The GAH and RMAH have been one of the biggest conversation topics in the diablo 3 universe even prior to this recent announcement. Indeed, some people will even argue that this feature was what drove the game.
This isn't a topic about why you're sad to see it go. It would appear the majority of core Diablo fans are happy it will be gone and yes we understand why you others are not happy it's leaving.
For those of you that are excited though, why is that?
Perhaps this is a weak argument and reason, but I am excited to see it go because I've always held that the AH prohibited player interaction. Part of what brought so much joy to my diablo 2 days was trading for that new item I needed. Yes it was a barter system, and yes it took time. With the AH features, it was much easier to find the item you need and get back to playing. But from my personal experience, the endeavors spent in trading games was worth the time spent. True, there were people that would try and scam you. True, there were people who would low ball your offers or beg you for freebies. But every once in a while that one guy would come into your trade game. Not only did he have that item you needed, and not only was he willing to negotiate with you for a fair trade, but this guy started to treat you like a human on the other end of the screen. After chatting for a while and making a trade or two, he sticks around in the game and you chat some more. By the end of the night, you've added some dude 18 states away from where you live to your friends list and you end up playing with him for years.
On the other end of the spectrum, this barter system allowed you to find some new players that you helped out. There's nothing like bringing a player up in the game, giving them a bunch of stuff, only to watch them pay it forward to another new player later, or perhaps they pay it forward back to you with some gift that's worth a lot.
With the ah, I lost 90 percent of this interaction. I had no need to seek other players out for help, items, etc. People will argue that that is my own fault, which is true. However, I feel the loss of the AH will create a felt need that will actually cause people to seek other people out in the game. I believe it will help unite players and give people more of a reason to play with one another again.
And I could be wrong too. If Loot 2.0 is going to be what it claims itself to be, there might be even less of a need to trade. This game is a game about killing monsters, and getting loot. I understand that. There's nothing more rewarding than finding that drop you've been hunting for. But meeting a new player, trading for that item and adding them to your friends list because they are a pretty alright person- well that's pretty dang good too.
Not really trying to be argumentative here, but I don't think the game really needs p2p trading to be social. The social options in this game could absolutely use some work, but I think it's just as easy to meet people and make friends through party matchmaking and working together to actually play the game as it is to do so through trading.
I guess what I'm saying is that while the lack of trading has contributed to the lack of socialism in D3, it's not really the main problem. And while the removal of the AH may take us a step in the right direction, I'm hoping Blizzard will find better ways to promote p2p trading without taking us back to the barter system.
I'm hoping that loot runs and adventure mode will provide a more relaxed atmosphere for playing (rather than just racing through the quest objectives) witch in turn will promote more social aspects, but we'll see.
For those of you that are excited though, why is that?
Ha, good question. I am excited. I'm so excited that when I read the announcement on Tuesday I called all my friends to tell them the news. We were all as excited as hearing that Santa Claus was coming early and we'd get presents tomorrow. And yeah, I asked myself "why is that?" - because I was never an outspoken "AH hater". So, why? It's gonna be a long story, so here's the...
TL;DR: The auction house killed the spirit of the game for me (killing monsters to acquire loot), thus immensely reducing fun.
Long story:
I played Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 a lot, but never really competitive. We kind of played self-found, with occasional trading with friends (or no trading at all, as Diablo 1 was single player in the beginning). In Diablo 1, it was pretty easy to hit "max" and create a BiS character, as the caps weren't too high and reachable for everyone. Games were just simpler back in the days. In Diablo 2, I started offline, but moved to ladder eventually. The main reason were the low-level runewords, which made self-found much easier and much more fun. But the other reason was that after years of playing and having no progress, trainers and cheats are just too convenient. You're stuck at level 85 forever, you don't find any upgrades, and after 100 Baal runs without a single unique item it's too tempting to just create yourself a +5 skill charm to speed things up a bit. Of course, it doesn't stop there... so, moving to ladder made that impossible. There were no trainers/cheats, and duping would get your account banned. Which meant losing all progress, and no one would want that. However, even though I looked into trading, I dismissed it immediately as I realized that chances are high that I'd just get a duped high rune or so. I knew the implications: it could get me banned, but it would definitely spoil the fun for me, just like using a trainer in offline mode.
