DiabloFans

It's funny because I'm dealing with a company right now that moves glacially. Meaning, unlike some companies that just make HUGE sweeping changes from one end of the spectrum to the other, they are making changes so finite that you have to really pay attention to even know there is a change.

It's already been said probably 50K times. The in game trade is insulting. It is highly exploitable and has been for over TEN years. I don't now whether they are too lazy or too uncaring or too incompetent to fix that. I'd like to think they aren't too incompetent.

The AH was supposed to "fix" that; however there is (still) an official trade forum on the official forums.. even though the *only* things you can trade are blue and yellow items that have not been enchanted or crafted at the blacksmith. The AH itself was bugged, exploited, and just a source of problems ... many of which were never addressed. So, they just threw in the towel, didn't do much with itemization, end game, or even include promised/advertised features (pvp areanas..), and instead just decided to remove the auction house. And then make all noteworthy gear bound to your account ... even though they still have trade forums and in game trade, even though they're all worthless pretty much.

The people who think the AH was the source of all evils are ridiculous.

The people who think removing the AH was the only way to fix loot are out of their minds.

Doing NOTHING in between the two solutions is also just totally absurd, as I see it.

Now.. don't get me wrong. I actually don't miss the auction house. I'm just saying the situation is completely stupid.

Having said that, if I were to get back into D3 ... which probably won't happen in the immediate future ... I might start to miss the auction house just because the only good way to farm sets and specific *powerful*, build-based legendaries, is through exploiting the shard system. And, as I stated previously, what's really the point of that? To farm faster?

To make a YouTube video about it that might get 50K+ views and might, one day, put $40 or $50 into my bank account? I can wash cars with the time it'd take me to farm that loot and make more money. As for enjoyment of play, well...I went from something like paragon 108 to paragon 260 or 270 since Reaper of Souls. There's only so much farming of static maps with static encounters that I can do against mindless computer AI before I just don't care any more.

Diablo 3 seriously needs some type of reputation system which is based on votes. These people that join a public game, see that a rift is complete, speak to Orek, claim the rewards, and then immediately leave the game shouldn't be able to get away with that trolling, self serving, complete jerk-off behavior.

Blizzard really needs to put something in place which will do something along the lines of:

After X number of votes, you are banned from public games for 72 hours.

Really, the one thing I miss so far, is the ability to see my stash (or at least the ones that were eligible to be put on the auction house), all my characters, my characters inventory, and what gear my characters are wearing, without having to log into the game / start a game / join a game.

Now you either have to log into the game separately for each hero, depending on what exactly you want to see, or you could log in as one hero and then view your own profile from in game I suppose.

In my opinion, save all shards and crafting materials until you're bored to tears (or along those lines - don't have to torture yourself). Thing is, you don't want to craft 5 or 10 items to replace X slot, then run out to farm another 5 or 10 crafting materials.. because if you chug along like that, odds are good that there will be drops you will get while farming that will make you feel like you wasted the crafting. That will either be because now, due to the drop you just got, you may be looking to build in an entirely different direction. Or that may be because the drop you just got is as good or better than what you just crafted.

Hence.. if you just farm for a while and save up, look at what paragon level you are, what holes there are in your gear/stats, and take a look at all the gear you've kept in your stash which has dropped. Then figure out what slots to try crafting replacements for.

Then upgrade the game difficulty possibly, especially if you're not yet farming torment, and then rinse/repeat.

Interesting how nobody really needed to use the AH as soon as they made loot less than a bad joke and an insult.. and people still seem to think it was all the AH, and not bad design, bad itemization, etc. *shrug* Whatever.

Quote from Foray

I joined a public game recently. Everyone was idling in town. So i figured I'd do the nice thing and open the rift to get things going. Everyone jumps in and less than 20 seconds into the rift I get kicked with no explanation. Yay...

That's sad, but not unexpected.

They can fix this when Josh pulls his head out of his ass and realizes that having rifts be the "endgame" creates more issues than it solves. Basically, you ran into three people who wanted to do rifts but didn't want to do bounties. If rifts weren't the "best place to farm" then you wouldn't see people actively trying to avoid paying keystones and, thereby, having to do bounties. This happens even in the larger rifting communities too.

It's a product of bad design that ENCOURAGES moochers.

Main issue is quite simple, no one agrees.

Sad commentary ON the issue is, it's easier NOT to use it. I know that doesn't fix it but it speaks to the problem, and the lack of hope that the problem will be corrected, and even further, the options volunteered here ( always appreciated) speak as well to the complexity of trying to please everyone and cover all possible wants/needs while addressing the ever present "trolls" which are usually only an issue in the aforementioned "public" games.

While it doesn't fix the system, if you don't use it, it doesn't much matter, and many have done simply that, it's just easier.

Quote from oldschool_2o4f

Sadly it's a pin point accurate "critique" of the public game system. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be hearing it so frequently.

Is it so hard to find 3 or 4 people to play with in the style and manner you're comfortable with? Socializing can be beneficial. It just takes effort.

As for public games, from all the crap I hear ALL THE TIME, I've never bothered to join one. I play with a group established from former games and we all get along great. Life IS good.

I think you misunderstood me. What I said was "When people have a complaint about an aspect of public games, telling them "Just don't use them" is a bullshit response" and by bullshit I mean "contributes nothing". There are plenty of ways blizzard can improve on the public game system; hell we saw some in the last patch; I dare say we will see more. Discussing possible solutions for issues regarding public games isn't aided by the "Derp just don't use them I don't" crowd The basic premise of public games is sound; and the majority of people who use it all have the same intentions. THere are just a few "design flaws" in some of the system designs that open the door to player abuse. Fixing these is perfectly possible.

I don't know about other "legit" players, but I'm seriously getting tired of being punished for what exploiters are doing. (no I'm not interested in arguing over whether farming of these is/was exploits.). I do agree that all of these needed a fix, but I'm tired of them taking the lazy way out.

1. People are farming urns...nerf urns.
2. People are farming resplendent chests...nerf resplendent chests.
3. People are farming Nigel Cuthroat...nerf Nigel.
4. People are farming scorpions...nerf scorpions.
5. People are farming aspects...nerf aspects.
6. People are farming Mira...nerf mira.
7. People are farming CotA...nerf CotA (and any other place with "easy" mobs.

Like I said, I agree they needed to fix these, but they need to do something more elegant that doesn't punish regular people. Off the top of my head a timer or a diminishing returns system, or a combination of the two.

There are always going to be epeen waivers looking for the path of least resistance, stop punishing me because of them.