BoA was blizzards lazy attempt to combat against 3rd party solutions, although I think they shit the bed on the implementation. I think craftables should stay BoA, but they need to free-up items again, at least until you reforge them..then its BoA city.
They've already taken steps to reduce people from buying gold by targetting the loopholes of people getting gold by selling tomes to reach the gold amount.
Trading is a big part of the game, and I do support BoA in most aspects but its really stupid you can't trade at all. I imagine if they do bring trading back, they need to create trading only games, or a trading lobby. Hell whatever they come up with its not a pretty solution, I'm almost borderline wondering if they shouldn't just bring back the Gold Auction house (which I doubt).
I think at this point they've gone to far to turn back now though.
Personally, I am still all for BOA and only trading with members within the part in a certain time frame.
I miss trading but there's just no way to re-implement it in a sensible way that wouldn't just cause even more problems.
They did what was best and I hope it keeps staying this way, and for some of you I don't think this was anywhere near a lazy or as some would say..."conspiracy" act.
Personally, I am still all for BOA and only trading with members within the part in a certain time frame.
I miss trading but there's just no way to re-implement it in a sensible way that wouldn't just cause even more problems.
They did what was best and I hope it keeps staying this way, and for some of you I don't think this was anywhere near a lazy or as some would say..."conspiracy" act.
Yeah no, sorry it was totally the lazy man's route toward combating 3rd parties and the spam. Yeah it was effective, but we suffered for it. Was it worth it..perhaps.
BoA was clearly designed around concerns for the 3rd party trade.
And, honestly, I wish Josh had been honest with us from the get-go. Instead we got this infantile, hopeless, "we can't balance drops so long as trading exists!" temper tantrum. I'd have had a lot more respect if he just said "If Blizzard can't make money on the RMAH then we're not going to let 3rd party sites make money from selling items either." It would have been a lot more respectable to hear the truth as opposed to this psychobabble which just amounted to an experiment in social engineering.
Since RoS I have traded ONE singular item. And, in reality, it was more like me giving a friend an extra Gidbinn I found (so that he could harass his girlfriend with it) and he decided he'd give me a "follower cannot die" enchantress relic in return because he didn't really want it. That's it. Why? Because most people I know aren't even discussing what items they get because it's so unlikely that two people in the same game get mutually-interesting items that they want to exchange within the same 2hr window that everyone is conditioned just to keep their own stuff.
Now, I don't know that trading is "part of endgame" but it certainly feels as if the decision to make green/orange items BoA and leave the rest unbound is the entire reason that, as you put it in another post, all white, blue, and yellow items are defacto "crafting materials." Yeah, from Normal through Master yellows are items you'll equip, but by the time you get to Torment you're looking almost exclusively for orange/green items. So yellow items have a very short window in which they're viable, and beyond that they're almost assuredly salvage/vendor material.
But this is because of BoA. These items HAVE to be inferior because they can be freely traded. The whole mantra became "anything that's worthwhile cannot be traded" and that created this scenario where 99% of the drops, once you're in T1, are either salvaged, vendored, or simply ignored. Which is EXACTLY what we had in D3 Classic, but for different reasons. So the net result is that they've created a "protected class" of items and everything else is left to rot as enchanting fodder.
And this is all under the guise of "it's impossible to balance unless we do that."
I REALLY think that creating a useful item sink (enchanting definitely was a big step here) and allowing enchanting/transmogging to bind an item to your account was plenty sufficient to achieve what ultimately needed to be achieved. I think the rest is simply detrimental.
Wanted to touch on the BoA. I don't expect it to last the year. I'm guessing Blizzard is starting to understand how it's smacking the players as manipulative, for lack of a better term.
And this is all under the guise of "it's impossible to balance unless we do that."
....and this is key. Many of the more pressing itemization issues like the 4/2 affix split strike me as more of a development parameter put in place for ease of balancing/adjusting on their end. Freeing these constraints may be a pain for the devs, but the players would love it. I hope they see their way to such a resolve.
Regarding my comment about the relation between open trades and end-game; I only meant to assert that trading adds a dimension to the game, big or small, and this game needs more dimension. It's very flat.
Regarding my comment about the relation between open trades and end-game; I only meant to assert that trading adds a dimension to the game, big or small, and this game needs more dimension. It's very flat.
Unfortunately it's like that because there was a huge "EVERYONE MUST PLAY MY WAY" push at some point post-Gamescom.
I support self-found style, and that's generally how I play. But I am not some kind of strict purist. I don't want that to be my only option for ever and ever until death do us part. I think that kind of limitation is asinine. I think trying to define one thing as "the only right way to play" is naive. Yes, killing monsters should be fun and should be what we're doing 90%+ of the time. But why does it HAVE to be 100% of the time? It's that lack of choice that makes the game feel "on rails" as you've said.
