you DON'T find a good item every 20h with this itemization...
Itemization at launch IS what killed the AH. Not the easy access to it.
We had NO CHOICE other than to use both AH's because items that drop are just EXTREMELY BAD unless you run a bot and manage to have tons of each items to ID and roll one good.
Fix the goddamn itemization and people will leave AH by themselves! or maybe only using it to buy crafting mats and gems.
Even with great itemization, you'll always be a step behind gear on the AH, because your 2000 hours will always be less than the combined hours of 3 million players and the loot that has brought.
As someone who played D2 for 8 years without trading a single item I'm not too worried about the lack of an AH.
Thank you, brx, for pulling out this picture. I'm gonna bookmark your post, I feel it will come in handy a couple of times within the next few days/weeks ;-)
It's been a long time since I've read the original post.
I add my thanks!
Trade should be completely removed from the game? I think no but a better solution is needed.
Perhaps we should open a post and start brainstorming, maybe Blizz will take notice if we think of a good solution.
As OP stated the actual AH system is NOT a good solution.
It grants too easy access to powerful items to too many players too quickly which, as a consequence, lead to:
1) too many powerful chars farming at high MP and thus injecting an even greater amount of items in the AH
2) the game feels too easy (if you buy stuff, and so came MP)
3) not rewarding enough (aka nothing good drops, and so came BoA recipes)
4) with no end content (item hunting is a powerful motivation but why should you play again and again if nothing good will drop and anyway you can buy it and save the hassle? and so....Paragon and Hellfire Ring)
5) just frustrating (aka why am I being punished for not buying my way to efficiency? see picture posted by brx)
Also whenever Blizz devs thought about a fix or a new feature or a change in geme mechanic they had to factor in the AH (again, see picture posted by brx) which most often than not it's been a limiting factor.
Now they are rid of it and can have a much freer approach.
To be honest I love to trade I remember I used to spend hours in D2 just trading gear, most of the time i made good trades and combined with farming runs I was able to progress into higher levels of gear. Only problem with D2 for me was the fact that at some point in gear curve the drop chance for BIS gear was so small that people either overpriced the gear or just wanted strait up cash for it. After that happened jsp started up and everyone and their mom started to sell their top gear there. I feel that trading is needed for the game to feel complete. I also don't know how I feel about smart drops I mean it will get boring when you have mostly BIS gear yet only gear for your character keeps drops even thou it is a side-grade at that point, but only time will tell.
All in all I hope blizzard at lest give back trading channels and good ways to make trade games otherwise there will be a lot of scamming going on which will just make them do work they don't want to do.
Completely agree with the OP.
This is one of the best things they could have done to improve the state of in-game community and trading in general. Bring on the trade channels!
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"Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the small death that brings total obliteration."
All in all I hope blizzard at lest give back trading channels and good ways to make trade games otherwise there will be a lot of scamming going on which will just make them do work they don't want to do.
There will be a lot of scamming regardless. Unless they come up with a bullet-proof solution (which I highly doubt).
Just remember, this is a game. If you find an item that you truly don't want to use, you shouldn't think "Wow, I'd like to trade this for something more useful but trading makes me want to stick my testicles in a blender so I'll just put it in my stash and hope RNG is better for me." That's decidedly NOT fun. And games should be fun.
This is why I like the AH. Not because I think it was 100% successful, but it was because it was an attempt to fix a major flaw (IMO) with D2. Of the 10+ characters I maxed in the game, I think I made...2 trades?
I don't understand... they remove AHs so people play the game itself more, but with in-game trade being the only trade option people will spend days and days just looking for items they want. I am not even mentioning that trading sites will shine and a lot of people will just spend their time their.
Yeah I may have spent hundreds of hours in AH in Diablo 3, but I spent just as much or more hours in trading sites in Diablo 2.
That said, I see a lot of advantages of removing AHs.
Why not substitute those "AH hours" for "in-game hours" instead of "3rd party site hours"?
Because 1 hour of AH/3rd party site is like 20+ hours in game? And that's probably a massive low ball. A lot of people play the game for the sense of progression. I, personally, do not. I stop playing when it's not fun, and getting new gear is only a small percentage of that. But others do.
