Ok ok what do i say......First Blizzard took 8 years to develop a BETA.
Then during the first four patches(ie upto 1.0.4) Blizzard realized that even their testing team has quit the game.(I wonder why?? *Innocent Face*)
Then one guy came up with an idea.He was like,"Hey since we have been treating players like shit and since we gotta keep them until the expansions,why don't we let them test the PTR? They have been doing the testing team's job since launch anyway.And this will make them feel as if they matter."
The others were like,"Wow dude cool idea!! Someone go tell one of the developers or one of the CMs to deliver a long blog about how they matter to us and how every voice counts.Don't want the PTR to be empty now,do we?"
And then came the PTR.The blizzard people were like "You.....yes you! get to make a contribution to the game!And you get to play content before the patch hits!!"
So that's why the PTRs are present.
And i must really find my Flame-Resistant suit fast or i'll burn to a crisp.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Grinding Gear Games (Company that produced POE): "These are great Ideas, we will use them for sure as they are clearly what the player base is looking for."
Blizzard: "While we agree that this game needs re-working and that these ideas could help the future of this game, we have no plans to listen to our fan-base at this time."
Ok ok what do i say......First Blizzard took 8 years to develop a BETA.
Then during the first four patches(ie upto 1.0.4) Blizzard realized that even their testing team has quit the game.(I wonder why?? *Innocent Face*)
Then one guy came up with an idea.He was like,"Hey since we have been treating players like shit and since we gotta keep them until the expansions,why don't we let them test the PTR? They have been doing the testing team's job since launch anyway.And this will make them feel as if they matter."
The others were like,"Wow dude cool idea!! Someone go tell one of the developers or one of the CMs to deliver a long blog about how they matter to us and how every voice counts.Don't want the PTR to be empty now,do we?"
And then came the PTR.The blizzard people were like "You.....yes you! get to make a contribution to the game!And you get to play content before the patch hits!!"
So that's why the PTRs are present.
And i must really find my Flame-Resistant suit fast or i'll burn to a crisp.
On your first point, just fyi, development of the current D3 didn't start until ~2006. They then took a year off (the whole team) to help on starcraft 2 development. This would mean actual development was about ~6 years.
Ok ok what do i say......First Blizzard took 8 years to develop a BETA.
Then during the first four patches(ie upto 1.0.4) Blizzard realized that even their testing team has quit the game.(I wonder why?? *Innocent Face*)
Then one guy came up with an idea.He was like,"Hey since we have been treating players like shit and since we gotta keep them until the expansions,why don't we let them test the PTR? They have been doing the testing team's job since launch anyway.And this will make them feel as if they matter."
The others were like,"Wow dude cool idea!! Someone go tell one of the developers or one of the CMs to deliver a long blog about how they matter to us and how every voice counts.Don't want the PTR to be empty now,do we?"
And then came the PTR.The blizzard people were like "You.....yes you! get to make a contribution to the game!And you get to play content before the patch hits!!"
So that's why the PTRs are present.
And i must really find my Flame-Resistant suit fast or i'll burn to a crisp.
On your first point, just fyi, development of the current D3 didn't start until ~2006. They then took a year off (the whole team) to help on starcraft 2 development. This would mean actual development was about ~6 years.
And i quote wikipedia:-
Development on Diablo III began in 2001 when Blizzard North was still in operation, and the game was first announced on June 28, 2008, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France.[14] The original artistic design differed from that shown at Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2008 demonstration, and had undergone three revisions before reaching the standards felt necessary by the team behind Diablo III.[citation needed] The game is being planned for a simultaneous release on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms.[14] It was also revealed that the game would require a constant internet connection to play, even for single-player mode.
And also i had read somewhere that development on "Project Hydra" started in 2001.
And i'm really sorry bro but i trust wikipedia over you.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Grinding Gear Games (Company that produced POE): "These are great Ideas, we will use them for sure as they are clearly what the player base is looking for."
Blizzard: "While we agree that this game needs re-working and that these ideas could help the future of this game, we have no plans to listen to our fan-base at this time."
Ok ok what do i say......First Blizzard took 8 years to develop a BETA.
Then during the first four patches(ie upto 1.0.4) Blizzard realized that even their testing team has quit the game.(I wonder why?? *Innocent Face*)
Then one guy came up with an idea.He was like,"Hey since we have been treating players like shit and since we gotta keep them until the expansions,why don't we let them test the PTR? They have been doing the testing team's job since launch anyway.And this will make them feel as if they matter."