It's not that being able to play self-found is wrong. It's right. It's just that assuming that everyone wants to play 100% self-found 100% of the time with no deviation is ignoring the massive diversity of the playerbase and that's just never a good idea. This is a game with millions of players and to impose such rigid restrictions on playstyle is sillier than ANYTHING Jay did. Yes. It's sillier than ANYTHING Jay did.
There should have been more reasons to choose between binding an item to your account and letting it remain tradeable. Like I said, enchanting got this spot on. You trade power/customization for the ability to trade an item. That's a great tradeoff. It also introduces an effective item sink which was SORELY missing from classic and was a major contributing factor as to why the AH became the monster it did. Without reasonable and effective item sinks inflation happens very quickly.
It seems the anti-BoA votes have stabilized at about 59%, as it's been like that for the past 500+ votes. There has been a lot of good discussion as well from anti-BoA folks. I voted for GAH+RMAH & noBoA.
Blizzard is making the same mistake they made with SC2, forcing players to play a certain way instead of giving them freedom. It doesn't matter if players want to trade or buy certain items.. for a game where PvP is basically nonexistent, who the f*ck cares if certain players are ahead of others? If I want to trade or sell or buy things, why are you so butthurt by it that you would want the AH to be shutdown? Players have been doing their own thing since the beginning of video games, now Blizzard is suddenly trying to control their gameplay?
Personally, I am still all for BOA and only trading with members within the part in a certain time frame.
I miss trading but there's just no way to re-implement it in a sensible way that wouldn't just cause even more problems.
They did what was best and I hope it keeps staying this way, and for some of you I don't think this was anywhere near a lazy or as some would say..."conspiracy" act.
Yeah no, sorry it was totally the lazy man's route toward combating 3rd parties and the spam. Yeah it was effective, but we suffered for it. Was it worth it..perhaps.
Something to keep in mind: Most of the nerfs & changes to the game are made with taking into consideration all of the QQ & complaint threads on D3's official forum (regardless of the consensus from the actual playerbase). This poll holds the opinion of that forum as well as other forums & D3 stream viewers. Just wanted to add that part.
The game is fine the way it is, people should stop being lazy and just play the game to find the gear instead of sitting around waiting for gear to be handed to them, it feels much more rewarding when you find that piece of gear you always wanted instead of it being given to you.
I have over 500hours playtime on my WD and I've never seen a SMK drop and it took me very long time to find T&T, and thats ok because I found a full almost perfect set of Jade Harvest pretty early in ROS, so just play the game and you will find the gear you want eventually.
Trading is part of end-game, whether anyone wishes to admit that or not.
BoA was clearly designed around concerns for the 3rd party trade. It's affecting the quality of the game tremendously. I supported BoA at first. Not anymore.
I agree 100%. Id like to see some reincarnation of the AH to allow trading but to keep the 3rd party sites out of it.
Not sure why D2 was so great. It was G-Rush, Uber level, buy BiS Hammer gear from JSP, run Baal bot 24-7. I dont want to see D3 run down that road for sure.
Trading is part of end-game, whether anyone wishes to admit that or not.
BoA was clearly designed around concerns for the 3rd party trade. It's affecting the quality of the game tremendously. I supported BoA at first. Not anymore.
I agree 100%. Id like to see some reincarnation of the AH to allow trading but to keep the 3rd party sites out of it.
Not sure why D2 was so great. It was G-Rush, Uber level, buy BiS Hammer gear from JSP, run Baal bot 24-7. I dont want to see D3 run down that road for sure.
Thing is, that quote of mine was from April. Not long ago, I suppose, but apparently long enough to sway my opinion.
I see the way they're building the game around BoA and it appears to be quite successful. I still believe trading could be a powerful end-game activity, but the way I saw trading forums, forums that utilize forum gold, scams, 3rd party sites and their spam....the way these things negatively affected long term play. I'm not sure I want to see a return to trading, because it opens the door for so much bad.
Better off that they properly configure the game to BoA concerns, commit to it, and give us plenty to do with the gears we find.
They've already taken steps to reduce people from buying gold by targetting the loopholes of people getting gold by selling tomes to reach the gold amount.
Trading is a big part of the game, and I do support BoA in most aspects but its really stupid you can't trade at all. I imagine if they do bring trading back, they need to create trading only games, or a trading lobby. Hell whatever they come up with its not a pretty solution, I'm almost borderline wondering if they shouldn't just bring back the Gold Auction house (which I doubt).
