That post is overly dramatic. He calculates with 4 well rolled stats when actually 2 well rolled stats (in combination with the chosen high mainstat) are enough for most builds. He also states that quintfecta, or even quartfecta gloves are below 350 million on AH. That might be true in US for gloves, but it's certainly not true in Europe for amulets. Even high rolled mainstat+chc+chd amulets cost a few hundred million, and everything with 4 good stats is over 500 million. The real problem is that these amulets are very rare. As in: there is no supply. For the general player, they don't exist, only for the very few on the top.
Craftable amulets will most certainly be a hit, but I'm not sure how will that affect prices. My prediction is that Brimstones will flop. People and sharks already stocked up insane amounts of it, after the patch they'll release all their stocks, but there won't be enough demand. Casuals will be limited by Demonic Essence drops and hardcores already stocked up, that's my take on it. On the other hand, gem prices may flourish, especially emerald and ruby because marquise crafts, but they are plagued with duping, and again, no one knows exactly how big the stock is.
I'd say trading with commodities is a real gamble and not for the small fish. I, at least, do well enough with immediate gear flipping, I don't stock up anything.
That post is overly dramatic. He calculates with 4 well rolled stats when actually 2 well rolled stats (in combination with the chosen high mainstat) are enough for most builds. He also states that quintfecta, or even quartfecta gloves are below 350 million on AH. That might be true in US for gloves, but it's certainly not true in Europe for amulets. Even high rolled mainstat+chc+chd amulets cost a few hundred million, and everything with 4 good stats is over 500 million.
THIS.
The post says that you need to invest on average 437 million to get a quinfecta amulet, that is, if you buy the materials off the AH. Sounds like a pretty good deal if you're on EU server where every freaking borderline decent item costs a fortune. High int roll is fixed, and high CC roll+decent IAS are perfectly possible within a few dozen crafts - and that's all I'd need for an upgrade. He also forgot to factor in minmax damage, LoH, vitality, armor, ... not too bad either. Sure, if you already have your BiS amulet be prepared to spend millions, but that's unlikely the case if you play EU. I got the feeling the EU servers haven't seen any decent quinfecta items being rolled - ever.
So guys... Would you or wouldnt you invest in the crafting material market specifically brimstones?? Do you guys predict an increase in the prices for brimstones???
Some people like that their games have a living and dynamic economy (sorry, said it again). That's mostly for MMO games (most of them RPGs) like EVE and WoW.
Some would go as far as to say that D2 itself had a living economy (probably one of the first games to have that) in SoJ, runes and uniques (on early stages of the game, without the rampant duping).
A lot of the fans wanted D3 to have an economy. But not a crappy and extremely unfriendly D2-style economy, where you could be scammed, where you had to go to forums to find an item, and then trade stuff without a way of comparing what you were trading. All these people got what they wanted, what they asked for when D3 was in development (the AH wasn't there from the beginning, you know?).
Btw, I'm not saying I like D3 having an economy, or defending the AH/RMAH. I don't even have a personal preference on that matter. I honestly wouldn't care if D3 didn't have an economy, nor am I annoyed by the fact that it has.
If the game is offline (or even online) and there's hardly any way to trade or to create an in-game economy, I really don't care. I played Titan Quest and Torchlight hundreds of hours without and economy and all was fine.
But if the game has an economy, I might try making use of it - but I'll try to never let it become a serious matter (like my daily lawyer work) otherwise the game's main purpose (to have fun in a light environment) is lost.
To me, that's the biggest mistake the majority of the playerbase made. Telling others that they suck because they don't know how to use the AH (and if they're stuck and can't get items, it's their own damn fault), and treating the game like a real life economy-simulator. That's not something Blizzard did, it's something the playerbase itself did.
In D2 you could stay 100% away from "the economy".
In D3 you can't, since 'it' affects your overall drop rates.
/argument
I'll quote mr. Kenobi here: "only a Sith deals in absolutes" (which is an absolute in itself, but you get the point).
In D2, duping and character editors were abundant. Sometimes I understand what Jay Wilson meant about fighting people's memories. Try playing D2 again, no help from anything, and let me know how many hours it takes to get the runes for an Enigma (I'm pretty sure it's somewhere around 1k). That's how you supposedly "stay away from the economy". People remember D2 differently because it was a much easier game, and because they could have anything with dupes.
