@rodrigj, Shadout
Could atleast one of you explain what exactly this problem is that you are referring you instead of calling me something and jumping to the next subject.
I think the problem they are talking about ( and I actualy kind of agree on this... ) is that drop chances of realy good items ( dont ask me to define exactly what "good" means, that's their word choice... ) are very low. They blame it on the AH because Blizzard of course considered the AH when designing drop chances.
This is a problem that I can understand. But I dont think there is a better solution. I certainly dont agree with them blaming the AH for it all.
Actualy, I would be more for increasing the drop rates and keeping the AH than for increasing the droprates and removing the AH, But most of all I am for leaving it as it is ^^
I dont really know if AH is to blame for current itemization. That would be hard to say, unless Blizzard confirms it directly.
However.. if the existence of AH now, is a barrier to improving itemization and droprates, because Blizzard wouldn't want to "screw up the economy", then yeah, I would prefer AH to not be around. Or if that is not possible, other solutions as people have thrown around, such as better itemization which are then account bound, or a seperate -self-found mode with better itemization.
Can you get both better itemization/droprates and have a working AH? Maybe. I'm very much not convinced though. But if we could get that, I certainly wouldn't complain about it.
1 : The only real use of a "no AH" checkbox is to find other like-minded people to play with.
2 : D2 easy, well if you have some luck perhaps (an without the "players x" command) : but right, with selfound, craft, socket and so on, you can achieve D2+exp in a reasonable timeline.
3 : But now, I can use my credit card and bought at the RMAH all I need to achieve MP10 in one go... How easy is that?
4 : I have enough gold for the AH too, and probably can achieve MP4/MP5 : and after that go back to the AH and do MP7/8 and so on...
1 : If the "no ah" button is just that, then we have again the problem that drop rates are not good enugh and the people playing "no ah" start complaining that they can not finish MP10. IMO if they add such a button, they have to redishn the drop rates etc so that "no ah" players can actualy finish the game.
2: D2 was very easy. You can play any char naked trough all difficulties. You dont even need drop luck, It's just so easy that gear does not matter at all.
3 : Easy, yes. How long would it be fun ? Maybe one evening, then you get bored. I dont think that people who just buy all their gear play for a long time.
4 : You forget the BIG step in between AH shopping where you have to farm to actualy get the gold. Yes, some people "farm" by playing the AH, but I dont think that is a majority.
I dont really know if AH is to blame for current itemization. That would be hard to say, unless Blizzard confirms it directly
However.. if the existence of AH now, is a barrier to improving itemization and droprates, because Blizzard wouldn't want to "screw up the economy", then yeah, I would prefer AH to not be around
I thought the main problem were droprates ^^ What's wrong with itemisation again?
Actualy I would prefer them screwing up the economy than removing the AH. But as I said, I am still convinced that what we have now is the best possible solution.
D2 easy, well if you have some luck perhaps (an without the "players x" command) : but right, with selfound, craft, socket and so on, you can achieve D2+exp in a reasonable timeline.
But now, I can use my credit card and bought at the RMAH all I need to achieve MP10 in one go... How easy is that?
I have enough gold for the AH too, and probably can achieve MP4/MP5 : and after that go back to the AH and do MP7/8 and so on...
Huh? what's the point : shopping game?
You can also not go to the AH or RMAH... you know that right? In D2 you could also swipe the credit card to get a bunch of great gear... you know that right? No one felt the "need" to do that in D2 because you actually could beat the game completely naked... you know that right? The increased difficulty in D3 was something the fans asked for... you know that right?
Your total ignorance has resurrected this thread and turned it into a shitstorm of bad grammar, improper punctuation (colons are not commas) and horrendous logic. I haven't touched the AH in months. Before that I used it. It's obviously my choice. To insinuate that you are unable to make the very same choice shows a flaw with YOURSELF and not necessarily with the game.
