As we all know, the purchasing and selling of digitized goods is a huge problem in Blizzard games, particularly Diablo II and World of Warcraft. With Diablo III on the horizon, I am curious as to how Blizzard may deal with this problem. As there are no plans for having absolutely BoE/BoP items, anything can easily be traded in-game, or sold on a third party website for cash. Some may argue that it's fair because the hardcore players can obtain items by playing, while the casual players, who still want epic gear, can spend a few bucks and be just as good. Others would say that purchasing items isn't fair in the least bit, because they spend countless hours farming for all that epic gear, that others may be able to get by spending 10 minutes and using a credit card. To resolve this issue, Blizzard could go about it a few different ways...
Blizzard-Hosted Store: Instead of having Blizzard attempt to crack down, or ignore item stores, they could simply open up their own "official" store, where everyone could potentially purchase items from. If item selling is going to be going on, Blizzard could use the money from this store to put into the game, to help make the game better for us. So in a sense, you'd be paying extra for some possible cool future things in D3.
User-hosted Stores: Blizzard could allow users to open up their own stores, to gain profit from. Assuming there will be no botters, these users would have to farm gear to sell themselves, so their countless hours of grinding and farming will earn them some cash.
No Stores: You would prefer Blizzard cracked down on all possible item store attempts and forced users to either trade for, or farm items.
Vanity Items only: The purchasing of only items, such as dyes, etc, that make you visually cooler, but do not affect gameplay whatsoever.
In-Game Gear: Players could purchase any item in the game that can also be found via farming, allowing casual players to be just as good as hardcore players.
Top Tier Gear: You would prefer the only way to obtain the top tier gear is to purchase it from the store, not allowing it to drop in-game.
Other: Perhaps you've come to a conclusion we haven't thought of. If so, please explain in the comments below.
All that in mind, we want to know, what is your position on Item Selling in Diablo 3?
In our previous poll, we wanted to know how you decided which class to play. The results showed "playstyle" as the biggest factor, with a majority of the votes. After playstyle, "archetype" and "skills and traits" tied for second place, with just barely a quarter of the votes that playstyle had.
Definitely is a big deal. There should be NO buying whatsoever, not even for vanity items. As soon as any item is sold online (rather via Blue or 3rd party), the value of the item goes to nil. I want my rare turquoise dye to be worth lots of gold.
Secondly, Blizzard should make as much an effort as possible in eliminating all 3rd-party sites that attempt to sell items for real money.
I am a casual player i have a wife and a son,and i work 75+ hours a week.. so i wont be one that has endless hours to farm items and i still strongly disagree with item sales for cash.
It ruines the entire game, and its not just the person buying the item thats effected its the entire economy that suffers,Diablo was never a game that you needed to have the best of the best gear to have fun and the longer it takes to get the best gear the longer you get to enjoy the game.
Vanity items only, and you must be careful with this. As long as it in no way enters the economy. Such as an emote in PvP after you kill someone, a special graphic when you join a pvp match, etc. High-quality items, or items at all, would turn Diablo III into another Hellgate: London-esque disaster where most players are inherently gimped.
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The final test of the Serpent's Form takes place in "The Pit of 12 Vipers." The initiates are not told about the 13th.
I like user stores, like in MMos like Aeon. They could set their own prices and their toon would sit idle as a store. I can see that easily working in a diablo game.
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How to play a frost mage in 2 easy steps!
Step 1. bind all keys other than S to Icelance
Step 2. Hold S and slam your face off your keyboard and win.
For me User-hosted Stores workz best because if someone puts effort in farming the gear than they desrve somekind a reward.
But still you cant be good at the game only if you buy ultra cool super-powerfull stuff , you need to play trough it to see and to experience stuff and you need to devote lot of time just to gain some essential and all that...
Is the reward of gold or trading for an item of equal or better value not reward enough,
If you find an item thats worth somthing to another player selling it for gold or trading it for an item worth somthing to you should be rewarding enough,If by User-hosted store you mean like a trading post system,then sure but for a player to find an item ans sell it for real money to the highest bidder seems unfair and unwise.
Make hell content as hard as they promised, I.E. next to impossible for a non flexible character(aka bot). For example they could have floor effects you've got to move from, not necessarily that but you know... un-predictable.
Perhaps random environments(gates) in specific areas that the bots can't handle because they require some extra human interaction(like those letters you have to enter to comment many times on youtube).