Now really, I don't exactly disagree with you. I'm inclined to believe the game drops have been somewhat tuned having the AH in mind. But I also know that I have no proof of that (that blue statement is hardly "proof", programing/code-wise). I didn't really like not seeing a legendary until I was level 49, so before we continue let me say again: I do agree partly with your statement/feeling.
That said I remember seeing quite a few threads about people who played without the AH. I'm pretty sure I saw a lot of people doing Inferno with gear they found. They claimed it was more challenging, the end-game was more lasting and it was perfectly viable.
I actually leveled up one of my characters (can't recall if it was my WD or my Monk) with absolutely no help from the AH. Not a single item purchased there. Nightmare difficulty was mildly challenging. Hell was a blast (overcoming each elite and boss felt great), and finally reaching Inferno felt like what they promised -> a nearly impossible task that would take weeks-months. By the end of Act 2, I finally decided to use the AH again.
People have been saying these so called AH-facts (which are mostly falacies) for so long, they actually starting believing them. I'm 100% sure a lot of the people who complain the game is only doable with the AH never even actually tried playing it without the AH. Looks like a love/hate relationship
In D2, duping and character editors were abundant. Sometimes I understand what Jay Wilson meant about fighting people's memories. Try playing D2 again, no help from anything, and let me know how many hours it takes to get the runes for an Enigma (I'm pretty sure it's somewhere around 1k). That's how you supposedly "stay away from the economy". People remember D2 differently because it was a much easier game, and because they could have anything with dupes.
And I think that Jay Wilson, and whole Blizzard as a matter of fact, is in grave mistake if they think they know in full detail how people played Diablo 2, because they don't know a bit about people playing offline or a pirated version. That is the pitfall of data-driven game development. Data simply did not exist for the majority of players, as they were not playing connected to battle.net. Diablo 2 was played worldwide, it was played on lan, and it was played on unofficial bnets. All those Diablo 2 players simply did not exist for Blizzard, and that's okay, because they never payed for the game. But Blizzard failed to realize that all those people will want to play Diablo 3 too, and their experience of Diablo 2 differs greatly from those played on legit bnet.
TL;DR: When you, or Jay Wilson, or anyone at Blizzard say you're fighting people's memories you are actually trying to force your reality on other people's very different realities.
Also, I have never purchased from the AH, so the argument doesn't really apply to me.
You never purchased from the AH, yet you can't find your own upgrades? I fail to see the logic there. I found upgrades for my WD/Monk (whichever didn't use the AH) every 5-10 minutes. Even on Act 1 Inferno.
As for the original, v1.0, un-nerfed Inferno......meh. Farming Act 1 over and over and over and OVER got old fast (the monster density on some of those zones borders on insulting), and it was a pretty uninteresting gear-check. Yes, I know, loot-based games are mostly about gear-checks, but the way the itemisation was handled in D3 made this gear-check really frustrating. Since the leap in difficulty from A1 to A2 was so big, and farming in Hell was pointless, that meant that I was stuck for ages on A1 Inferno...and that was boring. I suppose I could've proceeded like most people at that time: death-zerging, exploiting NPC's (Tyrael), exploiting broken mechanics/skills, bugs, etc....but what's the point in that?
I leveled my alternate before they tuned the game (ilvl drops, overall dmg and health, etc.) and managed to get past Inferno Act 1 in about week. Around 15-20 hours playtime. If you were farming it over and over and over, you probably didn't know how to recognize the necessary stats to progress. Back in the day, very few people stacked all resists and used crit chance/crit dmg. It wasn't much easier even with the AH back then, before all the changes, since stuf with +30 all-resist could cost 1-2 million.
All in all, I'm pretty convinced that it was much easier to avoid the whole 'economy' thing in D2 than it is in D3. Hell, until recently, I really knew very little about the economy in D2. That's how little an impact it had on my gameplay.
It never had any impact in mine either. Even when I played online, I was stuck with old habits. Gearing up a Hammerdin, a Sorc and a Bone-Necro. Almost never trading (didn't even know d2jsp), almost never seeing high-end stuff. When ubers came, I realized how weak I was compared to what they expected of me. They were simply impossible without the proper stats (and without the proper builds).
@Mastodon I was mostly a SP/Lan player. Check my post history if you want, but I've been saying since years before the beta that online-only was bad for me, because it would kill the lan parties I loved so much. I was never an advocate of ladder or an online economy. My point still stands, and applies both to offline and online. People remember a D2 that simply didn't exist.
