In the end the problem is not the AH itself, but rather the fact anything can be traded.
This is the one thing that the anti-AH crowd refuses to acknowledge. It's plenty clear that an overarching design decision from the entire Diablo series is being able to trade items (for currency, other items, whatever). If the AH didn't exist there'd be the same parrots here going on and on and on about how they're forced to use the trade channel and that anyone who disagrees with them is a fanboi troll who should be banned from the forums because anyone who isn't permenantly pessimistic shouldn't be allowed to express their opinions.
Of course it's not really the AH that is the problem, and more that the best way to get items is via trading, be it through the AH or other alternatives (which would have become the "new AH" in terms of complaints if the AH never existed).
Of course it's not. The AH is a symptom of a larger problem: hyperactive players in need of immediate gratification. I don't use the AH much myself, but the people who are incessantly hating on it want to act as if we all haven't earned the gold in our stash and that exercising that wealth is a hideous violation of what a "true fan" would do, or that it's "cheating." It's nothing but passive-aggressive character attacks on people who are not playing the game the way they want us to because they're not seeing as great of a success rate with the game by playing it their way and they want the rest of us to be punished for their in-game decisions.
It's really nothing more than that. They've made a choice for themselves and they want that choice to broadly effect everyone else so that they aren't responsible for any consequences of their choice. Everyone else bears the brunt of them defining what a "true fan" would do. Pretty presumptuous and paternalistic if I do say so, and yet their main argument is that they don't want to be "forced to us the AH" but their overwhelming solution is to force everyone else to play their way. The hypocrisy is overwhelming and if you disagree you're a troll.
Of course it's not. The AH is a symptom of a larger problem: hyperactive players in need of immediate gratification. I don't use the AH much myself, but the people who are incessantly hating on it want to act as if we all haven't earned the gold in our stash and that exercising that wealth is a hideous violation of what a "true fan" would do, or that it's "cheating."
While there might be some players like that, I don't think that's the main thing. The main thing is that a player will sooner or later realize that the true path for effective progression lies in spending a lot of their time on the AH. So they go and do that. Then they get bored of it because it's not really fun, after all they did buy the game to slay demons, not to browse auctions. Then they often quit or don't play so much, waiting for good gear to be cheaper so they don't have to work so hard trying to find it.
Bottom line is trading all day is boring, slaying demons is fun, and when you need to stop slaying demons in order to trade too often, it won't take long until you quit or greatly reduce your interest in the game. It's really a lot more simple than some "instant gratification" theories. It's a simple fun vs boring kind of thing.
I don't buy this whole "force everyone to play "their" way". Every game forces you to play in a specific way if you want to be effective. Better games have more ways that seem best and are impossible to choose between, but even the best games will have many ways that simply suck and there will always be people who complain that they aren't being effective if they play like that. So Diablo 3 might be forcing you to play in a specific way, but it's not special in any way compared to other games, so if you have a PC you probably already don't hate games for that. Unless you're a scrub, in which case you might want to play more casual games that let you win regardless of what decisions you make (not that Diablo 3 isn't very scrub-friendly, but apparently it's not scrub-friendly enough for a lot of people).
"Scrub": a person who makes a mistake in a video game, which is such a bad mistake that it is clearly wrong, yet they persist in making it.
In D2 trading was optional only because you could play completely overpowered classes that don't need gear. If you wanted to be optimal like most people are trying to do in Diablo 3, you needed to spend the grand majority of your time trading - Much more than you need to spend on Diablo 3 AH. If you don't want to be optimal in Diablo 3 you can play with 0 time spent trading or using the auction house. You'll just progress much slower as there aren't any completely overpowered classes you can use to bypass the need for items (even sprint barb is not THAT overpowered).
Forcing us to trade instead of using the AH would make Diablo 3 at least 10 times worse than it currently is, because instead of spending 1/2 our time on the AH to be optimal, we'd need to spend a lot more than 1/2 our time trading to achieve something.
Forcing us to trade instead of using the AH would make Diablo 3 at least 10 times worse than it currently is, because instead of spending 1/2 our time on the AH to be optimal, we'd need to spend a lot more than 1/2 our time trading to achieve something.
If you have to spend "half" of your time on the AH to "be optimal" then you're doing it wrong - in a game where efficiency is a key concept the thought that people are spending such a disproportionate amount of time in the AH to gear up is nothing short of unsubstantiated and ridiculous. I can honestly say that I've spent under 1% of my total time playing in the AH and my toon is certainly not "the best" but it is a very viable toon in the current game.
