Quote from Zakaz
The RMAH likely is part of their design philosophy, but only insomuch as the GAH is: the expectation that players will trade quality items they cannot use for ones they can use. While the old Diablo 2 system of item to item trades is effectively eliminated, the new process is actually much better in terms of actual value trades (you get "exact" market value for your item in a universal currency that can then be used to purchase anything you want). The only problem with this is that it greatly accelerates item acquisition, thus diminishing overall longevity (some like this, others don't - it really depends on how much of your life you wish to spend grinding for gear).
I really don't think the RMAH is some jackpot Blizzard is banking on for their bonuses at the end of the year. Is it profitable? Most likely, I don't deny that. But profitable and lucrative are different things here. For most intents and purposes, you make something profitable at a minimum for future expenditures (systems upgrades, employee raises, development, etc). While I'm not naive enough to think they're sitting at that minimum, I'm also hard-pressed to believe they're going out of their way to drive players to the RMAH with changes to loot or game mechanics in an effort to raise those profits. Not only is that incredibly difficult to do, it's also bordering on illegal (they have enough legal issues with the RMAH as it is).
The RMAH is a great way for Blizzard to secure funds to excuse prolonged expenditures toward this game for many years into the future. The players, even the ones whom don't use the RMAH, even the ones whom hate the RMAH, stand to benefit from Blizzards ability to put man hours into D3 without it becoming a burden to their profit margin.
This is of course assuming that D3 is a popular game 5-10 years from now, as many of us hope it will be.
As to legal issues concerning the RMAH; I trust that Blizzard has at their disposal a team of top-shelf lawyers whom combed through the legal ins-n-outs of the proposition well ahead of time to make sure that everything was square.
Is there any manipulation on Blizzards part to program the game in a manner intended to drive people to the RMAH?
This question is absurd. People are of free will....they can choose to participate, they can choose to decline participation. So, what if a player feels they cannot enjoy the game or otherwise succeed without using the RMAH? Will they be inclined to use the RMAH because Blizzard made the game too hard by design? Sure, I'm sure some/many will. But....this entity existed in Diablo 2 as well, only it wasn't the software company getting a cut. It was some spamming asshole named Mike or Zheng Min Quan that sit in their dark bedroom monitoring 20 computers that are running bots (two practices that hurt the player). People use their wallets in every game to buy themselves ahead.
1
I think you misunderstand what I've suggested.
This "slider" is basically your idea but instead of on/off, you basically set the level where it kicks in.
If you set the slider to "Blue" it would mean that you never see White or Grey items. You can't click on them, you don't even see them drop. If you set it to "Green/Orange" it would mean that you never see Yellow, Blue, White, or Grey items.
I mean it's your idea, but instead of just an on/off option you are in complete control of the actual threshold. That's a good thing right?
EDIT
Hell, you could even add an on/off checkbox for Crafting Materials too so that the user has even tighter control of the pile of dogshit they see on the ground.
4
I actually wanted to point out that part of the "AH is mandatory" mentality was a direct result of the "Act 2 wall."
The initial Inferno design, more or less, mandated the use of the AH. It was borderline impossible to move into Act 2 with self-found items in Act 1. I know 90% of the purchasing I did on the AH was prior to the Inferno revamps. With the Monster Power system it's so much easier to take it at my own pace and not use the AH for purchases (I still use it for sales of "extra" gear to be able to afford crafting... gems so expensive).
Had we had the Monster Power "progression" system from launch instead of the Act-by-Act progression system I am willing to bet that more people would have been able to play without the AH and it wouldn't care that it exists.
There are so many issues with the game that can be traced back, directly, to the initial Inferno design. The pervasiveness of the AH is one of those because, frankly, if that Act 2 wall never existed a lot of people would have been content to take the game at thier own pace. It did, though, and it made a LOT of people realize that farming Act 1 for months and months and months and MONTHS and still being unable to move into Act 2 was just not going to cut it.
After the monster density changes, I really think that Monster Power is exactly what this game needed for ultimate difficulty. As Maka has said in other threads, and I fully agree with him (again, Maka, don't have a heart attack!)... you can't put Inferno there and then put the best gear in the game there and then say "no, it's really only for 2% of the players." What you can do, however, is allow people to ratchet up the difficulty and allow them to get more drops.