I think at this point they've gone to far to turn back now though.
I miss trading but there's just no way to re-implement it in a sensible way that wouldn't just cause even more problems.
They did what was best and I hope it keeps staying this way, and for some of you I don't think this was anywhere near a lazy or as some would say..."conspiracy" act.
Since RoS I have traded ONE singular item. And, in reality, it was more like me giving a friend an extra Gidbinn I found (so that he could harass his girlfriend with it) and he decided he'd give me a "follower cannot die" enchantress relic in return because he didn't really want it. That's it. Why? Because most people I know aren't even discussing what items they get because it's so unlikely that two people in the same game get mutually-interesting items that they want to exchange within the same 2hr window that everyone is conditioned just to keep their own stuff.
Now, I don't know that trading is "part of endgame" but it certainly feels as if the decision to make green/orange items BoA and leave the rest unbound is the entire reason that, as you put it in another post, all white, blue, and yellow items are defacto "crafting materials." Yeah, from Normal through Master yellows are items you'll equip, but by the time you get to Torment you're looking almost exclusively for orange/green items. So yellow items have a very short window in which they're viable, and beyond that they're almost assuredly salvage/vendor material.
But this is because of BoA. These items HAVE to be inferior because they can be freely traded. The whole mantra became "anything that's worthwhile cannot be traded" and that created this scenario where 99% of the drops, once you're in T1, are either salvaged, vendored, or simply ignored. Which is EXACTLY what we had in D3 Classic, but for different reasons. So the net result is that they've created a "protected class" of items and everything else is left to rot as enchanting fodder.
And this is all under the guise of "it's impossible to balance unless we do that."
I REALLY think that creating a useful item sink (enchanting definitely was a big step here) and allowing enchanting/transmogging to bind an item to your account was plenty sufficient to achieve what ultimately needed to be achieved. I think the rest is simply detrimental.
....and this is key. Many of the more pressing itemization issues like the 4/2 affix split strike me as more of a development parameter put in place for ease of balancing/adjusting on their end. Freeing these constraints may be a pain for the devs, but the players would love it. I hope they see their way to such a resolve.
Regarding my comment about the relation between open trades and end-game; I only meant to assert that trading adds a dimension to the game, big or small, and this game needs more dimension. It's very flat.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
I support self-found style, and that's generally how I play. But I am not some kind of strict purist. I don't want that to be my only option for ever and ever until death do us part. I think that kind of limitation is asinine. I think trying to define one thing as "the only right way to play" is naive. Yes, killing monsters should be fun and should be what we're doing 90%+ of the time. But why does it HAVE to be 100% of the time? It's that lack of choice that makes the game feel "on rails" as you've said.
It's not that being able to play self-found is wrong. It's right. It's just that assuming that everyone wants to play 100% self-found 100% of the time with no deviation is ignoring the massive diversity of the playerbase and that's just never a good idea. This is a game with millions of players and to impose such rigid restrictions on playstyle is sillier than ANYTHING Jay did. Yes. It's sillier than ANYTHING Jay did.
There should have been more reasons to choose between binding an item to your account and letting it remain tradeable. Like I said, enchanting got this spot on. You trade power/customization for the ability to trade an item. That's a great tradeoff. It also introduces an effective item sink which was SORELY missing from classic and was a major contributing factor as to why the AH became the monster it did. Without reasonable and effective item sinks inflation happens very quickly.
Blizzard is making the same mistake they made with SC2, forcing players to play a certain way instead of giving them freedom. It doesn't matter if players want to trade or buy certain items.. for a game where PvP is basically nonexistent, who the f*ck cares if certain players are ahead of others? If I want to trade or sell or buy things, why are you so butthurt by it that you would want the AH to be shutdown? Players have been doing their own thing since the beginning of video games, now Blizzard is suddenly trying to control their gameplay?
I have over 500hours playtime on my WD and I've never seen a SMK drop and it took me very long time to find T&T, and thats ok because I found a full almost perfect set of Jade Harvest pretty early in ROS, so just play the game and you will find the gear you want eventually.
Not sure why D2 was so great. It was G-Rush, Uber level, buy BiS Hammer gear from JSP, run Baal bot 24-7. I dont want to see D3 run down that road for sure.
I see the way they're building the game around BoA and it appears to be quite successful. I still believe trading could be a powerful end-game activity, but the way I saw trading forums, forums that utilize forum gold, scams, 3rd party sites and their spam....the way these things negatively affected long term play. I'm not sure I want to see a return to trading, because it opens the door for so much bad.
Better off that they properly configure the game to BoA concerns, commit to it, and give us plenty to do with the gears we find.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan