DiabloFans

Quote from Catalept

The 1-70 journey with quests and cutscenes and unlocking skills and all that stuff we consider to be a brief, annoying preamble is the main game for millions of people. For the rest of us, there's still very much a situation where your longevity is my dull grind. Sure, you could get 'longevity' from D3 by reducing droprates and XP by a factor ten, making it a year-long project to get even a single character geared... but longevity shouldn't be the aim, it should be a side-effect.

Thank you so fucking much. I love you dearly.

It makes me violently angry when people talk about "longevity" as if it's something that can, and should, be the #1 priority of the developers. Just reduce the drop rates so that everyone has to play 2,000 hours before they get good stuff. No! Don't do that! Make me keep playing because it's fun, not because you've created a Sisyphean task for me to complete.

ITT: Idiot who refuses to supply evidence not understanding the irony of everyone else debunking his theories with the same inside-out logic.

For the record, I know for a fact that Jesus was actually a Korean zombie who had a foot fetish and liked to be cuckolded while listening to Hootie and the Blowfish CDs because Steve Jobs went back in time to invent the CD player for our Lord and Savior. Furthermore, his mother, Mary, was actually a transgendered Puerto Rican rococo dancer whose stage name was Slutty Miguel whose favorite food was sushi and was also an avid fan of the WNBA. Jesus also had a half-brother from a legal adoption his father and gay life-partner (Stephen) had before Joseph realized he liked unshaven women more than oily men. His brother, 34 years his elder, and in fact older than both his parents, was named Evgeni and he liked to play Nintendo but never really understood why the fuck Battletoads had to be SO FUCKING HARD.

Don't ask me for proof. Just believe. Inhale deeply and believe.

/troll off

Quote from UndeadProtoss

Every spell is over the top, you don't have this unified sense of progression like you had in Diablo 2. Where you would start off with a weak skill like ice bolt and then over the course of your leveling process attain stronger skills that increased in effectiveness and became more visually potent as you put more skill points into them (think how you got more charged bolts the more points you put in).

I disagree completely.

Why in the world would you want to slog through garbage spells that are shitty-on-purpose so that you can appreciate the good ones? That's masochistic and it also means that stuff like icebolt weren't anything more than filler spells until you got to X level when you unlock <spell that's better in every circumstance>.

I don't want items that suck. I don't want skills that suck. I don't want the philosophy behind upgrading my character to be "hey, this item doesn't suck, and you've spend 30 levels getting nothing but things that do suck... so isn't that great?" We already have that with legendaries and it SUCKS. No one gives two shits about an Angel Hair Braid. They're speedbumps. They're fodder for enchanting and crafting. They are, by design, exactly the things that you say make character progression awesome in ARPGs.... yet the community absolutely hates them.

Quote from Catalept

D3 already has too many tightly coupled systems. Bounties -> Rifts -> GRifts or GTFO. That's bad enough, as it disregards anyone who just wants to do bounties (that aren't Act I Normal), just wants to do Rifts, or (God forbid) actually prefers Story Mode (assuming 99% of Story Mode fans haven't already quit playing by now). True player freedom requires decoupled game options with appropriate reward structures.

The problem isn't with your train of thought, which is absolutely perfect. It lies with the attitude of the community. Ever since the BoA debate the general philosophy in "discussions" has amounted to "my way is the RIGHT way to play the game." I mean Josh basically green-lit that mentality by defining trading as "wrong" or "not fun" and then following that up with "Rifts are supposed to be the best farming spot" shortly into RoS.

By defining a correct way to play, a best area to farm, and being implicitly OK with limiting options he rubber-stamped the notion that going forward it's OK to have a best way to play and it's OK with everything else being inferior-by-design. That's why you keep hearing people asking for "incentives" to play seasons or "incentives" to do achievements. Most players don't need "incentives" to play hardcore, or ladders, or do achievements. We either play those modes or do those things because we like them.... or we ignore them.

The whole "incentive" bit is basically players keying in on Josh's philosophy that there should be one "best" way to play and everything else should languish in its wake and, more or less, begging for his blessing that their chosen playstyle will be what he picks as the #1 super excellent mega farming place. I mean there was a thread a few weeks ago with some guy saying that paragon LEVELS should roll over to standard from ladder... levels, not XP. He had a few other suggestions, but it was clear that he didn't want fairness, he just wanted ladders to be declared the "right" way to play and everyone else to get a big middle finger.