So, when Diablo 3 was announced, and I heard about the auction house, my first reaction was two-fold. At first I was like "I never traded in D2, so how will this change my game?". On the other hand, I perceived the offline mode as an advantage (and still do) - it was indeed effective to kill all dupes. The only dupes are rollback dupes, and since rollback items are BoA now, even this doesn't happen anymore. You can hate online mode as much as you want - but I like it, as it killed dupes and made trading an option for me. In addition to that, the auction house helped me to trade items without the need of becoming an expert in evaluating prices. Still, I didn't want to use it, but kept it in mind as a last resort.
Then Diablo 3 hit. And I wasn't there. Spend the entire summer in an internship - and the game I eagerly waited for for years was released such that I missed the first 3.5 months. My friends started playing and even saved up gear for me, but when I came back they were just too far away. They were clearing Inferno and I couldn't even stay alive. So... after a couple of days trying out different strategies (with the help of DiabloFans - eventually the reason for me to end my lurking and sign up), I borrowed some money from my friend and used the auction house. Oh boy. Just with a couple of clicks and some hundred thousand gold, I was able to compete with them. But just like in D2 with the offline cheats, it got out of hand: we all used the AH. Monster power was introduced, the uber event was introduced, and our goal was to kill ubers on MP10 (and with 1 wizard + 2 DHs, no credit card, it's a pain in the ass, it took us months). So, our characters became pretty powerful (well, 200-300k DPS was powerful for us, though pretty laughable for many forum members I guess), but we never found any upgrade ourselves. The 1.07 crafts gave us a bit of the feeling what it would be like to have something that you "earned yourself", and not just "bought off the shelf". And it also gave us a little bit of the feeling from D1/D2 that we missed in D3, despite it being an awesome game.
So, when RoS was announced we discussed going self-found. But we immediately realized that as soon as one of us became weak and would use the auction house, we all had to. And from our history we knew that none of us is as strong as maka or Indimix and able to stay away from the AH forever. I guess that's the main reason why I'm so rejoiced about the AH removal - we can finally go back to self-found and enjoy the game as we did its predecessors. Because in my opinion, besides the weak story everything has improved since D1/D2. And with the AH gone, this game can only become more awesome for me and my friends.
I'm happy about the announcements because I hope it creates a better in game experience. I enjoy having the auction house and I was for it since they announced it originally, however it kills the game experience. I can't remember the last time I found something awesome and would be an upgrade for my DH. I still go "ooooooooh!" whenever I see a legendary drop and I want that to be the case more often.
I'm glad to see the AH go because it was replacing many of the aspects I used to enjoy about D2.
I had stopped muleing things leveling up other characters because I could buy whatever I needed whenever I needed it. The appeal of farming for specific items was greatly diminished by knowledge of the fact that my time was genuinely better spent looking for a deal on the AH than actually playing.
I'm also glad to see the AH go because I felt like it fragments the gameplay experience, which makes it hard for me to relate to other players. "Oh, you play Softcore No-RMAH 1.5B Budget MP8? That's cool, I play Hardcore Self-found MP2." It's like we're not even playing the same game.
I swear, I read some forum posts about whether some item is worth 2B gold, and these guys all have like 5 marquise gems, and here I am, never had more than 10m gold at one time. Like, what game are they playing? How do I have a conversation about barbarian builds with these guys? It's like I'm at a bar and the bouncer won't let me in because my Skorn doesn't have 4% lifesteal.
I'm also glad to see the AH go because I felt like it fragments the gameplay experience, which makes it hard for me to relate to other players. "Oh, you play Softcore No-RMAH 1.5B Budget MP8? That's cool, I play Hardcore Self-found MP2." It's like we're not even playing the same game.
A valid point, but just wait till ladder rears its ugly head.
I'm excited because I'll make more profits trading in a barter system. Where knowledge is rewarded. AH changed that all. It wasn't too bad when we were limited to 3 affixes, but we still had to deal with AH bots.
A barter system is my prefered method of trading. I enjoy going to trade and watching people misprice things or discount it because of so much spam. Then I turn around and sell it on forums and vice versa. Though it's harder to get great deals on a forum than it is in a spammed trade chat.
For those of you that are excited though, why is that?
Ha, good question. I am excited. I'm so excited that when I read the announcement on Tuesday I called all my friends to tell them the news. We were all as excited as hearing that Santa Claus was coming early and we'd get presents tomorrow. And yeah, I asked myself "why is that?" - because I was never an outspoken "AH hater". So, why? It's gonna be a long story, so here's the...
