And yet, if they remove it, people will spend even more time playing trade channels rather than the game.
Unless the Loot 2.0 drops will be so great there will be no reason at all to use AH/trade. Which is quite bland for a lot of people.
A relative *handful* will do this. They know how often trade window was opened on D2 battle.net. When they say that a small portion of D2 players took trading seriously, they have the data to back it up.
In Jay's word the AH was a feature aimed at this relatively small demographic, because D2 is a sucky way to do trading. The problem from Blizzard's perspective is the vast majority of players ended up getting into the AH thanks to its relative convenience, and then losing the fun of finding random stuff. (not to mention, it's just plain easier for good stuff to get on the market with so many sellers.) It's a numbers game. Yes, those who take trading seriously are going to be screwed with more time wasted running around trading games. But many more people won't even touch that crappy environment and de facto reap the benefits of self-found. I don't think this is the best of possible solutions, but it is one that will be enjoyed by the majority, at the minority's expense.
Also it needs to be pointed out that I was speculating on Blizzard's motivations. Even if you think it's a bad idea, evidence suggests it is Blizzard's idea, and we should therefore not expect a great new trading alternative from them, unless maybe enough people raise a stink about it.
The fact is, people want to trade. A lot. The AH proved that beyond all expected measures. That desire won't just evaporate when the AH goes dark, and it sure as hell makes good business sense (for numerous reasons) for Blizzard to try and satisfy that desire in the best way they can, or they're going to have a huge increase in compromised account issues.
These victims just aren't as angry as everyone on the internet, ever, that has given D3 such a terrible name thanks to the AH. Blizzard's willing to put up with this if it gets them another 10 mil + copies.
Regardless of whether you think OP is right, I think this describes the current Blizzard's stance on why they are doing this.
If you watched the video, they specifically mentioned that the sheer "convenience" of the AH is what led people to play that rather than the game.
While they may do something, they don't have a new "awesome" trading experience up their sleeve. The whole problem with the AH according to them is that it's too convenient. The "fix" is to make trading a huge pain in the ass like it was in the D2 days, so that only a small handful of players who love bargaining so much to put up with that godawful system, will whittle their time away doing that instead of farming. (And even then, they will still acquire upgrades far slower than on a real AH, which extends the time it takes to hit the upgrade ceiling, etc.)
So far really their "replacement" are systems that were actually anethema to the "total randomness" of D2; class-tailored drops, rerolling specific mods. I expect more customization systems that don't rely on other players if anything.
Am I missing something, or aren't the people with the best lvl 60 gear going to be in the best position to farm/sell level 70 stuff like mad while the demand is especially high?
I think that "fate lies shattered forever" refers to the black soul stone being shattered and thus putting an end to the possibility of trapping the demons soul anymore.
Every other part of the prophecy refers to an angel, and there is a known angel of fate. We even met him. He (or something he is closely tied to, like the book of fate) is what will be "shattered" (possibly figurative.)
We already saw hope "swallowed" by despair. Everything else that we know in that prophecy appears chronologically in the exact order: Maltheal was lost long ago, then Tyreal falls, sometime after Rakanoth captures Auriel. Maltheal's reappearance as Death is the next step. There's one more step after for Fate, which coincidentally lines up with the 2nd planned expansion. So this means Valor --> Wrath already had to happen. How you want to interpret that happening is up to you; but there's no indication that pride for accepting help is what motivated Imperius, and mere hatred for half-demons trapsing around the heavens (Wrath) could well have motivated his actions. Humans aren't merely a "lesser" race from many angels perspective, they are a tainted one.
Fate is unable to read the actions of the Nephalim, not the *fate* of the Nephalim in particular. According to the book of Fate, heaven was already doomed once Hope (Auriel) was lost. But the unpredictable actions of the Nephalim could change that fate according to Ithereal, and they seemed to with Diablo being cast out. Thus the Nephalim's role in the future of Heaven cannot be known by the book of Fate; and with the destruction of the worldstone, more powerful Nephalim are running around now, some which may be antagonists. Adria is still unaccounted for, while Zoltun Kulle being "unkillable" is possibly still alive as well. And after main game -> Demons and first expansion -> Angel antagonists, some Nephalim harvesting their powers could make a good capstone and contrast for the 2nd (likely final) expansion.
Not that Ithereal necessarily *revealed* everything he knew from the book anyway, he may well have some foresight about the coming calamity that he just hasn't shown off yet.
I think a strong indicator that D2's itemization was better was the fact that people didn't throw a god damn fit about how bad it sucked.
We could argue in frantic circles all day about the technicals, the why's and if's and but's ........people loved D2 itemization and the only complaints I ever heard about them was that there were too few BiS selections of Uniques/RW's.
