I say they just make a Diablo 3.5 with no auction house, ladders, offline compatible, and countless other things that should have been done. Rather than making drastic changes to the current game, they could just, in theory, make a new one and provide it as a free download to anyone who has purchased Diablo 3
Let's try, just try to keep this as civil and as on-topic as possible.
I know JW's statement was ABOUT the AH (not just about that, though), but as soon as this derails into yet another AH vs no-AH flame wars, I'm locking it.
It's a fact: he acknowledges (and so the dev team probably), due to a huge community feedback, that the AH has brought issues not foreseen or planned, and they want to fix it.
Let's try to talk about what he said, instead of whether the AH is or not a good feature.
Because ultimately players are greedy (?) and would prefer to keep their best items for themselves? I guess they didn't think some players just love to drive economies into the ground.
Here's the most head-scratching thing I've read in a very long time;
"...(We thought) only a small percentage of players would use it (AH's)"
Why would he think that? That doesn't make any sense.
I still can't understand WHY players would even use the AH to begin with. Diablo is a progression based game. You play to find better to loot and to get stronger. Why on earth would you cheat on that? It's like playing a strategy game for its difficulty and then use "godmode". The progression is the fun of the game, so why would anybody use the AH? Is it to skip the fun?
The core premise of the auction house is sound. Say you find an awesome item that isn't useful for your character, or is maybe slightly less awesome than what you have already. Rather than just throwing it away or letting it rot in storage, you trade it for gold which you can in turn trade for something that's better for you. Where they blew it is in not realizing just how often this happens, and how the AH inevitably outpaces natural loot for your character when not restricted in some way. I think their single biggest failing was in choosing not to make loot Bind on Equip. It's simple common sense that item inflation will spiral out of control when there is no item sink in the game, and the natural consequence of this is very low prices on pretty darn good items.
Thats the first honest words i've heared from Jay Wilson since release.
Perhaps he should have tried that (honesty) a 3/4 year ago...and maybe he would still have his job.
Actually, I don't believe he thinks the AH is bad because of the community feedback. I think the AH caused some problems to him as a developper. The developpers can't even correct bugs (for example black weapons) because people bought them from the AH. They can't improve drop rates because it wouldn't solve the problem. And probably many more problems I can't even imagine. The AH really limits the option the developpers have to improve the game and it's probably a thorn in their side.
Roll back 6-7 months. Reduce AH usage to 5-10% of the playerbase (since 99% of the players are supposedly big fans of D2 and probably never traded in that game).
Gold never becomes the big thing it became (with people valuing items not how whether they're useable and powerful at Inferno or higher MPs, but for how much they sell on the AH - "mommy I can't find ANYTHING useful" aka "I can't jackpot and make 2 billion out of one item"), streamers never talk about high-end items costing 2-10 BILLION gold (do people even realize how much that is?).
Instead people play the game and find small upgrades every now and then (an item with pickup radius and similar stats, another with +bonus do health globes), and good items (high mainstat + vit + allres rolls) every couple hours. Everyone is happy and trying different combinations of crazy affixes and the AH is never a problem (because people just can't turboboost to the best gear possible if nobody's using it to sell everything they find and get gold asap).
I can assure you that's what they thought was gonna happen. That's what any reasonable person would think was gonna happen based on D2's past.
It's been a MAJOR selling point of the game, said by the developers MULTIPLE times, that efficiency isn't a major point for this franchise. And people APPLAUDED that on Blizzcons (I was there to see it).
But then the game launches and every kid just wants to make the most gold possible with the most mainstream flavor of the month build (early Kripparian and Athene builds). People complain en masse about Inferno and how "farming items in previous acts is boring" and how they want guaranteed drops after "x time played". Later on Everyone's fucking talking about "flipping items on the AH" and "farming efficient routes". A couple months after release, seeing these and the official forums I was literally like: "where the fuck did all this shit come from?". When did D2 players and fans turned into efficiency whores?
I can't help but feel that is some heavy WoW influence, where things like these actually matter. Where you can actually look at the weakest link of a raid (the mods for this are nearly mandatory nowadays) and point the finger to him "you SUCK, you need at least 'x' dps to be useful, and we need to do the boss like this, you suck at both". Where you can farm a specific raid for a specific item. People don't mind when it takes them 200-300 hours and they might not get the item (because of dozens of factors), as long as they can pretend they're in control somehow.
In the end, a lot of the complaints are due to the absolute random nature of D3. Loot servers, low legendary drop rates, complaints about item drops, it's all related to RNG (and not the AH, otherwise we wouldn't see it flooded with 15k legendaries).