TL;DR: The auction house killed the spirit of the game for me (killing monsters to acquire loot), thus immensely reducing fun.
I'm happy that it's leaving because I won't have to rely on the bloody thing to get anywhere anymore
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!"
I kinda have mixed feelings about it. I liked the AH and i had no problems with it at all. Never used RMAH because i dont have authenticator/smart phone. So im gonna talk about GAH.
You play the game, get some drops, you list the items with those stats on AH and you can see the range of prices on it. In that process you realize that there is a big difference between same item with 50 and 60 all resist , item with 50 and item with 70 vitality, item with 8% attack speed and item with 9% attack speed ( witching hour, inna temperance, lacuni etc). AH had the purpose to sort that out just fine, really FINE. Every time i wanted to buy upgrade for 1 item slot, I usually was buying 20-50m upgrades, not more than that I had to choose from a variety of items. So i had a really big thinking process when i was buying new item upgrade, will i pay 20m and loose 20 vita/10 all resist or will i pay extra 20m to get that 20 vita/10 all resist or maybe should i get 20 vita and 10k to heath globes for 30m. I really like that and that compromise will I get 10 all resist less on this item to pay less but i must get that all res on next item. So everyone could customize their gear according to budget they have. Here is the look or my Wizard:
Cant post links, sadly, ZeeZee EU server
I have total of 550 hours played on my char. All my gear is from AH/craft except Weapon, i found that in Act III while i was farming, at the moment of drop 6-7 months ago it was 230m now its around 150m, even less. It was the most expensive item i found in Diablo 3 + some ring for barbs for that sold for 80m gold. All others stuff are bought from AH. I never had more that 100m in my account, im not those of types of players that can save bunch of gold and buy something really good for it. I always made some smart buys, usually around 20-50m gold, all about that value wasnt worth the upgrade really.
Now i wanna discuss one sentence i saw like 100+ and more times on various Diablo 3 forums about removal of AH. The sentence is
" The auction house killed the spirit of the game which is farming monsters"
I just quoted this guy from above my post, but this sentence in various forms appeared on Diablo 3 forums and i just cant understand it at all.
WTF were you doing people in Diablo 3? You didnt killed monsters at all or what? You just sniped AH all the time and putted items on you character? Because farming monsters is not fun/rewarding? You are sad, you are playing for 1000 hours and you cant get upgrade? Im so sad about you but thats RNG.
Good items drops and that is a fact. Just check the AH and you will see how many good items dropped in last 24H. Fucking shittons of good items, Mempo with 3.5-6% crit, witching hours with all ress double int, double vit roll, Lacuni with 6% crit all ress and stat and so on and so on and so on. All those items dropped while someone FARMED THE MONSTERS, they didnt talked to Tyrael and he said " YO bro you look so cool take this 6% Mempo". They drop and then you have to have bunch of LUCK to get good rolls on them. Bunch of luck nothing else. Out of millions of players playing this game, ofc there is some lucker that will get BIS item. From a monster, not from AH. All those items on AH are from monsters.
Of course i didnt have that RNG luck to get some/few 1/2b items, most i got is 200m as i said allready. Im very proud because i got it, but im also proud of my every item i got on AH from some other player. Im proud that he played the game and got my 30% crit/8 as zunnimassa ring and posted it on ah for me to buy. I payed it, putted it on my char and i was happy like i found it :D. You cant say to me that you are more happy if you got item from monster drop or payed someone via AH/trade. Its the same shit to me IMO, item is on me I payed the price for it, i dont care if i found it or some other guy that is playing Diablo 3 got it.
Now lets talk about this AH removal thing and 2.0 loot thing. They are planning to reduce the ammount of loot that mosters drop, thats cool but will we see about that in future how will that turn out. 7 Legendary items per 1 hour of play is just too much imo, but we will see. Also i dont like that im a Wizard and smart loot is dropping me only items that are accorded to my class. I wanna have posibility to get fucking anything, for all classes not just for my wizard. I wanna get some awesome barb chest, demon hunter crossbow and all other shit. Why are you limiting my class to only my class based loot, that is just retarded. I dont like that at all. Also it will create a inflation of items of most played class. Which is Barb atm i think but we will see about that. I will have more chances of getting an upgrade via trade if all people on Diablo 3 are farming items for wizards, with this they make it that Wizards/Doctors farm items for Wizards/Doctors and Barbs/Crusaders farm items for Barbs/Crusaders. And if they make it like this, i will probably just trade with Wizards/Doctors because all of sudden YOUR CLASS have impact on loot. Suddenly in expansion when a monster see a WD/Wizard he just roll wizard/doctor afixes because Blizzard told them to do so. That should be totally random, thats the core of Diablo games, randomness not killing monsters.