The others were like,"Wow dude cool idea!! Someone go tell one of the developers or one of the CMs to deliver a long blog about how they matter to us and how every voice counts.Don't want the PTR to be empty now,do we?"
And then came the PTR.The blizzard people were like "You.....yes you! get to make a contribution to the game!And you get to play content before the patch hits!!"
So that's why the PTRs are present.
And i must really find my Flame-Resistant suit fast or i'll burn to a crisp.
On your first point, just fyi, development of the current D3 didn't start until ~2006. They then took a year off (the whole team) to help on starcraft 2 development. This would mean actual development was about ~6 years.
And i quote wikipedia:-
Development on Diablo III began in 2001 when Blizzard North was still in operation, and the game was first announced on June 28, 2008, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France.[14] The original artistic design differed from that shown at Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2008 demonstration, and had undergone three revisions before reaching the standards felt necessary by the team behind Diablo III.[citation needed] The game is being planned for a simultaneous release on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms.[14] It was also revealed that the game would require a constant internet connection to play, even for single-player mode.
And also i had read somewhere that development on "Project Hydra" started in 2001.
And i'm really sorry bro but i trust wikipedia over you.
Didn't you learn anything from school/uni/college?!?!
Wikipedia quotes are automatically invalid since anyone can change the info on them. That's not assuming you just made that bit up, no sir-ee no. Sure you can look at info on a Wiki but don't take it seriously, especially when trying to prove someone wrong about something. But you probably knew that
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!"
IMO, they do this because they realized that we are free, and they don't want to pay for testers.
Actually, it's kind of a smart move.
Ignorance is bliss...
Blizzard has one of the biggest internal test squads of all game developers. It's one of the reasons why the patch takes so long, the functionality is being tested internally to the core. What they can't assess in internal tests are large-scale impacts on a big economy, that's why there's a PTR. But they have various different levels of internal testers. Just check their job website frequently to see some QA jobs popping up. They have an armada of internal testers, but everyone who has ever done user tests knows that even 100 iterations of internal evaluation will not guarantee that every bug surfaces, and once a product is deployed the end-users will identify additional bugs. It's an absolutely known fact in software engineering in general.
Don't get me wrong, I'm as frustrated as everyone else about the fact that it'll take at least another 4-5 weeks before the patch goes live (probably more), and it probably means that I won't play (much) until then. But if I was running the show, I would do the same. It's just a necessary evil. QA is *not* exploitation of customers.
Development on Diablo III began in 2001 when Blizzard North was still in operation, and the game was first announced on June 28, 2008, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France.[14] The original artistic design differed from that shown at Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2008 demonstration, and had undergone three revisions before reaching the standards felt necessary by the team behind Diablo III.[citation needed] The game is being planned for a simultaneous release on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms.[14] It was also revealed that the game would require a constant internet connection to play, even for single-player mode.
And also i had read somewhere that development on "Project Hydra" started in 2001.
And i'm really sorry bro but i trust wikipedia over you.
Wikipedia is often a good source for information, but in this case it's one of the examples why it's still to be taken with a grain of salt.
Blizzard North started developing Diablo 3 in 2001, that's right. But what they developed was an MMORPG. In 2005, Blizzard North ceased to exist - many developers left (some went to Runic Games to later develop Torchlight), almost the entire team was switched out, and a completely new Diablo 3 was developed.
It's not the first time they hit the reset button on a project though, but to my knowledge it's the first time that during development of a game the entire team was replaced...
Why is there such a big discussion about the initial start of the development? In my eyes, it is completely pointless to argue if the development started 2001/2006 or 2008. On release day the game felt unfinished; that's fact. We had a lot of patches, and I think the PTR is a good thing. The more important topic is, why they take forever to get things rolling. Blizzard always has to announce a Q&A in which they announce the official announcement of a future patch coming soon. I will be a very happy customer, if they start doing their shit faster without those announcements of announcements.
I just don't get it why they can't announce patch --> PTR --> live.
At the moment it is: Announcement --> Q&A --> Announcement --> Announcement of PTR --> PTR --> Announcment --> Changes --> live
^^ Exactly.
And i won't trust wikipedia if you guys say so.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Grinding Gear Games (Company that produced POE): "These are great Ideas, we will use them for sure as they are clearly what the player base is looking for."