People talk so much about "finding their own items". Oh, please. The only reason people could "find" their own items in D2 is because with any crap you could stomp through content. Even Hell if you had the right skill build. Give me 30 hours and I can roll through everything in D2 with self-found content, as long as I assign the right stats and skill points. Items were a joke and barely mattered before the end-game. There were no useable/good rares, except during early vanilla. You couldn't find a good rare (like you can in D3) because they simply couldn't roll good affixes. It was all smoke and mirrors. People thought they were finding good items when in fact it was mostly crap. Finding uniques took hundreds of runs. That's probably 50+ hours searching for one item. Except instead of fighting different elites, you were killing the same enemy over and over again (and still had a chance of not finding it).
And if you never played online, I'm not even gonna talk about runewords (and ubers), since you probably don't even understand that those were the first items that actually mattered (and being remotely able to help at clearing ubers - depending on your class).
I'm not like most players, who actually think they're the center of the world. I'm not trying to force my reality over anyone (and I'm sure the D3 devs didn't as well). But I see daily a lot of people who are (PvP, competitive PvE, WoW-like features, more D2-like features) If I were, I'd be 110% against online only, ladders and the AH - because that was against my reality when I played D2.
I'm just positively against people saying they remember a game when it's so ridiculously obvious (to those who actually played) they barely played it. Most jump on the "diablofan" bandwagon and claim to have played a ton of it, but in reality only played a couple hours every 6 months with a few friends, and probably never played past Normal/Nightmare. And these guys claim to know more about the game than the guys who studied the genre for 10 years to create D3.
That said, if you check character editors (offline ones) download numbers, some had over 50 million downloads back in the day. So yeah, I'm sure nobody hacked/duped items in single player.
I'm still waiting for those fresh and correct memories. For people who played D2 for so long, and in such a legit manner, how long does it take to find a good rare (mostly in vanilla)? How long does it take to find the unique you want? For those who played online, how long did it take to see one Zod? 1k+ hours good enough for you? I've played D2 online nearly 800 hours (and offline probably 3-4 times that much), and I've never seen one drop myself.
In D2, duping and character editors were abundant. Sometimes I understand what Jay Wilson meant about fighting people's memories. Try playing D2 again, no help from anything, and let me know how many hours it takes to get the runes for an Enigma (I'm pretty sure it's somewhere around 1k). That's how you supposedly "stay away from the economy". People remember D2 differently because it was a much easier game, and because they could have anything with dupes.
And I think that Jay Wilson, and whole Blizzard as a matter of fact, is in grave mistake if they think they know in full detail how people played Diablo 2, because they don't know a bit about people playing offline or a pirated version. That is the pitfall of data-driven game development. Data simply did not exist for the majority of players, as they were not playing connected to battle.net. Diablo 2 was played worldwide, it was played on lan, and it was played on unofficial bnets. All those Diablo 2 players simply did not exist for Blizzard, and that's okay, because they never payed for the game. But Blizzard failed to realize that all those people will want to play Diablo 3 too, and their experience of Diablo 2 differs greatly from those played on legit bnet.
TL;DR: When you, or Jay Wilson, or anyone at Blizzard say you're fighting people's memories you are actually trying to force your reality on other people's very different realities.
Your post would be correct, if you were talking about a company like EA that doesn't care about people.
When Jay Wilson talked about "memories of people", this does not translate to "look at D2 ladder data". They actually go out and do user interviews, studies, talk to people. The Blizzard job site has a lot of HCI positions with these requirements every now and then. Also, if you actually read the interview Zero was talking about, it has nothing to do with game data but it's just stuff you realize if you interview gamers or at least listen to their forum posts. So please don't assume D3 was developed around the D2 ladder mode; if this was the case, D3 would be a competitive esports game. The exact opposite is the case.
And I can just +1 Zero's comment: there may have been a lot of dupes in ladder mode, but the stuff I saw on bigger LAN parties and in forums online was way beyond any dupes. Mods, cheats, character editors, savegames - stuff that makes dupes look like a joke. If you talk about online players enforce their reality on someone else, please don't do the same. I played both by the way, but never used trading. The main reason I switched to online play (and ladder) was because of the low level runewords. In 12 years of D2 I never found a real high rune, btw. So much for the people complaining about really good items/good rolls in D3 are too rare...
With your answers both of you actually proved my point. D2 had the possibility to be customized. D3 had none of that. Why not? The only gameplay customization option that was patched in so far is Monster Power, and that's nice, but it's nowhere enough to keep the game varied.
