58 replies to this topic

[egervari]

Bagstone, on 02 January 2013 - 07:02 PM, said:

Thanks for the list. Only partially agree on some of these. For example, BoE is part of WoW, not Diablo, please don't.

We have very good reasons to promote bind-on-equip, and we specifically talk about the relationship of this to WoW and why we still support it in Episode 6 and 7 (the later being the best case for it).

Ultimately, blizzard wanted to have its cake and eat it too. They want an AH for efficient item trading without having any of the item destruction/binding systems that would typically go along with it.

Just because other Diablo games didn't bind in the past does not mean newer Diablo games with auction houses should act in the same way. The existence of AH changes everything. The lack of item destruction/binding has destroyed the economy. Now everything you find in the game is worth nothing.

The same thing even happened in D2. If you were participating on d2jsp, it was *very* apparent that items lost tremendous value due to the lack of binding, including people's beloved rune-based currency. It wasn't just dupes - all items tanked. This made farming less rewarding as the ladder season went on, which is a bad thing for a game without ladders especially - i.e. Diablo 3.

Bagstone, on 02 January 2013 - 07:02 PM, said:

Also, about the 15% tax system, this is absolutely necessary economy-wise to prevent extreme AH flipping (you need at least 20% benefit from flipping in order to make money).

There's nothing wrong with flipping though. In real markets, flipping signals to the economy the value of items. If people are willing to pay more for an item, that economy now knows the item was undervalued. It helps people value items to their true values in the future.

Taxing production is universally a bad thing. Why do you want to punish the person who spend 1500 hours farming that 2 billion gold item? That doesn't make any sense to me. Sometimes these items sell for such high values, the tax is equivalent to hundreds of hours of farming - that's a ton of stolen/wasted effort.

On top of this, the 15% tax encourages transactions to be held outside of the AH, and as gold continues to inflate, more and more transactions will occur outside of the AH. Is that the behavior we want to see in the game? Do we want to see the AH relegated to low and mid-tier items only? This will eventually happen, and is happening now. If don't want this to happen, we have to realize the AH tax is encouraging this behavior. It is an unseen consequence to this game mechanic.

Bagstone, on 02 January 2013 - 07:02 PM, said:

Your very first and last points are two things that annoy me. 24% MS default? Dear god, did you ever play Diablo 1? Default MS in D1 felt like 20% of that in D3.

Sometimes the older games had better mechanics, and sometimes they had worse mechanics. Newer ARPGs have much faster base run speeds. If you play Torchlight 2 or Marvel Heroes, you'll realize that characters move much faster, and this really makes the game more enjoyable. It lets players experience more in limited time frames.

Ultimately what it comes down to is the game designer being respectful of the player's time. Making them walk/run very slowly is just wasting their time. In the past, movement speed might have had an impact on mechanics, but kiting builds are a thing of the past, and besides, there are ways to rebalance those encounters to take into account the movement speed boost.

And on top of this, I would rebalance the movement speed buffs to bring everything closer together, so we wouldn't see DH's vaulting around faster than they are now for example. Same with Wrath of the Berserker. Again, this is one of those things that goes unsaid by just giving a cole's notes version of our show

---

As an aside, I do encourage people to watch/listen to the shows. We put in a lot of time to make the shows, and to repeat ourselves means we spend less time making new shows and doing other things

Edited by egervari, 02 January 2013 - 11:36 PM.

[RTG_Sibcoe]

Thanks everyone.  We will for sure aim to get as much of the content expressed in text also, do please understand it can be difficult to compress an hour + podcast into a few paragraphs.  I do enjoy interacting with all of you on the forums here though, and those that do make the cross over and can enjoy both text forums and video, are much appreciated.  

We never have to agree on anything, so long as we do so maturely, politely, and with sensible debate.  Glad those of you who have listened/watched are enjoying the shows.  Do also keep in mind, there are many other shows I produce on D3 which are as short as 1 minute long, so something for everyone's time constraints.  