Unfortunately, this mentality is pervasive in the community right now because the developers clearly don't have the know-how, or maybe just the guts, to stop that train in its tracks.

Quote from oldschool_2o4f

Yeah, and I get the train of thought BUT... time, skill and effort SHOULD be rewarded....which goes totally against the almighty RNG, I know, but still...

Achievements do reward you. Achievement points are a point of ePeen for some and banner rewards are things that give you a degree of exclusivity without altering character power.

Every "reward" in the game doesn't have to make you crit harder. It's a shame that people can't do things because they find them fun. If it doesn't have +5 damage attached to it then it's garbage.

If you're not really interested in ePeen or cosmetic rewards then achievements, simply, aren't for you. And that's OK. Not everything has to be for everyone. The sooner the playerbase realizes and accepts this the sooner we get past this shit where everyone thinks that everything should be rewarded with character power and we can move away from this narcissistic "I should be rewarded for playing the game this way" mentality.

We should all be rewarded, relatively equally, for playing the game. Whether we have to restart on death, restart every X months, or never restart. Whether we're farming X, Y, or Z. Whether we're hunting achievements or not. If you want achievements to be "more rewarding" then the problem is that most achievements cannot be done in a rift... and since rifts are "the best way to play" that means that most achievements involve playing the game the "shitty" way.

Quote from Tinyhell

The problem is, the flavor content unlocked by achievements is by and large ignored by the player base. Who really cares what your banner looks like? That's why sponkey21 doesn't see any additional content, because he doesn't consider the banner stuff to be content.

And there's a good argument to be made that banners are dumb.

However, they much closer fall in line with the idea of achievements being "something to do" without being "mandatory to max your character" than letting people "unlock content" and get bonuses that directly effect character power.

The real question is: Given that banners aren't exactly exciting what would you propose to make achievements "rewarding" without amplifying character power? WoW has pets/mounts which seem to work very well in the scope of that game. What could D3 have?

Quote from Taargkrizzt

Still, for whatever reason I spend another 4 hours today trying to spawn Tollifers Last Stand - go figure ..

Tollifer can go fuck himself

Quote from Bagstone

To all the other points... I disagree. Increase the drop rates everywhere outside of rifts? This was the case when RoS launched, and the reason why rifts have higher drop rates is because otherwise no one would do rifts. If you'd increase the drop rates outside of rifts, everyone would go back to chest farming, or farming specific spots like Malthael (which many people still do, see paragon leveling). The drop rates were not chosen arbitrarily but changed in many many many iterations to the way they are now because that's the sweet spot.

No offense, but if you think the drop rates outside of rifts are currently the "sweet spot" then either you are blessed with not having to leave rifts very frequently or you and Josh are best buddies and go on romantic picnics and whisper sweet nothings to each other while sipping chardonnay in the mid-day sun.

The issue is that you have been brainwashed to believe that rifts should be THE ENDGAME. Imagine if you did some bounties... not because it was the only way to get access to rifts, but because you wanted to do bounties because they were fun and rewarding in their own right! Then, imagine that instead of immediately turning around and using those fragments, maybe you decided to play Campaign Mode. The horror! THE HORROR! I don't know why you, or anyone else, feels that the endgame must exist in only one fashion:

1) Unlock Adventure Mode
2) Do bounties for fragments or cache-only item
3) Do rifts, only going back to 2) if you run out of fragments

I have a feeling that you play a lot more co-op than solo if you think that the current situation is a "sweet spot" because, no offense, only someone who isn't forced to do as many bounties for fragments would have that opinion. I've yet to meet someone who predominantly plays solo who says "Man, I can't wait to do more bounties!" Usually it's more of a sarcastic "I'm so happy I ran out of fragments so that I can do bounties! I love getting 25% of the legendary drops so that I can have the pleasure of using them to temporarily get access to the better drop rates!" or "I'm completely fed up with Act 1 bounties!"

I simply envision a game where things like Ubers aren't something you do until you get a specific item and then never want to touch them again. I envision a game where people say "I'm tiring of rifts, so I'm just going to go farm random shit in Adventure Mode and then play some Campaign Mode"... and not have to pay for trying to break up the monotony by suffering through worse drop rates. I envision a game where the endgame isn't so completely procedural. The more choices we have, the better.