So why is D3 so narrowed down if they knew the many different ways people played D2?
With your answers both of you actually proved my point. D2 had the possibility to be customized. D3 had none of that. Why not? The only gameplay customization option that was patched in so far is Monster Power, and that's nice, but it's nowhere enough to keep the game varied.
So why is D3 so narrowed down if they knew the many different ways people played D2?
Can you be more specific what you're talking about if you say "D2 customization"?
Well, I guess we just disagree here. Take Torchlight for example to see why mods, cheats, character editors, and savegames - all available in both TL 1 and TL 2 - are not simply "good stuff" (there is a good side to them, but also a bad thing about them).
Let's look at the problem of D3 and the people complaining about it. Besides our two frustrated non-AH players (make and indimix), all the D3 hate posts or more civilized constructive criticism I've heard comes from players who have played for many hundreds of hours, explored almost every aspect of the game (including the AH and its economy, which is the subject of this thread/discussion). It seems to be consensus that D3 is an okay-ish game for casual gamers, capturing in the beginning, but lacking long-term motivation and proper endgame.
Now what about TL? Most reviews I've read, all people I've talked to who played it, and also to some extent my personal experience was that in the beginning the game is extremely fun and offers a lot of rewards. But upgrading gear is never an endless process, otherwise you would be at some million DPS at some point; so there needs to be a limit. Once you're getting closer to that limit, upgrades are harder to find, and just like in D3 you might end up playing a couple of hundreds of hours without finding anything that is a huge upgrade and gives you that awesome feeling of "yeah, I definitely improved my character a lot with this item". This was similar, if not the same in D2 offline play. And it was the reason why said character editors have 50m+ downloads: at some point you don't wait for the endgame, you take the shortcut and cheat. What does that mean? It's fun for a while, blasting through everything, but it soon becomes pointless, because you realize there are no (legal) upgrades. Even finding the BiS items won't mean anything to you, because you already have them, thanks to your character editor. Diablo is mainly about loot, and if you use cheats, savegames, char editors, you take away the core essence of the game.
Understand that it's not my wish to disencourage people to have different opinions, actually it's precisely the opposite.
It's because I like the debate and acknowledge there's 2 sides to every discussion (specially when it comes to games) that it breaks my heart when I see people talking about a specific feature of D3 as if it was clearly a downgrade from D2, or that it's a "bad design", or that nobody likes a certain feature. These absolutes couldn't be more wrong, or we wouldn't have an AH full of items every single day.
Some generic complaints have been said so many times that they've been carved into people's mind as absolute truths (check D3-related posts on IGN, Youtube, Gamespot) , to the point where whoever disagrees is just wrong, no questions asked (or is a fanboy). In terms of game mechanics, there's hardly "right" and "wrong". At most, you can say there's the "traditional" and the "innovative", and that your preference is "A" or "B".
My only purpose with all these posts is to make sure both sides of an argument (those who like the AH and those who don't; or those who like Autostats and those who don't; those who like free respecs and those who don't) canat leastacknowledge each other and agree to disagree respectfuly.
I personally have a very hard time seeing people being ignorant towards someone else's preference (it's usually the starting point for homophobia and all sorts of prejudice).
I prefer having offline and LAN modes, but I understand that's not going to happen anytime soon. Posting 500 messages all saying "fuck online-only, they ruined D3, fuck that loser Jay Wilson who is fat and Actiblizzard is the devil" isn't going to solve anything, and it's a shitty form of feedback.
I'm kinda fed of people talking about some game aspects like angry kids who didn't get the toy they wanted for Christmas (the AH, items affixes, RNG, legendaries, game's too hard or too casual) - this isn't directed at anyone in particular btw.
Guys please dont make this one of those other, I HATE D3 thread. if u want to have your nagging rights, create a separate thread. this is called " Patch 1.0.7 and AH Economy
I tried searching good deals on SoJ's. Because of dmg vs elites = dmg vs player. Rings will be flipped in about 2 weeks.
The SOJ's are a nice investment, but, hmm keep nin mind on the stats u would be missing on a ring, both on a defensive(all res, armor, life regen) and offensive(avg dmg, primary stat, vit, Att Spd, CC, CDmg) point of view. I would maybe invest in 5 SOJ's or less depending on whish class will use it...
30% dmg = 30% more life steal - 1000 times better than ANY defensive stats rings can roll with
30% dmg = better than any offensive stats rings can roll with.
Then you can add class affixes as a bonus.
To sum it up, no there is no better rings, specially for pvp than SoJ.
That post is overly dramatic. He calculates with 4 well rolled stats when actually 2 well rolled stats (in combination with the chosen high mainstat) are enough for most builds. He also states that quintfecta, or even quartfecta gloves are below 350 million on AH. That might be true in US for gloves, but it's certainly not true in Europe for amulets. Even high rolled mainstat+chc+chd amulets cost a few hundred million, and everything with 4 good stats is over 500 million. The real problem is that these amulets are very rare. As in: there is no supply. For the general player, they don't exist, only for the very few on the top.
Craftable amulets will most certainly be a hit, but I'm not sure how will that affect prices. My prediction is that Brimstones will flop. People and sharks already stocked up insane amounts of it, after the patch they'll release all their stocks, but there won't be enough demand. Casuals will be limited by Demonic Essence drops and hardcores already stocked up, that's my take on it. On the other hand, gem prices may flourish, especially emerald and ruby because marquise crafts, but they are plagued with duping, and again, no one knows exactly how big the stock is.
I'd say trading with commodities is a real gamble and not for the small fish. I, at least, do well enough with immediate gear flipping, I don't stock up anything.
THIS.
The post says that you need to invest on average 437 million to get a quinfecta amulet, that is, if you buy the materials off the AH. Sounds like a pretty good deal if you're on EU server where every freaking borderline decent item costs a fortune. High int roll is fixed, and high CC roll+decent IAS are perfectly possible within a few dozen crafts - and that's all I'd need for an upgrade. He also forgot to factor in minmax damage, LoH, vitality, armor, ... not too bad either. Sure, if you already have your BiS amulet be prepared to spend millions, but that's unlikely the case if you play EU. I got the feeling the EU servers haven't seen any decent quinfecta items being rolled - ever.
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Brimstone price will go up&word2=Brimstone price will go down
As a last resort, you may also ask the Oracle Cat.
Some would go as far as to say that D2 itself had a living economy (probably one of the first games to have that) in SoJ, runes and uniques (on early stages of the game, without the rampant duping).
A lot of the fans wanted D3 to have an economy. But not a crappy and extremely unfriendly D2-style economy, where you could be scammed, where you had to go to forums to find an item, and then trade stuff without a way of comparing what you were trading. All these people got what they wanted, what they asked for when D3 was in development (the AH wasn't there from the beginning, you know?).
Btw, I'm not saying I like D3 having an economy, or defending the AH/RMAH. I don't even have a personal preference on that matter. I honestly wouldn't care if D3 didn't have an economy, nor am I annoyed by the fact that it has.
If the game is offline (or even online) and there's hardly any way to trade or to create an in-game economy, I really don't care. I played Titan Quest and Torchlight hundreds of hours without and economy and all was fine.
But if the game has an economy, I might try making use of it - but I'll try to never let it become a serious matter (like my daily lawyer work) otherwise the game's main purpose (to have fun in a light environment) is lost.
To me, that's the biggest mistake the majority of the playerbase made. Telling others that they suck because they don't know how to use the AH (and if they're stuck and can't get items, it's their own damn fault), and treating the game like a real life economy-simulator. That's not something Blizzard did, it's something the playerbase itself did.
In D2, duping and character editors were abundant. Sometimes I understand what Jay Wilson meant about fighting people's memories. Try playing D2 again, no help from anything, and let me know how many hours it takes to get the runes for an Enigma (I'm pretty sure it's somewhere around 1k). That's how you supposedly "stay away from the economy". People remember D2 differently because it was a much easier game, and because they could have anything with dupes.
Now really, I don't exactly disagree with you. I'm inclined to believe the game drops have been somewhat tuned having the AH in mind. But I also know that I have no proof of that (that blue statement is hardly "proof", programing/code-wise). I didn't really like not seeing a legendary until I was level 49, so before we continue let me say again: I do agree partly with your statement/feeling.
That said I remember seeing quite a few threads about people who played without the AH. I'm pretty sure I saw a lot of people doing Inferno with gear they found. They claimed it was more challenging, the end-game was more lasting and it was perfectly viable.
I actually leveled up one of my characters (can't recall if it was my WD or my Monk) with absolutely no help from the AH. Not a single item purchased there. Nightmare difficulty was mildly challenging. Hell was a blast (overcoming each elite and boss felt great), and finally reaching Inferno felt like what they promised -> a nearly impossible task that would take weeks-months. By the end of Act 2, I finally decided to use the AH again.