As already mentioned, the game was easy and it had no AH economy. These are much bigger factors than item lovers will give credit for.
With ROS infinite paragon system does that mean a ladder system is coming?
I don't know what the OP had in mind, but the whole point of "resetting" the ladder was because levels were not, in fact, infinite. The only new thing infinite levels brings to the table is a "ladder" without resets, which also makes segregation and exclusive items nonsensical, so a different experience from what we saw in D2.
Thanks to the character DB API, someone will put such a leaderboard site together to rank the highest paragon levels, regardless of Blizzard support.
So who actually played LoD when it first came out? They'd likely remember that while, yes, expansion vs non was segregated, you could easily CONVERT your existing toons to expansion. it wasn't till 1.10 ladders that people got this restart nonsense in their head.
If level cap requires purchase though, I'm wondering how the game difficulty is supposed to scale now. Is inferno lvl 70 for everyone? how does mlvl scale between normal a nightmare depending on if you have an act 5 to go to? Will the public game lists be segregated if nothing else? Does the game host determine how mlvl scales? Frankly I'm having a hard time seeing how things won't be segregated unless the 70 cap is free in the patch for all, but that still leaves the scaling problem based on act 5 being present or not.
If any company ever came up with a way to prevent modification of save-files, they wouldn't be wasting all that cash on online servers in the first place. Hell at that point they ought to be able to stop piracy too, which would make all those server farms expensive and redundant. Because companies exist in the real world though, they pay the big bucks to host servers to do these things, because they know that anything on a local computer is hackable.
As long as Jay was in charge, D3 had no intention on being "e-sport." Yes, given prefab gear would be much more balanced then allowing people to bring their own, but then it would just further accentuate which the good classes and builds are. If barb is OP then there would only be barbs, not badly equipped barbs vs. moderately equipped wizards on the lower end of the matchmaking. Gear disparity has the potential to mask the serious class balance issues that would inevitably emerge, so there's big appeal for the team to try and use that fog to cloud class/skill balance issues they outright said they didn't want to address.
Would a balanced TDM be cool? Yeah probably. But so far the Diablo team has said over and over that after they saw the problems with WoW, that they just don't want to commit to serious PvP balancing ever. Unless there's a massive reversal in philosophy with the expansion, any PvP mode is probably going to introduce significant random and/or PvE elements in a more indirect competition to sidestep all the imbalances with player combat.
Wanting to please the majority of your playerbase doesn't have to be just about $$$. Maybe you want people to enjoy themselves for the 20-40 hours they do throw at your title, have some good memories and stories about it. I find it kind of strange attitude actually that one should exclusively design for the minority of your hardcore fans.
Diablo 1/2 had stories and world-class cinematics that were irrelevant past the first 25 hours. D2's nightmare/hell modes had a grand total of 2 months testing before initial release, and it's no coincidence that the skill tree ends pretty close to where the normal content does. This is not an MMO where they stagger actual content to make distant goals, instead they just let grinders grind away on old content, which isn't how you draw the biggest audience to your long-term. Emphasis on the short-term is not something new with D3, and the pace of hardcore-oriented changes we have been getting has been much greater than D2 ever received outside of their expansion.
I honestly think it's a PTR and/or possibly downloadable beta. That's not a patch but it's meaningful. This is the path they followed with all the 1.10 changes, they may need something similar just to stress test the stash upgrade.
D3 doesn't have a world, it has 4 players. :/ This kind of dynamic is appropriate to an MMO but not really here.
Most successful MMOs that do this seperate the groups into factions rather than free-for-all, which immediately identifies who is your ally and who you have to watch out for. There's also the possibility of teams going against each other instead of being out for themselves, which makes pvp a form of cooperative play. Again the games here are too small for that to emerge.
In the end we can see how Blizzard is cutting any "unneeded" complexity from the game (lol weapon swap), so any convoluted pvp system that benefits a small minority seems like a non-starter.
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A relative *handful* will do this. They know how often trade window was opened on D2 battle.net. When they say that a small portion of D2 players took trading seriously, they have the data to back it up.
In Jay's word the AH was a feature aimed at this relatively small demographic, because D2 is a sucky way to do trading. The problem from Blizzard's perspective is the vast majority of players ended up getting into the AH thanks to its relative convenience, and then losing the fun of finding random stuff. (not to mention, it's just plain easier for good stuff to get on the market with so many sellers.) It's a numbers game. Yes, those who take trading seriously are going to be screwed with more time wasted running around trading games. But many more people won't even touch that crappy environment and de facto reap the benefits of self-found. I don't think this is the best of possible solutions, but it is one that will be enjoyed by the majority, at the minority's expense.
