In this context, I don't see how it matters what kind of game it is. If the rule-makers of Chess wanted to change things dramatically, and it favored a certain playstyle significantly, that would still be inappropriate of them.
Well in the D3 context the problem is that self-found was simply impossible to play if you wanted to "win." That's horribly disingenuous to the Diablo franchise. Trading will always be faster just due to the nature of skipping past the RNG aspect of loot, but playing self-found has never been a crippling choice like it's been in D3.
To that extent they're not "favoring" a certain playstyle so much as they're attempting to level the playing field between finding loot versus trading for loot which is currently so skewed in favor of trading that it's not very fun for people who just want to log in and kill things.
Think of it this way. On a scale of 1 to 100 with 100 being "farming MP10 like a boss" and 1 being "too sucky to farm MP0" trading can get you to 100. Self-found, for most people peters out around MP6, or so, so about 60-65 on the scale, and it takes much more time.
So what if we slow trading down by moving away from the click-and-buy interface... and we also make it that people feel empowered to find the things they're looking for? Trading will still get you to 100, and is likely the only way to truly have "perfect" gear (but most self-found people aren't actually searching for the absolute best items, so that doesn't matter)... but now, maybe, self-found can get to 90, 95 with some more farming effort, and can do it faster than before.
What you've created is something that's actually pretty damned close to how D2 worked. And we know that D2 DID work in terms of self-found versus trading and not shoehorning anyone into EITHER playstyle, despite all the duping. If you found a 6/6/15 Vamp Gaze, you could still use it. If you wanted an 8/8/20 Vamp Gaze you may have to trade to get it, you may find it yourself, but it was not mandatory to "win" and that meant that no one was forced to trade, even if they would only max out at 90-95.
If you wanted a complete set of perfect gear... sure, get trading. But, in a game based on RNG, that seems pretty intuitive to me. Very few people are going to self-find a complete set of perfect items. It's just about the massive gap that currently exists and how to shrink that down so that people aren't stuck clicking through AH pages all day long.
AH or not, if someone is bent on getting amazing gear through methods other than self-found then they are going to do it. The point is, without an in game auction house, Blizzard does not endorse it and doesn't have to balance the game around it. This is reason enough to not have it, and I think most people are happy Blizzard's hands are free. People who still wants to buy power have their third party methods and people who want to trade their way to the top instead of killing monsters still can, it's just not streamlined. The bottom line is it's no longer Blizzard's job to deal with anything but how drops affects someone who is slaying monsters and nothing more so that self-found players aren't so far behind its discouraging and end up loathing their choice to play self-found.
Trading will always be faster just due to the nature of skipping past the RNG aspect of loot, but playing self-found has never been a crippling choice like it's been in D3.
I don't think I would have been able to make a powerful D2 characters with self-found items, in a million years. Perhaps your experience was different.
... but now, maybe, self-found can get to 90, 95 with some more farming effort, and can do it faster than before.
If being entirely self-found at a time when trading still totally exists can get you 95% of the way to the maximum "strength," I think that's a little off. If trading exists at all, and I'm not so sure it will, it must be mathematically the best way to get what you ultimately want. You shouldn't have a "95%" chance of getting a PERFECT item. If I can achieve 95% by being self-found in the same amount of time as a person who trades a lot, I will certainly not trade AT ALL. I am willing to be 5% weaker for simply not having to deal with whatever mess that comes post-AH. If it's like D2, I would love to avoid it all together for only a 5% strength loss.
The point is, without an in game auction house, Blizzard does not endorse it and doesn't have to balance the game around it.
I still don't see any examples of game-changing occurrences that related to the AH whatsoever. If a self-found person abused attack speed when it was overpowered, they got nerfed too. If someone spent money on a clearly imbalanced mechanic, that's their problem. They DID nerf attack speed, so they are clearly willing to do it, they just want to direct the anger of people who abuse broken mechanics to another place.
I mean, tell me a change they couldn't do because it would upset AH users too much.
If they don't like the idea of meddling with things that people spent real currency on, then they should remove the RMAH, not the normal AH.