Anyway, I really hope they come up with something to replace the AH. And by replace, I mean something that makes it so you can barter in ways other than a stupid amount of threads/named games (which you couldn't do when I played last spring, and I assume you still can't do).
Perhaps it's a barter house, where you post what items you want to trade, and what items you want to trade for, and you can search by items you want, items others want, and specific trades (this for that). If they did this, they would have to make it anonymous, and it would still be painful, because you have to hope that someone, somewhere, wants what you have, has what you want, AND is using the trade system.
I also hope they have a good alternate to trading. Perhaps increase the value you can get by selling/salvaging? The idea is "I have this legendary that I won't, and I don't want to bother trading, therefore, howerver, I can get something useful from vendors, so that is what I'll do." That would be my guess at what brimstone is for, it is just that the AH combined with not so good crafting made it not so useful.
Shaggy - 2013: "Trading makes me want to stick my testicles in a blender..."
I'm gonna remember that quote for a looong time.
The way I see it, people will still benefit greatly from trading in RoS, and it will still be the ultimate way of getting the best gear (just like D2 and PoE), but it will only be accessible to a small % of players. And probably the ones willing to invest either a lot of time or money in it.
Spending more time in the AH will almost always be more lucrative than killing monsters. It's an innerent characteristic of any economy (alas, even irl!). If you spend lots of time dealing with the "stock market", there's a very big chance you can multiply your money quicker. Newsflash: real life economies work like that too. There's a reason so many people prefer investing in stock markets rather than risking opening a restaurant or a clothes store (or even actually working :P?).
Now if someone is spending 20 hours in the AH looking for gear, and 2 hours playing with said items (and gets "bored" of the game), the problem lies elsewhere. It's the player who doesn't know how to search for good items, nor does he know how to spend his "budget". A very experienced player can find great items quickly on multiple budgets, he only needs to spend more time in that when he wants some very good deals - and the bidding system of the AH is perfect for that.
Also, the way I see it, the best way to have made a huge fortune in this first year and a half of D3 was having both skills (let's not bring bots to a legit discussion, shall we?), and an equal dedication to both.
Both playing the game and farming very efficiently (for those big jackpots) and being a smart AH user. Having consistency in both ensures a very steady income of gold, and that's probably how the most succesful players (the ones who didn't put money in D3 or botted) got where they are.
I think trade is more for trading with your friends you play with. Lets say you find something thats an upgrade for your friend but not for you. Just trade it to them for some gold.
You're forgetting the people that, at launch, used broken skills and mechanics to advance to places where 'legit' players could not, then proceeded to farm those places, then proceeded to post the items that dropped in those places (and nowhere else) in the AH, which made them a lot of gold, which allowed them to have a stranglehold on the economy.
I'm not "forgetting". I just don't think there's any factual data to support that theory. As far as I care, it's another one of those "urban legends" about Diablo 3.
A friend of mine managed to make over 200 million gold in the first month+, and he never even knew about any "broken skills" or mechanics. He doesn't check forums, he doesn't watch streams or youtubers, and never looked for guides online (whenever I talked about things like the Force Armor build he was like "nah never heard of that strat, I'll keep playing the way I want to").
He got it all by simply playing the game (he had like 350 hours played while I only had 150), going back to farming a previous difficulty, never giving up and mostly by not behaving like the average spoiled gamer of today's standards.
In the first couple weeks, playing a standard kiting Blizz/Hydra build (and with about 100-150 hours played), I managed to get up to 40-50 million gold, and that's with a 1-week trip in the first month. I'm sure more competent and hardcore players were doing a lot better than me (as my friend's stats suggested).
Also, funny how you disregard bots, considering most of the gold floating around in SC was, directly or indirectly, bought from the RMAH. And guess who posted it there?
I disregard bots because we can't have a proper discussion when we're all in the dark about the subject. (it's like 2 people graduated in English Literature trying to discuss the intricacies of Quantum Physics). I also don't think it was an issue back when there was no RMAH, so quite a few months after release.