However, you're right that the AH is a significant step forward from the D2 method when it comes to allowing people to exchange items while attempting to maximize the time they actually spend playing the game. This is obviously a design goal. They clearly want us playing the game, not running to Pindle, killing him, ignoring all the loot, leaving the game, creating a new game, etc., and that obviously extends to the method of item exchange. The AH (especially for sellers) is a much more passive endeavor than trading in D2 ever was. This is HIGHLY beneficial to people who are primarily selling and a huge improvement from the past. Is the AH perfect? Certainly not, but in terms of affording people the ability to enjoy the game without spending hours trying to trade that Trang'oul's chestpiece for something else it's an amazing success.
The problem is that it's also an obvious design decision that items in the Diablo franchise will be tradeable and won't decay (outside of inactive accounts and hardcore deaths). The fact that it's been a cognizant decision on Blizzard's part (since Diablo 1, through Diablo 3) to allow 99.999999% of items to be traded means that they want item exchange to occur. People who don't embrace that very fundamental design decision and then complain that their toons will not be optimal are being not only childish but ignorant.
If you wanted to be optimal in D2 you didn't fart around trying to find every last piece of gear for yourself. That's obviously the least-optimal way to play a game where the obvious inference is that damn near everything is tradeable. Yet time and time again, people cry about the AH saying they're "forced" to use it. Yet somehow people believe that in D3 they should be able to be "optimal" and also not have to use the AH at the same time. That is precisely what the saying "having your cake and eating it too" refers to.
Just look at Torchlight 2. It may be fun short-term, but the game was hacked to pieces within a few days. It's not a successful long-term paradigm to allow people to get what they want when they want it with zero challenge. I had been on a legendary cold streak recently. I found a Stormshield last night. My WD wants nothing to do with a Stormshield but I was still excited about it. It's no different than had I found a Windforce on my Necro in D2. My Necro didn't want a WF, but I sure as shit would have been happy as hell to find a WF regardless of if I could equip it or if I had to trade it for gear that I could equip. If I found 18 legendaries per day the only thing I'd be excited about is a perfect Stormshield. Is that really the game people want? Why people think that it's not enjoyable to find an awesome item that you cannot utilize, but can exchange for another item that you can utilize.... well that's beyond me because that's the essence of how a game with completely randomized and completely tradeable loot works. That's the heart of the design going back to the very first game. It was the heart of the design of the beloved D2 and LoD teams. It's the heart of the series.
1st question: i can answer this with an example that happened to me more then once , back in 1.03 i coldnt farm act 3 there was no way for me to do it so i sticked to act 1 and farming act 1 to gear up for act 3 would take 5-10 years , so i was forced to sell the neck i got for wizard and buy 2 loh weapons for my monk and there u go act 3 if u dont get it the answer to ur question is being forced to go to AH is what ruins the game u get 1 lucky drop like i did that neck and yeeee u skip act 2 and u can farm act 3 so easy i dont see the fun in that at all , and the fact that AH is and it will always be by far the best and fastest way to gear up is so wrong in my eyes
2nd question: for those who were into trading back in D2 , making AH for D3 was brilliant it makes blizz make more money and gives all the ppl that are into trading 100 times easier way to "trade" , so no i dont have a better solution for it but on the other side for those that didnt engage in trading back in D2 like myself and so many others we are not given the same option , AH is mandatory and thats the problem
Forcing us to trade instead of using the AH would make Diablo 3 at least 10 times worse than it currently is, because instead of spending 1/2 our time on the AH to be optimal, we'd need to spend a lot more than 1/2 our time trading to achieve something.
If you wanted to be optimal in D2 you didn't fart around trying to find every last piece of gear for yourself. That's obviously the least-optimal way to play a game where the obvious inference is that damn near everything is tradeable. Yet time and time again, people cry about the AH saying they're "forced" to use it. Yet somehow people believe that in D3 they should be able to be "optimal" and also not have to use the AH at the same time. That is precisely what the saying "having your cake and eating it too" refers to.
i liked your post but...