Cheers 0/

RTG Sibcoe
------------------
www.youtube.com/redteamgaming
www.twitter.com/redteamgaming
www.facebook.com/Sibcoe

[Litheum]

On Bind on Equip:
The main reason I don't want to see bind-on-equip is simple, I like being able to hand off items after I use them. It makes it easier to upgrade knowing your old stuff isnt completely usless now. I hand them down to friends, or alts, and want that to continue. I do think certain things should be bound.....such as hard to get items like hellfires, because it would completely devalue the content if those could go to auction. I can see some other things being bound for this reason as well, to keep their value high, or if they are character bound it gives me a reason to play alts, which I would certainly welcome. I don't even run Ubers with my alts because the hellfire is account bound.

On the 15% tax:
I actually agree with you to an extent, but only on the high dollar items. I wouldnt mind just seeing a cap on it, like you said flipping isnt a bad thing, but I would still like to discourage people from flipping mid and low lever gear, that could still be annoying for 2 reasons: it encourages playing the AH to gear, and gives a benefit to players with tons of time to scan the AH.

On Movement Speed:
Completely agree with you. I am not sure why people would be terribly upset about this change, it would just speed up gameplay across the board....unless you didnt speed up mob speed to match. But I took this as making the whole game faster. The game does feel a bit slow with no MS. I dont think its about getting anything for free, it is just about making the game feel faster, more exciting, more updated.....as you said most ARPGs move much faster than D3.

[Bagstone]

About MS and BoE: I get your points, and I understand that you'd like to see this changed, but I guess on these points we just have different opinions. I don't feel that designers are "disrespectful" by making the default MS low; it actually makes me want to get MS items and hence provides incentive for gearing diversity. Also, on my CMWW wizard I have 0% MS and I'm totally fine with that. I agree though that MS skills need balancing (TR monks, DH and so on), but it's not as bad as in D2 where everyone would get Enigma and bypass content like hell.

"On top of this, the 15% tax encourages transactions to be held outside of the AH, and as gold continues to inflate, more and more transactions will occur outside of the AH."
Okay, I'm not buying stuff for 2 billion (and probably never will as long as I perceive it as if I just payed ~600 Euros for one item). But from what I've read on forums and in discussions with players who are active in that price segment, there is still a lot of stuff to be found in the 1-2b price range on the AH. Trades outside of the AH are mainly done to get more than 2 billion due to the cap. But even if it would be the case that people trade outside the AH, what's bad about this? All the people complaining about the AH must be happy and therefore request a tax of 50% to reduce the impact of the AH. Well.. anyways, I don't have an issue with the 15%, I also don't have a problem if Blizzard gets some revenue out of it (however, they don't get anything out of the GAH, it's just a more-than-welcome gold sink).

[JKlimek]

^ flipping may happen in real life, but when it does, it happens with taxes!

The best example I can think of is predatory scalping sites.  They will buy large quantity of tickets (paying sales tax) and then resell them to consumers for much higher prices (who also pay sales tax on them again).  Beyond the fact that this happens in real life, there MUST be a gold sink in this game because otherwise gold is infinite and infinitely decreasing Real Value.  Unless you can think of a better way to do this, don't talk about removing the AH tax, because you're just shooting yourself in the foot in the end

[Shadout]

Yeah, 15% AH tax is fine, the game need gold sinks, and fee on trading is as good as any.
Maybe Blizzard should implement a way to take 15% fee when trading gold outside of AH, if there is a real fear that trading would happen too much outside of AH.


Regarding Bind on Equip, if it was implemented in ANY way, it would really have to be "Bind on Account-Equip" (or whatever it should be called). The game hardly needs to be even more alt-unfriendly than it is with Paragon levels.

As for Movement speed, I don't think we need more movement speed in combat, on top of what can be gained from gear.
Would it be enough to have a free, passive MS buff that only activated when you hadnt been hit and/or hit anything yourself for 3 seconds or so? So one could get faster from fight to fight, without feeling you have to take one of the movement skills just for that, but still not have higher speed in the middle of combat.