Edit: Why is it a multiple choice poll? Most of the options contradict each other so kind of pointless imho.
I got to say that I feel that no store at all would be the best route to take. But if there has to be a store at all then they really only need to sell vanity items. As soon as you can buy items that effect the game play it becomes less about skill and time that a player puts into the game and more about how much money you are willing to spend.
Blizzard-Hosted Store: Instead of having Blizzard attempt to crack down, or ignore item stores, they could simply open up their own "official" store, where everyone could potentially purchase items from. If item selling is going to be going on, Blizzard could use the money from this store to put into the game, to help make the game better for us. So in a sense, you'd be paying extra for some possible cool future things in D3.
Sixen, I'm disappointed. This has got to be the most braindead idea/suggestion ever. An official Blizzard item store... really?
Diablo is all about playing the game for what it is, and slowly working your way towards better gear. What would be the point of playing the game at all if Blizzard themselves already had an item store that sold every single item that could be found in the game?
In other words, why would you buy a game in order to spend even more money on made-up pixels just to be good in a made-up world? It's like saying if I hosted a basketball tournament, and I told all of the contestants that they could pay me $50 each to add 7 points to their final score. No one would want to play in my tournament for the mere fact that there is an uneven playing field for those who don't want to pay $50 to "win" at a trivial game. They'll just go find another "free" basketball tournament that is fair for everyone. The point of playing a game is to have fun and relax. If you "cheat" your way to winning (AKA by paying $$$), then it's not fun for anyone, including yourself.
Observe:Congratulations! You won the basketball game! But not because you worked hard at mastering your basketball skills. It's because you paid money to win! Not only do you lose your pride of "winning" because now everyone knows that you paid to win, which involved absolutely no skills at all, but now you're down $50 in the real world. There's absolutely 0 benefit. You won at a made-up game. So what? Again, congratulations!
Same thing for Blizzard games. If Blizzard started opening up official item stores, people will be discouraged to play their games, as no one will care if they are godly in a made-up world with made-up pixels. Anything that involves money for pixels in a "free-to-play" game, is just a stupid implementation. You'll have one population who spends money and has the godliest gear; then you'll have another population who refuses to spend money for pixels and thus are at a clear disadvantage. Eventually everyone will realize how stupid the game is, and they'll all quit the game.
No store to buy stuff....would just be better that way.
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www.myspace.com/mpotatoes for all your Trans Siberian Orchestra listening pleasure
If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
And to know who needs help
You need only just ask
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” - Albert Einstein
Games that had stores to buy gear has always eventually turned me away from it. In one respect, I loathe spending money to cheat my way through a game, but on the other hand since I'm at a disadvantage and love to be competitive - the only way to keep it up is to get the credit card out.
This tug-of-war of conflicting ideas I have going on in my head really tears me apart and inevitably turns me off of the game.
I didn't wait years for D3 to come out just to have my fun stripped away just because of stores. No fucking stores, please...
I think there should be no micro-purchases in games. It's ridiculous. It gives advantages to people who have money. If blizzard implemented a Vanity Only store (where you could buy things that don't affect gameplay) I would not mind it too much, but I'd still rather have no way to sell items. I hope blizzard cracks down on people trying to sell thier items for real money.
I voted vanity items. I'm not sure they will include it, but it's the only store they could do. Anything else would conflict with Blizzard's current design philosophies that they employ for WoW.
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
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As we all know, the purchasing and selling of digitized goods is a huge problem in Blizzard games, particularly Diablo II and World of Warcraft. With Diablo III on the horizon, I am curious as to how Blizzard may deal with this problem. As there are no plans for having absolutely BoE/BoP items, anything can easily be traded in-game, or sold on a third party website for cash. Some may argue that it's fair because the hardcore players can obtain items by playing, while the casual players, who still want epic gear, can spend a few bucks and be just as good. Others would say that purchasing items isn't fair in the least bit, because they spend countless hours farming for all that epic gear, that others may be able to get by spending 10 minutes and using a credit card. To resolve this issue, Blizzard could go about it a few different ways...
Blizzard-Hosted Store: Instead of having Blizzard attempt to crack down, or ignore item stores, they could simply open up their own "official" store, where everyone could potentially purchase items from. If item selling is going to be going on, Blizzard could use the money from this store to put into the game, to help make the game better for us. So in a sense, you'd be paying extra for some possible cool future things in D3.