Do you do better if you use the AH? Of course. That's not even being questioned. Even if you yanked out the AH, you'd still do better by trading. That is also very obvious. PoE has no AH and many people feel that finding their own items is a fruitless waste of time. So you simply can't blame it on the AH because the SAME thing happened in a game that has no AH. The difference? People in PoE are even more frustrated because sitting in trade chat for hours trying to buy a spell gem that you haven't got to drop is even more infuriating than going to the AH.
Can you get both better itemization/droprates and have a working AH? Maybe. I'm very much not convinced though. But if we could get that, I certainly wouldn't complain about it.
Then why shouldn't we attempt to do that? Why shouldn't everyone be on-board with a solution that is obviously the best possible solution for everyone involved? Why should the immediate thought be "REMOVE THE AH!" when, as I said above, a current game that has no AH still exhibits the very same issues that D3 has? If it can happen in a no-AH environment then the AH can't be the crux of the problem.
Hell, if you read the PoE forums there are a lot of people who are advocating removing trading from the game. Would you be OK with that? If we remove the AH from D3 that we also remove trading? All items and currency become completely untradeable except to your other toons via the stash. Because, if we are to learn *anything* from PoE the issue simply isn't the efficiency of the AH, it's the fact that the drop rates suck so badly that even a horrendously inefficient manner of item exchange (trade chat) is still more desireable.
So that makes me believe the items themselves, and the chances to actually get a decent one, are what encompass 90%+ of the problem. But I know it's much easier for people to just frame it as an "AUCTION HOUSE RAPED GRANNY" disucssion. I mean, just look at rodrigj. He's not exactly the best advocate for "remove the AH" discussion. He makes everyone else who believes that look like a raving lunatic who has absolutely no shred of self control at all.
@rodrigj, Shadout
Could atleast one of you explain what exactly this problem is that you are referring you instead of calling me something and jumping to the next subject.
If you are referring to "'part of the problem', then sorry, might have been too much of an internal joke.
Was referring to the "on-going" war between people who primarily love single-player games and people who love multi-player games. Saying that only multi-player games can offer worthwhile challenges, which you certainly seemed to be saying, obviously belongs in the "multiplayer is best" camp. Making such an argument 'part of the problem' for the single-player camp
I think rodrigjs 'part of the problem' comment was referring to something else entirely...
@Shadout
How exactly is it flawed to say that people have gotten better and better at games and developers can and should raise the difficulty level. This is how things work, you keep doing something repeatedly and you will become better at it over time.
Because they mostly haven't imo. While people are able to play more an more accumulated over the years, games certainly also have had a tendency of getting easier and easier in the last decades, so I surely can't see how people are better at games these days than 10-20 years ago for example.
Beside, those who have been able to play games for 30 years by now, are also thirdy years older, which tend to negatively affect reaction times etc, not exactly improving their skill ceiling
Overall, I don't think there are any reasonable argument for people being better at games today than in the past.
Then why shouldn't we attempt to do that? Why shouldn't everyone be on-board with a solution that is obviously the best possible solution for everyone involved? Why should the immediate thought be "REMOVE THE AH!" when, as I said above, a current game that has no AH still exhibits the very same issues that D3 has? If it can happen in a no-AH environment then the AH can't be the crux of the problem.
Because the most optimal solution to an issue, might very often (if not always) be unrealistic to reach.
If Blizzard could and would throw millions of dollars and work hours at a problem - sure, anything could theoretically get fixed perfectly.
I'm just saying that limiting AH in one way or another, might be the easier and faster solution - even if it isn't the theoretically best one. In my opinion and all that.
Hell, if you read the PoE forums there are a lot of people who are advocating removing trading from the game. Would you be OK with that? If we remove the AH from D3 that we also remove trading? All items and currency become completely untradeable except to your other toons via the stash.
Yeah, this is a long thread y now, but Ive already been around it earlier.
My issue is much more with trading in general than AH specifically.
I would be just fine with trading being removed totally - I also realize people would hate that even more than removing AH though
I would most likely support those who wanted trading gone in PoE too. Haven't really played that game enough to get much of an opinion about how trading might affect the game.