Blizzard: "While we agree that this game needs re-working and that these ideas could help the future of this game, we have no plans to listen to our fan-base at this time."
Blizzard always has to announce a Q&A in which they announce the official announcement of a future patch coming soon. I will be a very happy customer, if they start doing their shit faster without those announcements of announcements.
I just don't get it why they can't announce patch --> PTR --> live.
At the moment it is: Announcement --> Q&A --> Announcement --> Announcement of PTR --> PTR --> Announcment --> Changes --> live
The Q&A ("ask the devs") is a new thing they started just a couple of weeks ago.
Also, your order of events is not correct, as it mixes two different things: more transparency on game development (dev journals, ask the devs, but also blueposts) and official announcements regarding patches. Everything we've had so far belongs to the first category - in particular itemization was a big topic, and it has nothing to do with the upcoming patch, but it gives players transparency over what the Diablo development department is doing. It's about showing that player's feedback is taken into consideration and addressed; but this takes time (a lot of time, especially if you're Blizzard and are expected to deliver super high quality) and therefore the announcements of "things to come within the next year" are meant to calm players down. Imagine what the forums would look like without the posts from Travis Day...
There has been no official announcements with regard to 1.08, only some blue posts and hints here and there about what it *might* entail. Nothing so far is set in stone.
Yet, even with that "armada" of testers, they gave the "go ahead" to those Legendaries at release (among other things)....
Competent bunch.
Hm. Well. Yeah.
I guess what happened is that the internal testers played for a significant amount of hours, but never got the real good rare rolls (which is not that hard to believe - I have yet to see a trifecta item at all after a couple of hundred hours played, same with my friends; not sure if I even found a dualfecta item so far). So they thought "okay, the rares may potentially be better than the legendaries, but these exceptional rolls will happen only very rarely, so the legendaries are good items for many players and the godly rolled rares are just for the OCD people.
What happened then was a bunch of 10 million players ID'ing hundreds of rares each, which just makes it statistically insanely likely that a lot of high-end items surface - and thanks to the AH, these items were distributed quite quickly and made the legendaries look like crap. Which they were.
Is that possible? Not sure. I'm just guessing here, really. Because looking back it seems to be extremely ridiculous that these items were every released, I agree. But keep in mind that in D2 there were also many many legendaries that could not keep up with the BiS rares; but thanks to the cumbersome (and by many people not used) means of trade the distribution of good rares was not happening like in D3. Maybe they just wanted to achieve a similar result in as in D2, were many people hold on to rares and not everyone was using legendaries (after the fix, everyone in D3 started wearing the same stuff to date, like Mempo, Vile Ward, WH, Lacuni, EF/Skorn, ... - that's certainly something they had not in mind).
Yeah, of course. The AH is also one of the main reason why every fix needs to be tested, thus the PTR. The AH is part of the problem, Blizzard knows that and acknowledged it, but it's there and you can't take it away, so you need to fix the game with the AH in mind.
(Damn, I just realize, the AH to D3 behaves like the Euro to the EU. Introduced with good intentions, now proves to be one of its biggest problems, but can't be reversed.)
In short, the AH will have to exist. So tone it down a bit. How, well one idea that might work is by making more crafting materials, better recipes-with a better chance to roll better stats. THEN, you make them account bound BUT let them be tradeable ..... 2 problems fixed or as some would say 2 birds with one stone. A fix for items and a BOOST to the ever so lacking social aspect comparatively speaking (D2 in mind).
The problem with materials that aren't account bound is that at the beginning of a patch, literally on the first day, they'll have thousands of them bought, instead of having to grind for them (which is the point of the game). Demonic Essences did a good job there in my opinion.
Why is there such a big discussion about the initial start of the development? In my eyes, it is completely pointless to argue if the development started 2001/2006 or 2008. On release day the game felt unfinished; that's fact. We had a lot of patches, and I think the PTR is a good thing. The more important topic is, why they take forever to get things rolling. Blizzard always has to announce a Q&A in which they announce the official announcement of a future patch coming soon. I will be a very happy customer, if they start doing their shit faster without those announcements of announcements.
I just don't get it why they can't announce patch --> PTR --> live.
At the moment it is: Announcement --> Q&A --> Announcement --> Announcement of PTR --> PTR --> Announcment --> Changes --> live
I think the problem you're observing is the fact that Blizzard is communicating at all. If they didn't say anything players would have built less hype and expectations towards a new patch. Then a sudden announcement of PTR after a month and a half or two would be received greatly by the community. Some players on the other hand require even a slate to be published by Blizzard. Different players have different opinions on different subjects.