And so many people hate feeling like they're not going anywhere, not in control. They wanna have a long-term goal that doesn't involve spending 250 dollars (because picking up 2 billion gold is unreal) to get the BiS item.
Because you have to... the game is designed that way.
The odds are to low to find good loots yourself.
That's 100% pure bullshit. And almost everyone who says that hasn't actually tried to play 100-200 hours without the AH.
I played almost 30 levels (while making my first character on EU) SOLELY on drops, and on MP 4-5 (so you can't really say I could be wearing any crap and stomp content). You find upgrades ALL the time.
Reason why I had to do that was because of how pricy some items were on lower lvls. 50k for a pair of boots with movespeed? I'm not buying that. 150k for an amulet with +experience? Bite me!
I'm sure I'd find TONS of upgrades if I just kept playing throughout Inferno. I actually found a pair of pants in the first couple hours on MP0 (that are worth 300-400k even today nevermind, just sold it for 900k).
I only turbo-boosted to MP 3-4 material so I can play with overneathe and not hinder him. I'd love to know how we could do that in a couple hours if not for the AH.
One of the reasons Diablo 3's AH causes so much issues compared to AH in other games is also the fact that there is no reason to NOT use it.
In normal real-world AHs, and other game AH there is at least a listing fee of some sort. D3's system simply makes flipping really attractive, since as long as you think it will go for 17.7% more than you buy it for (or $1 on RMAH), you can basically list it for free as many times as needed to sell it.
Had Blizzard put in a listing fee, like 5% on the Buyout (or starting) price, several things would happen:
1) Suddenly AH does have a risk, so there's more reason to play the game rather than the AH
2) Players would price items to actually sell since they're getting dinged a % of the price they list it for
Basically we'd have an AH that is used more FOR trading, rather than for piling up gold just for the hell of it. People would have to put starting prices at amount where someone would realistically bid on it. The AH would also have far less clutter, and people wouldn't relist items every 2 hours just so it turns up higher on new listing search results. It'd probably help server load quite a bit as well, so the AH would actually work properly.
Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that I would personally stop playing if they just stripped the AH out of the game and I'm neither a botter nor a for-profit player. That would show such blatant disregard for players that I would most likely completely give up on them as a company completely and not buy any of their games again in the future, as I've already done with Turbine (for different reasons). Stripping out major game features is not the way to solve problems, particularly when there are other good solutions.
But blizz has identified the AH's as problematic, and many players concur. So far, the best solution they have drummed up is creating non-tradable items. This isn't a sustainable strategy for circumventing what has been identified as a problem.
Question; Why would you quit? Even if I liked the AH's immensely, I would consider the playability of the game as paramount to whatever trade vehicle was in place. If you really enjoyed the game, why would you care about the trade vehicle?
I agree that the AH is problematic in the current state of the game. However, non-tradeable items clearly is a sustainable solution -- WoW is certainly popular enough despite virtually all of the best gear (when I was playing, I can't speak to now) being BoP / BoE. I'm not sure bound items is the best solution, but pushing us back to d2jsp et al. by removing the AH would be vastly worse in my opinion. If they showed that kind of terrible judgement, I frankly wouldn't understand anyone who would give them another dollar. What "trade vehicle" do you think would be better? I can't come up with any ideas beyond forum and chat spam, and those certainly aren't better.
The fact that Blizzard completely ignored the effect the AH would have on the gameplay experience is obviously a bad thing and it needs to be dealt with in a way that makes playing the game at least as efficient as farming the AH. If they cannot find a better way to do that then removing the AH, they ought to find another line of work and I'll be glad to help them along by spending my money somewhere else.
One solution I proposed a while back was to have all items drop bound to account, but have an affix which removes the bound property. They could make the affix cost multiple slots if necessary and also play with how often it is applied to various items in different slots. Since most gear would be bound, you would automatically find better gear to wear than to sell, and gear on the AH would never be as good as what you could find yourself if you farm long enough (assuming they solve the other problem of making more affixes desirable). If you hate that idea, that's ok -- Blizzard employs several professional game designers who have been thinking about this for months and ought to be able to come up with a better idea than one I came up with after thinking about the problem for 20 minutes one day. If they can't, that's a very big problem.
That you consider the AH a "major game feature" is the real troubling fact, here.
I clashed with so many people in this forum over this issue, I suppose it's nice to see some validation.