So that makes me believe the items themselves, and the chances to actually get a decent one, are what encompass 90%+ of the problem. But I know it's much easier for people to just frame it as an "AUCTION HOUSE RAPED GRANNY" disucssion. I mean, just look at rodrigj.
Yeah, I agree. Items and chances of obtaining items outside of the AH is the real issue here.
However, obtaining items outside of AH vs. obtaining them from AH, is a moving target, so you cant totally ignore AH.
If you simply increase drop chances and "fix" itemization, then sure, it gets easier to find your own items. Which would be awesome for sure, and help self-found people. However, it similarly gets easier to to get items from AH in that scenario (better and cheaper items on AH). Resulting in an unchanged relationship between the efficiency of trading vs the efficiency of finding your own items.
What I want, is really those two options having more or less the same efficiency. Until that happens, there is no real and fair choice between using the AH vs not using it.
IF you can achieve more or less the same efficiency between trading and not trading, I would happily support the existence of trading
P.S. I'm not saying it should be as easy to find items yourself, as it is to find items on AH right now. Rather i think its way too easy to find items on AH right now, so in a "perfect" balance, it should be harder to find a certain item-quality through trading than it is now, and easier to find the same quality in game than it is now.
I just don't really think you can achieve such a balance to begin with, hence the "remove or at least severely limit trading"-solution sounds much easier.
You see, if you design the game to be played only with self-found items, they have two options : either make so many good item drop that everybody will have all items within little time. Or make the game so easy that you can beat it with no-matter-what gear. I dont like either option...
Why is that the only two options?
What would be impossible about a balance where it takes months to find items for MP10?
Hell, since I personally think end-game should be able to scale indefinitely (such as Endless dungeons), it could take an endless amount of time to find gear good enough to meet the highest challenges in the game.
I certainly think D2 for the most part was too easy. And D3 for the most part is going toward being too easy with every single patch nerf. Partly because MP levels are tedious rather than difficult however. I liked some of the early-release challenges of Inferno tbh, although some of it was over-the-top.
Keeping the difficulty of the game in the long run is mostly a question of having properly scaling content.
Why is that the only two options?
What would be impossible about a balance where it takes months to find items for MP10?
Hell, since I personally think end-game should be able to scale indefinitely (such as Endless dungeons), it could take an endless amount of time to find gear good enough to meet the highest challenges in the game.
Isnt that exactly what the "up the droprates" people are complaining about? That it takes too long to get geared ?
I am under the impression that "taking months ( or even years ) to find items for mp10" is exactly where we are right now balancing wise.
As I said multible times in this thread, I dont mind having something to do for years. Others seem to be pissed when they are not selffound-best-in-slot-owning-mp-10 within a month...
I WISH only for a way to remove it for people who don't want use it: so perhaps, I can find coop game with perfect strangers and play with them, without the sensation of being useless. And then being a nice, not greedy guy, have more chance to find something that up my toon.
Not that it is a ingame-solution, but have you tried the matchmaking forum on this site ? I am sure that you will find others that feel the same.
Why is that the only two options?
What would be impossible about a balance where it takes months to find items for MP10?
Hell, since I personally think end-game should be able to scale indefinitely (such as Endless dungeons), it could take an endless amount of time to find gear good enough to meet the highest challenges in the game.
Isnt that exactly what the "up the droprates" people are complaining about? That it takes too long to get geared ?
I am under the impression that "taking months ( or even years ) to find items for mp10" is exactly where we are right now balancing wise.
Might very well be closer to years than months if I should guess - although the average time isn't that important, since we are obviously talking a variance depending on the individual players luck, going from like (arbitrary numbers) 2 days to 10 years anyway.
While it can potentially take just minutes to gear for MP10 with AH - or weeks if I'm friendly enough to allow for some gold farming.
There are not necessarily a conflict between upping droprates and making the game harder or more time-consuming. From what I read, people want better droprates/itemization in general (regardless of self-found) because mostly finding utterly useless items are boring.
You could very well make itemization/drops better, while simultaneously increasing difficulty to compensate, if Blizzard wanted to keep the difficulty intact (which they sadly don't I guess).