Its not as if this is about being strictly optimal or not optimal . In D2 you could progress quite far before the point where trading became necessary to be optimal hit. It was basically a case of decreasing returns to time invested. The more time you invested in farming the more difficult it became to find items which would be useful on your character. In Diablo 3 so far the point where you had to start trading to be optimal hit much earlier. Specifically farming became inefficient relative to trading much faster. Thus the auction house felt 'necessary' because, It was more efficient than trading in D2 and the returns to time invested in farming were too low. So complaints about the AH are more about players wanting to be MORE optimal without the AH not Absolutely optimal without the AH.
Increasing drop-rates will increase the efficiency of Farming and thus make players more optimal without using the auction house. However clearly to be Absolutely optimal use of the AH will still be required.
So while i think your right that if you take demands about wanting to be optimal without the AH to the extreme they seem ridiculous you need to consider the spectrum of optimisation not just the extremes.
Forcing us to trade instead of using the AH would make Diablo 3 at least 10 times worse than it currently is, because instead of spending 1/2 our time on the AH to be optimal, we'd need to spend a lot more than 1/2 our time trading to achieve something.
If you wanted to be optimal in D2 you didn't fart around trying to find every last piece of gear for yourself. That's obviously the least-optimal way to play a game where the obvious inference is that damn near everything is tradeable. Yet time and time again, people cry about the AH saying they're "forced" to use it. Yet somehow people believe that in D3 they should be able to be "optimal" and also not have to use the AH at the same time. That is precisely what the saying "having your cake and eating it too" refers to.
i liked your post but...
Its not as if this is about being strictly optimal or not optimal . In D2 you could progress quite far before the point where trading became necessary to be optimal hit. It was basically a case of decreasing returns to time invested. The more time you invested in farming the more difficult it became to find items which would be useful on your character. In Diablo 3 so far the point where you had to start trading to be optimal hit much earlier. Specifically farming became inefficient relative to trading much faster. Thus the auction house felt 'necessary' because, It was more efficient than trading in D2 and the returns to time invested in farming were too low. So complaints about the AH are more about players wanting to be MORE optimal without the AH not Absolutely optimal without the AH.
Increasing drop-rates will increase the efficiency of Farming and thus make players more optimal without using the auction house. However clearly to be Absolutely optimal use of the AH will still be required.
So while i think your right that if you take demands about wanting to be optimal without the AH to the extreme they seem ridiculous you need to consider the spectrum of optimisation not just the extremes.
The biggest difference is that in Diablo 3 they added Inferno difficulty, which is specifically designed around having optimal gear. That's what brought this issue front and center whereas in Diablo 2 you could largely get away with ignoring trading and still play the endgame. I think 1.0.5 is going to bring it closer to D2's approach, in that you can realistically beat Inferno naturally so it doesn't matter that much that the AH is still a vastly easier way to gear up.
The other issue though is that the AH is so easy that everybody knows about it and is willing to use it even if they really would rather not. I think the biggest fix left for D3 is to fix crafting so that it really is a relatively viable alternative to the AH, so you can feasibly acquire your gear in-game with even like 80% of the efficiency of the AH.
Its not as if this is about being strictly optimal or not optimal . In D2 you could progress quite far before the point where trading became necessary to be optimal hit. It was basically a case of decreasing returns to time invested. The more time you invested in farming the more difficult it became to find items which would be useful on your character. In Diablo 3 so far the point where you had to start trading to be optimal hit much earlier. Specifically farming became inefficient relative to trading much faster. Thus the auction house felt 'necessary' because, It was more efficient than trading in D2 and the returns to time invested in farming were too low. So complaints about the AH are more about players wanting to be MORE optimal without the AH not Absolutely optimal without the AH.
Increasing drop-rates will increase the efficiency of Farming and thus make players more optimal without using the auction house. However clearly to be Absolutely optimal use of the AH will still be required.
So while i think your right that if you take demands about wanting to be optimal without the AH to the extreme they seem ridiculous you need to consider the spectrum of optimisation not just the extremes.
Stop complaining about the AH and complain about the real issue you have with the game then.
Your issue with the game is the loot quality. Blizzard wanted the game to last a long time so what they did was add layers upon layers of randomness which makes it so that it's REALLY hard to get a good item in this game.
* First you must get a ilvl63 item to drop (even at the best rates it's only 18%... even less if you aren't in act 3 yet)
* Now you must get it to roll at least as a rare
* Now you must get it to roll that it's a 6 affix rare (10%ish chance I think?)