The point is, without an in game auction house, Blizzard does not endorse it and doesn't have to balance the game around it.
I still don't see any examples of game-changing occurrences that related to the AH whatsoever. If a self-found person abused attack speed when it was overpowered, they got nerfed too. If someone spent money on a clearly imbalanced mechanic, that's their problem. They DID nerf attack speed, so they are clearly willing to do it, they just want to direct the anger of people who abuse broken mechanics to another place.
Blizzard has admitted that drop rates had to be lowered to accommodate the fact that the auction house exists. So many people would have such a fast easy way to trade and acquire gear through a hyper-efficient method they could not let things drop as well as they should have.
I still don't see any examples of game-changing occurrences that related to the AH whatsoever. If a self-found person abused attack speed when it was overpowered, they got nerfed too. If someone spent money on a clearly imbalanced mechanic, that's their problem. They DID nerf attack speed, so they are clearly willing to do it, they just want to direct the anger of people who abuse broken mechanics to another place.
The IAS nerf, instead of being implemented immediately to fix a very obvious problem, was instead delayed so that Blizzard could provide ample time for people to get the news and stop buying shit on the RMAH.
Black weapons were not fixed because of the fact that people had invested in them as superior items.
One With Everything has yet to be fixed because people have geared their toons around it (read: bought items).
Why do you think Archon and WotB haven't seen a patch so that they don't have 100% uptime? If people hadn't invested $$$ in their wizards and barbs, I'm sure they'd have nerfed both of those months ago instead of just idly chatting about how they want to change them.
Why do you think CMWW hasn't been nerfed?
Do you really think this is just a bunch of coincidences that none of these very obvious balance changes that the game needed haven't happened? Blizzard didn't hesitate to nerf Trail of Cinders, but that was because people generally didn't gear around it (high Disc regen is good for a lot more than ToC).
I don't think it's the norm to completely drop everything you've been working on and change spec /build / class when a patch augments a playstyle.
I am a witch doctor player for the most part, and I have little interest in the other classes. If witch doctors become the weakest overall class, I wont simply reroll and I have very rarely heard of people rerolling in similar situations COUNTLESs times. I think a few people DO reroll, but not majority.
This could be rerolling classes, item builds, strategies. People like to maintain what they are familiar with it it's at all possible.
Blizzard has admitted that drop rates had to be lowered to accommodate the fact that the auction house exists. So many people would have such a fast easy way to trade and acquire gear through a hyper-efficient method they could not let things drop as well as they should have.
What';s the downside? So, droprates were too high and they lowered them. Doesn't change the fact that I've found countless items myself and used them to add to my total worth.
The point is, without an in game auction house, Blizzard does not endorse it and doesn't have to balance the game around it.
I still don't see any examples of game-changing occurrences that related to the AH whatsoever. If a self-found person abused attack speed when it was overpowered, they got nerfed too. If someone spent money on a clearly imbalanced mechanic, that's their problem. They DID nerf attack speed, so they are clearly willing to do it, they just want to direct the anger of people who abuse broken mechanics to another place.
I mean, tell me a change they couldn't do because it would upset AH users too much.
If they don't like the idea of meddling with things that people spent real currency on, then they should remove the RMAH, not the normal AH.
Critical Mass and One With Everything are two very prominent abilities that haven't been touched because people have bought gear to make them work to ridiculous levels. These passives are amazing when geared correctly and thanks to the AH it's easy to gear them right, but it can pigeonhole the players into needing only specific gear which means finding interesting upgrades is very difficult.
They've spent months telling us how they want to fix OWE but they haven't been able to because they acknowledge that it would be unfair to everyone that spent their cash into it. Ever since IAS Blizzard has been gun shy about changing loot affixes because they dont' ever want someone to buy something and feel like Blizzard just pulled a "Bait and Switch" on them. You haven't seen any examples of game changing occurrences because they aren't making those decisions due to the AH.