Most of the time the whole "announce, Q&A, announce of PTR, etc." comes from the Community Managers though, so at least you can be certain patch is not "slowed down" by those blocks of text.
The problem with materials that aren't account bound is that at the beginning of a patch, literally on the first day, they'll have thousands of them bought, instead of having to grind for them (which is the point of the game). Demonic Essences did a good job there in my opinion.
Eliminate Crafting mats from AH .... problem solved
The problem with materials that aren't account bound is that at the beginning of a patch, literally on the first day, they'll have thousands of them bought, instead of having to grind for them (which is the point of the game). Demonic Essences did a good job there in my opinion.
I'm not against Demonic Essences being account bound. But I think that they should increase the drop rate of them. Maybe allow normal mobs to drop them... But they should buff Demonic Escences drop rate.
More Demonic Escences = People will craft more = Better gold sink
While it's obvious that will promote some players going on forums and trading sites to get a hold of said materials, which should make it slightly harder for everyone, top players already have a big following and it would be even easier for them to get the mats. "Buying out all your Essences! Crafting 500 *Item* live!"
I'm not against Demonic Essences being account bound. But I think that they should increase the drop rate of them. Maybe allow normal mobs to drop them... But they should buff Demonic Escences drop rate.
More Demonic Escences = People will craft more = Better gold sink
Yeah, I don't know about that. I can't really sell a lot of stuff on the AH and currently I'm stuck with 15 mil gold (for some time now) and 150 DE that if I start crafting will deplete my gold instantly. Gold sinks are great for top players, but I'm struggling to even get the gold to craft anymore. I've crafted around 150 so far in case you think I'm just super careful or something. 30 Amulets - 4 million gold right there. And I craft for multiple classes.
The problem with materials that aren't account bound is that at the beginning of a patch, literally on the first day, they'll have thousands of them bought, instead of having to grind for them (which is the point of the game). Demonic Essences did a good job there in my opinion.
I'm not against Demonic Essences being account bound. But I think that they should increase the drop rate of them. Maybe allow normal mobs to drop them... But they should buff Demonic Escences drop rate.
More Demonic Escences = People will craft more = Better gold sink
I dont think a "gold sink" will fix anything for the playablilty of the game. Yes it will fix the AH inflation, but like overneathe said ...the point of the game is the grind. If you want to shop do it on Ebay. Make the AH a last resort by increasing ways for people to play public games and trade more. To me, its a lot more fun to negotiate a trade than to win an item in an auction house.
Make all mats BoA. Problem solved.
You want to craft? Farm your own mats.
I've never bought a mat in my life. Not even the gems. I'm not quite sure why you don't have the same problem as me. All my gold is from grinding and all my mats are from grinding, but somehow the mats drop at a higher rate than I can collect gold to craft them (and even some of the lesser mats are starting to disappear after I've been collecting them since May 15).
Make all mats BoA. Problem solved.
You want to craft? Farm your own mats.
I've never bought a mat in my life. Not even the gems. I'm not quite sure why you don't have the same problem as me. All my gold is from grinding and all my mats are from grinding, but somehow the mats drop at a higher rate than I can collect gold to craft them (and even some of the lesser mats are starting to disappear after I've been collecting them since May 15).
This is a result of crafting prices and mats needed being unbalanced. I agree with you. It feels like now with the new craftable items i really dont get ahead in gold unless i find a 20+mil items while grinding.... There definitely needs to be some adjustments to crafting costs.
While it's obvious that will promote some players going on forums and trading sites to get a hold of said materials, which should make it slightly harder for everyone, top players already have a big following and it would be even easier for them to get the mats. "Buying out all your Essences! Crafting 500 *Item* live!"
I'm not against Demonic Essences being account bound. But I think that they should increase the drop rate of them. Maybe allow normal mobs to drop them... But they should buff Demonic Escences drop rate.
More Demonic Escences = People will craft more = Better gold sink
Yeah, I don't know about that. I can't really sell a lot of stuff on the AH and currently I'm stuck with 15 mil gold (for some time now) and 150 DE that if I start crafting will deplete my gold instantly. Gold sinks are great for top players, but I'm struggling to even get the gold to craft anymore. I've crafted around 150 so far in case you think I'm just super careful or something. 30 Amulets - 4 million gold right there. And I craft for multiple classes.