The AH is definitionally (if that's a word) a major game feature. You don't devote the significant levels of development time and patches they have to something that's not a major feature of your game. Overall, I think the AH will be a positive force once the game is refocused toward the gameplay and away from trading. The AH has a role to play -- the problem is just that it currently fills the central role.
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...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
Because you have to... the game is designed that way.
The odds are to low to find good loots yourself.
That's 100% pure bullshit. And almost everyone who says that hasn't actually tried to play 100-200 hours without the AH.
Try playing 100-200 hours Path of Exile, and see how well tuned (gear wise) you char is gonna be.
Then you know what i am talking about.
In around 1000 played hours Diablo3 i found 2-3 Loots worth around 200 Million Gold each...thats it.
Only 1 piece i could use on my Mainchar as a big upgrade.
So 1000 Hours for 1 good piece...i call that pretty lame to be honest.
If you talking about being able to "somehow" manage the content with the stuff you find, then you are right.
Fun/Good Loots however you wont find yourself for your chars, you find those only in the AH, or with actual trading.
Try playing 100-200 hours Path of Exile, and see how well tuned (gear wise) you char is gonna be.
Then you know what i am talking about.
Try trading anything in Path of Exile. See what a hassle that is. Most trades turn into an argument on whether the item is worth the price asked or not (whether buying or selling). See people asking for 50 chaos orbs for mediocre items or tier 1 skill gems (because dedicated players have thousands of those a couple weeks into the game).
I tried buying a Clarity there for literally 5 hours (while playing with my Ranger). Some wanted 5 Exalted, some wanted 20 chaos, and there was no way of measuring if that was even remotely a good deal.
Introduce an Auction House on PoE and I can guarantee you 110% the same thing would happen there in A month. Heck, in less than a week guys like Kripparian were already wearing BiS in 3-4 slots - talk about longevity and end-game farming, uh? But that game's longevity comes from its ladder system (which has its merits) so let's no go there.
In around 1000 played hours Diablo3 i found 2-3 Loots worth around 200 Million Gold each...thats it.
Never found anything worth that much. And I don't give a damn, because I'm not into that "my item is only as good if it's worth something on the AH" mentality.
Fun/Good Loots however you wont find yourself for your chars, you find those only in the AH, or with actual trading.
The fact that you put those 2 together tells the whole story.
Try trading anything in Path of Exile. See what a hassle that is. Most trades turn into an argument on whether the item is worth the price asked or not (whether buying or selling). See people asking for 50 chaos orbs for mediocre items or tier 1 skill gems (because dedicated players have thousands of those a couple weeks into the game).
Its a hassle, i dont even disagree.
But you forgot to mention that the overall Quality of Loots is way better, so you dont actually need to trade or AH.
You can basicly turn a white Item into a BiS item...tinker around with Items all you want.
You cant do that in D3...you find/craft a Item, it has set properties...and you are stuck with that.
I tried buying a Clarity there for literally 5 hours (while playing with my Ranger). Some wanted 5 Exalted, some wanted 20 chaos, and there was no way of measuring if that was even remotely a good deal.
Introduce an Auction House on PoE and I can guarantee you 110% the same thing would happen there in A month. Heck, in less than a week guys like Kripparian were already wearing BiS in 3-4 slots - talk about longevity and end-game farming, uh? But that game's longevity comes from its ladder system (which has its merits) so let's no go there.
Never found anything worth that much. And I don't give a damn, because I'm not into that "my item is only as good if it's worth something on the AH" mentality.
Yeah well, the AH is in the Game...and People use it to determine the approximate Value of Goods.
That doesnt mean everybody and their mother living only for the AH to make profit.
I honestly think a viable way to maintain massive item trading is to retain the auction house, but not for gold or real money purposes. I think the best solution is to have an item up, where people can offer items for trade and the owner can respectively accept or decline. I think listings should be able to go up for as long as a player would like (maybe up to 7 days and a minimum of 12 hours) still maintaining the ability to cancel the auction .
But you forgot to mention that the overall Quality of Loots is way better, so you dont actually need to trade or AH.
LOL, quality of loot is better? I played literally from lvl 15 to lvl 38 with the same bow because everything that dropped was crap. Spent a crapload of my "cash" (orbs) on well linked white items and they still turned out crap.
This goes back to my argument that people just want some semblance of control. Even if it is a shitty control mechanism.
Another reason why they should be cheap, easily accessible.
Oh my, a spreadsheet. I was completely unaware of skill rewards on that game, you know because that's advanced stuff right there, and cause I'm new to the whole forum scene and finding out stuff on my own.