Edited by Shadout, 03 January 2013 - 05:45 PM.

[RTG_Sibcoe]

Good points all.  I don't like the arbitrary taxation on the AH, mainly because I think it is a poor gold sink that takes away from the feeling of risk/reward, rather than say gambling or crafting, which reinforces it.  I prefer positively reinforcing game systems.  

With regards to movement speed, I would not mind the base speed staying as is, if only the cap was higher with gear.  That would be good, as again, it would create the need for decision on the part of the player, or specific gearing.  I just think overall, a lot of the current systems are dumbed down and appear lazy.  Richer systems would be welcome.  Let's see what happens.  

Cheers 0/

RTG Sibcoe
-----------------
www.youtube.com/redteamgaming
www.twitter.com/redteamgaming
www.facebook.com/Sibcoe

[shaggy]

RTG_Sibcoe, on 03 January 2013 - 06:32 PM, said:

Good points all.  I don't like the arbitrary taxation on the AH, mainly because I think it is a poor gold sink that takes away from the feeling of risk/reward, rather than say gambling or crafting, which reinforces it.  I prefer positively reinforcing game systems.  

With regards to movement speed, I would not mind the base speed staying as is, if only the cap was higher with gear.  That would be good, as again, it would create the need for decision on the part of the player, or specific gearing.  I just think overall, a lot of the current systems are dumbed down and appear lazy.  Richer systems would be welcome.  Let's see what happens.

@ AH Cut
I totally get your point that gambling is a BETTER gold sink.  But at this point in time the AH cut is the only remotely-significant gold sink in the game.  It'd be best to keep the AH Cut and to implement other gold sinks on top of it.  Even with the AH Cut there's still some pretty significant inflation, so I see no reason not to use the AH Cut as a baseline and move from there to implement more gold sinks that further help to curb inflation.

@ Movement Speed
It's already an amazingly-dominant farming stat.  If anything it needs a lower cap so that getting multiple movement speed pieces wasn't the only way to have a viable farming toon.  We don't need people trying to find movement speed in every slot.  I don't see how you equate a movement speed cap with "dumbing down" anything.  The stat is so radically important for farming that it's not really a decision to be made... you just must get as much of it as possible.  That's the polar opposite of "dumbing down" things because it virtually elimiates choices.

Edited by shaggy, 03 January 2013 - 08:27 PM.

[Tiedwai]

Amcham, on 02 January 2013 - 07:59 PM, said:

FPS drops the first time you load the game while is loading everything into memory? Almost everyone i know that has played d3 moaned about this.

Get a SSD.

[Ryude]

shaggy, on 03 January 2013 - 08:26 PM, said:

RTG_Sibcoe, on 03 January 2013 - 06:32 PM, said:

Good points all.  I don't like the arbitrary taxation on the AH, mainly because I think it is a poor gold sink that takes away from the feeling of risk/reward, rather than say gambling or crafting, which reinforces it.  I prefer positively reinforcing game systems.  

With regards to movement speed, I would not mind the base speed staying as is, if only the cap was higher with gear.  That would be good, as again, it would create the need for decision on the part of the player, or specific gearing.  I just think overall, a lot of the current systems are dumbed down and appear lazy.  Richer systems would be welcome.  Let's see what happens.

@ AH Cut
I totally get your point that gambling is a BETTER gold sink.  But at this point in time the AH cut is the only remotely-significant gold sink in the game.  It'd be best to keep the AH Cut and to implement other gold sinks on top of it.  Even with the AH Cut there's still some pretty significant inflation, so I see no reason not to use the AH Cut as a baseline and move from there to implement more gold sinks that further help to curb inflation.

@ Movement Speed
It's already an amazingly-dominant farming stat.  If anything it needs a lower cap so that getting multiple movement speed pieces wasn't the only way to have a viable farming toon.  We don't need people trying to find movement speed in every slot.  I don't see how you equate a movement speed cap with "dumbing down" anything.  The stat is so radically important for farming that it's not really a decision to be made... you just must get as much of it as possible.  That's the polar opposite of "dumbing down" things because it virtually elimiates choices.