* Now you must get it roll a combination of affixes that are worthwhile for your character
* Oh yeah... and they must roll the top tier version of that affix
Each layer of randomness builds on each other making it nearly impossible to get a perfectly rolled item. Have you even seen a perfectly rolled item even in the AH? I haven't.
It's a fine line. If you make it too random players aren't happy because they find crap loot. However, if you give the players loot too quickly, players become bored with the game. The next patch is eliminating one layer of randomness so maybe that will be enough for people unhappy about the loot.
The random loot + difficulty of Inferno seems to be the issue a lot of you in this thread have with the game. Instead of bringing up those issues though for some reason you go on a crusade about the AH. Does it really matter though? 1.0.5 is decreasing difficulty and increasing drops. Your issue will be fixed so turn those frowns upside down
The Diablo series has always been about non bound loot so of course the most optimal way will ALWAYS be to trade. The AH doesn't change that... it's how the series is designed. If you don't like that, Diablo isn't for you.
Forcing us to trade instead of using the AH would make Diablo 3 at least 10 times worse than it currently is, because instead of spending 1/2 our time on the AH to be optimal, we'd need to spend a lot more than 1/2 our time trading to achieve something.
If you wanted to be optimal in D2 you didn't fart around trying to find every last piece of gear for yourself. That's obviously the least-optimal way to play a game where the obvious inference is that damn near everything is tradeable. Yet time and time again, people cry about the AH saying they're "forced" to use it. Yet somehow people believe that in D3 they should be able to be "optimal" and also not have to use the AH at the same time. That is precisely what the saying "having your cake and eating it too" refers to.
i liked your post but...
Its not as if this is about being strictly optimal or not optimal . In D2 you could progress quite far before the point where trading became necessary to be optimal hit. It was basically a case of decreasing returns to time invested. The more time you invested in farming the more difficult it became to find items which would be useful on your character. In Diablo 3 so far the point where you had to start trading to be optimal hit much earlier. Specifically farming became inefficient relative to trading much faster. Thus the auction house felt 'necessary' because, It was more efficient than trading in D2 and the returns to time invested in farming were too low. So complaints about the AH are more about players wanting to be MORE optimal without the AH not Absolutely optimal without the AH.
Increasing drop-rates will increase the efficiency of Farming and thus make players more optimal without using the auction house. However clearly to be Absolutely optimal use of the AH will still be required.
So while i think your right that if you take demands about wanting to be optimal without the AH to the extreme they seem ridiculous you need to consider the spectrum of optimisation not just the extremes.
I agree.
What I've yet to see ANYONE who "hates" the AH do is draw a line in the sand in that spectrum. It's a pet peeve of mine when people basically set up a moving target with phrases like "mostly optimal" and the like. Blizzard is an archer and we are setting up targets for them (and they're also setting up targets for themselves). We cannot expect them to hit a constantly-moving target though and I have no doubt that's exactly what saying that people should be "fairly optimal" without the use of the AH.
Being purposely vague does only one thing: it makes sure that Blizzard takes multiple iterations to hone in on the right answer. So if you want the process to be slow, then please, continue to use vague, unquantifiable, subjective phrases like "more optimal" and "fairly optimal" - you know, phrases that mean different things to each and every one of us. Surely my definition of "fairly optimal" and maka's definition of "fairly optimal" are two different things, and that's why we generally don't see eye-to-eye on the subject.
But, if we left out the subjective vagueness and got down to brass and tacks, I bet we'd be able to have a much better and more productive (and actionable) discussion.
I have no issues with people wanting to be self-sufficient in theory. I don't think anything productive comes from being purposely-vague about it, though.
Humans are curious creatures. Even if you don't use the AH, you probably still browse items for sale. Immediately when you click the button, your screen is full of items that Blizzard recommends as upgrades - mostly legendary and set pieces of course.
So, while you sit there trying to find a yellow upgrade (in game, the old fashioned way), your screen is suddenly full of hundreds of people looting legendary items. It's demoralizing.
In a less refined system (trading via chat or whatever), you see far less quality items offered for sale. Occasionally, you'll see a good legendary, but most items sold on trade chat suck. This, at least, lets you know that people are getting as bad drops as you do. So you don't feel so bad about yours.
So the AH has the effect of demoralizing the player (geesh, look at these 50+ pages of legendaries) which makes your efforts seem pointless in comparison. Even if you don't want to buy something, if you don't feel a pang of irritation at the hundreds/thousands of better items immediately available for sale; then you simply aren't human. Especially given that the rolls are not based upon skill, but on random chance.