We have no numbers data on them. Most of us have almost 0 knowledge about how they work and how efficient they are. The only thing we know for an absolute fact is that Blizzard cannot stop bots 100% (who knows, maybe not even NSA programmers/hackers can't) without risking hurting legit users, who play 20 hours/day themselves.
Illegal activities and dirty money will always be a factor even in real life economies - that doesn't mean Economists should waste their times studying and analysing things they can't possibly measure (because they're usually "off the grid"). Instead they focus on what's tangible, and what can be used, which is what I tried to do in my post.
We'll see once RoS hits (and D2JSP will be a great way to measure all these theories).
Also, just for clarification, when I said that "let's not bring bots into a legit discussion" it was because I was comparing legit players' behaviours (people who actually play the game).
A botter can be succesful by doing neither of those "succesful behaviours" the same way a drug dealer can be succesful without ever studying or working. The same way using just the RMAH and putting 2k+ dollars in it would be like daddy buying a job in a big company
You just can't put those in the same discussion.
Ps.: for the record, I don't have anything against big RMAH users (or even botters). To each their own. It is a fact though that they're not getting what they have by "playing the game", though.
I've said this before in other threads, but I think it bears repeating here. I have no opinion on the RMAH, I could take or leave it. But the Gold AH served a very important function in D3. There were problems related to the AH, yes, but those same problems were also related itemization and droprates, and it seems like Blizzard was making good strides in addressing those problems with Loot 2.0. Removing the Gold AH will solve those problems outright, but it seems a weird decision to make at this point in time, with those other potential solutions on the horizon. Solutions that could have created a good compromise without the need to take away the AH.
I could be wrong. Maybe Loot 2.0 wouldn't have solved anything. Maybe things would have been better for a month or 2, and then we would be right back to where we started. But NOW WE'LL NEVER KNOW IF IT WOULD HAVE WORKED. And that's what upsets/disappoints me about this decision. It's not the fact that they are removing the AH, it's the timing.
(...) he never even knew about any "broken skills" or mechanics (...)
(...)In the first couple weeks, playing a standard kiting Blizz/Hydra build (...)
Let me guess.....Venom Hydra?
Broken skill. The pools weren't supposed to stack. Whether you know about it or not, it doesn't matter; you used it.
What did he play? Wizard (Venom Hydra, Force Armor)? DH (Smoke Screen)? And this is just from the top of my head, without doing any research. There were a couple more of these.
Seriously, your post is just....I don't even know what to call it. In your previous post, you stated that the most successful players got where they are (or were, in the case of the ones that don't play anymore) by playing 'legit', which has been demonstrated to not be true. Go watch streams from back then; every single player that progressed past Act 2 Inferno was using one or more skills that didn't work the way they were intended. This is fact. The fact that you try to sidestep it is, to be honest, disgraceful. And that's not even mentioning bot-obtained gold. Not that these people necessarily botted themselves, but do you honestly think that all the gold floating around was obtained by 'legit' players with their GF? Please. This botted gold has permeated the SC economy down to the poorest players (that use the AH, that is). Credit card warrior buys (most likely botted) gold with RM -> Credit card warrior spends said gold on the GAH -> Player that never botted has now received tens or hundreds of million of botted gold -> Said player spends it on the GAH -> Rinse and repeat.
@Shinna1989: the skills weren't OP, they were broken. They didn't work the way they were intended. Venom Hydra's pools weren't supposed to stack. Why do you think everyone used it? And why do you think everyone stopped using it once it got FIXED? Not nerfed, fixed. I'm not saying those people were cheaters, but don't act like the second coming just because you managed to clear Inferno pre-nerf, because you most likely did in on the back of skills and mechanics (Tyrael, anyone? Killing mobs off-screen, anyone? Legacy Nat's, anyone?) that weren't working the way they were intended.
Thank you for that, Maka.
Yeah, there's definitely a difference between legit players, who do not intend to misuse broken skill mechanics, that aren't working as intended, and players who do that constantly. A more recent example that I can remember...when Blizzard fixed the Sweeping Wind snapshotting people were doing when buffing their damage. Players went absolutely NUUUUUUUUUUUTS, and some people even tried to justify it as a legit gameplay mechanic!!! Bull! And Blizzard's fixing of it proves it wasn't what they intended.
