2 people absolutely sought after items that had that perfect stat roll, and the stats didn't have to vary by 400% to make people want to pay big for them. The same would likely happen in D3 if they could make the game feel fun or rewarding. Currently they're worried that if they make good items actually drop that people would get bored of the game because they'd have good gear, however I'm not the only person who has quit the game because it's just not even entertaining to a large portion of people at the current loot drops. (I'm still here because I sincerely want this to be an awesome game)
In D2 for the most part, you got geared for the content relatively quickly and you farmed for fun, you were allowed to feel like you were awesome with broken mechanics, like actually working life steal, that's just kind of missing in D3. There was power variation in D2 as well, and it's probably somewhat okay that dps in D3 can range from 10k early inferno to 200k in BiS gear (according to that green post) but it does feel a bit much from the average gear levels to the high end ones.
Did you play D2? Any time people get together around a common resource (loot, in this case), we start trading it. And any time we trade it, we look for a 'standard candle', something whose worth is relatively stable and allows us to pay, and sell for, a more precise amount vs. the resource we're going crazy over. This is how economies get started and it is unavoidable. In Diablo 2 we used SoJs as currency.
If we didn't have the AH we'd have to sit around trading as in D2. Join a "Trading" game, or make one of your own, and sit around for minutes or hours trying to barter. It didn't work well because with only 7 other players to trade with (max), someone was unlikely to want to buy or sell anything in particular.
In fact, the situation was so bad that d2jsp formed to help with it, and the guy who founded that site is now rich.
In short, if you think this game could function without an AH, you're wrong. History proves it.
Ummm... history proves only that the game could function perfectly well without an AH... D2 did. I think you missed the point; of course people will trade, but there is no massive, centralized place to do it that. That makes a huge difference as to how large the pool is. The larger the pool, the more prices for all but the best of the best items drop. *That* is the problem.
There was nothing *bad* about the situation before, that is your perception. I can tell you this; D3 in its current form will not last nearly as long as D2 did. No way, never. Now the AH isn't the only reason for that, lack of randomization is a huge problem, but to say things like the lack of an AH in D2 was a huge problem and that this game could not possibly function without an AH is ridiculous.
By the same token...
Saying that D2 functioned "perfectly" is just as ridiculous.
EDIT (this is in general and not at the quoted text)
There are valid talking points on the subject, but this entire thread proves that things cannot be rationally discussed because it either turns into "anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot" or brutally inaccurate D2 demagoguing. So if your opinion is that D2 could do no wrong then, please, save us all the trouble of talking to a brick wall and turn D2 the fuck on and leave the rest of us semi-intelligent people the fuck alone.
I wouldn't say that D2 could do no wrong, however I would say that some of the things they changed would have been better off unchanged, but that happens with a completely new development team. Like Brevik said, I'm sure they did the best they could. I personally think they'd be better off if rares didn't rain from the sky, but had a legitimate chance to be worth equipping beyond act 1. I liked the mf addition to paragon until I realized that if they made rares rarer, it could have some harsher repercussions for people who get fresh into inferno.
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This game is many things, and with the addtion of PVP, it will continue to be many things - but hands down, its primary purpose is a farming game. We farm for hours on end, to get loot that is either an upgrade to our character or something that we can sell to gain gold to buy other upgrades. I have no problem with the AH or the RMAH. I think they should be around and allow a fair and open market for players to trade and further progress in this farming game.
The problem that I have is how bad loot is DESIGNED to be and how terrible most of the drops are. Every communication, every patch, every "we hear you and we are working on the game, but it takes time" continues to use up their credibility until there is nothing left to explain why loot is still bad, why drop rates are still bad and what anyone is supposed to think other than they want you to use the AH and RMAH to further your character is this game.
What other reason is there? What are we supposed to think?
Other threads have talked about the weight of the properties on items, specifically weapons - how a weapon is terrible if it doesn't have a high roll of elemental damage and weapon % damage on it. These two properties taking up two of the potential six that can roll an item is, obviously designed to be that way. They have had months to realize that these two stats, if not present together, make the drop worthless. They haven't made move to fix this - i.e. adjust the base damage of a high ilevel weapon be significantly larger than they are now, so that when you get a drop it isn't automatically sold because of its lack of dps. Why haven't they? I'm starting to believe that they want it this way - so that good weapons are rare and therefore a huge incentive to be sold on the AH or RMAH.