The idea of a completely-exclusive playground for the uber-hardcore is completely put-offish. Allowing everyone to partake in some manner, but giving people extra rewards for ratcheting up the difficulty of the monsters, is much more in-line with the Diablo series. Difficulty and hardcore-ness have never been required to enjoy the game or participate in "endgame." It's always been accessible and fun for people whether they have 1 hour to play or 10 hours to play. The initial Inferno completely violated that and you can bet your ass that's why it was scrapped so quickly.
The casuals ultimately just wanted a CHANCE at "endgame." There was not a shred of CHANCE with the initial Inferno. Act 1 was do-able by almost everyone, but the rewards for doing it were woefully inadequate and really didn't allow you to move into Act 2. So you basically had all iLvl 62 & 63 items locked away from the casuals.
Monster Power comes along and everyone has a CHANCE, just the hardcore people have a lot better chance. Casuals can live with that. Being completely locked out, though, is not something most people really want to deal with. It's very un-Diablo.
2
Relying on others to tell you what is/isn't fun without ever experiencing it firsthand is stupid. There are things the community does agree on - monster density is one of them. But just harping at those things is old. In order to give meaningful feedback on these things you really have to understand the WHY.
We all tend to agree that itemization needs to be touched somehow. My understanding on the subject is different than others because my experiences have drawn me to my own conclusions. So while Maffia (just picking the guy above me here) and I may both think that itemization "needs to be fixed" our in-game ventures may very well lead us to different solutions.
So I'd very much encourage you to have first-hand experience before providing solutions. Without that experience you just can't have the requisite understanding of the problems to provide quality solutions, and it shows. The solutions you've suggested here are pretty... well they're just not good. Particularly the Quests, Endgame, Monsters, and Environment ideas are just... bad. This is Diablo 3, not The Legend of Zelda, but those solutions seem to assume the opposite.
You really should invest some actual time in the game. I guarantee you'll come back with much better solutions that actually address real problems.
1
At least I got a quote for my signature out of this stupid thread.
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No. Why would you? Without the "promise" in writing that they'd re-paint your car why would you assume he's not just trying to sell you a car?
Caveat emptor. Seriously, it's cliche as fuck, but if you're not watching your own ass as a consumer then who will? You have to be your #1 advocate. If you're going to just believe that everyone is honest, that the Honda dealership is there for your charity, etc. then you're going to end up getting screwed over again and again.
When you bought D3 for $60, no matter what Blizzard said they'd have LIKED to add in the future, you should be very aware that your money purchased the current game and any updates they choose to serve you with and nothing more. It doesn't entitle you to updates that you feel you should get. It doesn't entitle you to things that Blizzard said they might want to add - although they obviously will try to add things they think are beneficial. That's just how it works.
Victim culture is cool though. It's never your own fault for making a bad decision.
3
You can also not go to the AH or RMAH... you know that right? In D2 you could also swipe the credit card to get a bunch of great gear... you know that right? No one felt the "need" to do that in D2 because you actually could beat the game completely naked... you know that right? The increased difficulty in D3 was something the fans asked for... you know that right?
Your total ignorance has resurrected this thread and turned it into a shitstorm of bad grammar, improper punctuation (colons are not commas) and horrendous logic. I haven't touched the AH in months. Before that I used it. It's obviously my choice. To insinuate that you are unable to make the very same choice shows a flaw with YOURSELF and not necessarily with the game.
Do you do better if you use the AH? Of course. That's not even being questioned. Even if you yanked out the AH, you'd still do better by trading. That is also very obvious. PoE has no AH and many people feel that finding their own items is a fruitless waste of time. So you simply can't blame it on the AH because the SAME thing happened in a game that has no AH. The difference? People in PoE are even more frustrated because sitting in trade chat for hours trying to buy a spell gem that you haven't got to drop is even more infuriating than going to the AH.