Yes a self found person could have found the right setup and gotten lucky, but a self found person didn't spend hard earned cash. Truth is, a self found person probably wouldn't have bothered with OWE (at least to the degree it was used) because it needs such very specific gear that it wouldn't be thinkable unless you got very lucky.
Black weapons were not fixed because of the fact that people had invested in them as superior items.
They didn't have the balls to nerf items and their associated players that were clearly and LITERALLY broken? That's their problem. If someone really invested in a broken exploit, I believe that is their fault entirely.
Just to supplement what Shaggy and Kage are saying, remember too that Blizzard makes a profit off these RMAH exchanges. So if they are profiting off someone who spent $250 on an item (about $40 of it going to Blizzard) and then they want to nerf the effect that item provides, that person is then mad at Blizzard and has a pretty valid complaint, even if they were prior warned. Then people criticize Blizzard for just trying to steal their money and it's just not worth the hassle for them, especially when they just want to make the game better and balanced without their hands being tied.
I don't think it's the norm to completely drop everything you've been working on and change spec /build / class when a patch augments a playstyle.
I am a witch doctor player for the most part, and I have little interest in the other classes. If witch doctors become the weakest overall class, I wont simply reroll and I have very rarely heard of people rerolling in similar situations COUNTLESs times. I think a few people DO reroll, but not majority.
This could be rerolling classes, item builds, strategies. People like to maintain what they are familiar with it it's at all possible.
A lot of high end players tend to gravitate to the path of least resistance. We're talking Min-Maxers here. If you think people don't change classes or specs just because another spec becomes dominate then I don't think you remember WoW very well.
In World of Warcraft, people would change specs all the time just to get a 1% better theoretical DPS. If a patch nerfed a spec, most raiders jumped ship and moved to another. Yes not everyone did it, but it happened enough.
If Blizz put out a patch that made one very specific set of gear or one specific class super over powered, do you think that a bunch of people wouldn't scramble to play that spec and class? Hell why do you think there's so many whirlwind barbs out there?
One With Everything has yet to be fixed because people have geared their toons around it (read: bought items).
I haven't even seen a OWE monk in a long time. I'm pretty sure it's not the dominant build anymore or at least it's not the only choice.
Why do you think Archon and WotB haven't seen a patch so that they don't have 100% uptime?
I don't know what WotB is, but I know that Archon is also not the only build you can use, I don't think it's the most common either.
I don't know what CMWW is either, but it they continue to keep strong skills strong, and bring others in line in order to have more total options, I am all for it. No one is forcing you to switch spec or gear. And, I actually see a lot of variation in builds for all classes except witch doctor. Every other class has a bunch of builds that are VERY functional.
Critical Mass and One With Everything are two very prominent abilities that haven't been touched because people have bought gear to make them work to ridiculous levels.
Critical strike is good for everybody. Having absurd amounts of critical strike might be a little odd, but those players knew what they were getting into. They were buying some pretty specialized items. A lot of item sets can work for multiple builds. You shouldn't mention the few exceptions. Very few. Again, I put all the blame on people who consent to buy very specific items especially if it's clearly broken like black items.
Like I said, I don't even think OWE is all that prominent anymore, anyways. If someone uses it, and it functions well for them I'm happy for them. If it needs to get nerfed slightly to be more fair and be brought in line, then that's life.
Just to supplement what Shaggy and Kage are saying, remember too that Blizzard makes a profit off these RMAH exchanges. So if they are profiting off someone who spent $250 on an item (about $40 of it going to Blizzard) and then they want to nerf the effect that item provides, that person is then mad at Blizzard and has a pretty valid complaint, even if they were prior warned. Then people criticize Blizzard for just trying to steal their money and it's just not worth the hassle for them, especially when they just want to make the game better and balanced without their hands being tied.
Put a "subject to change" clause and it's all on the buyer. Then after that, don't make ridiculous changes, try to keep the game constant enough and not make poor decisions that need to be dramatically remedied. Don't make big ass mistakes, Blizzard.
Hell why do you think there's so many whirlwind barbs out there?