Hell, Monk-wise...I've even felt like it was unfair to use the Nirvana Effect, when using Fists of Fury buffed with Infused with Light, because it felt so OP to me. And as far as I know, the devs don't have any problem with it. Numerous posts were put up about it on the Bnet forums, and the devs haven't said a word. Not like that's necessarily proof positive that it's working as intended, could just be they see the downsides to it as an appropriate balance to how easy it makes Spirit Generation.
But still...knowing it has even a chance of being unfair causes me to move away from using it as a battle strategy. I consider myself a very legit player for that. I don't even like using skills that are too easy to abuse, like Critical Mass, Frost Nova, Night Stalker, Shadow Power, Wrath of the Berserker, Whirlwind, Zombie Bears, One With Everything, Overawe, and lots of others.
Anything I can do to ensure I'm not exploiting the game, I do.
I think there are several very strong points in this thread. I believe trading is an important in combating RNG. No matter how often you may find a valuable item within the game, there will always be something different that you need. It is important for you to be able to make a transaction to obtain desired items. I fully support trading aiding you make progress once RNG ruins your game play.
When you balance the rate in which you get an item that is desirable the availability of these items and the life of the item are very important. Removal of the AH and item binding will aid in controlling this. A very specific search on the Auction House is very bad for a balance since you can find the best for a slot and ignore all others that you can not afford. This devalues the middle tiered items significantly. Long lifes of items is also an bad for balance. If an item was bad it was sold or destroyed, but good items had a very long life. The better items were rarely destoryed and most eventually ended up on the auction house while not in use. Eventually items that were good get replaced by the items a tier above and comparable items became more prevalent. We start hitting a wall when the best items become available and all items become more prevalent. Item binding and the removal of the AH will greatly increase the value of middle tiered items.
Removing the very well controlled transaction that the AH provided is possibly the only truly bad thing for this game. The fact that with any transaction bad people are going to try to take advantage of the naive. I am not familiar with the current means of exploit ions done to players, but the one I remember and experiences was the trade swap. (Loosing a IK armor to a war hat with a chipped emerald really hurt!) I think flipping the trade mechanic would really help. I have heard suggestions of having a box you deposit items in that are available for trade. I am going to build on that idea to suggest a more secure transaction.
1. Inspect the trade container and find an item you want.
2. Barter for a price.
3. Request that item or items from seller and price given in a static trade window.
4. Both parties accept and items are transferred.
TLDR: Trade is good, AH was mostly bad, Secure trading for young and casual players.
It was me who played a Venom/Hydra build, not him. Yes of course I tried using more powerful builds, I had to make the most out of my playtime back then which also doesn't mean I didn't try hipster builds as well (believe me, I tried all of them, for a couple hours not minutes).
Here's his build back when he first started playing (try playing it with above average defensive stats and 30-40k DPS, it's very doable in MP 1-2), not efficient but certainly doable. And he had fun with it. I guess sometimes staying out of this whole internet forum drama is better for your game experience.
And while a lot of the playerbase that we do know (youtubers, streamers, forum members) did use the more popular abilities/builds (and here's the core of my argument, and I stand by it) many other players didn't. That was NOT the main deciding factor for whether the player was succesful or not at that stage of the game or 1 year later. Another friend played a Force Armor Wizard but he spent all his gold on it, bought shitty items, couldn't even progress properly into Act 2 - he gave up farming after 200-210 hours. Burned out, frustrated that he didn't get a 200 mil item. Switched to Barb because he thought it would be "easier", again got frustrated that it wasn't as easy as people made it look like.
Again, we can't really discuss which profession gives you a good chance of success in life (which is kinda what I was talking about) when we come down to arguments such as "but stealing a bank is better and gives more money". That's why I didn't want to bring bots into the discussion.