Just my 2 cents here.

I think they capped movement speed because they were afraid of everyone stacking it, much like everyone had the Enigma runeword in D2. Teleporting was 100x faster for farming than just running. Likewise, if you have 100% movement speed you're going to farm obscenely fast and everyone will take it without question.

[egervari]

Litheum, on 03 January 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

On Bind on Equip:
The main reason I don't want to see bind-on-equip is simple, I like being able to hand off items after I use them. It makes it easier to upgrade knowing your old stuff isnt completely usless now.

It's not useless if your character needed that item, and it could still be re-purposed into crafting materials after it's no longer useful. Of course, this assumes a better crafting system - and I'd highly encourage you to listen to our crafting episode to understand what I mean here. It's too much to explain - I won't do it.

While binding does introduce some drawbacks, they are nowhere near as bad. You have to pick - do you want the ease of sharing items, or do you want the economy to be destroyed? Take your pick. I choose the former. No choice is perfect, but one is better than the other.

Litheum, on 03 January 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

I actually agree with you to an extent, but only on the high dollar items.

For me, the wasted/stolen effort is wasted/stolen effort. It makes very little difference what the amount is. The game should be consistent in this matter.

Litheum, on 03 January 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

I wouldnt mind just seeing a cap on it, like you said flipping isnt a bad thing, but I would still like to discourage people from flipping mid and low lever gear, that could still be annoying for 2 reasons: it encourages playing the AH to gear, and gives a benefit to players with tons of time to scan the AH.

I wouldn't want to discourage flipping on any items. I see no reason to favour one group of players over another by doing this. We don't want any economic controls at all.

Edited by egervari, 03 January 2013 - 09:31 PM.

[egervari]

JKlimek, on 03 January 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

^ flipping may happen in real life, but when it does, it happens with taxes!

The best example I can think of is predatory scalping sites.  They will buy large quantity of tickets (paying sales tax) and then resell them to consumers for much higher prices (who also pay sales tax on them again).  Beyond the fact that this happens in real life, there MUST be a gold sink in this game because otherwise gold is infinite and infinitely decreasing Real Value.  Unless you can think of a better way to do this, don't talk about removing the AH tax, because you're just shooting yourself in the foot in the end

Just because the government taxes people for economic production doesn't make it right for blizzard to do the same. Taxing production in the real world is also counter-productive (and I say immoral, since no government has the right to steal from the fruits of your labour) as well.

Edited by egervari, 03 January 2013 - 09:42 PM.

[shaggy]

egervari, on 03 January 2013 - 09:30 PM, said:

I wouldn't want to discourage flipping on any items. I see no reason to favour one group of players over another by doing this. We don't want any economic controls at all.

They have an AUCTION house which is modelled after REAL WORLD AUCTION HOUSES which typically have FEES (sometimes %ages on the sale, sometimes flat fees, sometimes both).

It is not an "economic control."  It's a goddamned fee for using the service.  If you don't want to use the service then feel free to use the chat channels which have no fees associated.  You are paying for the convenience of listing your items and then moving on and not having to spend hours in chat trying to sell them.  It's not some governmental scheme to dick you out of your money.  Get a grip.

[egervari]

shaggy, on 03 January 2013 - 09:44 PM, said:

egervari, on 03 January 2013 - 09:30 PM, said:

I wouldn't want to discourage flipping on any items. I see no reason to favour one group of players over another by doing this. We don't want any economic controls at all.

They have an AUCTION house which is modelled after REAL WORLD AUCTION HOUSES which typically have FEES (sometimes %ages on the sale, sometimes flat fees, sometimes both).

It is not an "economic control."  It's a goddamned fee for using the service.  If you don't want to use the service then feel free to use the chat channels which have no fees associated.  You are paying for the convenience of listing your items and then moving on and not having to spend hours in chat trying to sell them.  It's not some governmental scheme to dick you out of your money.  Get a grip.