Because it's a good spec, they should bring other specs in line over time. How does that affect the AH? We are talking about it relating to the AH.
The downfall seems to be buying these very specialized items, and I think that's a risk that people need to be responsible for.
If they slightly nerfed my firebat spec, and strengthened other ones that's fine. I predict that will happen. I really don't even see how they could make me require different stats specifically. If they somehow managed to require DIFFERENT stats than I currently have for another spec, I may or may not aspire to get those stats over time in order to use that spec. As long as my current firebat setup still works overall, I'm not worried about it. It's not impossible to keep multiple specs strong.
Firebat spec shouldn't be at risk of eventually imploding all together and becoming gratuitously bad. If it did for some reason (and it simply should not), I shouldn't have to rearrange my entire item build because of it.
Remember, we have to relate this to the AH. Every single tiny aspect needs to be COMPLETELY related specifically to the AH.
I mean, how different can items REALLY get at a primordial level. You need some HP, some resist, some of your main stat, some crit, some crit damage, some attack speed maybe. Specialization should exist, but it shouldn't be black and white, it should be should be marginal and I think it is. At that level, you can afford to wiggle your items around a little bit for different builds.
Alright, let's talk about "their own fault" since that seems to be a point you're sticking with. People buy gear with money, blizzard changes the skills that would make that item useful. Person gets mad and claims that Blizzard pulled a Bait and Switch on them. This brings buyer's remorse and the player might try to seek action against blizzard. Would they win? probably not, but let's assume this happens en mass..
Players feel jilted by Blizzard now those players are very angry and are out money. Do you think they will continue to play the game? Do you think Blizzard, legal action or no, would ever want to make their players feel like they had just taken their money and ran? It's about image and making the customers feel welcome and that they want you to play. To just screw over millions of paying customers wouldn't be conducive to that.
I just want to go ahead and say I personally don't care if the AH stays, I don't use it, but I recognize that it washes Blizzard's hands of having to deal with people feeling remorseful about a purchase. Blizzard themselves have admitted to how often the AH comes into discussion when they make any changes when it comes to skills and builds and I'm honestly glad it won't anymore. If it frees up Blizzard to make really cool changes for the health of the game, then so be it.
Person gets mad and claims that Blizzard pulled a Bait and Switch on them. This brings buyer's remorse and the player might try to seek action against blizzard. Would they win? probably not, but let's assume this happens en mass..
Baits and switches are illegal. They shouldn't use that technique.
You're asking "If Blizzard is really shady, evil, and willing to act illegally, should the AH go down?"
It's like "One With Everything exists, better shut down the AH."
No, it's more like: "we don't want to take money for things that are subject to change and upset players. we can legally do it and put up a warning to justify it, but it still doesn't feel good and it still makes players mad when we do it even if it is their own fault, better shut down the AH."
Well in the D3 context the problem is that self-found was simply impossible to play if you wanted to "win." That's horribly disingenuous to the Diablo franchise. Trading will always be faster just due to the nature of skipping past the RNG aspect of loot, but playing self-found has never been a crippling choice like it's been in D3.
To that extent they're not "favoring" a certain playstyle so much as they're attempting to level the playing field between finding loot versus trading for loot which is currently so skewed in favor of trading that it's not very fun for people who just want to log in and kill things.
Think of it this way. On a scale of 1 to 100 with 100 being "farming MP10 like a boss" and 1 being "too sucky to farm MP0" trading can get you to 100. Self-found, for most people peters out around MP6, or so, so about 60-65 on the scale, and it takes much more time.
So what if we slow trading down by moving away from the click-and-buy interface... and we also make it that people feel empowered to find the things they're looking for? Trading will still get you to 100, and is likely the only way to truly have "perfect" gear (but most self-found people aren't actually searching for the absolute best items, so that doesn't matter)... but now, maybe, self-found can get to 90, 95 with some more farming effort, and can do it faster than before.