Then why shouldn't we attempt to do that? Why shouldn't everyone be on-board with a solution that is obviously the best possible solution for everyone involved? Why should the immediate thought be "REMOVE THE AH!" when, as I said above, a current game that has no AH still exhibits the very same issues that D3 has? If it can happen in a no-AH environment then the AH can't be the crux of the problem.
Hell, if you read the PoE forums there are a lot of people who are advocating removing trading from the game. Would you be OK with that? If we remove the AH from D3 that we also remove trading? All items and currency become completely untradeable except to your other toons via the stash. Because, if we are to learn *anything* from PoE the issue simply isn't the efficiency of the AH, it's the fact that the drop rates suck so badly that even a horrendously inefficient manner of item exchange (trade chat) is still more desireable.
So that makes me believe the items themselves, and the chances to actually get a decent one, are what encompass 90%+ of the problem. But I know it's much easier for people to just frame it as an "AUCTION HOUSE RAPED GRANNY" disucssion. I mean, just look at rodrigj. He's not exactly the best advocate for "remove the AH" discussion. He makes everyone else who believes that look like a raving lunatic who has absolutely no shred of self control at all.
1
I think that most people who give feedback (myself included) would find that their feedback is better-received if it was put together in a manner that more intimately embraced a degree of drafting, proofreading, editing, and revising. I know some of my favorite suggestions were such simply because of how they were presented - the Talisman thing and the revamped "home screen" thread as direct examples.
For the next few months (until we have something more-concrete about itemization changes) we'll all be somewhat on pins and needles. It's certainly one of the most important patches that D3 will see and I know we all want them to get it right. That doesn't help us, the players, with our anxiety in the meantime, though!
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Because, what made D2 great was the fact that they didn't just give us D1 (version 2.0). D2 took a lot of that amazing ARPG hack-and-slash base and innovated on it.
D1 didn't have "talent trees" - it had tomes and all spells were available to all classes.
D1 didn't have a Horadric Cube, or any of the things associated with it.
D1 didn't have rare or set items.
D1 had a very limited set of legendaries of which most (all?) were available through quests and not as drops.
D1 didn't have magic find.
D1 didn't have followers.
D1 didn't have sockets, runewords, jewels, or gems.
D1 didn't have charms.
D1 didn't have class-specific items.
D1 didn't have acts - it simply had a change in the tileset and enemies every 4 "floors."
D1 didn't have waypoints.
Do I need to go on?
D1 was a truly awesome and groundbreaking game. Why did D2 change anything? Why isn't D3 simply D1 version 3? Why ever change anything?
The best thing about D2 was that it was a sequel, but that it tried different things. Some of those things didn't work. Some of those things were wildly successful. The best game series have always had that approach - just take Final Fantasy as a prime example. Each game has similarities but each game has key differences. The fact that FF8 is not just FF7 part 2 makes it compelling even if FF8 is "not as good" because most players just aren't interested in the same game rehashed over and over and over again.
It's much more productive to talk about what features of D3 you'd like iterated on rather than say "just do everything D2 did" - the second is just stupid, no offense meant to you personally. It's just a very idiotic way to approach a problem. It stifles innovation and creativity if designers aren't free and willing to experiment. As consumers we have to understand that every change may not be good, but that the process of making those changes opens up our world to better and better products.
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He was talking about the dozens of people who post their shitty videos here on a daily basis with the hopes of BECOMING the "next Kripparian."
You don't have to look too far around here to find streams where people are doing some kind of giveaway to attract people. That's what Ruksak was talking about and it was pretty obvious he wasn't talking about Kripp because we all know Kripp doesn't do giveaways.
He was referring to how Kripp's "celebrity status" has created, literally, hundreds of people who are trying to copycat his success. He wasn't really knocking Kripp at all with that statement - if anything he was kinda referring to him as "the original" in that respect.
That and he was pointing out that, most of the time, bad publicity is better than no publicity and that Kripp ultimately would rather people hating on him than people completely forgetting about him. I don't think there is anything all too objectionable about that?
Sometimes meanings get lost in text. I think that's what this is a case of?
EDIT
I just backed out to the General Discussion screen and... one of the top 10 posts was exactly what Ruksak was referring to.