Now about that AH removal thing. Items will drop in big amounts like are they doing now, they will be EPIC and shit, but you wont have big spreedsheet of them posted on AH in accorded prices. You will have to use trading forums/chat. People that use trading forums/chat are like less than 5% of people that used AH. Demand of the items will be big, but supply on the forums chats will be small because not everyone will bother with them. So this removal of AH is just making false impression that you are progressing by killing monsters. You cant mess with RNG. In one moment you will hit a wall and you will kill shitloads of monsters and you wont get a single upgrade. You will have to trade with someone, because there is millions of wizards around me farming items, they have bigger chances of getting my upgrade then me myself. You will have to trade to get upgrades, there is no word about it. And they just removed the AH so my item buying/trading/progression is slower and i dont have chance have to pick from variety of items for 30m for example, I will have to limit myself to trading forums/chats and you cant compare supply of AH and supply of some trading forum. Not a single trading forum on planet cant have supply same as AH we have at the moment. We will have less items to choose from to upgrade, and they made that intentionally. Items of all sorts will drop, but you will have limited access to them because of AH removal. Demand will be big, everyone will want items to upgrade, but suply will be low because of removal of AH, making your progression slower. You wanted that and you got it.
To finish this, i will just say that they should keep some sort of AH for materials, gems, recepies so people dont have to spend too much time on those basic stuff. Removes Weapons/Armors and everything but keep everything else on some small marketplace.
Thank you for reading this, im writing this for last 2 hours, crazy. I had to post this i dont know why but i had to do it somewhere.
I'm actually happy about it, more so than I thought I would be.
When the AH was announced I thought it was a great idea. I remember getting Sets Items I had no use for in D2 and just hanging on to them for long periods of time until I came across someone that "WTB". With the AH announced I thought it was the perfect solution to this issue. Cue the game launch and it was suddenly a different story.
I would long on, see that I sold X amount of items for Y gold and get ridiculously excited. Then I would use said gold to buy other items and sell them at a slightly inflated price. Even with Blizz's cut off the top, I was still making millions. Before I knew it, I was playing the AH and not the game. I would log on (with the limited amount of time a college student has) and spend the entirety of it buying and selling on the AH.
Was it rewarding? Yes. Did I have fun? Yes. But it wasn't the game I was meant to be playing.
But do you realize that AH loot dropped from monsters?
Well... botters play a rather important role in getting items on the ah. Players still find 1-2 good items but that is very, very, VERY rare. You said it yourself.... the only item worth equipping that you found yourself was that weapon from 6 months ago. In 6 months you haven't managed to find a better one? That sounds like an itemization problem. And considering gearing up with the ah is so easy right now... imagine how easy it would be with loot 2.0 to get bis items using the ah.
No that sounds like an randomization problem and its not a problem its just RNG.
Doesn't matter how fast items are dropping. The AH will always be THE place to get loot. Unless they put in massive BOA, then no one is trading.
How fast players should get loot is open for debate. Should it take 500 hours to get top-tier loot, or 2k hours? No one is going to agree on that. But that's not the main issue here anyway. The issue is you feel like you're wasting your time killing monsters, which is bad for a monster killing game.
And to save everyone some time, of course, you could just NOT use the AH, but if the general advice for a feature in your game is to just ignore it, I think that speaks strongly to the issues it's causing your game. So I see this more as damning evidence for removal rather than an argument to let it remain.
Now i wanna discuss one sentence i saw like 100+ and more times on various Diablo 3 forums about removal of AH. The sentence is
" The auction house killed the spirit of the game which is farming monsters"
I just quoted this guy from above my post, but this sentence in various forms appeared on Diablo 3 forums and i just cant understand it at all.
Since you're quoting me, I'll just let you know that you can find my more elaborate answer here: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/103271-itemization-auction-house-and-online-restriction/
Maybe it'll help you understand. If not, I'd be happy to discuss this further, I feel that opinions like yours are a bit underrepresented in the discussion right now.
Now i wanna discuss one sentence i saw like 100+ and more times on various Diablo 3 forums about removal of AH. The sentence is
" The auction house killed the spirit of the game which is farming monsters"
I just quoted this guy from above my post, but this sentence in various forms appeared on Diablo 3 forums and i just cant understand it at all.