I think things would be a lot different if the AH was broken up into servers (like WoW), so you aren't seeing items for sale from 10+ million players (or whatever) but maybe from a few thousand. That would, at least, make you feel less crappy about your bad rolls.
The AH has also altered, completely, the way this game is played. No longer is it "find a weapon to improve your survivability" it's become "spend XXX gold to buy upgrades" - it's one step away from being what gamers claim to hate - pay to win. And for the RMAH, it is pay to win.
Easy and simple correction that i have been pointing is Limit prices in AH like lets say as an example
100 Mil
Best itens in Ah would cost it and lets say medium grade itens would cost 10 percent of it making 10 times easy to buy an item that u want
Outside of game in foruns or things lilke that u could sell itens for more but at ah limit 100 mil
I think it would be a solution
Breaking it up would make it worse. It's hard enough as it is to find the kind of item I want that's not listed for a crazy price. Note: Definition of crazy price - Price nobody would pay unless he's a complete idiot. If someone placed a bid on an item I consider it to not be listed for a crazy price, so it's not like I'm just being cheap. People really do list a lot of items for prices nobody will pay. Since people are too lazy to deal with bidding, people are also too scared of losing money by letting people bid (lower competition means lower final sell value compared to buyout where more people would be interested in buying), and thus items either sell very fast and you don't see them, or are overpriced and just show up on your search to make you mad.
The fact I can buy an item for 80 million or wait for it to show up with open bids, or if I'm lucky be the first to see it listed with a reasonable buying, considering how long 80 million takes to farm, mean I need to spend a lot of time on the auction house to make sure my gold gets put to good use. I can't just spend 5 minutes on the AH to buy an 80mil item and go back to farming. If I could, maybe the fact every item in this game can be traded wouldn't be so bad.
Of course, having all items trade-able is a design decision. Many don't agree with that design decision, and those that do (aka want to have the cake and eat it too) would probably prefer a no-trading game than having to spend so much time on trading.
If we do insist on trading, though, they could at least improve the AH so it's not such a huge waste of time. For example encourage bid-able items - Mostly with adjustable auction duration (or at least change it so items listed during prime time don't have their auction end early in the morning), and maybe allowing to change the buyout without cancelling the auction (even if there are bids already), and finally make the AH accessible from a web browser.
There's no intention of being "purposely vague", as you put. The question itself is inherently vague itself, because the very definition of "fun" is 'vague' and 'individual'.
The bottom line is that I'm not having fun playing this game; not because the actual gameplay of killing demons is not fun (it mostly is, with kinks to iron out, ofc), but because I don't feel the reward is rewarding enough (i.e., I'm unhappy with the quality of loot dropped by monsters I kill). And I believe that the decision to design loot as it is designed is inextricably linked to the existence of an Auction House (the RMAH only serves to reinforce that belief).
I don't want to 'force everyone to play the way I play', as I've read; I just want to be able to have fun playing in a style that, let's be honest, is not unorthodox at all. In D2, the mass-traders were a minority; there were so many people that didn't even play on bnet, much, just in SP or LANs, but still played consistently. Now all of a sudden not wanting to buy my gear with gold is seen as some weird obsession, and I should 'L2P'.
No thanks.
Being as this is central to your argument I assume you can cite this as a fact, and not some random statement that anyone can make on the internet.
I think one of the main points made was that, there used to be a single player mode wherein trading was not even possible so you had to find all your gear yourself, forgoing the internet connectivity issues. For those players the balancing of drops with regard to the auction house, has reduced their return to time invested thus the game is much less rewarding for them because being self sufficient is now much less satisfying and to achieve the same results they must invest more time.
If we assume to begin that Diablo 2 had the return to time invested equilibrium/sweet spot between trade and farming. Then we take into account the fact that D3 has the AH which is a more efficient means of trade than in D2. This entails that farming in D3 must have a higher return to time invested than in D2 to counteract the efficiency of the auction house and achieve equilibrium.
Now personally I think that at the moment that return to time invested is higher on the auction house before you even reach inferno and that this is undesirable and unsatisfying for alot of people including me.
But i will now go try 1.05 and the farming returns have been increased! so lets see how it goes Plvl 14 here i come!
