What kind of incentive can you give to farm for an item when you can get it with just one click ?
If someone truly WANTS to play self-found then they will. There is NOTHING Blizzard can do to "incentivize" people who just want to be "done" and be "done" yesterday. There's no point in even trying to root out that behavior. This is a video game, not a social engineering project.
The only thing that matters is making self-found fun for people who actually want to play that mode. Trying to make it work for people who have absolutely zero will-power is a pie-in-the-sky dream.
Think of it this way. You go to your doctor and he tells you that you're 150 pounds overweight and you need to exercise and eat healthy otherwise you're at severe risk for a heart attack. Is it the doctor's fault if, every day on the way to work, you stop at Dunkin Donuts and get a half dozen donuts and eat them at your desk? He can only do so much for you before you have to man up and take some responsibility for yourself.
At some point, if people TRULY want to play self-found, they're going to have to man the fuck up and play self-found even if the AH is "easier." Blizzard cannot build failsafes against people who don't actually want to kill monsters aside from making all items BoA and that would go over like a lead balloon with the community. So let's ditch the idea that it's Blizzard's responsibility to not click the AH button for us.
It's amazing just how little responsibility people want to take for their own actions.
I actually think removing all gold from the game would be a good thing.
Like PoE did with its system?
It's a very cool way of dealing with an ARPG economy. Instead of stablishing a "currency", embrace the "barter" system. Some people love that, some people hate it.
I only know that it is a very weird way for people to trade and determine how much things are worth. I've had a couple dozen people ask me for like 10 Chaos Orbs (back when Open Beta started) for a Clarity. A skill that takes kinda 5 minutes to farm? And people will have a dozen of them from drops? Also, the chat spam - I couldn't take that for more than a day. We're not in 1995 anymore
Yeah currency and the AH are a good thing. They just need to push the incentive away from the AH, which they are doing. Make it so the Ah is where you go to fill the holes in your build, not the majority. Ideally, say 80% of your gear should be found outside of the AH.
As long as it can come from the AH, it will come from the AH (unless the player decides to play self found). What kind of incentive can you give to farm for an item when you can get it with just one click ? It's like asking someone to grow his own fruits and vegetables when he has fresh products at the market every morning down the street...
The incentive is just making it more likely for people to use self found/made gear. If someone can find an item thats as good, or close to, they are less likely to spend the gold for the said item on the ah. The mystic is a good step in this direction, as is the concept of adding a bonus to found items made by a poster on this site ( as soon as the item is sold it loses it bonus).
Making all legendaries bind on pick up would be a way to make the AH less of a place to find all your gearing needs instantaneously. Do this and boost the drop rates of legendaries a considerable amount would be a great enhancement to the game in my opinion.
Any mechanic where items have a potential to have better stats if they are picked up and worn by the person that found them specifically would be a solution as well.
The best gear in the game should not be purchasable with the click of a button. I should not be able to buy a perfect mempo off the RMAH in 10 seconds and then have zero chance of finding a better helm by playing the game. To me that's just criminal. Look at all the top players on diabloprogress, and with a straight face tell me that anything more than a nominal fraction of them actually found even a single piece of the gear they are wearing. HA! Yeah right.
Note that I say all this as someone who HAS used flipping in the AH and a little of my own money on the RMAH to gain an advantage. I would LOVE to find my own gear, but the state of the game right now doesn't support this very well. For me, the BOA crafting was the first step because now I actually wear some crafted pieces that I had to acquire myself. But in my 1000+ hours of playing, I've never found a piece good enough to beat what I bought on the auction house (gold/RMAH). It's really sad and it needs to change.
I don't want to hear there are no ways to deincentivize the use of the auction house for the absolute best gear, because there are obvious ways.
If someone truly WANTS to play self-found then they will. There is NOTHING Blizzard can do to "incentivize" people who just want to be "done" and be "done" yesterday. There's no point in even trying to root out that behavior. This is a video game, not a social engineering project.
The only thing that matters is making self-found fun for people who actually want to play that mode. Trying to make it work for people who have absolutely zero will-power is a pie-in-the-sky dream.
Think of it this way. You go to your doctor and he tells you that you're 150 pounds overweight and you need to exercise and eat healthy otherwise you're at severe risk for a heart attack. Is it the doctor's fault if, every day on the way to work, you stop at Dunkin Donuts and get a half dozen donuts and eat them at your desk? He can only do so much for you before you have to man up and take some responsibility for yourself.
At some point, if people TRULY want to play self-found, they're going to have to man the fuck up and play self-found even if the AH is "easier." Blizzard cannot build failsafes against people who don't actually want to kill monsters aside from making all items BoA and that would go over like a lead balloon with the community. So let's ditch the idea that it's Blizzard's responsibility to not click the AH button for us.
It's amazing just how little responsibility people want to take for their own actions.
The incentive is just making it more likely for people to use self found/made gear. If someone can find an item thats as good, or close to, they are less likely to spend the gold for the said item on the ah. The mystic is a good step in this direction, as is the concept of adding a bonus to found items made by a poster on this site ( as soon as the item is sold it loses it bonus).
Any mechanic where items have a potential to have better stats if they are picked up and worn by the person that found them specifically would be a solution as well.
The best gear in the game should not be purchasable with the click of a button. I should not be able to buy a perfect mempo off the RMAH in 10 seconds and then have zero chance of finding a better helm by playing the game. To me that's just criminal. Look at all the top players on diabloprogress, and with a straight face tell me that anything more than a nominal fraction of them actually found even a single piece of the gear they are wearing. HA! Yeah right.
Note that I say all this as someone who HAS used flipping in the AH and a little of my own money on the RMAH to gain an advantage. I would LOVE to find my own gear, but the state of the game right now doesn't support this very well. For me, the BOA crafting was the first step because now I actually wear some crafted pieces that I had to acquire myself. But in my 1000+ hours of playing, I've never found a piece good enough to beat what I bought on the auction house (gold/RMAH). It's really sad and it needs to change.
I don't want to hear there are no ways to deincentivize the use of the auction house for the absolute best gear, because there are obvious ways.
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