Maybe I'm just pissy because I do not find more than one item in 12 hours plus of farming that is remotely worth selling for usually a small amount on the AH. I do believe that all characters - or even accounts - have a hidden stat of "luck" and this stat affects, well - your luck at RNG. My brother-in-law opened my eyes to this years ago with WoW. He was a lead designer on a few titles in the past couple of years and I trust his information implicitly. He explained that charcters have to have a hidden stat of luck when they are rolled, so that some with higher luck can start obviously creating the market by finding items faster than others with standard luck. This is not a tin-foil hat thing - so save your keystrokes.
But I'm not the only one that spends hours and hours farming to find nothing of value - or new legendary items that have such huge margin of error built into the property rolls that its insulting. Take a look at legedary items - Tal Rasha's belt for instance. Can roll one of two properties - 90 to 100 int or 170 to 200 int. That's insulting. Its either significantly worse than a Rare belt you can buy off the AH (consdieringly only the primary resource) or its on par and just as good as some rares you can find on the AH. That margin of error is designed for one reason - to create extremely rare, great legendary items - within the legendary items. Why? So it will sell on the AH or RMAH.
If they just wanted there to be a range, than it would only roll between 170 to 200 int - so that if you were lucky enough to get a legendary drop (which is rare to begin with) and that legendary happened to applicable to your character (also rare) than it would be a viable, great piece and could always stand a little improvement.
(prepare for negative whining) Blizzard is taking a bate-and-switch devlopement to this game. They lower enemy health pools a while back and Extra Health became a more prevelant affix on champions. They get drug into the light by the community and fix the embarrassingly designed legendary items, to only keep a margin of error that makes them crap.
How much more do we have to see, before it becomes obvious to all players that this game has been designed for one reason - to make you buy things off the RMAH or AH.
That's not the game I want and I hope that TL2 or other games in the ARPG genre kick this game to the curb so quickly that they scramble to take their greedy hands out of the pot and fix it to be what it should be.
Thus ends the rant. Feel free to rant along with me - or tell me what else I'm supposed to think.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
Long story short:
The more you use the AH to buy great gear, the worse drops will seem in comparison. Play a hardcore character without using the AH at all and see how crappy the gear dropping is... if you even make it into Inferno I guarantee you'll be getting upgrades often.
Seriously, mods, can we just make a forum for whining and hand wringing? It's getting a bit out-of-control of late. I come here to discuss the game, not to hear <forumgoer who doesn't post except once every three months to whine about loot #789878769111> whine about the SAME SHIT ALL OVER AGAIN.
Can we keep this a bit cleaner than the B.net forums? I'd hate to think that this place gets so bad that the subforums are the only worthwhile place to post and get decent information. But that's the direction we're headed... again.
1) you're not recognizing good rares when you see them, and are vendoring/smashing hundreds of thousands, possibly millions worth of gear. The best way to understand what's good for a class is to play it at 60, but if you don't have the time, spend a bit of time reading their class forums. Understand their popular builds and what gear is good for them.
2) you farm slowly due to a bad build or bad gear. Check your class forum for popular builds and use one, and you should also be able to find some guidance on finding good, cheap gear for your build there as well. Even players with terrible gear can farm act 1 inferno very effectively and have a great shot at great loot. So if you're banging your head against a wall in act 2+ due to bad gear, just chill in act 1 for a bit.
3) you explore every last corner of every map, open every chest, shoot every skull pile or pot or whatever, etc. instead of focusing on killing elite packs and running as fast as possible to the next elite pack. Some people like to do this, and I won't put them down, since it's a game and if they enjoy it then they should go nuts. But you're not enjoying it, so if this is how you play, stop doing it.
The reason most loot is worthless is that millions of players are getting hundreds of drops every single serious playing session.
Hundreds of millions of drops. Millions of players. 99% of what drops is not wanted.
You talk about how a weapon is terrible if it doesn't have a high roll of elemental damage and weapon % damage. Let's say that every rare weapon drop was guaranteed to have those two affixes.