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This is the one thing that the anti-AH crowd refuses to acknowledge. It's plenty clear that an overarching design decision from the entire Diablo series is being able to trade items (for currency, other items, whatever). If the AH didn't exist there'd be the same parrots here going on and on and on about how they're forced to use the trade channel and that anyone who disagrees with them is a fanboi troll who should be banned from the forums because anyone who isn't permenantly pessimistic shouldn't be allowed to express their opinions.
Of course it's not. The AH is a symptom of a larger problem: hyperactive players in need of immediate gratification. I don't use the AH much myself, but the people who are incessantly hating on it want to act as if we all haven't earned the gold in our stash and that exercising that wealth is a hideous violation of what a "true fan" would do, or that it's "cheating." It's nothing but passive-aggressive character attacks on people who are not playing the game the way they want us to because they're not seeing as great of a success rate with the game by playing it their way and they want the rest of us to be punished for their in-game decisions.
It's really nothing more than that. They've made a choice for themselves and they want that choice to broadly effect everyone else so that they aren't responsible for any consequences of their choice. Everyone else bears the brunt of them defining what a "true fan" would do. Pretty presumptuous and paternalistic if I do say so, and yet their main argument is that they don't want to be "forced to us the AH" but their overwhelming solution is to force everyone else to play their way. The hypocrisy is overwhelming and if you disagree you're a troll.
Which solution would that be? and how does it force everyone else to play 'their' way?
Bottom line is trading all day is boring, slaying demons is fun, and when you need to stop slaying demons in order to trade too often, it won't take long until you quit or greatly reduce your interest in the game. It's really a lot more simple than some "instant gratification" theories. It's a simple fun vs boring kind of thing.
I don't buy this whole "force everyone to play "their" way". Every game forces you to play in a specific way if you want to be effective. Better games have more ways that seem best and are impossible to choose between, but even the best games will have many ways that simply suck and there will always be people who complain that they aren't being effective if they play like that. So Diablo 3 might be forcing you to play in a specific way, but it's not special in any way compared to other games, so if you have a PC you probably already don't hate games for that. Unless you're a scrub, in which case you might want to play more casual games that let you win regardless of what decisions you make (not that Diablo 3 isn't very scrub-friendly, but apparently it's not scrub-friendly enough for a lot of people).
"Scrub": a person who makes a mistake in a video game, which is such a bad mistake that it is clearly wrong, yet they persist in making it.
Forcing us to trade instead of using the AH would make Diablo 3 at least 10 times worse than it currently is, because instead of spending 1/2 our time on the AH to be optimal, we'd need to spend a lot more than 1/2 our time trading to achieve something.
If you have to spend "half" of your time on the AH to "be optimal" then you're doing it wrong - in a game where efficiency is a key concept the thought that people are spending such a disproportionate amount of time in the AH to gear up is nothing short of unsubstantiated and ridiculous. I can honestly say that I've spent under 1% of my total time playing in the AH and my toon is certainly not "the best" but it is a very viable toon in the current game.
However, you're right that the AH is a significant step forward from the D2 method when it comes to allowing people to exchange items while attempting to maximize the time they actually spend playing the game. This is obviously a design goal. They clearly want us playing the game, not running to Pindle, killing him, ignoring all the loot, leaving the game, creating a new game, etc., and that obviously extends to the method of item exchange. The AH (especially for sellers) is a much more passive endeavor than trading in D2 ever was. This is HIGHLY beneficial to people who are primarily selling and a huge improvement from the past. Is the AH perfect? Certainly not, but in terms of affording people the ability to enjoy the game without spending hours trying to trade that Trang'oul's chestpiece for something else it's an amazing success.
The problem is that it's also an obvious design decision that items in the Diablo franchise will be tradeable and won't decay (outside of inactive accounts and hardcore deaths). The fact that it's been a cognizant decision on Blizzard's part (since Diablo 1, through Diablo 3) to allow 99.999999% of items to be traded means that they want item exchange to occur. People who don't embrace that very fundamental design decision and then complain that their toons will not be optimal are being not only childish but ignorant.
If you wanted to be optimal in D2 you didn't fart around trying to find every last piece of gear for yourself. That's obviously the least-optimal way to play a game where the obvious inference is that damn near everything is tradeable. Yet time and time again, people cry about the AH saying they're "forced" to use it. Yet somehow people believe that in D3 they should be able to be "optimal" and also not have to use the AH at the same time. That is precisely what the saying "having your cake and eating it too" refers to.