What you've created is something that's actually pretty damned close to how D2 worked. And we know that D2 DID work in terms of self-found versus trading and not shoehorning anyone into EITHER playstyle, despite all the duping. If you found a 6/6/15 Vamp Gaze, you could still use it. If you wanted an 8/8/20 Vamp Gaze you may have to trade to get it, you may find it yourself, but it was not mandatory to "win" and that meant that no one was forced to trade, even if they would only max out at 90-95.
If you wanted a complete set of perfect gear... sure, get trading. But, in a game based on RNG, that seems pretty intuitive to me. Very few people are going to self-find a complete set of perfect items. It's just about the massive gap that currently exists and how to shrink that down so that people aren't stuck clicking through AH pages all day long.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
I don't think I would have been able to make a powerful D2 characters with self-found items, in a million years. Perhaps your experience was different.
If being entirely self-found at a time when trading still totally exists can get you 95% of the way to the maximum "strength," I think that's a little off. If trading exists at all, and I'm not so sure it will, it must be mathematically the best way to get what you ultimately want. You shouldn't have a "95%" chance of getting a PERFECT item. If I can achieve 95% by being self-found in the same amount of time as a person who trades a lot, I will certainly not trade AT ALL. I am willing to be 5% weaker for simply not having to deal with whatever mess that comes post-AH. If it's like D2, I would love to avoid it all together for only a 5% strength loss.
I still don't see any examples of game-changing occurrences that related to the AH whatsoever. If a self-found person abused attack speed when it was overpowered, they got nerfed too. If someone spent money on a clearly imbalanced mechanic, that's their problem. They DID nerf attack speed, so they are clearly willing to do it, they just want to direct the anger of people who abuse broken mechanics to another place.
I mean, tell me a change they couldn't do because it would upset AH users too much.
If they don't like the idea of meddling with things that people spent real currency on, then they should remove the RMAH, not the normal AH.
Blizzard has admitted that drop rates had to be lowered to accommodate the fact that the auction house exists. So many people would have such a fast easy way to trade and acquire gear through a hyper-efficient method they could not let things drop as well as they should have.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
The IAS nerf, instead of being implemented immediately to fix a very obvious problem, was instead delayed so that Blizzard could provide ample time for people to get the news and stop buying shit on the RMAH.
Black weapons were not fixed because of the fact that people had invested in them as superior items.
One With Everything has yet to be fixed because people have geared their toons around it (read: bought items).
Why do you think Archon and WotB haven't seen a patch so that they don't have 100% uptime? If people hadn't invested $$$ in their wizards and barbs, I'm sure they'd have nerfed both of those months ago instead of just idly chatting about how they want to change them.
Why do you think CMWW hasn't been nerfed?
Do you really think this is just a bunch of coincidences that none of these very obvious balance changes that the game needed haven't happened? Blizzard didn't hesitate to nerf Trail of Cinders, but that was because people generally didn't gear around it (high Disc regen is good for a lot more than ToC).
I am a witch doctor player for the most part, and I have little interest in the other classes. If witch doctors become the weakest overall class, I wont simply reroll and I have very rarely heard of people rerolling in similar situations COUNTLESs times. I think a few people DO reroll, but not majority.
This could be rerolling classes, item builds, strategies. People like to maintain what they are familiar with it it's at all possible.
What';s the downside? So, droprates were too high and they lowered them. Doesn't change the fact that I've found countless items myself and used them to add to my total worth.
Critical Mass and One With Everything are two very prominent abilities that haven't been touched because people have bought gear to make them work to ridiculous levels. These passives are amazing when geared correctly and thanks to the AH it's easy to gear them right, but it can pigeonhole the players into needing only specific gear which means finding interesting upgrades is very difficult.
They've spent months telling us how they want to fix OWE but they haven't been able to because they acknowledge that it would be unfair to everyone that spent their cash into it. Ever since IAS Blizzard has been gun shy about changing loot affixes because they dont' ever want someone to buy something and feel like Blizzard just pulled a "Bait and Switch" on them. You haven't seen any examples of game changing occurrences because they aren't making those decisions due to the AH.