I mean there's something horribly wrong about the overarching design when people are routinely questioning why Campaign Mode even exists. I get that Josh wanted us to play with his new toys. I long said that we needed free travel between all waypoints in all acts, and the game is better for having it. But I really don't think that most players needed Campaign Mode to be completely neutered in order to try out Adventure Mode. Even if they had almost exactly the same loot/hr, most people would probably play Adventure Mode because it feels more like what we know Diablo to be.

I mean, currently, you don't even have to unlock Adventure Mode in seasons. Could we have any more clear of an indication that Campaign Mode should simply be removed? But why? Why shouldn't it be something we can enjoy rather than having this "everyone plays exactly the same at all times" philosophy forced down our throats?

Quote from oldschool_2o4f

1) How about reducing the droprate in rifts to what it is everywhere else?

What the drop rate actually is isn't really important. It should simply be equal. So long as rifts have singnificantly higher chance to drop legendaries there is going to be this fundamentally-backwards meta game of whereby everyone tries to minimize the amount of time they spend doing anything but rifts. Why have so much content and not use it? The goal of my suggestion wasn't to make loot fall from the sky, it was simply to make Bounties feel like something fun to do instead of a punishment for running out of fragments. I think we all should be able to agree on that, yes?

If evening out the drop rates between Rifts and non-Rift activities resulted in too much loot falling from the sky then, certainly, the overall rate should be adjusted accordingly.

Quote from oldschool_2o4f

3) All elites possibly drop infernal bits, seriously?

Again, my vision here was that farming Keywardens would remain the best way to craft a Hellfire Ring/Amulet if that is your primary objective. But, it should not be the ONLY way to achieve that goal. It's about parallel objectives. There are fewer balance issues if X isn't the *sole* way to acquire Y. Would it really be a problem if rift elites had a 1 in 500 chance to drop one of the four possible keys? I mean that's what I'm thinking here. It would hardly be the BEST way to acquire a ring/amulet. That's not what I'm aiming for.

Quote from oldschool_2o4f

4) Increase blood shards in bounties? Why have rifts?

Aside from fragments, why have bounties currently? Because most rifts have much better elite density? Because of the other buffs to rifts that I proposed? If we're eliminating split farming, which I really think the majority of the intelligent Diablo fans would agree is a good thing, then you have to buff the rewards for bounties somehow.

Maybe the ratio of blood shards from bounties to blood shards from rifts (per hour) isn't that far off and, in this case, this step is already taken. To me it feels off, which is why I've suggested it.

Quote from oldschool_2o4f

5) Increase cache legendary drops? While I can sympathize that the damn things seemingly NEVER drop, I don't want the keys to the city in 20 minutes.

I also do not want the keys to the city in 20 minutes.

This suggestion comes solely from the fact that for most players, unless you play in a 4p group ALL THE TIME, the number of fragments you need per rift is going down significantly come 2.1. This means the average person will need to farm fewer bounties to do the same number of rifts. As it stands I'm averaging roughly one RoRG per ~400 A1 bounties, so per ~80 sets of A1 bounties. I have yet to acquire a RoRG that one would consider "good" (ie: one with crit or crit damage).

Given that I'll be needing to do fewer bounties to maintain my rifting in 2.1, it would seem logical that some level of buff is in order.

Quote from oldschool_2o4f

Seriously, if you adopt what you propose then the whole games essentially the same thing. There's nothing really different anywhere and it gets really boring really quick. This is NOT what I want, and given a A or B I'll choose what I have now.

As it stands the only thing we do are rifts. What I'm trying to alleviate is the massive boredom and burnout from that. Most of my friends gave up on D3 already. Most of my friends gave up on RoS within 4-6 weeks because doing rifts ad infinatum (or doing bounties ad infinatum for a RoRG) just isn't fun. I'm to the point where I'd like to play through story mode just for a break, but I can't, because my choice is "have some variety in what I do" or "get appropriate amounts of loot."

In a game that's about loot, if you have options that yield less loot, they're almost always going to be spurned. Once someone has a "perfect" Hellfire Amulet the whole Ubers system is thrown away to them. Why? Because it's not well-integrated into the game we play. It's a wonky stand-alone system that encourages you to get what you need and then never touch it again. The first step to fixing that is to make it LESS ISOLATED. Somehow integrate it into regular gameplay.

It's not about welfare. It's not about getting the keys to the city in 20 minutes. It's about a more-comprehensive approach to what ultimately is a boring chore. Farming in 1.0.7+ actually was more enjoyable for me than farming in RoS+. I've burnt out on farming way faster because Rifts are about as enjoyable as Alkaizer runs. They're astonishingly repetitive, yet they're the only "right" way to play.