Just look at Torchlight 2. It may be fun short-term, but the game was hacked to pieces within a few days. It's not a successful long-term paradigm to allow people to get what they want when they want it with zero challenge. I had been on a legendary cold streak recently. I found a Stormshield last night. My WD wants nothing to do with a Stormshield but I was still excited about it. It's no different than had I found a Windforce on my Necro in D2. My Necro didn't want a WF, but I sure as shit would have been happy as hell to find a WF regardless of if I could equip it or if I had to trade it for gear that I could equip. If I found 18 legendaries per day the only thing I'd be excited about is a perfect Stormshield. Is that really the game people want? Why people think that it's not enjoyable to find an awesome item that you cannot utilize, but can exchange for another item that you can utilize.... well that's beyond me because that's the essence of how a game with completely randomized and completely tradeable loot works. That's the heart of the design going back to the very first game. It was the heart of the design of the beloved D2 and LoD teams. It's the heart of the series.
2nd question: for those who were into trading back in D2 , making AH for D3 was brilliant it makes blizz make more money and gives all the ppl that are into trading 100 times easier way to "trade" , so no i dont have a better solution for it but on the other side for those that didnt engage in trading back in D2 like myself and so many others we are not given the same option , AH is mandatory and thats the problem
i liked your post but...
Its not as if this is about being strictly optimal or not optimal . In D2 you could progress quite far before the point where trading became necessary to be optimal hit. It was basically a case of decreasing returns to time invested. The more time you invested in farming the more difficult it became to find items which would be useful on your character. In Diablo 3 so far the point where you had to start trading to be optimal hit much earlier. Specifically farming became inefficient relative to trading much faster. Thus the auction house felt 'necessary' because, It was more efficient than trading in D2 and the returns to time invested in farming were too low. So complaints about the AH are more about players wanting to be MORE optimal without the AH not Absolutely optimal without the AH.
Increasing drop-rates will increase the efficiency of Farming and thus make players more optimal without using the auction house. However clearly to be Absolutely optimal use of the AH will still be required.
So while i think your right that if you take demands about wanting to be optimal without the AH to the extreme they seem ridiculous you need to consider the spectrum of optimisation not just the extremes.
The biggest difference is that in Diablo 3 they added Inferno difficulty, which is specifically designed around having optimal gear. That's what brought this issue front and center whereas in Diablo 2 you could largely get away with ignoring trading and still play the endgame. I think 1.0.5 is going to bring it closer to D2's approach, in that you can realistically beat Inferno naturally so it doesn't matter that much that the AH is still a vastly easier way to gear up.
The other issue though is that the AH is so easy that everybody knows about it and is willing to use it even if they really would rather not. I think the biggest fix left for D3 is to fix crafting so that it really is a relatively viable alternative to the AH, so you can feasibly acquire your gear in-game with even like 80% of the efficiency of the AH.
Stop complaining about the AH and complain about the real issue you have with the game then.
Your issue with the game is the loot quality. Blizzard wanted the game to last a long time so what they did was add layers upon layers of randomness which makes it so that it's REALLY hard to get a good item in this game.
* First you must get a ilvl63 item to drop (even at the best rates it's only 18%... even less if you aren't in act 3 yet)
* Now you must get it to roll at least as a rare
* Now you must get it to roll that it's a 6 affix rare (10%ish chance I think?)
* Now you must get it roll a combination of affixes that are worthwhile for your character
* Oh yeah... and they must roll the top tier version of that affix
Each layer of randomness builds on each other making it nearly impossible to get a perfectly rolled item. Have you even seen a perfectly rolled item even in the AH? I haven't.
It's a fine line. If you make it too random players aren't happy because they find crap loot. However, if you give the players loot too quickly, players become bored with the game. The next patch is eliminating one layer of randomness so maybe that will be enough for people unhappy about the loot.
The random loot + difficulty of Inferno seems to be the issue a lot of you in this thread have with the game. Instead of bringing up those issues though for some reason you go on a crusade about the AH. Does it really matter though? 1.0.5 is decreasing difficulty and increasing drops. Your issue will be fixed so turn those frowns upside down
The Diablo series has always been about non bound loot so of course the most optimal way will ALWAYS be to trade. The AH doesn't change that... it's how the series is designed. If you don't like that, Diablo isn't for you.
I agree.