Instead of 99% of weapons being unwanted, many of them because they lacked those two affixes, instead, you'd have 99% of weapons being unwanted because they weren't in the top 1% of those affixes. Or because they lacked the new "must have" stats (primary stat, crit damage, whatever).
There would still be hundreds of millions of drops and only millions of players, and thus you would still not find more than one item in 12 hours plus of farming that was remotely worth selling.
Do you understand why this is so?
That's not true, you decided to take his POV to the extreme. Where did he say that he wants to get the best loot in 15 minutes? There is a middleground between "99% of drops are garbage" (current state of the game) and "all drops are awesome.
Flat out, the AH was the motivation behind the crap drops, and it was a bad call. I don't care what the devs have said in the past, it is logically impossible to believe that the AH has no affect on how they have balanced item drops.
Yes, however; the AH is the reason all of these millions of drops are so readily accessible. If the only means of trade were chat and forums the pool of gear which is readily available would be drastically smaller and what we look at as mediocre now would seem much better.
It's just stupid. Currently I can hit 60 and with a couple of million easily clear inferno because the market is so saturated with mid to high-mid tier items that are laughably cheap. Because of that, only the absolute best gear is valuable.
Why in the world would I farm when I can just buy better gear right off the bat? Why would I continue to farm after I have bought that gear knowing that I am guaranteed to almost never see an upgrade drop for me? Poor game design.
What I said was stupid, so I edited it out. Sorry about that.
It does seem like the biggest issue people have with this game is that they want a single player experience when the majority of players want the online multiplayer experience of diablo. Diablo really isn't a single player game, and what's more, there are thousands of great single player games out there. My friend's been playing Skyrim lately and keeps telling me about how good it is.
Purchasing Diablo 3 and then complaining about things that are a result of its orientation as a multiplayer game strikes me as stalking into Burger King, demanding they sell you a pizza, and refusing to accept their answer of "Sir, there's a Pizza Hut next door, if you want pizza you should go there."
In short, people who want a single player game and bought Diablo 3 should learn from their mistake, and go purchase a single player game. At least they can sell a few things on the RMAH and make back what they paid for this game, you can't say the same about most other games.
Well, the fact that the majority of people are playing it as a single player game (Blizz confirmed this) would speak otherwise, but regardless, the problem remains. I don't believe you need an AH in a multi-player game, and it poses a real problem for a game that is all about farming.
I suppose my point is that the drops aren't garbage in and of themselves; they are garbage because you can buy their equivalent for peanuts on the AH. If that were not the case the drop rates would probably be fine.
EDIT:...
Actually, that seems to contradict my earlier statement a bit, doesn't it :P. Ok, so while I do believe that the Ah (specifically, the RMAH, which is Blizzard's recurring revenue model for D3) affects the game's drop rates, I also believe that the perceived problem of too many garbage drops is a direct result of a centralized mechanism for buying and selling items, i.e., the AH.
Blizzard has confirmed that the majority of people play in single player mode, not that they play it as a single player game. I play exclusively single player mode, and yet I greatly enjoy the multiplayer aspect of the economy. I think a lot of other people feel the same way.
The problem is that multiplayer in this game is done very poorly. It's limited to 4 players, which is horrible. Further it's linked by quest, forcing you to play directly with other players.
I felt that D2 multiplayer was great, as it allowed players to choose their level of sociability. You could join an 8 player game and solo stuff, just enjoying reading the chat and the harder monsters + more loot that came from being in a full game. Or you could join full diablo run games (or baal runs for those who enjoyed LoD - I thought it sucked and always played classic). Or anything in between.
The point is, the level of sociability was up to the player to decide. Lately, Blizzard is forcing the issue on players. In WoW you are now forced to join a guild - it's part of why I quit that game. It's due to a big deal they made a while back with another company that refuses to let people decide how sociable they want to be - Facebook. (Oh god is it wonderful to watch their stock die ^_^)
Did you play D2? Any time people get together around a common resource (loot, in this case), we start trading it. And any time we trade it, we look for a 'standard candle', something whose worth is relatively stable and allows us to pay, and sell for, a more precise amount vs. the resource we're going crazy over. This is how economies get started and it is unavoidable. In Diablo 2 we used SoJs as currency.