Anyway, your claim was that if Blizzard removed AH, then there were only two options; making the game too easy or making the game too fast to gear up for (isnt that actually just one and the same option?)
Which clearly is not the case.
You could very well make itemization/drops better, while simultaneously increasing difficulty to compensate, if Blizzard wanted to keep the difficulty intact (which they sadly don't I guess).
Anyway, your claim was that if Blizzard removed AH, then there were only two options; making the game too easy or making the game too fast to gear up for (isnt that actually just one and the same option?)
Which clearly is not the case.
Actualy I would LOVE to have the difficulty of the game at release with the crazy crazy inferno mode with the items we have today. That would IMO be close to a perfect balance.
3 possibilities : either they dont change enugh and the game is still too time consuming, or they change too much and the game gets too easy, or they get it just right. Which would of course be great, but how likely is that ? ^^
I am not terribly concerned with how they solve the problem. I left the game the day of the paragon level patch ,I returned about a week ago. I like many of the changes. I am encouraged by patch 1.08. However I cannot see a stituation where my enjoyment will last long or I will buy and expanasion unless this fundamental problem is fixed.
It needs to be more productive to play the game than to play the AH. With 200k gold I went from MP0 to MP7 in a little over a week palying the AH, not flipping just shopping. As I uprgaded , selling the items I bought generated large profits(kinda flipping). I sold one set item that dropped for me for 25 million. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Magusrex-1997/hero/4552603 I generated 10x that on the AH.
Items need to leave the market so itemization and drops rates can be fixed. The AH can stay but we need BoE, BoA or some form of an item can be sold or traded once. This would allow them to make it more productive to play game vs playing the AH.
3 possibilities : either they dont change enugh and the game is still too time consuming, or they change too much and the game gets too easy, or they get it just right. Which would of course be great, but how likely is that ? ^^
Not likely
But yeah, I think some of the inferno nerfs were premature,
Pre-release they said it would take months to gear up for inferno... then they start there nerfing after some weeks. Doh.
Which isn't to say that nerfs shouldnt have happened, there were elite affixes which were more stupid or unfair (especially for HC) than they were a challenge.
Blizzard just often seem to go a bit too far whenever they make balance changes.
And the sad thing is, a lot of the inferno nerfs aren't something that you get back simply by having MP levels. More HP and dmg cant compare to having elite affixes and monster behavior that requires the player to adjust.
Now elite affixes hardly matters more than "oh, I have to spin 1 more time through this group before they die".
Items need to leave the market so itemization and drops rates can be fixed. The AH can stay but we need BoE, BoA or some form of an item can be sold or traded once. This would allow them to make it more productive to play game vs playing the AH.
Blizz is working on that actualy...
We now have BoA rings, amulets, shoulders, gloves and chest. I am sure more will come.
We are allready at a point where like a third of the slots have a crafted BoA BIS piece.
The only way I would agree on items leaving the market every now and then would be ladder resets, if we ever get a ladder.
I thought it was dumb at first, but the more i think about it I actually really like this idea some of you are proposing about items that could only be traded once. This seems like it would solve alot of issues.
For example if an item was traded on the auction house it then became BoA it seems to me like it would help in the following ways:
-Item is BoA after first trade and is removed from market (less flood of items on the auction house), better economy
-No one can flip items any more, thus causing more players to actually play Diablo to earn their gold, instead of playing AH
-Still allowing players to easily trade self found items that are good, but not useful to them
I'm sure many would complain at first that they cannot re-trade the items if they don't want them any more, but it's really basically the same as crafting, just without the randomness of the results. Players (such as myself) have been spending buttloads of their lovely gold on crafting knowing they will never get that money back since the items are BoA. So it's really the same thing, just be sure you really want something before buy it, because once you do it's yours!
I don't think this would work with the RMAH, but i think that should be removed anyways. I do like the GAH though and i think this would be a good change to it. It great to have an easy & safe way to trade when you found something good, but not something you can use, (or maybe something you found already).
gold AH is fine, its more or less same as trading in diablo 2, instead with runes
But RMAH aint cool and shouldt been added to the game
Well considering majority or more likely all mmorpg has a gold AH. so they should not remove that.
and in the case of RMAH I do believe that even if they remove it, there are still third party sties that sells gold and in-game items for real money.