Looks like this idiot here didn't feel like wasting 20-25 minutes of his limited playtime on another class. With a proper trading mechanism, I'd be able to get that in 30 seconds.
Yeah well, the AH is in the Game...and People use it to determine the approximate Value of Goods.
That doesnt mean everybody and their mother living only for the AH to make profit.
No, it only means some people can only have "fun" when they find top-notch end-game items that when compared to others in the AH must sell for pathetic amounts of gold. As you have proved with your comments.
And what Story is that?
If an item isn't "good" it isn't "fun". Aka if an item doesn't "sell on the AH for tons of gold, then I'm not having fun" -> that is the fucked up mentality that makes people hate the game and whine left and right about everything (even a random facebook comment that has nothing to do with the game development).
And then it's the developer's fault that they're not having "fun". Yeah, let's give everyone a much higher chance of getting end-game top-quality items, that will make them happy - oh wait, that DID happen (hint: check the overall quality and price of items on the AH) and people are still bitching about it.
I honestly think a viable way to maintain massive item trading is to retain the auction house, but not for gold or real money purposes. I think the best solution is to have an item up, where people can offer items for trade and the owner can respectively accept or decline. I think listings should be able to go up for as long as a player would like (maybe up to 7 days and a minimum of 12 hours) still maintaining the ability to cancel the auction .
oh tell me about it, I recently put a pretty decent level 25ish barb belt up on the HC AH and set the buyout to 10k (I thought that was pretty overpriced) and forgot to set the bidding price to something higher. Someone ended up getting it for 250 gold hahaha.
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Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
The solution needs to improve self-found gear without significantly improving AH gear or gold found, such as the BoA crafting recipes. I think they are on the right track.
Agree with the underlined part.
But Blizz apparently regrets the AH's existence. They have made steps to drive people away from the AH's (BoA).
They can't just strip the AH out of the game. The outrage from something like that would drive players away in droves.
Well they most certainly can. IMO...the only people that would run away so haphazardly would be the botters and for-profit players.
Blizz is trying to dramatically overhaul D3. They've targeted the worst offender, itemization. They've targeted content to be expanded. And rightfully so, they've apparently now targeted the AH's as problematic.
It's doubtful that Blizzard as a whole regrets the AH and in fact embraces it as it is an existing part of the game and will continue to be so for the games duration. Rather than saying they regret it, perhaps it would be best to say they wish it were more balanced and that is what brings me to my second point. They are not driving people away from the AH with BoA items, they are simply balancing the games itemization thus balancing the use of the AH. People thought that the Hellfire Ring would be the demise of ring sales on the AH but look how that turned out... Even Vile Wards are bouncing back from a short lived low spell in sales and Lacunis are as expensive as ever. With more crafting of better items, the AH will become just another option giving way a little more to crafting and looting. The next best improvement I can see them doing is increasing the drops of better items and letting us have more crafting.
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The fact that the AH IS a major game feature, is the real troubling fact.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
I know JW's statement was ABOUT the AH (not just about that, though), but as soon as this derails into yet another AH vs no-AH flame wars, I'm locking it.
It's a fact: he acknowledges (and so the dev team probably), due to a huge community feedback, that the AH has brought issues not foreseen or planned, and they want to fix it.
Let's try to talk about what he said, instead of whether the AH is or not a good feature.
"...(We thought) only a small percentage of players would use it (AH's)"
Why would he think that? That doesn't make any sense.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Ha. Bagstone.
The core premise of the auction house is sound. Say you find an awesome item that isn't useful for your character, or is maybe slightly less awesome than what you have already. Rather than just throwing it away or letting it rot in storage, you trade it for gold which you can in turn trade for something that's better for you. Where they blew it is in not realizing just how often this happens, and how the AH inevitably outpaces natural loot for your character when not restricted in some way. I think their single biggest failing was in choosing not to make loot Bind on Equip. It's simple common sense that item inflation will spiral out of control when there is no item sink in the game, and the natural consequence of this is very low prices on pretty darn good items.
Perhaps he should have tried that (honesty) a 3/4 year ago...and maybe he would still have his job.
Because you have to... the game is designed that way.
The odds are to low to find good loots yourself.
Gold never becomes the big thing it became (with people valuing items not how whether they're useable and powerful at Inferno or higher MPs, but for how much they sell on the AH - "mommy I can't find ANYTHING useful" aka "I can't jackpot and make 2 billion out of one item"), streamers never talk about high-end items costing 2-10 BILLION gold (do people even realize how much that is?).