Since you're quoting me, I'll just let you know that you can find my more elaborate answer here: http://www.diablofan...ne-restriction/
Maybe it'll help you understand. If not, I'd be happy to discuss this further, I feel that opinions like yours are a bit underrepresented in the discussion right now.
Man, you are on a roll teaching these newbies
Yeah! I mean it's not like I stopped magic finding once I found everything but a tyreals might and a zod. Which was only a few months of my over 2 years of nonstop play. Clearly that was the the most important part of the game.
Sorry, I just have to point out for those of us that played A LOT, finding the same items again and again was less and less exciting. I turned to crafting for my thrills. The irony here is that I should be calling you guys noobs because you clearly didn't play as much or find as much as I did.
I mean if I was so jaded that the only loot that was exciting for me to see was near perfect rolls then it certainly wasn't the item hunt keeping me interested. I kept playing because of PvP, Trading, and Crafting.
I'd say the game had less to do with finding awesome items for a hardcore player like myself. Since the probability of finding something I considered awesome was minimal. There was less of a chance I would even use the item since it would have had to been a truly godly zon item.
That doesn't mean I overlook the thrill of that awesome drop, but if you play long enough your criteria for an awesome item gets more and more defined. To the point that the only logical course of action is crafting the specific item, trading or getting bored and giving up entirely.
I also realize that if you play less, that the drops may be the most important thing to you. Since they are still exciting. But what most don't realize, including Blizzard, is what I say above.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
This isn't a topic about why you're sad to see it go. It would appear the majority of core Diablo fans are happy it will be gone and yes we understand why you others are not happy it's leaving.
For those of you that are excited though, why is that?
Perhaps this is a weak argument and reason, but I am excited to see it go because I've always held that the AH prohibited player interaction. Part of what brought so much joy to my diablo 2 days was trading for that new item I needed. Yes it was a barter system, and yes it took time. With the AH features, it was much easier to find the item you need and get back to playing. But from my personal experience, the endeavors spent in trading games was worth the time spent. True, there were people that would try and scam you. True, there were people who would low ball your offers or beg you for freebies. But every once in a while that one guy would come into your trade game. Not only did he have that item you needed, and not only was he willing to negotiate with you for a fair trade, but this guy started to treat you like a human on the other end of the screen. After chatting for a while and making a trade or two, he sticks around in the game and you chat some more. By the end of the night, you've added some dude 18 states away from where you live to your friends list and you end up playing with him for years.
On the other end of the spectrum, this barter system allowed you to find some new players that you helped out. There's nothing like bringing a player up in the game, giving them a bunch of stuff, only to watch them pay it forward to another new player later, or perhaps they pay it forward back to you with some gift that's worth a lot.
With the ah, I lost 90 percent of this interaction. I had no need to seek other players out for help, items, etc. People will argue that that is my own fault, which is true. However, I feel the loss of the AH will create a felt need that will actually cause people to seek other people out in the game. I believe it will help unite players and give people more of a reason to play with one another again.
And I could be wrong too. If Loot 2.0 is going to be what it claims itself to be, there might be even less of a need to trade. This game is a game about killing monsters, and getting loot. I understand that. There's nothing more rewarding than finding that drop you've been hunting for. But meeting a new player, trading for that item and adding them to your friends list because they are a pretty alright person- well that's pretty dang good too.
I guess what I'm saying is that while the lack of trading has contributed to the lack of socialism in D3, it's not really the main problem. And while the removal of the AH may take us a step in the right direction, I'm hoping Blizzard will find better ways to promote p2p trading without taking us back to the barter system.
I'm hoping that loot runs and adventure mode will provide a more relaxed atmosphere for playing (rather than just racing through the quest objectives) witch in turn will promote more social aspects, but we'll see.
Ha, good question. I am excited. I'm so excited that when I read the announcement on Tuesday I called all my friends to tell them the news. We were all as excited as hearing that Santa Claus was coming early and we'd get presents tomorrow. And yeah, I asked myself "why is that?" - because I was never an outspoken "AH hater". So, why? It's gonna be a long story, so here's the...
TL;DR: The auction house killed the spirit of the game for me (killing monsters to acquire loot), thus immensely reducing fun.