For example if an item was traded on the auction house it then became BoA
-Item is BoA after first trade and is removed from market (less flood of items on the auction house), better economy
-Still allowing players to easily trade self found items that are good, but not useful to them
It is a dumb idea still.
1 : removing items from the market will only make 2 things : less items to pick from and higher prices. Do you relay think that it will help you gear up when you have less choice and you have to pay more for it ??
2 : If you make items BoA after they were in the AH, but you can still trade normaly as long as they are not in the AH, then nobody will use the AH any more and we will be back to the D2 days with forum trading and general chat spam.
For example if an item was traded on the auction house it then became BoA
-Item is BoA after first trade and is removed from market (less flood of items on the auction house), better economy
-Still allowing players to easily trade self found items that are good, but not useful to them
It is a dumb idea still.
1 : removing items from the market will only make 2 things : less items to pick from and higher prices. Do you relay think that it will help you gear up when you have less choice and you have to pay more for it ??
2 : If you make items BoA after they were in the AH, but you can still trade normaly as long as they are not in the AH, then nobody will use the AH any more and we will be back to the D2 days with forum trading and general chat spam.
If they implement those changes, it would allow Blizzard to make drops more useful and increase the rate of good stuff dropping so you wouldn't need to use th AH anymore. They can't do that now because of the AH. Playing the game would become more productive than staring at the AH screen.
Everyone has to remember that any changes made to how the Auction House functions only have an effect if people are using the AH. What I mean by that is that, if they make a change - say making items bound after purchase on AH, if you arrange a trade on the forums, or by chat, then you get around that particular mechanism.
If the mechanism is too punitive, then people will just go back to D2 trading and everyone will be pissed off at how tedious item exchange has become. This is something Travis said they want to avoid - wasting our time on forums and chat channels trying to arrange in-person trades.
Therefore, it's much more reasonable to do things like the BoA crafting, which just makes people want to trade less. As a great example, I haven't ever looked on the AH for a shoulder-slot item since 1.0.7 went live. I haven't looked because I have no direct need to. The 1.0.7 shoulder pattern has done more to curb my need to use the AH for that slot than ANY change they could actually make to the AH.
Therefore, it's much more reasonable to do things like the BoA crafting, which just makes people want to trade less. As a great example, I haven't ever looked on the AH for a shoulder-slot item since 1.0.7 went live. I haven't looked because I have no direct need to. The 1.0.7 shoulder pattern has done more to curb my need to use the AH for that slot than ANY change they could actually make to the AH.
IMO this is why there should be no more crafted items. Whilst a few is good for new players, theres no need to have a crafted item for every slot.
You say that you do not need to search for any shoulders (hence crafting close to BIS). Therefore the market for shoulders such as Vile Ward for example becomes obsolete (even though Vile Wards /with a solid roll are still best in slot).
I still can't get my head around why people think the AH is such a burden. I would like to think half my gear is BIS yet i still seek out alternative options. People just complain mostly due to the fact they either have no currency to work with or the item they seek is out of their price range.
That can't be avoided as BIS items should have a high price tag, and that will never change.
Learn to work with it, not against it. If you can't, just don't look at it and get on with the game
I would propose that items that go through the trade window become BoA as well, very important for the idea to work.
You are not listening if your answer is...just do not use the AH. The existance of the AH its current form forces Blizzards hand, because items do not leave circulation they cannot make it so better more useful items drop more frequently. I want to play a game that rewards me for playing smarter, engaging in harder content that gets me better drops at a reasonable frequency. Facerolling easy mode content superfast is boring. Staring at he AH is boring, but these are the playstyles that are the most productive uses of time to improve your character. Playing challenging content in a smart fashion should be the way you are rewarded the most. I believe the AH in its current manifestation is preventing Blizzard from doing it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
However.. if the existence of AH now, is a barrier to improving itemization and droprates, because Blizzard wouldn't want to "screw up the economy", then yeah, I would prefer AH to not be around. Or if that is not possible, other solutions as people have thrown around, such as better itemization which are then account bound, or a seperate -self-found mode with better itemization.