We need to break the stranglehold that rifts have on the game, while keeping them relevant and worthwhile. I very much believe that what I've suggested does precisely that.

The game already is boring for the reasons you're afraid my suggestions would bring about. I mean one of the major features of 2.1 is Greater Rifts. Which, pragmatically, are the same fucking thing as Rifts. They managed to implement a new feature that's the same damned thing we've already been doing for months. At least with my suggestions it would hopefully open up open world farming and Ubers to more use and would allow people to only go into Greater Rifts if they want to test their gear/build. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, really. Why should we have two versions of rifts that are both mandatory for character progression? So that people get fed up twice as fast?

Problem:
Currently, for drops, there is one right way to farm: Nephalem Rifts. They provide the most blood shards and they have a far higher drop rate on legendaries than Campaign Mode or anything else in Adventure Mode. This means that time spent doing anything other than Nephalem Rifts needs to be minimized in order to maximize your chances for items. This is a bad meta game, but one that's very easily fixed.

Solution:
1. Apply the same drop rates from Nephalem Rifts to the entire game, both Campaign and Adventure Modes.

2. Squash split-farming bounties.

3. Allow Legendary Gems to be upgraded in Nephalem Rifts and not just Greater Rifts (keep it commensurate with difficulty). Also give all elites in Nephalem Rifts a chance to drop Infernal Machine keys.

4. Increase the blood shards from Bounties to be roughly equal to that of those found in Nephalem Rifts on a per-hour basis.

5. Due to the reduced cost for entering Rifts, particularly for solo play, and the inability to split farm bounties, increase the chance for cache-specific legendaries by a generous amount.

These five rather simple changes would allow people to farm as they like instead of on a schedule. It would allow people who aren't totally into Greater Rifts to treat them as a proving ground instead of the only path to upgrade their Legendary Gems. Greater Rifts would, likely, still be better at upgrading the gems, but it wouldn't be the only way to do it, and that's a good thing. Bounties would feel a lot more rewarding. As it is, on T4, I still can do a full act's worth of bounties, and regularly see zero legendaries, including the cache. This feels underwhelming and bounties should be much more fun. If they nix split farming then maybe, just maybe, they can do other things to make bounties feel more enjoyable.

Quote from ruksak

We wanted Cows and we got "Fuck those losers". Wilson might as well Tweeted that to us, the players, directly.

I think I've isolated the problem.

You've taken this stuff far too personally. Neither Jay, nor Josh, nor Rob, nor anyone at Blizzard is carrying out some covert war against your fragile sensibilities.

You used to rally against people who wanted D2.5 and now you've become one of the pitchfork-carrying idiots who, for whatever asinine nostalgic reasons, think that nothing should change.

I'm sure you remember that in D1 the "sorceress" was actually called the "wizard" and the "barbarian" was the "warrior" and the "amazon" was the "rogue." Franchises change. If you can't deal with that then I'm not sure what to tell you other than this is 2014, not 1999. It's 15 years later. Do you also get upset that your phone has different features with potentially-different names (despite sometimes-similar functions) than your land line did 20 years ago?

Did you rage against the phone company because "voicemail" was functionally very similar to an "answering machine" and how they're just trying to one-up 1960s technology with their new naming schemes and desire to move forward? I mean, seriously, you are so far asea that you don't even know how far asea you've drifted.

No sane person sits around ranting about how "wizard" is an attempt by Jay Wilson to one-up Dave Brevik because of how ultra-paranoid it is. It makes the black helicopter stuff look rational. Do you honestly think Jay Wilson's sole directive was to design a game for fans of the Diablo series whose primary objective was to sully the name of developers past? I mean just think about it for a second. Think about how completely-unhinged that sounds. Think about how completely-schizophrenic you sound whining about the book of cain. In the absence of Cain himself, what other thing in Sanctuary could possibly be used to identify loads of magical items? A book of his writings? Nah. THAT IS CLEARLY JAY WILSON TRYING TO POOP IN DAVE BREVIK'S TUBA. Clearly.

EDIT
As far as Cain's actual death, there have been millions of games/films/plays/books where a loveable, endearing, character has died at some point. Final Fantasy 7 comes to mind. Aerieth had a very untimely demise which on a personal level caught me horribly off-guard. The Walking Dead has killed off Dale and Hershel, both were very-loved characters. I'm sure it pissed off fans, I know Hershel's death particularly angered me, but it's completely irrational to try to portray any of that as some kind of coup d'etat.