Long story:
I played Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 a lot, but never really competitive. We kind of played self-found, with occasional trading with friends (or no trading at all, as Diablo 1 was single player in the beginning). In Diablo 1, it was pretty easy to hit "max" and create a BiS character, as the caps weren't too high and reachable for everyone. Games were just simpler back in the days. In Diablo 2, I started offline, but moved to ladder eventually. The main reason were the low-level runewords, which made self-found much easier and much more fun. But the other reason was that after years of playing and having no progress, trainers and cheats are just too convenient. You're stuck at level 85 forever, you don't find any upgrades, and after 100 Baal runs without a single unique item it's too tempting to just create yourself a +5 skill charm to speed things up a bit. Of course, it doesn't stop there... so, moving to ladder made that impossible. There were no trainers/cheats, and duping would get your account banned. Which meant losing all progress, and no one would want that. However, even though I looked into trading, I dismissed it immediately as I realized that chances are high that I'd just get a duped high rune or so. I knew the implications: it could get me banned, but it would definitely spoil the fun for me, just like using a trainer in offline mode.
So, when Diablo 3 was announced, and I heard about the auction house, my first reaction was two-fold. At first I was like "I never traded in D2, so how will this change my game?". On the other hand, I perceived the offline mode as an advantage (and still do) - it was indeed effective to kill all dupes. The only dupes are rollback dupes, and since rollback items are BoA now, even this doesn't happen anymore. You can hate online mode as much as you want - but I like it, as it killed dupes and made trading an option for me. In addition to that, the auction house helped me to trade items without the need of becoming an expert in evaluating prices. Still, I didn't want to use it, but kept it in mind as a last resort.
Then Diablo 3 hit. And I wasn't there. Spend the entire summer in an internship - and the game I eagerly waited for for years was released such that I missed the first 3.5 months. My friends started playing and even saved up gear for me, but when I came back they were just too far away. They were clearing Inferno and I couldn't even stay alive. So... after a couple of days trying out different strategies (with the help of DiabloFans - eventually the reason for me to end my lurking and sign up), I borrowed some money from my friend and used the auction house. Oh boy. Just with a couple of clicks and some hundred thousand gold, I was able to compete with them. But just like in D2 with the offline cheats, it got out of hand: we all used the AH. Monster power was introduced, the uber event was introduced, and our goal was to kill ubers on MP10 (and with 1 wizard + 2 DHs, no credit card, it's a pain in the ass, it took us months). So, our characters became pretty powerful (well, 200-300k DPS was powerful for us, though pretty laughable for many forum members I guess), but we never found any upgrade ourselves. The 1.07 crafts gave us a bit of the feeling what it would be like to have something that you "earned yourself", and not just "bought off the shelf". And it also gave us a little bit of the feeling from D1/D2 that we missed in D3, despite it being an awesome game.
So, when RoS was announced we discussed going self-found. But we immediately realized that as soon as one of us became weak and would use the auction house, we all had to. And from our history we knew that none of us is as strong as maka or Indimix and able to stay away from the AH forever. I guess that's the main reason why I'm so rejoiced about the AH removal - we can finally go back to self-found and enjoy the game as we did its predecessors. Because in my opinion, besides the weak story everything has improved since D1/D2. And with the AH gone, this game can only become more awesome for me and my friends.
I had stopped muleing things leveling up other characters because I could buy whatever I needed whenever I needed it. The appeal of farming for specific items was greatly diminished by knowledge of the fact that my time was genuinely better spent looking for a deal on the AH than actually playing.
I'm also glad to see the AH go because I felt like it fragments the gameplay experience, which makes it hard for me to relate to other players. "Oh, you play Softcore No-RMAH 1.5B Budget MP8? That's cool, I play Hardcore Self-found MP2." It's like we're not even playing the same game.
I swear, I read some forum posts about whether some item is worth 2B gold, and these guys all have like 5 marquise gems, and here I am, never had more than 10m gold at one time. Like, what game are they playing? How do I have a conversation about barbarian builds with these guys? It's like I'm at a bar and the bouncer won't let me in because my Skorn doesn't have 4% lifesteal.
A valid point, but just wait till ladder rears its ugly head.
A barter system is my prefered method of trading. I enjoy going to trade and watching people misprice things or discount it because of so much spam. Then I turn around and sell it on forums and vice versa. Though it's harder to get great deals on a forum than it is in a spammed trade chat.
pretty much this
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Aren't you happier when you take out the garbage?, same here.
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!"