People have been saying these so called AH-facts (which are mostly falacies) for so long, they actually starting believing them. I'm 100% sure a lot of the people who complain the game is only doable with the AH never even actually tried playing it without the AH. Looks like a love/hate relationship
And I think that Jay Wilson, and whole Blizzard as a matter of fact, is in grave mistake if they think they know in full detail how people played Diablo 2, because they don't know a bit about people playing offline or a pirated version. That is the pitfall of data-driven game development. Data simply did not exist for the majority of players, as they were not playing connected to battle.net. Diablo 2 was played worldwide, it was played on lan, and it was played on unofficial bnets. All those Diablo 2 players simply did not exist for Blizzard, and that's okay, because they never payed for the game. But Blizzard failed to realize that all those people will want to play Diablo 3 too, and their experience of Diablo 2 differs greatly from those played on legit bnet.
TL;DR: When you, or Jay Wilson, or anyone at Blizzard say you're fighting people's memories you are actually trying to force your reality on other people's very different realities.
I leveled my alternate before they tuned the game (ilvl drops, overall dmg and health, etc.) and managed to get past Inferno Act 1 in about week. Around 15-20 hours playtime. If you were farming it over and over and over, you probably didn't know how to recognize the necessary stats to progress. Back in the day, very few people stacked all resists and used crit chance/crit dmg. It wasn't much easier even with the AH back then, before all the changes, since stuf with +30 all-resist could cost 1-2 million.
It never had any impact in mine either. Even when I played online, I was stuck with old habits. Gearing up a Hammerdin, a Sorc and a Bone-Necro. Almost never trading (didn't even know d2jsp), almost never seeing high-end stuff. When ubers came, I realized how weak I was compared to what they expected of me. They were simply impossible without the proper stats (and without the proper builds).
@Mastodon I was mostly a SP/Lan player. Check my post history if you want, but I've been saying since years before the beta that online-only was bad for me, because it would kill the lan parties I loved so much. I was never an advocate of ladder or an online economy. My point still stands, and applies both to offline and online. People remember a D2 that simply didn't exist.
People talk so much about "finding their own items". Oh, please. The only reason people could "find" their own items in D2 is because with any crap you could stomp through content. Even Hell if you had the right skill build. Give me 30 hours and I can roll through everything in D2 with self-found content, as long as I assign the right stats and skill points. Items were a joke and barely mattered before the end-game. There were no useable/good rares, except during early vanilla. You couldn't find a good rare (like you can in D3) because they simply couldn't roll good affixes. It was all smoke and mirrors. People thought they were finding good items when in fact it was mostly crap. Finding uniques took hundreds of runs. That's probably 50+ hours searching for one item. Except instead of fighting different elites, you were killing the same enemy over and over again (and still had a chance of not finding it).
And if you never played online, I'm not even gonna talk about runewords (and ubers), since you probably don't even understand that those were the first items that actually mattered (and being remotely able to help at clearing ubers - depending on your class).
I'm not like most players, who actually think they're the center of the world. I'm not trying to force my reality over anyone (and I'm sure the D3 devs didn't as well). But I see daily a lot of people who are (PvP, competitive PvE, WoW-like features, more D2-like features) If I were, I'd be 110% against online only, ladders and the AH - because that was against my reality when I played D2.
I'm just positively against people saying they remember a game when it's so ridiculously obvious (to those who actually played) they barely played it. Most jump on the "diablofan" bandwagon and claim to have played a ton of it, but in reality only played a couple hours every 6 months with a few friends, and probably never played past Normal/Nightmare. And these guys claim to know more about the game than the guys who studied the genre for 10 years to create D3.
That said, if you check character editors (offline ones) download numbers, some had over 50 million downloads back in the day. So yeah, I'm sure nobody hacked/duped items in single player.
I'm still waiting for those fresh and correct memories. For people who played D2 for so long, and in such a legit manner, how long does it take to find a good rare (mostly in vanilla)? How long does it take to find the unique you want? For those who played online, how long did it take to see one Zod? 1k+ hours good enough for you? I've played D2 online nearly 800 hours (and offline probably 3-4 times that much), and I've never seen one drop myself.
Your post would be correct, if you were talking about a company like EA that doesn't care about people.