Yes a self found person could have found the right setup and gotten lucky, but a self found person didn't spend hard earned cash. Truth is, a self found person probably wouldn't have bothered with OWE (at least to the degree it was used) because it needs such very specific gear that it wouldn't be thinkable unless you got very lucky.
They didn't have the balls to nerf items and their associated players that were clearly and LITERALLY broken? That's their problem. If someone really invested in a broken exploit, I believe that is their fault entirely.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
A lot of high end players tend to gravitate to the path of least resistance. We're talking Min-Maxers here. If you think people don't change classes or specs just because another spec becomes dominate then I don't think you remember WoW very well.
In World of Warcraft, people would change specs all the time just to get a 1% better theoretical DPS. If a patch nerfed a spec, most raiders jumped ship and moved to another. Yes not everyone did it, but it happened enough.
If Blizz put out a patch that made one very specific set of gear or one specific class super over powered, do you think that a bunch of people wouldn't scramble to play that spec and class? Hell why do you think there's so many whirlwind barbs out there?
I haven't even seen a OWE monk in a long time. I'm pretty sure it's not the dominant build anymore or at least it's not the only choice.
I don't know what WotB is, but I know that Archon is also not the only build you can use, I don't think it's the most common either.
I don't know what CMWW is either, but it they continue to keep strong skills strong, and bring others in line in order to have more total options, I am all for it. No one is forcing you to switch spec or gear. And, I actually see a lot of variation in builds for all classes except witch doctor. Every other class has a bunch of builds that are VERY functional.
Critical strike is good for everybody. Having absurd amounts of critical strike might be a little odd, but those players knew what they were getting into. They were buying some pretty specialized items. A lot of item sets can work for multiple builds. You shouldn't mention the few exceptions. Very few. Again, I put all the blame on people who consent to buy very specific items especially if it's clearly broken like black items.
Like I said, I don't even think OWE is all that prominent anymore, anyways. If someone uses it, and it functions well for them I'm happy for them. If it needs to get nerfed slightly to be more fair and be brought in line, then that's life.
Put a "subject to change" clause and it's all on the buyer. Then after that, don't make ridiculous changes, try to keep the game constant enough and not make poor decisions that need to be dramatically remedied. Don't make big ass mistakes, Blizzard.
Because it's a good spec, they should bring other specs in line over time. How does that affect the AH? We are talking about it relating to the AH.
The downfall seems to be buying these very specialized items, and I think that's a risk that people need to be responsible for.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
Firebat spec shouldn't be at risk of eventually imploding all together and becoming gratuitously bad. If it did for some reason (and it simply should not), I shouldn't have to rearrange my entire item build because of it.
Remember, we have to relate this to the AH. Every single tiny aspect needs to be COMPLETELY related specifically to the AH.
I mean, how different can items REALLY get at a primordial level. You need some HP, some resist, some of your main stat, some crit, some crit damage, some attack speed maybe. Specialization should exist, but it shouldn't be black and white, it should be should be marginal and I think it is. At that level, you can afford to wiggle your items around a little bit for different builds.
Players feel jilted by Blizzard now those players are very angry and are out money. Do you think they will continue to play the game? Do you think Blizzard, legal action or no, would ever want to make their players feel like they had just taken their money and ran? It's about image and making the customers feel welcome and that they want you to play. To just screw over millions of paying customers wouldn't be conducive to that.
I just want to go ahead and say I personally don't care if the AH stays, I don't use it, but I recognize that it washes Blizzard's hands of having to deal with people feeling remorseful about a purchase. Blizzard themselves have admitted to how often the AH comes into discussion when they make any changes when it comes to skills and builds and I'm honestly glad it won't anymore. If it frees up Blizzard to make really cool changes for the health of the game, then so be it.
Baits and switches are illegal. They shouldn't use that technique.
You're asking "If Blizzard is really shady, evil, and willing to act illegally, should the AH go down?"
No, it's more like: "we don't want to take money for things that are subject to change and upset players. we can legally do it and put up a warning to justify it, but it still doesn't feel good and it still makes players mad when we do it even if it is their own fault, better shut down the AH."
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s