Lengthy read, but please do take the time to read:
Jay Wilson, I am directing this thread at you because you seem to severely dislike PvP for some reason, and yet you are the head of the Diablo 3 development team, and those 2 facts combined honestly chills me to my bones, thinking about what Diablo 3's PvP mode might turn out to be like -- terribly supported.
You've stated (on video if I might add) that you laugh in the face of those who value PvP in Diablo games. "Shut up PvP guy" is what you said. That honestly hurts, and I'm sure I share the same sentiments with a ton of other people.
So let me ask you: Have you been on Diablo 2 recently? Maybe even just 3 years ago, or yesterday? I'm guessing not, because you've been so busy with developing Diablo 3. But let me mention that the reason why Diablo 2 has survived until this day is due to PvP. Just pure PvP. That is the reason why people still purchase the Diablo Battle Chest at Best Buy for $40 a pop 10 years after release, when there are modern games like Portal 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the shelves. For Christ sakes, Diablo 2 is over 10 years old, and thousands upon thousands of people still play it religiously every single day. As you've even claimed yourself, people spend actual $$$ on D2 pixels via 3rd party sites. Even for those people who do not spend real $$$, you know what they do? They do countless Meph runs, Chaos runs, Baal runs, and other such runs just to find better items. Why do people do all of that still? Because farming the same bosses over and over is fun? Because people enjoy spending money on pixels to look cool? No. It's because people want to build their characters up and become the best at PvP.
You've really got to be out-of-touch with the Diablo 2 player base if you think that people still play that game just so they can kill Baal one more time. As harsh as that may sound, it's the truth. Your stats might say people spend countless hours in the Baal Throne Room or spend countless hours killing Mephisto, but what they are doing is farming for better gear so that they can use it in PvP. PvP is the ultimate endgame. And it is going to be the same way for D3. Simple as that.
With that said, I think I speak on behalf of the majority of potential Diablo 3 players when I say: We want more PvP features. More PvP features doesn't equate to "promoting e-sports". I know you are vehemently against balancing the game for the sake of e-sports, and that's okay. Diablo 3's PvP is meant to be casual anyway. But features like replays, spectator modes, 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, Last-man-standing, are all COOL features. They don't have to be linked to e-sports to be cool. They are just inherently awesome in any game, whether it is in an FPS or an RPG. They add depth to the PvP, and they make the PvP aspect of the game infinitely more enjoyable and replayable. Heck, you can even twist the new PvP features to benefit Blizzard financially. More features on PvP = more people who want to get better at PvP = more people spend money to buy gear on your RM AH. You get more profit, we get more features.
Relying on PvM alone to make people's interest for D3 last is just plain foolish. I understand that in an ideal world with unicorns and rainbows, the Diablo 3 team that you are heading would like everyone to be completely enamored with the main campaign and PvM aspect of D3 for eternity. But like clockwork, people will get bored and tired of the campaign after a certain number of play-throughs. If I learned anything from my history professor: Analysis of past events is the best tool you can have at your disposal to better prepare yourself for the future. In this case, Diablo 2 is what you should be looking at. Diablo 2 solved the staleness by having PvP as the endgame. Heck, if there were no hacks/mods to sour the Diablo 2 PvP experience right now, and if Diablo 3 weren't coming out, PvP alone would carry Diablo 2 for another 10 years.
So Jay Wilson, please I am begging you: don't skimp out on D3's PvP. It is immensely more important than you think it is. PvM is great, but PvP is greater.
Hopefully I didn't come off as sounding too childish or hostile, but I feel strongly about the potential neglect of D3's PvP mode(s) and features. People if you agree, bump and reply to this post. I want Jay Wilson, Bashiok, and the entire D3 development team to realize how big of a population of people actually care about the success of PvP in D3.
We need a ladder, and ratings, some people play the game only because of this, why is diablo trying to drive away and cut of some of their playerbase.
1. The smart guys will not farm. The smart guys will do arbitrage. (buy low sell high, buy-salvage-sell, buy-on-gold-AH sell on RMAH, buy-on-RMAH-sell-on-GAH-sell the gold back to $, etc, etc, etc)
It is the only sure and certain way to make money, but provided Blizzard won't allow automation like in WoW it will require huge amounts of time invested into something that cannot be actually called gaming. I immagine there will be groups of people doing this but all in all the more people doing it the less profitable it will be and the market will become efficient, i.e. the only way to make money off it is to farm.