Yeah, I understand your point. But still, one of the biggest reasons behind BOA items is to sink gold. And if Demonic Essences droped more often, people would craft more. And that would result in a more efficient gold sink.
Then during the first four patches(ie upto 1.0.4) Blizzard realized that even their testing team has quit the game.(I wonder why?? *Innocent Face*)
Then one guy came up with an idea.He was like,"Hey since we have been treating players like shit and since we gotta keep them until the expansions,why don't we let them test the PTR? They have been doing the testing team's job since launch anyway.And this will make them feel as if they matter."
The others were like,"Wow dude cool idea!! Someone go tell one of the developers or one of the CMs to deliver a long blog about how they matter to us and how every voice counts.Don't want the PTR to be empty now,do we?"
And then came the PTR.The blizzard people were like "You.....yes you! get to make a contribution to the game!And you get to play content before the patch hits!!"
So that's why the PTRs are present.
And i must really find my Flame-Resistant suit fast or i'll burn to a crisp.
Blizzard: "While we agree that this game needs re-working and that these ideas could help the future of this game, we have no plans to listen to our fan-base at this time."
http://s1332.photobucket.com/user/Tester_3211/media/Diablo3devs_zpscc5fbac9.jpg.html?state=replace
On your first point, just fyi, development of the current D3 didn't start until ~2006. They then took a year off (the whole team) to help on starcraft 2 development. This would mean actual development was about ~6 years.
And i quote wikipedia:-
Development on Diablo III began in 2001 when Blizzard North was still in operation, and the game was first announced on June 28, 2008, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France.[14] The original artistic design differed from that shown at Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2008 demonstration, and had undergone three revisions before reaching the standards felt necessary by the team behind Diablo III.[citation needed] The game is being planned for a simultaneous release on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms.[14] It was also revealed that the game would require a constant internet connection to play, even for single-player mode.
And also i had read somewhere that development on "Project Hydra" started in 2001.
And i'm really sorry bro but i trust wikipedia over you.
Blizzard: "While we agree that this game needs re-working and that these ideas could help the future of this game, we have no plans to listen to our fan-base at this time."
http://s1332.photobucket.com/user/Tester_3211/media/Diablo3devs_zpscc5fbac9.jpg.html?state=replace
Wikipedia quotes are automatically invalid since anyone can change the info on them. That's not assuming you just made that bit up, no sir-ee no. Sure you can look at info on a Wiki but don't take it seriously, especially when trying to prove someone wrong about something. But you probably knew that
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!"
Ignorance is bliss...
Blizzard has one of the biggest internal test squads of all game developers. It's one of the reasons why the patch takes so long, the functionality is being tested internally to the core. What they can't assess in internal tests are large-scale impacts on a big economy, that's why there's a PTR. But they have various different levels of internal testers. Just check their job website frequently to see some QA jobs popping up. They have an armada of internal testers, but everyone who has ever done user tests knows that even 100 iterations of internal evaluation will not guarantee that every bug surfaces, and once a product is deployed the end-users will identify additional bugs. It's an absolutely known fact in software engineering in general.
Don't get me wrong, I'm as frustrated as everyone else about the fact that it'll take at least another 4-5 weeks before the patch goes live (probably more), and it probably means that I won't play (much) until then. But if I was running the show, I would do the same. It's just a necessary evil. QA is *not* exploitation of customers.
Wikipedia is often a good source for information, but in this case it's one of the examples why it's still to be taken with a grain of salt.
Blizzard North started developing Diablo 3 in 2001, that's right. But what they developed was an MMORPG. In 2005, Blizzard North ceased to exist - many developers left (some went to Runic Games to later develop Torchlight), almost the entire team was switched out, and a completely new Diablo 3 was developed.
http://www.diablowik...d_North_version
It's not the first time they hit the reset button on a project though, but to my knowledge it's the first time that during development of a game the entire team was replaced...
^^ Exactly.
And i won't trust wikipedia if you guys say so.
Blizzard: "While we agree that this game needs re-working and that these ideas could help the future of this game, we have no plans to listen to our fan-base at this time."
http://s1332.photobucket.com/user/Tester_3211/media/Diablo3devs_zpscc5fbac9.jpg.html?state=replace
The Q&A ("ask the devs") is a new thing they started just a couple of weeks ago.