But still...knowing it has even a chance of being unfair causes me to move away from using it as a battle strategy. I consider myself a very legit player for that. I don't even like using skills that are too easy to abuse, like Critical Mass, Frost Nova, Night Stalker, Shadow Power, Wrath of the Berserker, Whirlwind, Zombie Bears, One With Everything, Overawe, and lots of others.
Anything I can do to ensure I'm not exploiting the game, I do.
I totally respect that attitude, but I just wanted to say that Whirlwind by itself is really not that easy to abuse. It's actually the worst fury spender in terms of single target damage, and it's only when you combine it with other stuff, like the Tornado build, that it gets OP. Likewise, WotB is not OP at all unless you take Thrive on Chaos rune. Otherwise, it's very balanced as a 2-minute skill. I'd recommend giving them a try.
So guys like Jaetch or Archon only got good items because they either botted or bought gold from the RMAH? There are no other factors in the equation? Finding and selling some of THE most powerful items (either by farming or on the AH), which these guys probably get on a regular basis, had absolutely noimpact on how succesful they got?
To be fair, we don't even know who were the "most succesful players". Things like Diabloprogress and D3UP came quite a few months after release. And guys like Kripparian or Athene didn't really play "legit" from my pov.
I still think there are some very succesful players that got to a comfortable position early on (good gear, 200-250 mil gold) legit. I have personally played with one of these examples, so you really won't change my mind here. The generalization is what bothers me: almost everyone who has good stuff must have gotten it through non-legit ways. That's just wrong, and frankly resembles a lot the "if this guy is rich, he must have done something illicit" mentality that a lot of poor people have.
My core argument stands: that it was very possible to reach the higher echelons of power level just by being a dedicate player and smart AH user (no shenanigans involved). I'm sure there's a few thousand of those players out there. It's just easier to believe otherwise.
What bots do is give wealth to unfair players and inflate the gold market/values. But they don't take away the merit of dedicated and smart players. The concept that "the existence of the RMAH or the AH is what screws the weaker players" is what I'm opposing here. With or without a (RM)AH, smart players with lots of time to play will always be at the top. Simple as that.
And that will not change with RoS, no matter what kind of fantasy people are feeding right now.
Jaetch might have bought gold off the RMAH, but afaik he didn't put 250 US$ in his Bnet balance multiple times. He sold pretty good items, and used that money to work his way up.
And every game has things like "black weapons". The top DPS players would still be the top DPS players, period. Again, you're taking the merit away of good players because of a coding issue.
The generalization is what bothers me: almost everyone who has good stuff must have gotten it through non-legit ways. That's just wrong, and frankly resembles a lot the "if this guy is rich, he must have done something illicit" mentality that a lot of poor people have.
Nowhere in any of my posts will you find that statement.
No. You're forgetting the people that, at launch, used broken skills and mechanics to advance to places where 'legit' players could not, then proceeded to farm those places, then proceeded to post the items that dropped in those places (and nowhere else) in the AH, which made them a lot of gold, which allowed them to have a stranglehold on the economy. They could afford to buy every single piece of good gear that appeared in the AH, therefore maintaining a sort of cartelisation over the good items available on the AH, allowing them to basically ask any price they so wished.
Seriously, your post is just....I don't even know what to call it. In your previous post, you stated that the most successful players got where they are (or were, in the case of the ones that don't play anymore) by playing 'legit', which has been demonstrated to not be true.
This resembles a lot a generalization. "Legit" players couldn't farm or get items? As I said, I personally know a player that is proof enough for me that statement is untrue.
It's just something most average players need to believe in, otherwise they have to accept the harsher truth. Just like everyone with a high KD in CoD/BF on PC is "cheating".
I think trading is better than the AH. AH made the game into a sub-game. Most of the players played "fliping items" instead of diablo. I believe trading will be more self oriented, because of its inefficiency to find the best deals uderpriced and then resell for profit. Simply put, most of us will be trading just for upgrades, not fliping. Well just a hypothesis...
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Even with great itemization, you'll always be a step behind gear on the AH, because your 2000 hours will always be less than the combined hours of 3 million players and the loot that has brought.
As someone who played D2 for 8 years without trading a single item I'm not too worried about the lack of an AH.
I add my thanks!