Can you get both better itemization/droprates and have a working AH? Maybe. I'm very much not convinced though. But if we could get that, I certainly wouldn't complain about it.
1 : If the "no ah" button is just that, then we have again the problem that drop rates are not good enugh and the people playing "no ah" start complaining that they can not finish MP10. IMO if they add such a button, they have to redishn the drop rates etc so that "no ah" players can actualy finish the game.
2: D2 was very easy. You can play any char naked trough all difficulties. You dont even need drop luck, It's just so easy that gear does not matter at all.
3 : Easy, yes. How long would it be fun ? Maybe one evening, then you get bored. I dont think that people who just buy all their gear play for a long time.
4 : You forget the BIG step in between AH shopping where you have to farm to actualy get the gold. Yes, some people "farm" by playing the AH, but I dont think that is a majority.
I thought the main problem were droprates ^^ What's wrong with itemisation again?
Actualy I would prefer them screwing up the economy than removing the AH. But as I said, I am still convinced that what we have now is the best possible solution.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
You can also not go to the AH or RMAH... you know that right? In D2 you could also swipe the credit card to get a bunch of great gear... you know that right? No one felt the "need" to do that in D2 because you actually could beat the game completely naked... you know that right? The increased difficulty in D3 was something the fans asked for... you know that right?
Your total ignorance has resurrected this thread and turned it into a shitstorm of bad grammar, improper punctuation (colons are not commas) and horrendous logic. I haven't touched the AH in months. Before that I used it. It's obviously my choice. To insinuate that you are unable to make the very same choice shows a flaw with YOURSELF and not necessarily with the game.
Do you do better if you use the AH? Of course. That's not even being questioned. Even if you yanked out the AH, you'd still do better by trading. That is also very obvious. PoE has no AH and many people feel that finding their own items is a fruitless waste of time. So you simply can't blame it on the AH because the SAME thing happened in a game that has no AH. The difference? People in PoE are even more frustrated because sitting in trade chat for hours trying to buy a spell gem that you haven't got to drop is even more infuriating than going to the AH.
Then why shouldn't we attempt to do that? Why shouldn't everyone be on-board with a solution that is obviously the best possible solution for everyone involved? Why should the immediate thought be "REMOVE THE AH!" when, as I said above, a current game that has no AH still exhibits the very same issues that D3 has? If it can happen in a no-AH environment then the AH can't be the crux of the problem.
Hell, if you read the PoE forums there are a lot of people who are advocating removing trading from the game. Would you be OK with that? If we remove the AH from D3 that we also remove trading? All items and currency become completely untradeable except to your other toons via the stash. Because, if we are to learn *anything* from PoE the issue simply isn't the efficiency of the AH, it's the fact that the drop rates suck so badly that even a horrendously inefficient manner of item exchange (trade chat) is still more desireable.
So that makes me believe the items themselves, and the chances to actually get a decent one, are what encompass 90%+ of the problem. But I know it's much easier for people to just frame it as an "AUCTION HOUSE RAPED GRANNY" disucssion. I mean, just look at rodrigj. He's not exactly the best advocate for "remove the AH" discussion. He makes everyone else who believes that look like a raving lunatic who has absolutely no shred of self control at all.
Was referring to the "on-going" war between people who primarily love single-player games and people who love multi-player games. Saying that only multi-player games can offer worthwhile challenges, which you certainly seemed to be saying, obviously belongs in the "multiplayer is best" camp. Making such an argument 'part of the problem' for the single-player camp
I think rodrigjs 'part of the problem' comment was referring to something else entirely...
Because they mostly haven't imo. While people are able to play more an more accumulated over the years, games certainly also have had a tendency of getting easier and easier in the last decades, so I surely can't see how people are better at games these days than 10-20 years ago for example.