I kinda have mixed feelings about it. I liked the AH and i had no problems with it at all. Never used RMAH because i dont have authenticator/smart phone. So im gonna talk about GAH.
You play the game, get some drops, you list the items with those stats on AH and you can see the range of prices on it. In that process you realize that there is a big difference between same item with 50 and 60 all resist , item with 50 and item with 70 vitality, item with 8% attack speed and item with 9% attack speed ( witching hour, inna temperance, lacuni etc). AH had the purpose to sort that out just fine, really FINE. Every time i wanted to buy upgrade for 1 item slot, I usually was buying 20-50m upgrades, not more than that I had to choose from a variety of items. So i had a really big thinking process when i was buying new item upgrade, will i pay 20m and loose 20 vita/10 all resist or will i pay extra 20m to get that 20 vita/10 all resist or maybe should i get 20 vita and 10k to heath globes for 30m. I really like that and that compromise will I get 10 all resist less on this item to pay less but i must get that all res on next item. So everyone could customize their gear according to budget they have. Here is the look or my Wizard:
Cant post links, sadly, ZeeZee EU server
I have total of 550 hours played on my char. All my gear is from AH/craft except Weapon, i found that in Act III while i was farming, at the moment of drop 6-7 months ago it was 230m now its around 150m, even less. It was the most expensive item i found in Diablo 3 + some ring for barbs for that sold for 80m gold. All others stuff are bought from AH. I never had more that 100m in my account, im not those of types of players that can save bunch of gold and buy something really good for it. I always made some smart buys, usually around 20-50m gold, all about that value wasnt worth the upgrade really.
Now i wanna discuss one sentence i saw like 100+ and more times on various Diablo 3 forums about removal of AH. The sentence is
" The auction house killed the spirit of the game which is farming monsters"
I just quoted this guy from above my post, but this sentence in various forms appeared on Diablo 3 forums and i just cant understand it at all.
WTF were you doing people in Diablo 3? You didnt killed monsters at all or what? You just sniped AH all the time and putted items on you character? Because farming monsters is not fun/rewarding? You are sad, you are playing for 1000 hours and you cant get upgrade? Im so sad about you but thats RNG.
Good items drops and that is a fact. Just check the AH and you will see how many good items dropped in last 24H. Fucking shittons of good items, Mempo with 3.5-6% crit, witching hours with all ress double int, double vit roll, Lacuni with 6% crit all ress and stat and so on and so on and so on. All those items dropped while someone FARMED THE MONSTERS, they didnt talked to Tyrael and he said " YO bro you look so cool take this 6% Mempo". They drop and then you have to have bunch of LUCK to get good rolls on them. Bunch of luck nothing else. Out of millions of players playing this game, ofc there is some lucker that will get BIS item. From a monster, not from AH. All those items on AH are from monsters.
Of course i didnt have that RNG luck to get some/few 1/2b items, most i got is 200m as i said allready. Im very proud because i got it, but im also proud of my every item i got on AH from some other player. Im proud that he played the game and got my 30% crit/8 as zunnimassa ring and posted it on ah for me to buy. I payed it, putted it on my char and i was happy like i found it :D. You cant say to me that you are more happy if you got item from monster drop or payed someone via AH/trade. Its the same shit to me IMO, item is on me I payed the price for it, i dont care if i found it or some other guy that is playing Diablo 3 got it.
Now lets talk about this AH removal thing and 2.0 loot thing. They are planning to reduce the ammount of loot that mosters drop, thats cool but will we see about that in future how will that turn out. 7 Legendary items per 1 hour of play is just too much imo, but we will see. Also i dont like that im a Wizard and smart loot is dropping me only items that are accorded to my class. I wanna have posibility to get fucking anything, for all classes not just for my wizard. I wanna get some awesome barb chest, demon hunter crossbow and all other shit. Why are you limiting my class to only my class based loot, that is just retarded. I dont like that at all. Also it will create a inflation of items of most played class. Which is Barb atm i think but we will see about that. I will have more chances of getting an upgrade via trade if all people on Diablo 3 are farming items for wizards, with this they make it that Wizards/Doctors farm items for Wizards/Doctors and Barbs/Crusaders farm items for Barbs/Crusaders. And if they make it like this, i will probably just trade with Wizards/Doctors because all of sudden YOUR CLASS have impact on loot. Suddenly in expansion when a monster see a WD/Wizard he just roll wizard/doctor afixes because Blizzard told them to do so. That should be totally random, thats the core of Diablo games, randomness not killing monsters.