2. Given that Blizzard can alter drop rates by changing a single number in a config file, it is foolish to think that farmers will be independant. They will more or less work for Blizzard, and provide Blizzard with the revenue they want. Even more, Blizzard can very easily alter the revenue of a farmer by altering drops and costs of crafted items as well as introducing or taking out of the game alternative ways for the players to obtain the items they are looking for, through artisans.
All in all I believe that if the system will be implemented correctly, in the long run the ones making money will be those that put in a lot of effort into farming. There will of course exist the occasional sucker that will buy an overpriced item (most likely at the start of the game, or expansion) but other than that money made will simply translate into time spent and not "talent" as Athene puts it.
Next, about the fact that as a gamer you can support yourself by playing the game, I believe it is a false dream and should be looked at very carefully if we dont want to fall into the trap of legitimizing a useless activity. Dont get me wrong, I believe e-sports has a place in the current world and the money it brings pays for the entertainment value of those watching the games. It creates thus something of value. But what kind of value does a guy in his teens bring, by farming drops in an online game ? The items can be created at a click of a button by the game developpers anyway, so the effort is pretty much worthless. Of course you might say that it offers somthing to the people not willing to spend their time getting the item, so they "hire" someone to do it themselves. This might be true, but if this is the care, you shouldnt call yourself a gamer, but errand-boy (at best) - and calling it this way, it becomes very apparent that flipping burgers at McD is quite comparable to this task. At least, the guy flipping burgers can hope for a promotion to manager some day.
Your understanding of Economics is similar to a 3 year old with a 4000 pieces puzzle.
Have you ever played with the stock market? I have for 3 years, I made some winnings, some losses, but most importantly I learned a lot of interesting things... People that play wall street, are generally a lot smarter then your average d3 gamer.
There will always be arbitrage options, in ever market, there is no such thing as a perfect market... Things always go to an equilibrium but there will always be discrepancies... Farming will never be a good money making tool, at least manual farming(botting will be extinct). What will be a good money making tool will be taking over the market by buying out certain items and reselling them for more... A tactic that got me and some of my friends ridiculously rich in WoW... I can believe all of you are so oblivious and are crying... D2 had MASSIVE holes that was driving people away like botting, maphacking, duping...
All of this is closed now. The way blizz is doing it is through storing the data on their servers... thus no offline gaming...
The negative impacts of this are soo minor compared to the postive aspects towards gaming as a whole and the d3 economy..
ALL OF YOU PEOPLE need to OPEN your mind and UNLOCK yourselves from this stupid IDEA that FARMERS WILL RUIN EVERYING and YOU CAN NOW BUY AND BE THE BEST...
Do you really think half the population is ready to spend 100's of dollars on fucking d3 items???
You are mad if you think this is true. The people that were going to use 3rd party sites are the ones who will be doing it, and that was always available in d2...
The benefits of the AH outweigh the faults 10tiemsfold..... People wont spend countless hours trying to make money playing diablo if it isn't actually viable and efficient way to pay their rent, they just wont... stop making the assumptions all these kids will be farming for hours cause they won't, they will get bored after a couple of hours... and go back to their normal job... Were not chinese here remember....
Seriously bunch of whiners. Make some real arguments instead of restating what the previous guy said and use your brain before you make an argument.
3
Lengthy read, but please do take the time to read:
Jay Wilson, I am directing this thread at you because you seem to severely dislike PvP for some reason, and yet you are the head of the Diablo 3 development team, and those 2 facts combined honestly chills me to my bones, thinking about what Diablo 3's PvP mode might turn out to be like -- terribly supported.
You've stated (on video if I might add) that you laugh in the face of those who value PvP in Diablo games. "Shut up PvP guy" is what you said. That honestly hurts, and I'm sure I share the same sentiments with a ton of other people.
So let me ask you: Have you been on Diablo 2 recently? Maybe even just 3 years ago, or yesterday? I'm guessing not, because you've been so busy with developing Diablo 3. But let me mention that the reason why Diablo 2 has survived until this day is due to PvP. Just pure PvP. That is the reason why people still purchase the Diablo Battle Chest at Best Buy for $40 a pop 10 years after release, when there are modern games like Portal 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the shelves. For Christ sakes, Diablo 2 is over 10 years old, and thousands upon thousands of people still play it religiously every single day. As you've even claimed yourself, people spend actual $$$ on D2 pixels via 3rd party sites. Even for those people who do not spend real $$$, you know what they do? They do countless Meph runs, Chaos runs, Baal runs, and other such runs just to find better items. Why do people do all of that still? Because farming the same bosses over and over is fun? Because people enjoy spending money on pixels to look cool? No. It's because people want to build their characters up and become the best at PvP.