What I've yet to see ANYONE who "hates" the AH do is draw a line in the sand in that spectrum. It's a pet peeve of mine when people basically set up a moving target with phrases like "mostly optimal" and the like. Blizzard is an archer and we are setting up targets for them (and they're also setting up targets for themselves). We cannot expect them to hit a constantly-moving target though and I have no doubt that's exactly what saying that people should be "fairly optimal" without the use of the AH.
Being purposely vague does only one thing: it makes sure that Blizzard takes multiple iterations to hone in on the right answer. So if you want the process to be slow, then please, continue to use vague, unquantifiable, subjective phrases like "more optimal" and "fairly optimal" - you know, phrases that mean different things to each and every one of us. Surely my definition of "fairly optimal" and maka's definition of "fairly optimal" are two different things, and that's why we generally don't see eye-to-eye on the subject.
But, if we left out the subjective vagueness and got down to brass and tacks, I bet we'd be able to have a much better and more productive (and actionable) discussion.
I have no issues with people wanting to be self-sufficient in theory. I don't think anything productive comes from being purposely-vague about it, though.
Being as this is central to your argument I assume you can cite this as a fact, and not some random statement that anyone can make on the internet.
So, while you sit there trying to find a yellow upgrade (in game, the old fashioned way), your screen is suddenly full of hundreds of people looting legendary items. It's demoralizing.
In a less refined system (trading via chat or whatever), you see far less quality items offered for sale. Occasionally, you'll see a good legendary, but most items sold on trade chat suck. This, at least, lets you know that people are getting as bad drops as you do. So you don't feel so bad about yours.
So the AH has the effect of demoralizing the player (geesh, look at these 50+ pages of legendaries) which makes your efforts seem pointless in comparison. Even if you don't want to buy something, if you don't feel a pang of irritation at the hundreds/thousands of better items immediately available for sale; then you simply aren't human. Especially given that the rolls are not based upon skill, but on random chance.
I think things would be a lot different if the AH was broken up into servers (like WoW), so you aren't seeing items for sale from 10+ million players (or whatever) but maybe from a few thousand. That would, at least, make you feel less crappy about your bad rolls.
The AH has also altered, completely, the way this game is played. No longer is it "find a weapon to improve your survivability" it's become "spend XXX gold to buy upgrades" - it's one step away from being what gamers claim to hate - pay to win. And for the RMAH, it is pay to win.
100 Mil
Best itens in Ah would cost it and lets say medium grade itens would cost 10 percent of it making 10 times easy to buy an item that u want
Outside of game in foruns or things lilke that u could sell itens for more but at ah limit 100 mil
I think it would be a solution
The fact I can buy an item for 80 million or wait for it to show up with open bids, or if I'm lucky be the first to see it listed with a reasonable buying, considering how long 80 million takes to farm, mean I need to spend a lot of time on the auction house to make sure my gold gets put to good use. I can't just spend 5 minutes on the AH to buy an 80mil item and go back to farming. If I could, maybe the fact every item in this game can be traded wouldn't be so bad.
Of course, having all items trade-able is a design decision. Many don't agree with that design decision, and those that do (aka want to have the cake and eat it too) would probably prefer a no-trading game than having to spend so much time on trading.
If we do insist on trading, though, they could at least improve the AH so it's not such a huge waste of time. For example encourage bid-able items - Mostly with adjustable auction duration (or at least change it so items listed during prime time don't have their auction end early in the morning), and maybe allowing to change the buyout without cancelling the auction (even if there are bids already), and finally make the AH accessible from a web browser.
I think one of the main points made was that, there used to be a single player mode wherein trading was not even possible so you had to find all your gear yourself, forgoing the internet connectivity issues. For those players the balancing of drops with regard to the auction house, has reduced their return to time invested thus the game is much less rewarding for them because being self sufficient is now much less satisfying and to achieve the same results they must invest more time.
If we assume to begin that Diablo 2 had the return to time invested equilibrium/sweet spot between trade and farming. Then we take into account the fact that D3 has the AH which is a more efficient means of trade than in D2. This entails that farming in D3 must have a higher return to time invested than in D2 to counteract the efficiency of the auction house and achieve equilibrium.
Now personally I think that at the moment that return to time invested is higher on the auction house before you even reach inferno and that this is undesirable and unsatisfying for alot of people including me.
But i will now go try 1.05 and the farming returns have been increased! so lets see how it goes Plvl 14 here i come!