In order to have a compelling story loved characters MUST be at-risk. Would now be an appropriate time to mention Game of Thrones? Cain dying may or may not have been a good idea, but killing off a loved character is NOTHING NEW TO STORYTELLING. How you can interpret an age-old mechanic of literature as some kind of nose-thumbing is just beyond me. Was J.K. Rowling trying to piss off Harry Potter fans by killing off Dumbledore? Fuck no. But Dumbledore's death was so good because it was controversial, shocking, and because most people fell into the "Dumbledore couldn't possibly die" trap.

EDIT 2
I used to watch Boy Meets World religiously on TGIF when I was young. Recently I watched Girl Meets World because Boy Meets World was a nostalgic thing for me. Girl Meets World disappointed me. For me it fell way short of Boy Meets World. But the reality is that Girl Meets World is developed by different people at a different point in history (the second episode was somewhat about cell phones... whereas no one had cell phones when Boy Meets World was filmed). It's naive of me to think that Girl Meets World wouldn't be written and filmed with 2014 in mind and not 1996.

There isn't anything criminal about that, there isn't any conspiracy to piss me off by the producers. It's just how things work. The show is good for what it is, but it's not good for a 30-year-old guy who expects Boy Meets World with a female lead. If that's the attitude you go in with, you end up disappointed. Hence my disappointment. If you go in expecting it to be a show where the stars of Boy Meets World are now parents and their daughter is going through coming-of-age stuff with similar themes (focus on friends and family, importance of school, etc.), some of which may happen to be similar to that of her parents.... well then you'll get what you're bargaining for.

This was expected. The fact that the new legendaries are tied to the ladder system exclusively, implied that players opposed to the idea of playing seasons would be left in the dirt. By ensuring that the new items are "less desirable", these players can now contently continue to play normal mode.

The ladders are for people who enjoy a fresh start and (somehow) play competitively. I for one love the idea of starting over. I don't think the new legendaries should be the main incentive for people to play seasons, and Blizzard seems to agree on that point.

Quote from ruksak

Examples;

1) It's not Dueling, it's "brawling".

2) Instead of interacting with Cain throughout the endgame, you interact with a desk. (ID'ing)

3) They're not "Uniques", they're "Legendaries".

4) There is no Cow Level, it's Whimseyshire. No wait, it's Cow Rift.....or whatever....fuck you.

5) They're not "Ladders", they're "Seasons".

1) In Diablo 2, the game didn't use the term "dueling", the players did. And to me, it is silly to use this term for both Diablo 3 and 2, as "dueling" means two people fighting while in both games more than two players can fight each other at the same time. So not only the makers of Diablo 3 had the right to give it whatever name they could (as the pvp mechanic wasn't named before), they choose a suitable name as well.

2) Cain was already old in Diablo 1, and between Diablo 1 and 3, more than 20 years passed. He is a mortal being. He would die from old age if he wasn't murdered, so people should get over his death. Yes, it was cheesy; but it was much better than seeing him in his bed, dying from old age.

About the desk part, I hope you do remember that we had nothing at the start of Diablo 3. The Book of Cain is the developers' answer to those asking for an ID all feature; and not only it acknowledges Cain's work in the old games, it also makes sense: The Book of Cain contains the vast knowledge of Deckard Cain, so it might contain information about many magical items or artifacts. So when you find a magical item, you search through it's pages to see if there is something that resembles that item. Then you find it, it's name and it's properties. More logical than using another NPC with a great knowledge which would make you ask yourself "How many of these guys there are?"

4) I really don't understand what is the problem here. The Cow Level in Diablo 2 was making fun of players thinking there is one existed in Diablo 1. Whimsyshire in Diablo 3 is making fun of players thinking Diablo 3 would be colourful as teletubbies. Both is a joke to people with tinfoil hats. But if your question here is "Why didn't they made a cow level like in Diablo 2 in Diablo 3?", why should they? Whimsyshire covers the "joke" part pretty well, what would making a similar level with cows in it would achieve?

5) Did you know that the "ladders" in Diablo 2 are actually leaderboards, and the period is called "Season" or "Ladder Season"? (source: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/basics/charactertypes.shtml) I didn't until now, so I should thank you for this.