Also, your order of events is not correct, as it mixes two different things: more transparency on game development (dev journals, ask the devs, but also blueposts) and official announcements regarding patches. Everything we've had so far belongs to the first category - in particular itemization was a big topic, and it has nothing to do with the upcoming patch, but it gives players transparency over what the Diablo development department is doing. It's about showing that player's feedback is taken into consideration and addressed; but this takes time (a lot of time, especially if you're Blizzard and are expected to deliver super high quality) and therefore the announcements of "things to come within the next year" are meant to calm players down. Imagine what the forums would look like without the posts from Travis Day...
There has been no official announcements with regard to 1.08, only some blue posts and hints here and there about what it *might* entail. Nothing so far is set in stone.
Hm. Well. Yeah.
I guess what happened is that the internal testers played for a significant amount of hours, but never got the real good rare rolls (which is not that hard to believe - I have yet to see a trifecta item at all after a couple of hundred hours played, same with my friends; not sure if I even found a dualfecta item so far). So they thought "okay, the rares may potentially be better than the legendaries, but these exceptional rolls will happen only very rarely, so the legendaries are good items for many players and the godly rolled rares are just for the OCD people.
What happened then was a bunch of 10 million players ID'ing hundreds of rares each, which just makes it statistically insanely likely that a lot of high-end items surface - and thanks to the AH, these items were distributed quite quickly and made the legendaries look like crap. Which they were.
Is that possible? Not sure. I'm just guessing here, really. Because looking back it seems to be extremely ridiculous that these items were every released, I agree. But keep in mind that in D2 there were also many many legendaries that could not keep up with the BiS rares; but thanks to the cumbersome (and by many people not used) means of trade the distribution of good rares was not happening like in D3. Maybe they just wanted to achieve a similar result in as in D2, were many people hold on to rares and not everyone was using legendaries (after the fix, everyone in D3 started wearing the same stuff to date, like Mempo, Vile Ward, WH, Lacuni, EF/Skorn, ... - that's certainly something they had not in mind).
(Damn, I just realize, the AH to D3 behaves like the Euro to the EU. Introduced with good intentions, now proves to be one of its biggest problems, but can't be reversed.)
I think the problem you're observing is the fact that Blizzard is communicating at all. If they didn't say anything players would have built less hype and expectations towards a new patch. Then a sudden announcement of PTR after a month and a half or two would be received greatly by the community. Some players on the other hand require even a slate to be published by Blizzard. Different players have different opinions on different subjects.
Most of the time the whole "announce, Q&A, announce of PTR, etc." comes from the Community Managers though, so at least you can be certain patch is not "slowed down" by those blocks of text.
Ha. Bagstone.
Eliminate Crafting mats from AH .... problem solved
I'm not against Demonic Essences being account bound. But I think that they should increase the drop rate of them. Maybe allow normal mobs to drop them... But they should buff Demonic Escences drop rate.
More Demonic Escences = People will craft more = Better gold sink
Yeah, I don't know about that. I can't really sell a lot of stuff on the AH and currently I'm stuck with 15 mil gold (for some time now) and 150 DE that if I start crafting will deplete my gold instantly. Gold sinks are great for top players, but I'm struggling to even get the gold to craft anymore. I've crafted around 150 so far in case you think I'm just super careful or something. 30 Amulets - 4 million gold right there. And I craft for multiple classes.
Ha. Bagstone.
I dont think a "gold sink" will fix anything for the playablilty of the game. Yes it will fix the AH inflation, but like overneathe said ...the point of the game is the grind. If you want to shop do it on Ebay. Make the AH a last resort by increasing ways for people to play public games and trade more. To me, its a lot more fun to negotiate a trade than to win an item in an auction house.
I've never bought a mat in my life. Not even the gems. I'm not quite sure why you don't have the same problem as me. All my gold is from grinding and all my mats are from grinding, but somehow the mats drop at a higher rate than I can collect gold to craft them (and even some of the lesser mats are starting to disappear after I've been collecting them since May 15).
Ha. Bagstone.
I am good with this. but make the crafted items tradeable!! +1
This is a result of crafting prices and mats needed being unbalanced. I agree with you. It feels like now with the new craftable items i really dont get ahead in gold unless i find a 20+mil items while grinding.... There definitely needs to be some adjustments to crafting costs.
Yeah, I understand your point. But still, one of the biggest reasons behind BOA items is to sink gold. And if Demonic Essences droped more often, people would craft more. And that would result in a more efficient gold sink.