You've really got to be out-of-touch with the Diablo 2 player base if you think that people still play that game just so they can kill Baal one more time. As harsh as that may sound, it's the truth. Your stats might say people spend countless hours in the Baal Throne Room or spend countless hours killing Mephisto, but what they are doing is farming for better gear so that they can use it in PvP. PvP is the ultimate endgame. And it is going to be the same way for D3. Simple as that.
With that said, I think I speak on behalf of the majority of potential Diablo 3 players when I say: We want more PvP features. More PvP features doesn't equate to "promoting e-sports". I know you are vehemently against balancing the game for the sake of e-sports, and that's okay. Diablo 3's PvP is meant to be casual anyway. But features like replays, spectator modes, 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, Last-man-standing, are all COOL features. They don't have to be linked to e-sports to be cool. They are just inherently awesome in any game, whether it is in an FPS or an RPG. They add depth to the PvP, and they make the PvP aspect of the game infinitely more enjoyable and replayable. Heck, you can even twist the new PvP features to benefit Blizzard financially. More features on PvP = more people who want to get better at PvP = more people spend money to buy gear on your RM AH. You get more profit, we get more features.
Relying on PvM alone to make people's interest for D3 last is just plain foolish. I understand that in an ideal world with unicorns and rainbows, the Diablo 3 team that you are heading would like everyone to be completely enamored with the main campaign and PvM aspect of D3 for eternity. But like clockwork, people will get bored and tired of the campaign after a certain number of play-throughs. If I learned anything from my history professor: Analysis of past events is the best tool you can have at your disposal to better prepare yourself for the future. In this case, Diablo 2 is what you should be looking at. Diablo 2 solved the staleness by having PvP as the endgame. Heck, if there were no hacks/mods to sour the Diablo 2 PvP experience right now, and if Diablo 3 weren't coming out, PvP alone would carry Diablo 2 for another 10 years.
So Jay Wilson, please I am begging you: don't skimp out on D3's PvP. It is immensely more important than you think it is. PvM is great, but PvP is greater.
Hopefully I didn't come off as sounding too childish or hostile, but I feel strongly about the potential neglect of D3's PvP mode(s) and features. People if you agree, bump and reply to this post. I want Jay Wilson, Bashiok, and the entire D3 development team to realize how big of a population of people actually care about the success of PvP in D3.
We need a ladder, and ratings, some people play the game only because of this, why is diablo trying to drive away and cut of some of their playerbase.
I made a poll
1
Your understanding of Economics is similar to a 3 year old with a 4000 pieces puzzle.
Have you ever played with the stock market? I have for 3 years, I made some winnings, some losses, but most importantly I learned a lot of interesting things... People that play wall street, are generally a lot smarter then your average d3 gamer.
There will always be arbitrage options, in ever market, there is no such thing as a perfect market... Things always go to an equilibrium but there will always be discrepancies... Farming will never be a good money making tool, at least manual farming(botting will be extinct). What will be a good money making tool will be taking over the market by buying out certain items and reselling them for more... A tactic that got me and some of my friends ridiculously rich in WoW... I can believe all of you are so oblivious and are crying... D2 had MASSIVE holes that was driving people away like botting, maphacking, duping...
All of this is closed now. The way blizz is doing it is through storing the data on their servers... thus no offline gaming...
The negative impacts of this are soo minor compared to the postive aspects towards gaming as a whole and the d3 economy..
ALL OF YOU PEOPLE need to OPEN your mind and UNLOCK yourselves from this stupid IDEA that FARMERS WILL RUIN EVERYING and YOU CAN NOW BUY AND BE THE BEST...
Do you really think half the population is ready to spend 100's of dollars on fucking d3 items???
You are mad if you think this is true. The people that were going to use 3rd party sites are the ones who will be doing it, and that was always available in d2...
The benefits of the AH outweigh the faults 10tiemsfold..... People wont spend countless hours trying to make money playing diablo if it isn't actually viable and efficient way to pay their rent, they just wont... stop making the assumptions all these kids will be farming for hours cause they won't, they will get bored after a couple of hours... and go back to their normal job... Were not chinese here remember....
Seriously bunch of whiners. Make some real arguments instead of restating what the previous guy said and use your brain before you make an argument.