Now about that AH removal thing. Items will drop in big amounts like are they doing now, they will be EPIC and shit, but you wont have big spreedsheet of them posted on AH in accorded prices. You will have to use trading forums/chat. People that use trading forums/chat are like less than 5% of people that used AH. Demand of the items will be big, but supply on the forums chats will be small because not everyone will bother with them. So this removal of AH is just making false impression that you are progressing by killing monsters. You cant mess with RNG. In one moment you will hit a wall and you will kill shitloads of monsters and you wont get a single upgrade. You will have to trade with someone, because there is millions of wizards around me farming items, they have bigger chances of getting my upgrade then me myself. You will have to trade to get upgrades, there is no word about it. And they just removed the AH so my item buying/trading/progression is slower and i dont have chance have to pick from variety of items for 30m for example, I will have to limit myself to trading forums/chats and you cant compare supply of AH and supply of some trading forum. Not a single trading forum on planet cant have supply same as AH we have at the moment. We will have less items to choose from to upgrade, and they made that intentionally. Items of all sorts will drop, but you will have limited access to them because of AH removal. Demand will be big, everyone will want items to upgrade, but suply will be low because of removal of AH, making your progression slower. You wanted that and you got it.
To finish this, i will just say that they should keep some sort of AH for materials, gems, recepies so people dont have to spend too much time on those basic stuff. Removes Weapons/Armors and everything but keep everything else on some small marketplace.
Thank you for reading this, im writing this for last 2 hours, crazy. I had to post this i dont know why but i had to do it somewhere.
Sorry for bad english, im not a native speaker.
Best regards,
ZeeZee
But do you realize that AH loot dropped from monsters?
When the AH was announced I thought it was a great idea. I remember getting Sets Items I had no use for in D2 and just hanging on to them for long periods of time until I came across someone that "WTB". With the AH announced I thought it was the perfect solution to this issue. Cue the game launch and it was suddenly a different story.
I would long on, see that I sold X amount of items for Y gold and get ridiculously excited. Then I would use said gold to buy other items and sell them at a slightly inflated price. Even with Blizz's cut off the top, I was still making millions. Before I knew it, I was playing the AH and not the game. I would log on (with the limited amount of time a college student has) and spend the entirety of it buying and selling on the AH.
Was it rewarding? Yes. Did I have fun? Yes. But it wasn't the game I was meant to be playing.
Nice logical fallacy, not good enough thou.
Millions of players. Lots of drops. None of them mine.
No that sounds like an randomization problem and its not a problem its just RNG.
How fast players should get loot is open for debate. Should it take 500 hours to get top-tier loot, or 2k hours? No one is going to agree on that. But that's not the main issue here anyway. The issue is you feel like you're wasting your time killing monsters, which is bad for a monster killing game.
And to save everyone some time, of course, you could just NOT use the AH, but if the general advice for a feature in your game is to just ignore it, I think that speaks strongly to the issues it's causing your game. So I see this more as damning evidence for removal rather than an argument to let it remain.
Since you're quoting me, I'll just let you know that you can find my more elaborate answer here: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/103271-itemization-auction-house-and-online-restriction/
Maybe it'll help you understand. If not, I'd be happy to discuss this further, I feel that opinions like yours are a bit underrepresented in the discussion right now.
Yeah! I mean it's not like I stopped magic finding once I found everything but a tyreals might and a zod. Which was only a few months of my over 2 years of nonstop play. Clearly that was the the most important part of the game.
Sorry, I just have to point out for those of us that played A LOT, finding the same items again and again was less and less exciting. I turned to crafting for my thrills. The irony here is that I should be calling you guys noobs because you clearly didn't play as much or find as much as I did.
I mean if I was so jaded that the only loot that was exciting for me to see was near perfect rolls then it certainly wasn't the item hunt keeping me interested. I kept playing because of PvP, Trading, and Crafting.
I'd say the game had less to do with finding awesome items for a hardcore player like myself. Since the probability of finding something I considered awesome was minimal. There was less of a chance I would even use the item since it would have had to been a truly godly zon item.
That doesn't mean I overlook the thrill of that awesome drop, but if you play long enough your criteria for an awesome item gets more and more defined. To the point that the only logical course of action is crafting the specific item, trading or getting bored and giving up entirely.
I also realize that if you play less, that the drops may be the most important thing to you. Since they are still exciting. But what most don't realize, including Blizzard, is what I say above.