User-hosted Stores: Blizzard could allow users to open up their own stores, to gain profit from. Assuming there will be no botters, these users would have to farm gear to sell themselves, so their countless hours of grinding and farming will earn them some cash.
No Stores: You would prefer Blizzard cracked down on all possible item store attempts and forced users to either trade for, or farm items.
Vanity Items only: The purchasing of only items, such as dyes, etc, that make you visually cooler, but do not affect gameplay whatsoever.
In-Game Gear: Players could purchase any item in the game that can also be found via farming, allowing casual players to be just as good as hardcore players.
Top Tier Gear: You would prefer the only way to obtain the top tier gear is to purchase it from the store, not allowing it to drop in-game.
Other: Perhaps you've come to a conclusion we haven't thought of. If so, please explain in the comments below.
All that in mind, we want to know, what is your position on Item Selling in Diablo 3?
In our previous poll, we wanted to know how you decided which class to play. The results showed "playstyle" as the biggest factor, with a majority of the votes. After playstyle, "archetype" and "skills and traits" tied for second place, with just barely a quarter of the votes that playstyle had.
Diablo III Analyst
SC2Mapster
Secondly, Blizzard should make as much an effort as possible in eliminating all 3rd-party sites that attempt to sell items for real money.
It ruines the entire game, and its not just the person buying the item thats effected its the entire economy that suffers,Diablo was never a game that you needed to have the best of the best gear to have fun and the longer it takes to get the best gear the longer you get to enjoy the game.
just my thoughts
cheers
Diablo III Analyst
SC2Mapster
Step 1. bind all keys other than S to Icelance
Step 2. Hold S and slam your face off your keyboard and win.
Is the reward of gold or trading for an item of equal or better value not reward enough,
If you find an item thats worth somthing to another player selling it for gold or trading it for an item worth somthing to you should be rewarding enough,If by User-hosted store you mean like a trading post system,then sure but for a player to find an item ans sell it for real money to the highest bidder seems unfair and unwise.
Perhaps random environments(gates) in specific areas that the bots can't handle because they require some extra human interaction(like those letters you have to enter to comment many times on youtube).
Edit: Why is it a multiple choice poll? Most of the options contradict each other so kind of pointless imho.
Sixen, I'm disappointed. This has got to be the most braindead idea/suggestion ever. An official Blizzard item store... really?
Diablo is all about playing the game for what it is, and slowly working your way towards better gear. What would be the point of playing the game at all if Blizzard themselves already had an item store that sold every single item that could be found in the game?
In other words, why would you buy a game in order to spend even more money on made-up pixels just to be good in a made-up world? It's like saying if I hosted a basketball tournament, and I told all of the contestants that they could pay me $50 each to add 7 points to their final score. No one would want to play in my tournament for the mere fact that there is an uneven playing field for those who don't want to pay $50 to "win" at a trivial game. They'll just go find another "free" basketball tournament that is fair for everyone. The point of playing a game is to have fun and relax. If you "cheat" your way to winning (AKA by paying $$$), then it's not fun for anyone, including yourself.
Observe: Congratulations! You won the basketball game! But not because you worked hard at mastering your basketball skills. It's because you paid money to win! Not only do you lose your pride of "winning" because now everyone knows that you paid to win, which involved absolutely no skills at all, but now you're down $50 in the real world. There's absolutely 0 benefit. You won at a made-up game. So what? Again, congratulations!
Same thing for Blizzard games. If Blizzard started opening up official item stores, people will be discouraged to play their games, as no one will care if they are godly in a made-up world with made-up pixels. Anything that involves money for pixels in a "free-to-play" game, is just a stupid implementation. You'll have one population who spends money and has the godliest gear; then you'll have another population who refuses to spend money for pixels and thus are at a clear disadvantage. Eventually everyone will realize how stupid the game is, and they'll all quit the game.
If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
And to know who needs help
You need only just ask
-stores are bad
-ruin balance
-buying power is bypassing the game
-not a fun mechanic
-earn you're items by playing
-etc
edit: changed lpaying to playing...what an embarrassing mistake
This tug-of-war of conflicting ideas I have going on in my head really tears me apart and inevitably turns me off of the game.
I didn't wait years for D3 to come out just to have my fun stripped away just because of stores. No fucking stores, please...