Trade should be completely removed from the game? I think no but a better solution is needed.
Perhaps we should open a post and start brainstorming, maybe Blizz will take notice if we think of a good solution.
As OP stated the actual AH system is NOT a good solution.
It grants too easy access to powerful items to too many players too quickly which, as a consequence, lead to:
1) too many powerful chars farming at high MP and thus injecting an even greater amount of items in the AH
2) the game feels too easy (if you buy stuff, and so came MP)
3) not rewarding enough (aka nothing good drops, and so came BoA recipes)
4) with no end content (item hunting is a powerful motivation but why should you play again and again if nothing good will drop and anyway you can buy it and save the hassle? and so....Paragon and Hellfire Ring)
5) just frustrating (aka why am I being punished for not buying my way to efficiency? see picture posted by brx)
Also whenever Blizz devs thought about a fix or a new feature or a change in geme mechanic they had to factor in the AH (again, see picture posted by brx) which most often than not it's been a limiting factor.
Now they are rid of it and can have a much freer approach.
All in all I hope blizzard at lest give back trading channels and good ways to make trade games otherwise there will be a lot of scamming going on which will just make them do work they don't want to do.
This is one of the best things they could have done to improve the state of in-game community and trading in general. Bring on the trade channels!
There will be a lot of scamming regardless. Unless they come up with a bullet-proof solution (which I highly doubt).
This is why I like the AH. Not because I think it was 100% successful, but it was because it was an attempt to fix a major flaw (IMO) with D2. Of the 10+ characters I maxed in the game, I think I made...2 trades?
Because 1 hour of AH/3rd party site is like 20+ hours in game? And that's probably a massive low ball. A lot of people play the game for the sense of progression. I, personally, do not. I stop playing when it's not fun, and getting new gear is only a small percentage of that. But others do.
Anyway, I really hope they come up with something to replace the AH. And by replace, I mean something that makes it so you can barter in ways other than a stupid amount of threads/named games (which you couldn't do when I played last spring, and I assume you still can't do).
Perhaps it's a barter house, where you post what items you want to trade, and what items you want to trade for, and you can search by items you want, items others want, and specific trades (this for that). If they did this, they would have to make it anonymous, and it would still be painful, because you have to hope that someone, somewhere, wants what you have, has what you want, AND is using the trade system.
I also hope they have a good alternate to trading. Perhaps increase the value you can get by selling/salvaging? The idea is "I have this legendary that I won't, and I don't want to bother trading, therefore, howerver, I can get something useful from vendors, so that is what I'll do." That would be my guess at what brimstone is for, it is just that the AH combined with not so good crafting made it not so useful.
I'm gonna remember that quote for a looong time.
The way I see it, people will still benefit greatly from trading in RoS, and it will still be the ultimate way of getting the best gear (just like D2 and PoE), but it will only be accessible to a small % of players. And probably the ones willing to invest either a lot of time or money in it.
Spending more time in the AH will almost always be more lucrative than killing monsters. It's an innerent characteristic of any economy (alas, even irl!). If you spend lots of time dealing with the "stock market", there's a very big chance you can multiply your money quicker. Newsflash: real life economies work like that too. There's a reason so many people prefer investing in stock markets rather than risking opening a restaurant or a clothes store (or even actually working :P?).
Now if someone is spending 20 hours in the AH looking for gear, and 2 hours playing with said items (and gets "bored" of the game), the problem lies elsewhere. It's the player who doesn't know how to search for good items, nor does he know how to spend his "budget". A very experienced player can find great items quickly on multiple budgets, he only needs to spend more time in that when he wants some very good deals - and the bidding system of the AH is perfect for that.
Also, the way I see it, the best way to have made a huge fortune in this first year and a half of D3 was having both skills (let's not bring bots to a legit discussion, shall we?), and an equal dedication to both.
Both playing the game and farming very efficiently (for those big jackpots) and being a smart AH user. Having consistency in both ensures a very steady income of gold, and that's probably how the most succesful players (the ones who didn't put money in D3 or botted) got where they are.
A friend of mine managed to make over 200 million gold in the first month+, and he never even knew about any "broken skills" or mechanics. He doesn't check forums, he doesn't watch streams or youtubers, and never looked for guides online (whenever I talked about things like the Force Armor build he was like "nah never heard of that strat, I'll keep playing the way I want to").
He got it all by simply playing the game (he had like 350 hours played while I only had 150), going back to farming a previous difficulty, never giving up and mostly by not behaving like the average spoiled gamer of today's standards.
In the first couple weeks, playing a standard kiting Blizz/Hydra build (and with about 100-150 hours played), I managed to get up to 40-50 million gold, and that's with a 1-week trip in the first month. I'm sure more competent and hardcore players were doing a lot better than me (as my friend's stats suggested).
I disregard bots because we can't have a proper discussion when we're all in the dark about the subject. (it's like 2 people graduated in English Literature trying to discuss the intricacies of Quantum Physics). I also don't think it was an issue back when there was no RMAH, so quite a few months after release.
We have no numbers data on them. Most of us have almost 0 knowledge about how they work and how efficient they are. The only thing we know for an absolute fact is that Blizzard cannot stop bots 100% (who knows, maybe not even NSA programmers/hackers can't) without risking hurting legit users, who play 20 hours/day themselves.
Illegal activities and dirty money will always be a factor even in real life economies - that doesn't mean Economists should waste their times studying and analysing things they can't possibly measure (because they're usually "off the grid"). Instead they focus on what's tangible, and what can be used, which is what I tried to do in my post.
We'll see once RoS hits (and D2JSP will be a great way to measure all these theories).
A botter can be succesful by doing neither of those "succesful behaviours" the same way a drug dealer can be succesful without ever studying or working. The same way using just the RMAH and putting 2k+ dollars in it would be like daddy buying a job in a big company
You just can't put those in the same discussion.
Ps.: for the record, I don't have anything against big RMAH users (or even botters). To each their own. It is a fact though that they're not getting what they have by "playing the game", though.
I could be wrong. Maybe Loot 2.0 wouldn't have solved anything. Maybe things would have been better for a month or 2, and then we would be right back to where we started. But NOW WE'LL NEVER KNOW IF IT WOULD HAVE WORKED. And that's what upsets/disappoints me about this decision. It's not the fact that they are removing the AH, it's the timing.
That's not really a fair comparison. Loot 2.0 is going WAY beyond what the 1.04 patch did.
Thank you for that, Maka.
Yeah, there's definitely a difference between legit players, who do not intend to misuse broken skill mechanics, that aren't working as intended, and players who do that constantly. A more recent example that I can remember...when Blizzard fixed the Sweeping Wind snapshotting people were doing when buffing their damage. Players went absolutely NUUUUUUUUUUUTS, and some people even tried to justify it as a legit gameplay mechanic!!! Bull! And Blizzard's fixing of it proves it wasn't what they intended.
Hell, Monk-wise...I've even felt like it was unfair to use the Nirvana Effect, when using Fists of Fury buffed with Infused with Light, because it felt so OP to me. And as far as I know, the devs don't have any problem with it. Numerous posts were put up about it on the Bnet forums, and the devs haven't said a word. Not like that's necessarily proof positive that it's working as intended, could just be they see the downsides to it as an appropriate balance to how easy it makes Spirit Generation.
But still...knowing it has even a chance of being unfair causes me to move away from using it as a battle strategy. I consider myself a very legit player for that. I don't even like using skills that are too easy to abuse, like Critical Mass, Frost Nova, Night Stalker, Shadow Power, Wrath of the Berserker, Whirlwind, Zombie Bears, One With Everything, Overawe, and lots of others.
Anything I can do to ensure I'm not exploiting the game, I do.
When you balance the rate in which you get an item that is desirable the availability of these items and the life of the item are very important. Removal of the AH and item binding will aid in controlling this. A very specific search on the Auction House is very bad for a balance since you can find the best for a slot and ignore all others that you can not afford. This devalues the middle tiered items significantly. Long lifes of items is also an bad for balance. If an item was bad it was sold or destroyed, but good items had a very long life. The better items were rarely destoryed and most eventually ended up on the auction house while not in use. Eventually items that were good get replaced by the items a tier above and comparable items became more prevalent. We start hitting a wall when the best items become available and all items become more prevalent. Item binding and the removal of the AH will greatly increase the value of middle tiered items.