I don't have a problem with a $1 fee on the RMAH, but it amounts to a $75 tax on a 2 billlion gold item - which is 30% of what you could make on the real money AH.

If you're going to have an AH in the game and not have any systems to control item saturation and gold inflation, then I don't understand why you want to also have systems to encourage not using the AH in addition to all of the other economic problems this game has.

$75 is not worth using it as a service fee. That's insane. That's 75x the auction fee on the RMAH. That's more than the cost of the damn game itself, even at launch! That's also 1-2 weeks worth of gold pick ups if you were constantly farming this game every day.

I'm sorry you don't see a problem with this, but using an electric service to help you sell/transfer a digital item is not worth $75. People can eat for an entire week for that amount.

And the difference with a real auction house is that there is no people to pay to run the auction, no security guards that need to be hired and no building to rent to host the auction. If you want to account for the fact that someone had to build the software, I thought that is what the 10+ million sales @ 59.99 was supposed to be for!

Also unlike the real world, there isn't different auction houses competing against one another, so there's no way to drive the fees down. It is whatever Blizzard says it is. It's a monopoly, just like government. In Diablo 3, the internal government and blizzard are one in the same. It's nothing like the real world at all. Of course, all the 'black markets' have fees nowhere near these amounts, which says a lot.

Edited by egervari, 03 January 2013 - 10:09 PM.

[Shadout]

The gold AH fee is no different than repair cost or cost of levelling the blacksmith or whatever.
Except that it is more effective of course.

The fee isnt exactly stopping the majority from using the AH.

Nor is it really Blizzards problem that you decide put some dollar value unto your in-game gold.
Personally I cant buy dinner with my gold :/ I tried!

egervari, on 03 January 2013 - 09:33 PM, said:

Just because the government taxes people for economic production doesn't make it right for blizzard to do the same. Taxing production in the real world is also counter-productive (and I say immoral, since no government has the right to steal from the fruits of your labour) as well.

You didnt build that /joke

Edited by Shadout, 03 January 2013 - 10:09 PM.

[egervari]

In my humble opinion, the fees to level the blacksmith is also robbery if you're not doing the whole self-found thing, but that's another topic altogether.

[maka]

egervari, on 03 January 2013 - 09:33 PM, said:

Taxing production in the real world is also counter-productive (and I say immoral, since no government has the right to steal from the fruits of your labour) as well.

This reminds me of some video I saw with some anti-government Republican American dude.
He was going on about the usual "no big government" thing, when someone asked him how he liked driving on roads built with public money. His reply? "Actually, I usually drive on roads built by the people that live in my gated community, so they're not built with government money".

Shadout, on 03 January 2013 - 10:00 PM, said:

Nor is it really Blizzards problem that you decide put some dollar value unto your in-game gold.

Man, I couldn't agree more. This whole "in-game gold = real money" is getting way out of hand.

Edited by maka, 03 January 2013 - 10:57 PM.

[maka]

Oops, double post. Delete please.

Edited by maka, 03 January 2013 - 10:56 PM.

[egervari]

maka, on 03 January 2013 - 10:52 PM, said:

Shadout, on 03 January 2013 - 10:00 PM, said:

Nor is it really Blizzards problem that you decide put some dollar value unto your in-game gold.

Man, I couldn't agree more. This whole "in-game gold = real money" is getting way out of hand.

No individual simply "decides" to put a value on in-game gold. It has a value.

Do you decide that your house has no value? Your car? Your computer? It has a value. If it didn't, you wouldn't have worked to obtain them in the first place.

In-game gold has a value. It is basically a conversion of time/effort. It is not very valuable - especially these days as you need to transfer billions of in-game gold to get anything worth-while - but it does have economic value nonetheless.

Ignoring this fact won't make the value of that in-game gold go away.

Edited by egervari, 03 January 2013 - 11:00 PM.

[Shadout]

Gold has "real" value on RMAH, but not on GAH. They are separate entities, and the sad existence of RMAH should not in any way have an influence on what happens with GAH (or what happens with the rest of the game for that matter).