Beside, those who have been able to play games for 30 years by now, are also thirdy years older, which tend to negatively affect reaction times etc, not exactly improving their skill ceiling
Overall, I don't think there are any reasonable argument for people being better at games today than in the past.
If Blizzard could and would throw millions of dollars and work hours at a problem - sure, anything could theoretically get fixed perfectly.
I'm just saying that limiting AH in one way or another, might be the easier and faster solution - even if it isn't the theoretically best one. In my opinion and all that.
Yeah, this is a long thread y now, but Ive already been around it earlier.
My issue is much more with trading in general than AH specifically.
I would be just fine with trading being removed totally - I also realize people would hate that even more than removing AH though
I would most likely support those who wanted trading gone in PoE too. Haven't really played that game enough to get much of an opinion about how trading might affect the game.
Yeah, I agree. Items and chances of obtaining items outside of the AH is the real issue here.
However, obtaining items outside of AH vs. obtaining them from AH, is a moving target, so you cant totally ignore AH.
If you simply increase drop chances and "fix" itemization, then sure, it gets easier to find your own items. Which would be awesome for sure, and help self-found people. However, it similarly gets easier to to get items from AH in that scenario (better and cheaper items on AH). Resulting in an unchanged relationship between the efficiency of trading vs the efficiency of finding your own items.
What I want, is really those two options having more or less the same efficiency. Until that happens, there is no real and fair choice between using the AH vs not using it.
IF you can achieve more or less the same efficiency between trading and not trading, I would happily support the existence of trading
P.S. I'm not saying it should be as easy to find items yourself, as it is to find items on AH right now. Rather i think its way too easy to find items on AH right now, so in a "perfect" balance, it should be harder to find a certain item-quality through trading than it is now, and easier to find the same quality in game than it is now.
I just don't really think you can achieve such a balance to begin with, hence the "remove or at least severely limit trading"-solution sounds much easier.
What would be impossible about a balance where it takes months to find items for MP10?
Hell, since I personally think end-game should be able to scale indefinitely (such as Endless dungeons), it could take an endless amount of time to find gear good enough to meet the highest challenges in the game.
I certainly think D2 for the most part was too easy. And D3 for the most part is going toward being too easy with every single patch nerf. Partly because MP levels are tedious rather than difficult however. I liked some of the early-release challenges of Inferno tbh, although some of it was over-the-top.
Keeping the difficulty of the game in the long run is mostly a question of having properly scaling content.
Isnt that exactly what the "up the droprates" people are complaining about? That it takes too long to get geared ?
I am under the impression that "taking months ( or even years ) to find items for mp10" is exactly where we are right now balancing wise.
As I said multible times in this thread, I dont mind having something to do for years. Others seem to be pissed when they are not selffound-best-in-slot-owning-mp-10 within a month...
Not that it is a ingame-solution, but have you tried the matchmaking forum on this site ? I am sure that you will find others that feel the same.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
While it can potentially take just minutes to gear for MP10 with AH - or weeks if I'm friendly enough to allow for some gold farming.
There are not necessarily a conflict between upping droprates and making the game harder or more time-consuming. From what I read, people want better droprates/itemization in general (regardless of self-found) because mostly finding utterly useless items are boring.
You could very well make itemization/drops better, while simultaneously increasing difficulty to compensate, if Blizzard wanted to keep the difficulty intact (which they sadly don't I guess).
Anyway, your claim was that if Blizzard removed AH, then there were only two options; making the game too easy or making the game too fast to gear up for (isnt that actually just one and the same option?)
Which clearly is not the case.
Actualy I would LOVE to have the difficulty of the game at release with the crazy crazy inferno mode with the items we have today. That would IMO be close to a perfect balance.
3 possibilities : either they dont change enugh and the game is still too time consuming, or they change too much and the game gets too easy, or they get it just right. Which would of course be great, but how likely is that ? ^^
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
It needs to be more productive to play the game than to play the AH. With 200k gold I went from MP0 to MP7 in a little over a week palying the AH, not flipping just shopping. As I uprgaded , selling the items I bought generated large profits(kinda flipping). I sold one set item that dropped for me for 25 million. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Magusrex-1997/hero/4552603 I generated 10x that on the AH.