Instead people play the game and find small upgrades every now and then (an item with pickup radius and similar stats, another with +bonus do health globes), and good items (high mainstat + vit + allres rolls) every couple hours. Everyone is happy and trying different combinations of crazy affixes and the AH is never a problem (because people just can't turboboost to the best gear possible if nobody's using it to sell everything they find and get gold asap).
I can assure you that's what they thought was gonna happen. That's what any reasonable person would think was gonna happen based on D2's past.
It's been a MAJOR selling point of the game, said by the developers MULTIPLE times, that efficiency isn't a major point for this franchise. And people APPLAUDED that on Blizzcons (I was there to see it).
But then the game launches and every kid just wants to make the most gold possible with the most mainstream flavor of the month build (early Kripparian and Athene builds). People complain en masse about Inferno and how "farming items in previous acts is boring" and how they want guaranteed drops after "x time played". Later on Everyone's fucking talking about "flipping items on the AH" and "farming efficient routes". A couple months after release, seeing these and the official forums I was literally like: "where the fuck did all this shit come from?". When did D2 players and fans turned into efficiency whores?
I can't help but feel that is some heavy WoW influence, where things like these actually matter. Where you can actually look at the weakest link of a raid (the mods for this are nearly mandatory nowadays) and point the finger to him "you SUCK, you need at least 'x' dps to be useful, and we need to do the boss like this, you suck at both". Where you can farm a specific raid for a specific item. People don't mind when it takes them 200-300 hours and they might not get the item (because of dozens of factors), as long as they can pretend they're in control somehow.
In the end, a lot of the complaints are due to the absolute random nature of D3. Loot servers, low legendary drop rates, complaints about item drops, it's all related to RNG (and not the AH, otherwise we wouldn't see it flooded with 15k legendaries).
And so many people hate feeling like they're not going anywhere, not in control. They wanna have a long-term goal that doesn't involve spending 250 dollars (because picking up 2 billion gold is unreal) to get the BiS item.
I played almost 30 levels (while making my first character on EU) SOLELY on drops, and on MP 4-5 (so you can't really say I could be wearing any crap and stomp content). You find upgrades ALL the time.
Reason why I had to do that was because of how pricy some items were on lower lvls. 50k for a pair of boots with movespeed? I'm not buying that. 150k for an amulet with +experience? Bite me!
I'm sure I'd find TONS of upgrades if I just kept playing throughout Inferno. I actually found a pair of pants in the first couple hours on MP0 (
that are worth 300-400k even todaynevermind, just sold it for 900k).I only turbo-boosted to MP 3-4 material so I can play with overneathe and not hinder him. I'd love to know how we could do that in a couple hours if not for the AH.
In normal real-world AHs, and other game AH there is at least a listing fee of some sort. D3's system simply makes flipping really attractive, since as long as you think it will go for 17.7% more than you buy it for (or $1 on RMAH), you can basically list it for free as many times as needed to sell it.
Had Blizzard put in a listing fee, like 5% on the Buyout (or starting) price, several things would happen:
1) Suddenly AH does have a risk, so there's more reason to play the game rather than the AH
2) Players would price items to actually sell since they're getting dinged a % of the price they list it for
Basically we'd have an AH that is used more FOR trading, rather than for piling up gold just for the hell of it. People would have to put starting prices at amount where someone would realistically bid on it. The AH would also have far less clutter, and people wouldn't relist items every 2 hours just so it turns up higher on new listing search results. It'd probably help server load quite a bit as well, so the AH would actually work properly.
I agree that the AH is problematic in the current state of the game. However, non-tradeable items clearly is a sustainable solution -- WoW is certainly popular enough despite virtually all of the best gear (when I was playing, I can't speak to now) being BoP / BoE. I'm not sure bound items is the best solution, but pushing us back to d2jsp et al. by removing the AH would be vastly worse in my opinion. If they showed that kind of terrible judgement, I frankly wouldn't understand anyone who would give them another dollar. What "trade vehicle" do you think would be better? I can't come up with any ideas beyond forum and chat spam, and those certainly aren't better.
The fact that Blizzard completely ignored the effect the AH would have on the gameplay experience is obviously a bad thing and it needs to be dealt with in a way that makes playing the game at least as efficient as farming the AH. If they cannot find a better way to do that then removing the AH, they ought to find another line of work and I'll be glad to help them along by spending my money somewhere else.