Removing the very well controlled transaction that the AH provided is possibly the only truly bad thing for this game. The fact that with any transaction bad people are going to try to take advantage of the naive. I am not familiar with the current means of exploit ions done to players, but the one I remember and experiences was the trade swap. (Loosing a IK armor to a war hat with a chipped emerald really hurt!) I think flipping the trade mechanic would really help. I have heard suggestions of having a box you deposit items in that are available for trade. I am going to build on that idea to suggest a more secure transaction.
1. Inspect the trade container and find an item you want.
2. Barter for a price.
3. Request that item or items from seller and price given in a static trade window.
4. Both parties accept and items are transferred.
TLDR: Trade is good, AH was mostly bad, Secure trading for young and casual players.
Here's his build back when he first started playing (try playing it with above average defensive stats and 30-40k DPS, it's very doable in MP 1-2), not efficient but certainly doable. And he had fun with it. I guess sometimes staying out of this whole internet forum drama is better for your game experience.
And while a lot of the playerbase that we do know (youtubers, streamers, forum members) did use the more popular abilities/builds (and here's the core of my argument, and I stand by it) many other players didn't. That was NOT the main deciding factor for whether the player was succesful or not at that stage of the game or 1 year later. Another friend played a Force Armor Wizard but he spent all his gold on it, bought shitty items, couldn't even progress properly into Act 2 - he gave up farming after 200-210 hours. Burned out, frustrated that he didn't get a 200 mil item. Switched to Barb because he thought it would be "easier", again got frustrated that it wasn't as easy as people made it look like.
Again, we can't really discuss which profession gives you a good chance of success in life (which is kinda what I was talking about) when we come down to arguments such as "but stealing a bank is better and gives more money". That's why I didn't want to bring bots into the discussion.
I totally respect that attitude, but I just wanted to say that Whirlwind by itself is really not that easy to abuse. It's actually the worst fury spender in terms of single target damage, and it's only when you combine it with other stuff, like the Tornado build, that it gets OP. Likewise, WotB is not OP at all unless you take Thrive on Chaos rune. Otherwise, it's very balanced as a 2-minute skill. I'd recommend giving them a try.
To be fair, we don't even know who were the "most succesful players". Things like Diabloprogress and D3UP came quite a few months after release. And guys like Kripparian or Athene didn't really play "legit" from my pov.
I still think there are some very succesful players that got to a comfortable position early on (good gear, 200-250 mil gold) legit. I have personally played with one of these examples, so you really won't change my mind here. The generalization is what bothers me: almost everyone who has good stuff must have gotten it through non-legit ways. That's just wrong, and frankly resembles a lot the "if this guy is rich, he must have done something illicit" mentality that a lot of poor people have.
My core argument stands: that it was very possible to reach the higher echelons of power level just by being a dedicate player and smart AH user (no shenanigans involved). I'm sure there's a few thousand of those players out there. It's just easier to believe otherwise.
What bots do is give wealth to unfair players and inflate the gold market/values. But they don't take away the merit of dedicated and smart players. The concept that "the existence of the RMAH or the AH is what screws the weaker players" is what I'm opposing here. With or without a (RM)AH, smart players with lots of time to play will always be at the top. Simple as that.
And that will not change with RoS, no matter what kind of fantasy people are feeding right now.
Jaetch might have bought gold off the RMAH, but afaik he didn't put 250 US$ in his Bnet balance multiple times. He sold pretty good items, and used that money to work his way up.
And every game has things like "black weapons". The top DPS players would still be the top DPS players, period. Again, you're taking the merit away of good players because of a coding issue.
This resembles a lot a generalization. "Legit" players couldn't farm or get items? As I said, I personally know a player that is proof enough for me that statement is untrue.
It's just something most average players need to believe in, otherwise they have to accept the harsher truth. Just like everyone with a high KD in CoD/BF on PC is "cheating".