Items need to leave the market so itemization and drops rates can be fixed. The AH can stay but we need BoE, BoA or some form of an item can be sold or traded once. This would allow them to make it more productive to play game vs playing the AH.
But yeah, I think some of the inferno nerfs were premature,
Pre-release they said it would take months to gear up for inferno... then they start there nerfing after some weeks. Doh.
Which isn't to say that nerfs shouldnt have happened, there were elite affixes which were more stupid or unfair (especially for HC) than they were a challenge.
Blizzard just often seem to go a bit too far whenever they make balance changes.
And the sad thing is, a lot of the inferno nerfs aren't something that you get back simply by having MP levels. More HP and dmg cant compare to having elite affixes and monster behavior that requires the player to adjust.
Now elite affixes hardly matters more than "oh, I have to spin 1 more time through this group before they die".
But RMAH aint cool and shouldt been added to the game
Blizz is working on that actualy...
We now have BoA rings, amulets, shoulders, gloves and chest. I am sure more will come.
We are allready at a point where like a third of the slots have a crafted BoA BIS piece.
The only way I would agree on items leaving the market every now and then would be ladder resets, if we ever get a ladder.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
For example if an item was traded on the auction house it then became BoA it seems to me like it would help in the following ways:
-Item is BoA after first trade and is removed from market (less flood of items on the auction house), better economy
-No one can flip items any more, thus causing more players to actually play Diablo to earn their gold, instead of playing AH
-Still allowing players to easily trade self found items that are good, but not useful to them
I'm sure many would complain at first that they cannot re-trade the items if they don't want them any more, but it's really basically the same as crafting, just without the randomness of the results. Players (such as myself) have been spending buttloads of their lovely gold on crafting knowing they will never get that money back since the items are BoA. So it's really the same thing, just be sure you really want something before buy it, because once you do it's yours!
I don't think this would work with the RMAH, but i think that should be removed anyways. I do like the GAH though and i think this would be a good change to it. It great to have an easy & safe way to trade when you found something good, but not something you can use, (or maybe something you found already).
and in the case of RMAH I do believe that even if they remove it, there are still third party sties that sells gold and in-game items for real money.
It is a dumb idea still.
1 : removing items from the market will only make 2 things : less items to pick from and higher prices. Do you relay think that it will help you gear up when you have less choice and you have to pay more for it ??
2 : If you make items BoA after they were in the AH, but you can still trade normaly as long as they are not in the AH, then nobody will use the AH any more and we will be back to the D2 days with forum trading and general chat spam.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
If they implement those changes, it would allow Blizzard to make drops more useful and increase the rate of good stuff dropping so you wouldn't need to use th AH anymore. They can't do that now because of the AH. Playing the game would become more productive than staring at the AH screen.
If the mechanism is too punitive, then people will just go back to D2 trading and everyone will be pissed off at how tedious item exchange has become. This is something Travis said they want to avoid - wasting our time on forums and chat channels trying to arrange in-person trades.
Therefore, it's much more reasonable to do things like the BoA crafting, which just makes people want to trade less. As a great example, I haven't ever looked on the AH for a shoulder-slot item since 1.0.7 went live. I haven't looked because I have no direct need to. The 1.0.7 shoulder pattern has done more to curb my need to use the AH for that slot than ANY change they could actually make to the AH.
I would propose that items that go through the trade window become BoA as well, very important for the idea to work.
You are not listening if your answer is...just do not use the AH. The existance of the AH its current form forces Blizzards hand, because items do not leave circulation they cannot make it so better more useful items drop more frequently. I want to play a game that rewards me for playing smarter, engaging in harder content that gets me better drops at a reasonable frequency. Facerolling easy mode content superfast is boring. Staring at he AH is boring, but these are the playstyles that are the most productive uses of time to improve your character. Playing challenging content in a smart fashion should be the way you are rewarded the most. I believe the AH in its current manifestation is preventing Blizzard from doing it.