If we didn't have the AH we'd have to sit around trading as in D2. Join a "Trading" game, or make one of your own, and sit around for minutes or hours trying to barter. It didn't work well because with only 7 other players to trade with (max), someone was unlikely to want to buy or sell anything in particular.
In fact, the situation was so bad that d2jsp formed to help with it, and the guy who founded that site is now rich.
In short, if you think this game could function without an AH, you're wrong. History proves it.
butthurt will be butthurt, your "statement" is nothing but insulting other people get over your self. Why don't you start a petition of WTF Blizzard you owe me, go ahead do it, I'm sure it will do well. fsakes.
If I have to add anything to the topic I'm sure I could find something stated from 50000000 other threads so I'll leave it at this:
Quit playing if life sucks so bad, and if you have quit and are here being bitter seriously find something else to do with your life, how about tying a rope around your penis and jump from a bridge.... nerd rage is entertaining.
To the person who complained that the OP compared this game to WoW: Since you obviously didn't know, WoW and Diablo 3 are both made by Blizzard. Looking at all the cross-game idea-bleeding makes me nauseous.
To everyone else: Legendaries are still totally screwy and unreliable, but that's obviously the only way that different copies of the same legendary can maintain any resale value to make Blizzard more money.
I'm eagerly awaiting TL2 as well.
Blizzard's drastic alteration of their games is getting very old. Anyone who played WoW for any length of time should agree to that point, at least.
Ummm... history proves only that the game could function perfectly well without an AH... D2 did. I think you missed the point; of course people will trade, but there is no massive, centralized place to do it that. That makes a huge difference as to how large the pool is. The larger the pool, the more prices for all but the best of the best items drop. *That* is the problem.
There was nothing *bad* about the situation before, that is your perception. I can tell you this; D3 in its current form will not last nearly as long as D2 did. No way, never. Now the AH isn't the only reason for that, lack of randomization is a huge problem, but to say things like the lack of an AH in D2 was a huge problem and that this game could not possibly function without an AH is ridiculous.
No matter what, 99% of drops are going to be bad because they won't be in the top 100%. However, to demand two affixes for a weapon to have good dps, let alone the high primary stat you'd want on it, the life on hit, or lifesteal if you have good enough gear to not need it any more, or the crit, or the socket, you know what screw it, it takes like 4 affixes to make a decent weapon. Try getting a comfortable dps number without a ton of crit damage on weapons.
Everybody needs similar gear. Most builds really want AR, primary, vitality, and crit on gear that can get it. A green poster on the official forum talks about some ideas that could be solutions for the gear problems here: http://us.battle.net...opic/6489780839
The thread is capped out, but blizzard should probably hire the guy and give him thousands of dollars.
One thing he doesn't quite touch on that I believe is a problem is that level 63 gear shouldn't roll with 30 of a primary stat. What the op said about legendaries is spot on, and I believe the same of rares, the important stats have too much variability.
Getting the right stats on a piece of gear is already pretty rare, but then you wind up with one of more of the stats being around 50 out of 200-300 and it just ruins the piece.
In D2 people absolutely sought after items that had that perfect stat roll, and the stats didn't have to vary by 400% to make people want to pay big for them. The same would likely happen in D3 if they could make the game feel fun or rewarding. Currently they're worried that if they make good items actually drop that people would get bored of the game because they'd have good gear, however I'm not the only person who has quit the game because it's just not even entertaining to a large portion of people at the current loot drops. (I'm still here because I sincerely want this to be an awesome game)
In D2 for the most part, you got geared for the content relatively quickly and you farmed for fun, you were allowed to feel like you were awesome with broken mechanics, like actually working life steal, that's just kind of missing in D3. There was power variation in D2 as well, and it's probably somewhat okay that dps in D3 can range from 10k early inferno to 200k in BiS gear (according to that green post) but it does feel a bit much from the average gear levels to the high end ones.
By the same token...
Saying that D2 functioned "perfectly" is just as ridiculous.
EDIT (this is in general and not at the quoted text)
There are valid talking points on the subject, but this entire thread proves that things cannot be rationally discussed because it either turns into "anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot" or brutally inaccurate D2 demagoguing. So if your opinion is that D2 could do no wrong then, please, save us all the trouble of talking to a brick wall and turn D2 the fuck on and leave the rest of us semi-intelligent people the fuck alone.