One solution I proposed a while back was to have all items drop bound to account, but have an affix which removes the bound property. They could make the affix cost multiple slots if necessary and also play with how often it is applied to various items in different slots. Since most gear would be bound, you would automatically find better gear to wear than to sell, and gear on the AH would never be as good as what you could find yourself if you farm long enough (assuming they solve the other problem of making more affixes desirable). If you hate that idea, that's ok -- Blizzard employs several professional game designers who have been thinking about this for months and ought to be able to come up with a better idea than one I came up with after thinking about the problem for 20 minutes one day. If they can't, that's a very big problem.
The AH is definitionally (if that's a word) a major game feature. You don't devote the significant levels of development time and patches they have to something that's not a major feature of your game. Overall, I think the AH will be a positive force once the game is refocused toward the gameplay and away from trading. The AH has a role to play -- the problem is just that it currently fills the central role.
Try playing 100-200 hours Path of Exile, and see how well tuned (gear wise) you char is gonna be.
Then you know what i am talking about.
In around 1000 played hours Diablo3 i found 2-3 Loots worth around 200 Million Gold each...thats it.
Only 1 piece i could use on my Mainchar as a big upgrade.
So 1000 Hours for 1 good piece...i call that pretty lame to be honest.
If you talking about being able to "somehow" manage the content with the stuff you find, then you are right.
Fun/Good Loots however you wont find yourself for your chars, you find those only in the AH, or with actual trading.
I tried buying a Clarity there for literally 5 hours (while playing with my Ranger). Some wanted 5 Exalted, some wanted 20 chaos, and there was no way of measuring if that was even remotely a good deal.
Introduce an Auction House on PoE and I can guarantee you 110% the same thing would happen there in A month. Heck, in less than a week guys like Kripparian were already wearing BiS in 3-4 slots - talk about longevity and end-game farming, uh? But that game's longevity comes from its ladder system (which has its merits) so let's no go there.
Never found anything worth that much. And I don't give a damn, because I'm not into that "my item is only as good if it's worth something on the AH" mentality.
The fact that you put those 2 together tells the whole story.
Ha. Bagstone.
Its a hassle, i dont even disagree.
But you forgot to mention that the overall Quality of Loots is way better, so you dont actually need to trade or AH.
You can basicly turn a white Item into a BiS item...tinker around with Items all you want.
You cant do that in D3...you find/craft a Item, it has set properties...and you are stuck with that.
Yeah well, Idiots are everywhere.
Clarity is actually a Gem you get pretty early on with Quests :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0Anunpnd0-mAudHIxazRvZGpqLXdlQ3JfT0hkWVRjV2c&toomany=true#gid=0
Wont happen...
Yeah well, the AH is in the Game...and People use it to determine the approximate Value of Goods.
That doesnt mean everybody and their mother living only for the AH to make profit.
And what Story is that?
This goes back to my argument that people just want some semblance of control. Even if it is a shitty control mechanism.
Another reason why they should be cheap, easily accessible.
Oh my, a spreadsheet. I was completely unaware of skill rewards on that game, you know because that's advanced stuff right there, and cause I'm new to the whole forum scene and finding out stuff on my own.
Looks like this idiot here didn't feel like wasting 20-25 minutes of his limited playtime on another class. With a proper trading mechanism, I'd be able to get that in 30 seconds.
No, it only means some people can only have "fun" when they find top-notch end-game items that when compared to others in the AH must sell for pathetic amounts of gold. As you have proved with your comments.
If an item isn't "good" it isn't "fun". Aka if an item doesn't "sell on the AH for tons of gold, then I'm not having fun" -> that is the fucked up mentality that makes people hate the game and whine left and right about everything (even a random facebook comment that has nothing to do with the game development).
And then it's the developer's fault that they're not having "fun". Yeah, let's give everyone a much higher chance of getting end-game top-quality items, that will make them happy - oh wait, that DID happen (hint: check the overall quality and price of items on the AH) and people are still bitching about it.
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
It's doubtful that Blizzard as a whole regrets the AH and in fact embraces it as it is an existing part of the game and will continue to be so for the games duration. Rather than saying they regret it, perhaps it would be best to say they wish it were more balanced and that is what brings me to my second point. They are not driving people away from the AH with BoA items, they are simply balancing the games itemization thus balancing the use of the AH. People thought that the Hellfire Ring would be the demise of ring sales on the AH but look how that turned out... Even Vile Wards are bouncing back from a short lived low spell in sales and Lacunis are as expensive as ever. With more crafting of better items, the AH will become just another option giving way a little more to crafting and looting. The next best improvement I can see them doing is increasing the drops of better items and letting us have more crafting.