Also it needs to be pointed out that I was speculating on Blizzard's motivations. Even if you think it's a bad idea, evidence suggests it is Blizzard's idea, and we should therefore not expect a great new trading alternative from them, unless maybe enough people raise a stink about it.
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These victims just aren't as angry as everyone on the internet, ever, that has given D3 such a terrible name thanks to the AH. Blizzard's willing to put up with this if it gets them another 10 mil + copies.
Regardless of whether you think OP is right, I think this describes the current Blizzard's stance on why they are doing this.
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While they may do something, they don't have a new "awesome" trading experience up their sleeve. The whole problem with the AH according to them is that it's too convenient. The "fix" is to make trading a huge pain in the ass like it was in the D2 days, so that only a small handful of players who love bargaining so much to put up with that godawful system, will whittle their time away doing that instead of farming. (And even then, they will still acquire upgrades far slower than on a real AH, which extends the time it takes to hit the upgrade ceiling, etc.)
So far really their "replacement" are systems that were actually anethema to the "total randomness" of D2; class-tailored drops, rerolling specific mods. I expect more customization systems that don't rely on other players if anything.
0
And it was so awful that even Blizzard forgot about it.
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0
Every other part of the prophecy refers to an angel, and there is a known angel of fate. We even met him. He (or something he is closely tied to, like the book of fate) is what will be "shattered" (possibly figurative.)
0
Fate is unable to read the actions of the Nephalim, not the *fate* of the Nephalim in particular. According to the book of Fate, heaven was already doomed once Hope (Auriel) was lost. But the unpredictable actions of the Nephalim could change that fate according to Ithereal, and they seemed to with Diablo being cast out. Thus the Nephalim's role in the future of Heaven cannot be known by the book of Fate; and with the destruction of the worldstone, more powerful Nephalim are running around now, some which may be antagonists. Adria is still unaccounted for, while Zoltun Kulle being "unkillable" is possibly still alive as well. And after main game -> Demons and first expansion -> Angel antagonists, some Nephalim harvesting their powers could make a good capstone and contrast for the 2nd (likely final) expansion.
Not that Ithereal necessarily *revealed* everything he knew from the book anyway, he may well have some foresight about the coming calamity that he just hasn't shown off yet.
0
As already mentioned, the game was easy and it had no AH economy. These are much bigger factors than item lovers will give credit for.
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I don't know what the OP had in mind, but the whole point of "resetting" the ladder was because levels were not, in fact, infinite. The only new thing infinite levels brings to the table is a "ladder" without resets, which also makes segregation and exclusive items nonsensical, so a different experience from what we saw in D2.
Thanks to the character DB API, someone will put such a leaderboard site together to rank the highest paragon levels, regardless of Blizzard support.
0
If level cap requires purchase though, I'm wondering how the game difficulty is supposed to scale now. Is inferno lvl 70 for everyone? how does mlvl scale between normal a nightmare depending on if you have an act 5 to go to? Will the public game lists be segregated if nothing else? Does the game host determine how mlvl scales? Frankly I'm having a hard time seeing how things won't be segregated unless the 70 cap is free in the patch for all, but that still leaves the scaling problem based on act 5 being present or not.
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WoW goes underdark?
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Also presuming this is Malthiel.
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Yes.
As long as Jay was in charge, D3 had no intention on being "e-sport." Yes, given prefab gear would be much more balanced then allowing people to bring their own, but then it would just further accentuate which the good classes and builds are. If barb is OP then there would only be barbs, not badly equipped barbs vs. moderately equipped wizards on the lower end of the matchmaking. Gear disparity has the potential to mask the serious class balance issues that would inevitably emerge, so there's big appeal for the team to try and use that fog to cloud class/skill balance issues they outright said they didn't want to address.
Would a balanced TDM be cool? Yeah probably. But so far the Diablo team has said over and over that after they saw the problems with WoW, that they just don't want to commit to serious PvP balancing ever. Unless there's a massive reversal in philosophy with the expansion, any PvP mode is probably going to introduce significant random and/or PvE elements in a more indirect competition to sidestep all the imbalances with player combat.
0
Diablo 1/2 had stories and world-class cinematics that were irrelevant past the first 25 hours. D2's nightmare/hell modes had a grand total of 2 months testing before initial release, and it's no coincidence that the skill tree ends pretty close to where the normal content does. This is not an MMO where they stagger actual content to make distant goals, instead they just let grinders grind away on old content, which isn't how you draw the biggest audience to your long-term. Emphasis on the short-term is not something new with D3, and the pace of hardcore-oriented changes we have been getting has been much greater than D2 ever received outside of their expansion.