Shaggy made a very good answer for point 3, and I have nothing to add that.

Quote from veicht »

You missed one of the biggest ones so here I am registering for an account after being a lurker forever.... crusader.

Ya... D2 had paladins .... so lets try and make a lore 1 up with CRUSADER!!

You know, before Diablo 2, we didn't have paladins either; so by your logic, Blizzard must have pulled that out of ther butts, right? Also, amazon is just a rogue ripoff, right?

The makers of Diablo 2 never gave us reasons why a barbarian, a sorceror, a paladin, a necromancer and an amazon team up to fight Diablo, but we accepted it. Even though we had no background or any knowledge about them, we loved them. And here we are, there can't be crusader because there is already a paladin, even though the makers of Diablo 3 showed us a good background and the reason why we see a crusader in Diablo 3. I just can't understand this.

I am so, so glad that Blizzard decided to actually make a new game and release it as Diablo 3, rather than listening to the fans who clearly wanted them to release a patch 1.14 for Diablo 2 and charge us sixty bucks for it.

Quote from helpme123

If this is, then I am greatly disappointed in the Blizzard team. There is really no point doing season.

Please tell me this is not just it.

Don't you think the fact that the only reason you would play seasons is for exclusive loot means that seasons are a failure to begin with?

So I decided to do some experiments to see exactly what gems were available to be upgraded by Urshi at the end of the rift. Shuffled gems around my account and got the following results:

The following gems were offered to me as options:

• In my inventory
• Socketed in an item I was wearing
• In my stash
• Socketed in an item in my stash

The following gems were not offered to me as options:

• Socketed in an item my merc was wearing
• Socketed in an item another character was wearing
• Socketed in an item another character's merc was wearing
• On the floor in the rift next to Urshi (figured it was worth a try)

Also, for greater rift level 17, the upgrade chance it 45%. I was successful and got a single rank upgrade.

Quote from shaggy

You can upgrade gems socketed in your gear. You can upgrade gems in your stash.

Can you upgrade gems socketed in other characters gear?

And can you upgrade gems socketed in gear in your stash?

As has been stated - the higher the rift level, the greater your chance of successfully upgrading it, and the greater the chance of it gaining more than one level. Think of it as the greater rifts themselves - if you're capable of doing lvl 25-30 greater rifts, then you'll jump from a lvl 1 rift to a lvl 8-10 rift just due to insane clear time. Likewise, if you try to upgrade a lvl 1 gem in a lvl 25 rift, then it'll have a big chance of jumping up multiple levels at once.

It's funny because I'm dealing with a company right now that moves glacially. Meaning, unlike some companies that just make HUGE sweeping changes from one end of the spectrum to the other, they are making changes so finite that you have to really pay attention to even know there is a change.

It's already been said probably 50K times. The in game trade is insulting. It is highly exploitable and has been for over TEN years. I don't now whether they are too lazy or too uncaring or too incompetent to fix that. I'd like to think they aren't too incompetent.

The AH was supposed to "fix" that; however there is (still) an official trade forum on the official forums.. even though the *only* things you can trade are blue and yellow items that have not been enchanted or crafted at the blacksmith. The AH itself was bugged, exploited, and just a source of problems ... many of which were never addressed. So, they just threw in the towel, didn't do much with itemization, end game, or even include promised/advertised features (pvp areanas..), and instead just decided to remove the auction house. And then make all noteworthy gear bound to your account ... even though they still have trade forums and in game trade, even though they're all worthless pretty much.

The people who think the AH was the source of all evils are ridiculous.

The people who think removing the AH was the only way to fix loot are out of their minds.

Doing NOTHING in between the two solutions is also just totally absurd, as I see it.

Now.. don't get me wrong. I actually don't miss the auction house. I'm just saying the situation is completely stupid.

Having said that, if I were to get back into D3 ... which probably won't happen in the immediate future ... I might start to miss the auction house just because the only good way to farm sets and specific *powerful*, build-based legendaries, is through exploiting the shard system. And, as I stated previously, what's really the point of that? To farm faster?

To make a YouTube video about it that might get 50K+ views and might, one day, put $40 or $50 into my bank account? I can wash cars with the time it'd take me to farm that loot and make more money. As for enjoyment of play, well...I went from something like paragon 108 to paragon 260 or 270 since Reaper of Souls. There's only so much farming of static maps with static encounters that I can do against mindless computer AI before I just don't care any more.