When Jay Wilson talked about "memories of people", this does not translate to "look at D2 ladder data". They actually go out and do user interviews, studies, talk to people. The Blizzard job site has a lot of HCI positions with these requirements every now and then. Also, if you actually read the interview Zero was talking about, it has nothing to do with game data but it's just stuff you realize if you interview gamers or at least listen to their forum posts. So please don't assume D3 was developed around the D2 ladder mode; if this was the case, D3 would be a competitive esports game. The exact opposite is the case.
And I can just +1 Zero's comment: there may have been a lot of dupes in ladder mode, but the stuff I saw on bigger LAN parties and in forums online was way beyond any dupes. Mods, cheats, character editors, savegames - stuff that makes dupes look like a joke. If you talk about online players enforce their reality on someone else, please don't do the same. I played both by the way, but never used trading. The main reason I switched to online play (and ladder) was because of the low level runewords. In 12 years of D2 I never found a real high rune, btw. So much for the people complaining about really good items/good rolls in D3 are too rare...
So why is D3 so narrowed down if they knew the many different ways people played D2?
Can you be more specific what you're talking about if you say "D2 customization"?
This is good stuff if used for customization, and not to cheat other players.
Let's look at the problem of D3 and the people complaining about it. Besides our two frustrated non-AH players (make and indimix), all the D3 hate posts or more civilized constructive criticism I've heard comes from players who have played for many hundreds of hours, explored almost every aspect of the game (including the AH and its economy, which is the subject of this thread/discussion). It seems to be consensus that D3 is an okay-ish game for casual gamers, capturing in the beginning, but lacking long-term motivation and proper endgame.
Now what about TL? Most reviews I've read, all people I've talked to who played it, and also to some extent my personal experience was that in the beginning the game is extremely fun and offers a lot of rewards. But upgrading gear is never an endless process, otherwise you would be at some million DPS at some point; so there needs to be a limit. Once you're getting closer to that limit, upgrades are harder to find, and just like in D3 you might end up playing a couple of hundreds of hours without finding anything that is a huge upgrade and gives you that awesome feeling of "yeah, I definitely improved my character a lot with this item". This was similar, if not the same in D2 offline play. And it was the reason why said character editors have 50m+ downloads: at some point you don't wait for the endgame, you take the shortcut and cheat. What does that mean? It's fun for a while, blasting through everything, but it soon becomes pointless, because you realize there are no (legal) upgrades. Even finding the BiS items won't mean anything to you, because you already have them, thanks to your character editor. Diablo is mainly about loot, and if you use cheats, savegames, char editors, you take away the core essence of the game.
It's because I like the debate and acknowledge there's 2 sides to every discussion (specially when it comes to games) that it breaks my heart when I see people talking about a specific feature of D3 as if it was clearly a downgrade from D2, or that it's a "bad design", or that nobody likes a certain feature. These absolutes couldn't be more wrong, or we wouldn't have an AH full of items every single day.
Some generic complaints have been said so many times that they've been carved into people's mind as absolute truths (check D3-related posts on IGN, Youtube, Gamespot) , to the point where whoever disagrees is just wrong, no questions asked (or is a fanboy). In terms of game mechanics, there's hardly "right" and "wrong". At most, you can say there's the "traditional" and the "innovative", and that your preference is "A" or "B".
My only purpose with all these posts is to make sure both sides of an argument (those who like the AH and those who don't; or those who like Autostats and those who don't; those who like free respecs and those who don't) can at least acknowledge each other and agree to disagree respectfuly.
I personally have a very hard time seeing people being ignorant towards someone else's preference (it's usually the starting point for homophobia and all sorts of prejudice).
I prefer having offline and LAN modes, but I understand that's not going to happen anytime soon. Posting 500 messages all saying "fuck online-only, they ruined D3, fuck that loser Jay Wilson who is fat and Actiblizzard is the devil" isn't going to solve anything, and it's a shitty form of feedback.
I'm kinda fed of people talking about some game aspects like angry kids who didn't get the toy they wanted for Christmas (the AH, items affixes, RNG, legendaries, game's too hard or too casual) - this isn't directed at anyone in particular btw.
Patch 1.0.7 and AH Economy
" and NOT "Bitch about D3".
Much appreciated
30% dmg = better than any offensive stats rings can roll with.
Then you can add class affixes as a bonus.
To sum it up, no there is no better rings, specially for pvp than SoJ.
Currently played toon: https://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Rage-2973/hero/97362116